Even as enemies, the Five Kage—standing at the pinnacle of the shinobi world—could not help but marvel at Yui Xuanyue's prodigious talent. No wonder they said he was the strongest of the Yui clan in a thousand years.
Yet Xuanyue himself was far from satisfied.
At its core, ninjutsu was the manipulation of chakra through seven fundamental nature transformations. From the very beginning, Xuanyue had trained with a clear purpose.
He wasn't aiming merely to master bloodline limits. He sought something higher: the "Web"—a power that fused all seven chakra natures into a single, transcendent system that surpassed traditional bloodline limits.
A Web wielder wasn't guaranteed to be on the level of a Six Paths-class existence—but anyone who mastered the Web would certainly be among the elite, a force beyond most.
The Ōtsutsuki, Kaguya, and her descendant Yui, possessed such mastery.
Naturally, Xuanyue aimed to reach that level himself. Not only would it allow him to dominate the ninja world, but it would also grant him longevity. After being reborn, he had no intention of returning to the earth after just a century.
The Yui clan, though ancient and tracing back to the founding of the ninja religion like the Senju and Uchiha, had long lost the strength in their bloodline to ascend to the Six Paths level by heritage alone.
The other path—becoming a Ten-Tails Jinchūriki—was something Xuanyue avoided from the start. After witnessing Kaguya merge with the Ten-Tails through the Divine Fruit, he respected her power but feared the same mad fate that had befallen the first Uchiha prodigy.
That left only one path: to diligently pursue the Web. To study all seven chakra natures exhaustively and fuse them perfectly.
Some shinobi had mastered all seven natures—Kakashi Hatake, for example—but none fully fused them into a seamless system.
Since his rebirth as a second-generation prodigy, Xuanyue had been lauded as the "perfect child" of shinobi talent. Chakra flowed through him with uncanny ease.
In a short time, he had awakened all seven elemental natures. Yet perfect fusion remained excruciatingly difficult, even for someone of his talent.
Still, in the process of developing the Web, he had incidentally created numerous bloodline limits—abilities requiring only two natures, not seven. And that was how he had risen to stand alongside the gods themselves.
"Alas… still not a true god," Xuanyue murmured, eyes tracing the Four Kage as they worked to shatter his ice techniques. "Even the current divine-level shinobi fall short."
He needed more time—but it was slipping away.
"Perhaps I should prepare a fallback," he muttered, glancing briefly at a striking white-haired figure beyond the battlefield before withdrawing his gaze before they could notice.
[Host, please complete your beginner mission immediately.]
The system's cold, mechanical voice echoed in his mind.
"Worthless system!" Xuanyue muttered, ignoring the broken AI, and refocused on the battlefield.
The Four Kage had begun their counterattack, unleashing an array of spectacular jutsu far beyond the normal scale of shinobi techniques.
"Old fools… when will you just die?" Xuanyue muttered, shaking his head. He formed a single hand seal.
"Ice Release: Monodon White Whale!"
Woo~~~
A long, resonant cry thundered across the sky.
Through the Four Kage's astonished eyes, a colossal ice whale erupted from the water, towering impossibly high and sending waves crashing in every direction, blotting out the sun as it hurtled toward them.
The next moment—
BOOOOM!
The ground shook violently.
A massive shockwave, a torrent of water and mud, surged outward in every direction.
Xuanyue swatted away the incoming wave with a casual motion, brow raised. As the caster, he could feel the jutsu's current state.
Through the dissipating smoke, Ishikawa—the First Tsuchikage—stood on the devastated terrain. Clad in his earth-guardian robes, he defied his small stature, using raw, uncharacteristic strength to hold aloft the ice whale, hundreds of times his size.
"Earth Release: Super Light-Heavy Rock Technique!"
One man standing against a natural disaster, Ishikawa's body stretched and straightened under the strain, lifting the whale higher with every heartbeat.
"I'll return this to you!"
He hurled the massive beast toward Xuanyue in a dramatic arc.
"Persistent little rock," Xuanyue muttered, eyes following the whale. With a hand seal, the ice shattered into a vast flood, repurposed to block the surging A and Retsuto.
But before he could command the water, an external chakra force intruded, contesting his control.
"Byakuren!" Xuanyue spat the name.
Seizing the moment, A and Retsuto closed in.
"Again!"
With a surge of chakra rivaling a Tailed Beast, he coiled energy around his fists and launched a high-speed strike at Xuanyue.
Xuanyue didn't flinch. Steel Release cloaked his blackened right fist, like tempered iron, colliding with A's monstrous strength.
CLANG!
The clash of metal and chakra rang out, echoing across the battlefield.
A staggered back a few steps, unharmed. Xuanyue, too, was forced to retreat slightly.
Before he could counterattack, a sudden gust of wind appeared at his side.
Xuanyue barely had time to react before a razor-sharp strike, infused with wind chakra, lunged straight for his eyes.
Steel Release covered his body—but not his vision.
Retsuto had drawn his kunai, channeling deadly wind chakra for a lethal thrust.
And it wasn't over.
The hands that had held up the ice whale now surged from beneath Xuanyue, locking his legs in place. Beside him, Byakuren appeared, water jutsu forming at lightning speed into a prison capable of containing even a Mizukage-class shinobi.
Even if Xuanyue blocked Retsuto's attack, he could not escape this prepared cage.
Everything happened in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, the Four Kage, moving with perfect coordination, delivered their ultimate strike—the Four Shadows' Deadly Kill.
End of Chapter 5