Chapter 472: The Fall of the Raikage
A torrential gale ripped across the battlefield, carrying jagged fragments of shattered stone high into the suffocating dust clouds. The dense forest that once guarded the flank of the Konoha encampment had been completely eradicated. In its place lay a catastrophic, miles-wide crater, its edges still smoking from the sheer friction of combat.
Above this ruined earth, two blurs of motion—one a blinding streak of azure lightning, the other a blazing comet of blue vapor—clashed with apocalyptic fury. Every time they collided, the sky itself seemed to fracture, unleashing deafening sonic booms that flattened the remaining debris.
"Damn green-skinned monster!" Raikage Ay roared, his voice tearing through the thunder.
His massive, muscle-bound frame surged with violent electrical arcs, yet his eyes burned with sheer, unadulterated frustration. His absolute pride—his peerless speed—was failing him. Ever since the death of Namikaze Minato, Ay had stood uncontested as the fastest shinobi alive. Yet here, in the dirt and the blood, a mere Konoha Jonin clad in a fundamentally ridiculous green spandex jumpsuit was matching his Lightning Release Chakra Mode blow for blow. And he was doing it with pure, unadulterated taijutsu.
It was a humiliation Ay could not stomach.
"Lightning Release: Lariat!"
Ay vanished in a blinding flash of ozone and thunder. He materialized directly above Might Guy, gravity and momentum fueling his descent. His massive forearm, saturated in hyper-condensed Lightning Release chakra, chopped downward like a guillotine aimed straight for Guy's skull.
Beneath the lethal strike, Guy did not flinch. His thick brows furrowed, but his eyes burned with a manic, blazing thrill.
"Good timing!" he bellowed, his voice echoing with raw power. "This is the true passion of youth!"
He made no move to evade. The cerulean sweat evaporating from his skin thickened into a raging aura of blue steam. The Eight Gates—the Seventh Gate of Shock—was already pushed to its absolute zenith.
"Konoha... Great Whirlwind!"
Guy pivoted on his heel, his waist twisting with the torque of a coiled spring. His leg lashed upward, a blur of green and blue that intercepted the Raikage's descending wrist with terrifying precision.
A sickeningly heavy thud echoed across the crater. A halo of white shockwaves violently erupted from the point of impact, tearing the air apart. The sheer kinetic force of the kick forcefully deflected Ay's lethal hand blade. The lightning-coated arm grazed past Guy's shoulder, plunging instead into the bedrock below. The earth split open, a massive fissure tearing through the crater floor.
Riding the brutal recoil, Guy executed a flawless backflip, soaring backward to create distance. The instant his sandals touched the ground, the bedrock beneath him pulverized into fine dust under the residual force.
"What a tough turtle shell!" Guy barked out a laugh, shaking his slightly numb right leg to restore the circulation. A wide, gleaming grin stretched across his face.
"Stop talking to yourself!" Ay crashed onto the broken earth, the lightning wreathing his body spiking into a chaotic, blinding frenzy. The air around him smelled heavily of scorched ozone. "I will admit, your taijutsu is impressive. But..."
Ay's muscles bulged, his veins straining against his dark skin.
"In the face of absolute power and defense, your strikes are nothing more than a tickle!"
A monstrous surge of chakra erupted from the Raikage. The azure lightning encasing him instantly doubled in density, forming a nearly impenetrable shell of pure, crackling energy.
Lightning Release Chakra Mode: Overload.
"With this next attack, I am going to crush every single bone in your body, inch by agonizing inch!" Ay roared.
The ground beneath his boots instantly caved in, unable to bear the explosive force of his launch. He shot forward like a fired railgun shell.
"Lightning Release: Liger Bomb!"
Facing the catastrophic, world-ending pressure of the incoming strike, Guy exhaled a long, steady breath. The manic excitement vanished from his face, replaced by a solemn, ironclad gravity. He slowly shifted his footing, sinking into a highly specific, grounded stance. He brought his hands forward, pressing the webs of his thumbs together to form a distinct seal.
"Since your speed and power have reached their absolute limits..." Guy murmured, his voice cutting through the roar of the approaching lightning. "Then I will respond with an attack that shatters those limits!"
The raging torrent of blue steam radiating from his body suddenly froze. It stopped flowing outward, forcibly compressed inward by a terrifying, suffocating pressure. Every ounce of his momentum, every drop of his physical strength, converged directly into the space between his hands—the 'Tiger's Mouth' seal.
The Raikage was already upon him, a sinister, victorious grin twisting his features as he prepared to deliver the fatal blow.
In that fraction of a second, Guy's eyes snapped wide open. The veins in his neck bulged as he unleashed a deafening, soul-shaking roar.
"Daytime! Tiger!!!"
Guy thrust his palms forward with apocalyptic force. A colossal, ferocious tiger formed entirely of blinding white, high-pressure shockwaves violently erupted from his hands. It roared, a sound that threatened to rupture eardrums for miles.
"What is that?!" Ay's pupils shrank to pinpricks. The sheer atmospheric pressure radiating from the beast was suffocating. "A cheap trick... Break for me!"
Ay bellowed, his pride refusing to let him evade. He drove his lightning-clad fist straight forward, intending to pierce the heart of the shockwave tiger and crush Guy behind it.
But the instant his knuckles made contact with the white beast, the Raikage's expression warped in horror. The massive tiger of air did not yield. Instead, it opened its maw and swallowed the azure lightning whole. Ay slammed into an immovable, irresistible wall of kinetic force. The pure, unadulterated physical impact bore down on him, and for the first time in his life, his impenetrable Lightning Release Armor let out a sickening, teeth-grinding crack.
"Impossible!!!" Ay roared, his voice cracking with disbelief and despair.
The next second, the Daytime Tiger fully detonated.
A blinding flash consumed the crater, followed instantly by a colossal white mushroom cloud that punched straight through the cloud cover. A catastrophic shockwave ripped outward, tearing up the earth like a tidal wave of soil and stone. Even the distant sectors of the battlefield were violently shaken by the tremor. Countless shinobi, both friend and foe, ceased their skirmishes, their weapons lowering as they stared in absolute horror at the towering pillar of white air dominating the horizon.
A long, suffocating silence followed.
Slowly, the thick smoke and dust began to settle. The landscape had been completely rewritten. What was once a dense forest was now a smooth, bowl-shaped meteorite crater spanning hundreds of meters in diameter.
At the very bottom of the abyss, Raikage Ay lay sprawled on his back amidst the pulverized rubble.
"Cough... urgh..." Ay violently hacked up a thick clot of blood. His vision swam, the world spinning in and out of focus. He gritted his teeth, commanding his limbs to push him upward, but his muscles screamed in agony, completely unresponsive.
'I... I actually lost to a taijutsu shinobi?'
"What... was that jutsu..." Ay rasped, his hoarse voice dripping with deep, bitter unwillingness.
High above, at the jagged lip of the crater, Might Guy dropped heavily onto one knee. Even a peerless taijutsu master like him could not escape the severe physical toll of opening the Seventh Gate. His muscles twitched violently, and his breathing came in ragged, exhausted gasps.
Yet, through sheer willpower, Guy forced his head up. He flashed his signature, gleaming white teeth, extending a violently trembling arm to give the fallen Raikage a thumbs-up.
"That is the Roar of Youth—Daytime Tiger!"
Having delivered his declaration, Guy's vision darkened. He swayed dangerously on the edge, nearly collapsing forward into the pit.
"Guy Jonin!"
A chorus of sharp voices rang out from the tree line behind him. Several masked figures flickered into existence, landing gracefully on the crater's edge. The Konoha Anbu reinforcements had arrived.
The operatives peered over the ledge, their eyes widening behind their porcelain masks as they took in the sight of the massive, broken man bleeding out at the bottom.
"That's... the Raikage!" one Anbu gasped, his voice tight with disbelief.
"Heavens above... Guy Jonin actually defeated the Raikage in a head-on clash!"
"Move! Sealing Squad, advance!" an Anbu Platoon Leader barked, instantly snapping out of his shock. "This is our only chance! Restrain the Raikage immediately!"
Several Konoha shinobi specializing in fuinjutsu drew their scrolls and leaped down the steep incline, rushing toward the fallen Kage.
"You... bastards..." Ay growled, his pride flaring one last time.
He tried to summon his lightning, to crush these masked weaklings approaching him, but the agonizing pain tearing through his nervous system left him paralyzed. He could not even twitch a finger. He was forced to watch in helpless, burning rage as the Anbu surrounded him. Black, ink-like sealing runes crawled from their scrolls, slithering up his massive arms and chest, locking down his tenketsu and completely severing his connection to his chakra network.
The Fourth Raikage, Ay, had fallen.
...Meanwhile, miles away in a different sector of the forest, another slaughter was drawing to a close.
A shrill, desperate scream pierced the canopy. The final Kumogakure Anbu operative was brutally kicked through the air, his ribs shattering as he crashed heavily into the trunk of a massive oak. He spat a mouthful of dark blood and slumped into the roots, instantly losing consciousness.
The clearing was a macabre gallery of devastation. The damp earth was completely carpeted with the broken bodies of Kumogakure's finest shinobi, lying in twisted, unnatural angles. Some had been incinerated into unrecognizable, smoking charcoal. Others were pinned to the earth, impaled by dozens of precisely thrown kunai. But the vast majority simply lay paralyzed, their eyes vacant and drooling, their minds utterly shattered by the inescapable nightmare of Uchiha genjutsu.
Standing amidst the carnage, his boots resting casually near a severed arm, Uchiha Shunichi slowly and methodically slid his katana back into its scabbard. The metallic click echoed loudly in the dead silence.
Shunichi lowered his gaze, staring indifferently at the twitching Kumogakure Captain groveling at his feet. The crimson irises of his Three-Tomoe Sharingan spun slowly, radiating a suffocating, chilling malice.
"You people are no match for the Uchiha," Shunichi stated, his tone flat, devoid of even the slightest hint of exertion. "Failure was your only inevitable outcome."
The Kumogakure Captain trembled violently. Blood poured from a gash on his forehead, but he didn't dare wipe it away. He stared at the hellscape around him, his mind fracturing under the weight of sheer, unadulterated terror.
Dozens of Elite Jonin. This was the Hidden Cloud Village's premier assault force, a unit feared across the elemental nations. And they had been systematically dismantled, butchered, and humiliated by this single squad of Uchiha in less than ten minutes.
'Are these people... monsters?' the Captain thought, his breath hitching in his throat.
Shunichi turned his back on the broken man. The sunlight pierced through the ruined canopy, illuminating the red and white Uchiha fan crest proudly emblazoned on the back of his high-collared shirt.
"Burn this crest into your memory," Shunichi commanded, his voice echoing with absolute, unquestionable authority. "It is a mountain your village will never surmount. We are the Uchiha."
Without looking back, Shunichi raised a gloved hand and flicked his wrist.
"Take them all away."
From the shadows of the trees, the surrounding Uchiha clan members materialized in perfect unison. Their expressions were identical to their leader's—cold, arrogant, and utterly ruthless. Moving with terrifying efficiency, they clamped heavy, iron Chakra-Suppressing Shackles onto the wrists and necks of the surviving Kumogakure shinobi. Without a shred of mercy, they began dragging the elite Cloud ninja back toward the Konoha encampment, hauling them through the dirt like dead dogs.
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