Bang!
Ren's side kick crashed against Hizashi's raised forearm.
The impact sent a sharp recoil through Ren's leg. His expression changed slightly; it felt less like kicking a human arm and more like striking a steel pillar wrapped in flesh.
Hizashi was equally surprised.
Despite Ren's age, the kick carried far more force than he had expected from an academy student. His feet shifted half a step across the dirt before he regained his balance.
The moment he stabilized, Hizashi used the recoil to rotate his body.
His right palm sliced through the air.
A sharp whistle followed his fingertips as the Gentle Fist strike shot directly toward the opening in Ren's chest.
Too fast!
Ren's muscles tightened.
He had already known Hizashi's skill surpassed Daichi's by an enormous margin, but understanding that in theory was different from facing it directly.
Hizashi's movement contained none of Daichi's anger or wasted effort.
Every step was controlled.
Every strike followed the shortest possible path.
Ren pushed off the ground with both feet.
His body shot backward, coat snapping in the wind as he crossed seven meters in an instant. Hizashi's fingertips passed through the space directly in front of his chest, missing his shirt by less than an inch.
Ren landed and slid another step before stopping.
The two separated.
Their opening exchange had lasted only seconds, yet both now regarded the other more seriously.
Hizashi slowly lowered his blocking arm.
He did not pursue.
Instead, his pale eyes studied Ren with unmistakable curiosity.
"That movement you used when you charged at me earlier…"
Ren flexed his right ankle, trying to dispel the numbness.
Hizashi continued, "Was that truly the Substitution Technique?"
"What else would it be?"
"A personalized version?"
"You could call it that."
Hizashi frowned.
Like almost every Konoha shinobi, he had learned the academy's Substitution Technique. The Hyūga might specialize in taijutsu, but they did not reject ninjutsu entirely. Basic techniques, medical ninjutsu, barrier arts, and sealing methods all had a place within the clan.
Yet Hizashi had never seen an ordinary substitution produce movement resembling the Flying Thunder God.
There had been no obvious preparation.
More importantly, he had not seen Ren form a single hand seal.
The Substitution Technique was only E-rank. Its simplicity made it easy to learn, but that same simplicity left little room for improvement. Generations of shinobi had already refined its conventional form.
Reducing the activation to one seal would have been impressive.
Removing the seals entirely should have been impossible.
Even Tobirama Senju, renowned for developing and simplifying ninjutsu, could not casually erase every requirement from a technique without changing its fundamental nature.
Hizashi's Byakugan remained active.
Veins pressed around his eyes as his vision swept across Ren's chakra network.
"The academy report said you modified the chakra circulation," he said. "But what you used looked closer to space–time ninjutsu."
"It only looked that way because it was fast."
Ren kept his answer deliberately simple.
He continued flexing his foot beneath the hem of his trousers.
That single blocked kick had confirmed something important.
Hizashi's body was extraordinarily conditioned.
More importantly, the older shinobi had shown no killing intent. His counterattack had been dangerous, but controlled. Had Hizashi genuinely wished to injure him, that Gentle Fist strike would have targeted a more vulnerable chakra point and continued after Ren retreated.
This was an investigation, not an assassination.
Hizashi wanted to understand how Ren had defeated Daichi and exploited the Byakugan's blind angle.
That meant Ren could afford to experiment.
"If you didn't see clearly," Ren said, reaching toward his equipment pouch, "I'll show you again."
Metal flashed between his fingers.
Hizashi's posture lowered.
Ren threw both hands forward.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Seven training shuriken and kunai tore through the air.
They did not travel in straight lines.
Several weapons collided deliberately in midflight, changing one another's direction. Steel rang against steel as the projectiles split into irregular arcs and converged upon Hizashi from the front, sides, and above.
The technique was crude compared with the future skill of prodigies such as Itachi Uchiha, but from an academy student, it was astonishing.
Hizashi remained still.
His feet rooted themselves against the ground.
The Byakugan tracked every rotation, collision, and altered trajectory.
"Gentle Fist Art…"
Chakra gathered around his palms.
"Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms!"
His arms moved.
Palm strikes blurred into pale afterimages.
Clang!
The first kunai was knocked aside.
Tap!
Two shuriken changed direction beneath precise fingertip strikes and buried themselves harmlessly in the ground.
Hizashi rotated at the center of the storm, deflecting, striking, and redirecting every projectile before it entered his reach.
Metallic impacts rang across the clearing in rapid succession.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The weapons seemed to crash against an invisible barrier.
But the projectiles were never the true attack.
Smoke exploded among them.
Poof!
Ren vanished from his original position.
One of the scattered kunai transformed into him less than a meter from Hizashi's front-left side.
Ren drove a fist toward the exposed space beneath Hizashi's raised arm.
Hizashi did not turn.
His left hand shot backward like a striking serpent, two fingers aimed directly at Ren's throat.
The attack passed through him.
Poof!
The figure burst into smoke.
A clone.
Hizashi's Byakugan detected a fresh chakra disturbance behind him.
He spun and launched a fierce side kick.
His heel cut through another Ren.
Poof!
A second clone disappeared.
"Behind."
"Left."
"Right."
Smoke repeatedly erupted around Hizashi.
Ren flickered between the kunai and shuriken scattered across the clearing while illusionary clones approached from alternate angles. Visual Sharing allowed him to borrow the sight of one clone at a time, giving him brief perspectives from outside his own body.
A fist appeared near Hizashi's ribs.
A kick swept toward his knee.
Another Ren lunged at his unprotected back.
Each attack arrived from a different direction.
Each was fast enough to overwhelm an ordinary Chūnin.
Hizashi blocked all of them.
His palms intercepted Ren's fists.
His elbows deflected kicks.
His fingertips pierced clones and dispersed them before they could complete their feints.
From beginning to end, Hizashi remained within a circle barely two meters across.
He stood like a boulder in the center of a violent river.
"Useless!"
Hizashi knocked aside another punch and drove Ren backward with a controlled palm strike.
"My Byakugan can watch almost every direction at once. Changing positions means nothing if I see where you appear!"
Ren exchanged places with another shuriken before the follow-up strike could reach him.
He reappeared five meters away.
His breathing had become heavier.
Hizashi was right.
Sealless Instant Release activated in only two-tenths of a second. However, exchanging positions did not guarantee a successful attack. Ren still needed time to recognize his new orientation, regain balance, select a target, and move his body.
Against Daichi, that delay had been insignificant.
Against Hizashi, it was enough.
The older shinobi possessed superior reaction speed, dynamic vision, balance, and combat experience. The instant Ren appeared, Hizashi's body was already responding.
That was the true reason Minato Namikaze became the Yellow Flash.
The Flying Thunder God Technique alone did not make him invincible.
Minato possessed the perception to understand a battlefield instantly, the reflexes to attack the moment he arrived, and the spatial awareness to reorient himself regardless of position.
The members of the Hokage Guard Platoon—Genma Shiranui, Raidō Namiashi, and Iwashi Tatami—would later learn a collective version of the technique from Minato.
Yet they needed all three members working together to activate the Flying Thunder Formation Technique. It served as an extraordinary transportation method, but not as a practical dueling technique.
Possessing teleportation and fighting through teleportation were entirely different abilities.
Ren had confirmed his first hypothesis.
Sealless Instant Release was powerful, but his body and reactions could not yet exploit its full potential against an experienced opponent.
It was time for the second experiment.
Ren glanced across the scattered weapons.
Then he disappeared.
Poof!
Hizashi's Byakugan immediately searched the clearing.
A chakra disturbance flared behind him.
Hizashi turned—but found only an abandoned shuriken lying on the ground.
His brow furrowed.
Ren had already formed the Transformation seal within the cover of the substitution smoke.
His body shrank.
Bones, muscles, clothing, and features collapsed into the shape of an ordinary gray bird. Wings unfolded, caught the air, and carried him upward.
Perfect Form reproduced every visible detail.
The feathers shifted naturally.
The wings beat with the correct rhythm.
Even the bird's tiny claws curled beneath its body.
A sensory shinobi—or anyone looking directly with the Byakugan—would still recognize the chakra hidden inside the transformation.
Ren did not give Hizashi that opportunity.
He flew into the narrow conical blind angle extending behind Hizashi's upper spine.
The Byakugan swept above.
Below.
Left.
Right.
The gray bird remained directly within the only space it could not see.
Hizashi's expression changed.
"Where did he go?"
He searched the trees and ground.
There was no trace of Ren's chakra.
For the first time since their spar began, uncertainty entered Hizashi's stance.
He now understood how Daichi must have felt.
The academy student had not disabled the Byakugan.
He had turned its one limitation into a weapon.
Ren adjusted every wingbeat to remain inside the blind angle as Hizashi shifted his head.
The distance between them narrowed.
Six meters.
Five.
Four.
Hizashi's guard loosened for only an instant.
That was enough.
The gray bird's wings folded.
Poof!
Smoke erupted in midair.
Ren emerged less than four meters behind and above Hizashi. His hands were already moving through the final seals, which he had begun forming while maintaining the transformation.
He inhaled.
Heat surged from his abdomen into his chest.
The Great Fireball Technique's red-haired avatar exploded onto the system interface, practically vibrating with excitement.
[Great Fireball Technique: "Finally! I was beginning to think you planned to let those basic techniques have all the fun."]
Flames coiled around her arms.
[Great Fireball Technique: "Show that white-eyed show-off what real power looks like!"]
Ren's chest expanded.
"Fire Release…"
Hizashi sensed the chakra behind him.
He turned.
"…Great Fireball Technique!"
Flames erupted from Ren's mouth.
The Spirit of Fire trait amplified the technique the instant it formed.
His former exercise-ball-sized flame expanded violently, growing into a blazing orange-red sphere more than a meter across. It descended toward Hizashi like a fragment of the sun.
Heat flooded the clearing.
Grass curled and blackened beneath it.
The air warped.
The enhanced Great Fireball roared toward Hizashi at point-blank range.
His pale eyes widened.
He had expected another clone.
Another substitution.
Another clever use of an academy technique.
He had not expected a C-rank Fire Release of this intensity from an eight-year-old civilian.
There was no time to dodge.
No room to retreat.
Hizashi lowered his center of gravity.
Chakra erupted from every tenketsu across his body.
His feet turned.
Then his entire body began to spin.
"Eight Trigrams Palms…"
A dome of rotating chakra exploded outward.
"Revolving Heaven!"
The blazing fireball collided with the Hyūga clan's absolute defense.