Chapter 164: The Duel of Masters
Screeee—!
Kyūmiya Emon, the Swiftwind Swordsman, gave a two-handed, horizontal slash. His motion was fluid, a perfect extension of the gale itself. From the tip of his ninjato, a ferocious torrent of air erupted, swirling and compressing into a howling tornado over twenty meters tall.
On the chaotic battlefield where Konoha, Suna, and Iwa forces clashed, this sudden vortex of destruction carved its own path. It tore up the sodden earth, sucking gravel, mud, and debris into its spiraling maw, becoming a grinding column of projectiles.
"Aah!"
Several Konoha chunin, caught too close, were helplessly wrenched off their feet. They were flung against the roaring wall of wind, pinned by centrifugal force, unable to break free. While Emon's ultimate target was Hatake Sakumo, clearing the immediate area of enemy combatants was a useful, brutal side benefit.
This was not mere ninjutsu. It was a fusion—sword technique and Wind Release chakra woven into a new, devastating discipline, akin to the ninja world's own evolution of kenjutsu and taijutsu hybrids. Over millennia, shinobi arts had not remained static; creativity was a human constant.
"Impressive technique," Hatake Sakumo acknowledged, his voice calm amidst the roar. The White Fang blade in his hand erupted with new intensity. Silvery-white lightning arced and crawled over the metal until the sword itself seemed to be forged from pure electricity, its form lost in the blinding glare.
As a fellow master of the blade, Sakumo was not intimidated. He assessed, he adapted.
He leapt, meeting the onrushing tornado head-on. In mid-air, he drew the White Fang blade back to his chest, the lightning around it condensing, buzzing with a high-pitched whine.
"Break!"
CRACK-THOOOM!
A flash of pristine white light, sharp as a fang, stabbed into the heart of the tornado. It didn't cut from the outside. Sakumo's strike pierced into the vortex, flooding its interior with chaotic, conductive lightning. The carefully structured wind currents shattered from within. The massive tornado didn't split in two; it unraveled, bursting apart into harmless, dissipating gusts of wind and a rain of harmless debris.
He could have bisected it cleanly. But the Konoha ninja trapped within would have been bisected as well. Hatake Sakumo, the White Fang whose mission success was built on corpses, held to one unshakeable code: he never abandoned his comrades. These shinobi were his responsibility. So, he chose the more difficult, precise method—disrupting the technique's core to free them without harm.
The freed ninja tumbled through the air from the twenty-meter height, landing with practiced rolls in the mud. Gasping, they looked up with profound gratitude towards their commander. The White Fang was not just a weapon; he was their shield.
"As expected of Konoha's White Fang," Emon called out, his tone laced with a new edge of respect… and contempt. "But for a swordsman of your caliber to be so burdened by attachments… it is disappointing. The path of the sword demands absolute focus. Sentiment is a flaw."
Sakumo landed lightly, his blade still humming. "Hah. A man who feels nothing for his allies does not deserve the title 'shinobi.' That is a truth you desert dwellers will never grasp."
He was done talking. The White Fang blade flared again. Sakumo's body blurred, propelled not just by muscle, but by the crackling lightning chakra coursing through him. He became a streak of thunderous light.
Emon's eyes narrowed to slits. Wind chakra erupted around his legs, and he shot forward to meet the charge, his own movement a silent, slicing gust. The air around him warped and screamed, and the sharp wind pressure trailing his blade carved deep scars into the earth.
CLANG!
The first collision was a deafening shockwave of sound and energy. Lightning met hurricane. A sphere of violent electricity and shredding winds exploded around the two masters, clearing the mud for meters in every direction.
Boom!
They disengaged and re-engaged in a blur. No more probing. This was the heart of the duel—a relentless, breathtaking exchange of lethal skill. Their blades became extensions of their wills, a silver-white streak of lightning and a grey-green blur of wind clashing again and again.
Clang! Clang! CLANG!
Sparks, white and hot, showered from every impact. Sword energy—manifestations of their chakra and intent—erupted with each parry and slash, gouging the battlefield around them into a cratered wasteland. Solid rock shattered; the packed earth split like soft fruit. Their duel was a contained storm of destruction, a terrifying and beautiful display of skill rarely witnessed on any battlefield.
Hatake Sakumo was a confirmed Kage-level combatant. Kyūmiya Emon stood at the peak of the quasi-Kage tier. Yet, in pure swordsmanship, Emon was matching the legendary White Fang blow for blow. Even Sakumo, mid-strike, had to acknowledge his opponent's art. The man had fully harmonized Wind Release with his blade. His attacks were sharp, deceptive, and elusive—as intangible as the breeze until the killing edge was upon you. A single misjudgment would mean a limb severed, a fatal wound.
"Gale Flash!"
In the midst of their high-speed dance, Emon suddenly launched himself vertically like a raptor taking flight. For a split second, he was exposed, arms raised high for a two-handed overhead strike—a seeming opening.
It was a trap.
The very air around him shuddered and converged, drawn to his blade as if magnetized. The ninjato in his hands glowed with a concentrated, turbulent cyan light—the very essence of cutting wind given form.
He brought the sword down.
SHREEEEE—!
The sound was that of the world being torn in half. A crescent blade of solidified, screaming air pressure shot downward, so dense it was visible, distorting the light around it. It was less a slash and more a localized, horizontal typhoon.
"Good!" Sakumo's shout was one of pure, adrenaline-fueled appreciation. He didn't dodge. He met it.
He raised the White Fang, and the lightning covering his body surged into the blade until he and the sword seemed one entity.
"Lightning Sever!"
SCREEE—CRACK!
A slash of condensed thunder met the descending typhoon. For an instant, the sound of a thousand shrieking birds filled the void.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The clash of energies detonated, and they were on each other again, blades a continuous blur of silver and grey. The sound of steel on steel became a single, sustained metallic scream. Their footwork was a masterpiece of micro-adjustments and explosive bursts. It was a duel that transcended the surrounding slaughter, a peerless exhibition of skill.
Two masters of their craft, fighting at this level, could each slaughter scores of lesser opponents. A true elite's taijutsu and kenjutsu were weapons of mass destruction.
Then, as if by mutual, unspoken agreement, they broke apart, landing five meters apart on the churned earth. They faced each other, chests heaving slightly, the rain sizzling on their superheated blades.
Kyūmiya Emon's eyes flicked to his own forearm. A thin, precise line of red welled up, a single drop of blood tracing a path down his blade onto the rain-slicked ground.
He was wounded. Hatake Sakumo, aside from his accelerated breathing, was unmarked.
In their first true exchange of ultimate techniques, Emon had lost by a hair.
"I have severed all bonds," Emon stated, his voice tight with a mixture of fury and awe. "I have practiced day and night with single-minded devotion. I was the undisputed number one swordsman in the Land of Wind. I joined our darkest forces to hone my art further. I believed there was no equal under the sky."
"The world is vast," Sakumo replied, his voice calm, carrying the weight of experience. "You were first in a desert. That is not the world."
"WHITE FANG!" Emon snarled, the name a curse and an acknowledgment. "The next move… it is the culmination of a decade of my life. When this sword is drawn, it ends in life or death. This world is not wide enough for both of us!"
He settled into a new, impossibly deep stance, his blade held low, parallel to the ground. The wind around him didn't howl; it grew silent, sucked into the vacuum of his intent. The air pressure dropped sharply.
"Thirty-Six Consecutive Strikes: Storm's End."
(End of Chapter 163)
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