A white-haired man with red eyes stood quietly at the entrance of a cave beneath the curtain of rain, silently watching the downpour outside.
A female ninja, drenched and disheveled, emerged from the rain. Her silhouette, once a tiny black dot in the distance, quickly closed the gap with a few swift movements. She knelt on one knee beside the man.
"You've done well, Number Two."
The man looked at the ninja trailing far behind the woman, but instead of being angry, his eyes shone with joy.
"You've accomplished exactly what I asked. When I gain true power, I'll give you what you desire."
As he spoke, several ninja broke through the rain and appeared at the mouth of the cave. They wore forehead protectors with the symbol of Iwagakure.
Seeing the female ninja kneeling beside the white-haired man, they wordlessly spread out and surrounded the cave and the man.
The leader of the Iwa group was a thin ninja with spiky hair like a hedgehog. He was the Explosion Release user named Gari, who had once been exchanged back to Iwa from Konoha's prison during peace talks between the two villages.
Because he had been captured and had leaked some intel under interrogation, Gari had been punished after returning to Iwagakure.
He was removed from the elite Explosion Corps and sent on dangerous missions outside the village to earn money and repay Iwa's losses.
"Gari of the Explosion Release. So I finally lured you out of Iwagakure."
The red eyes of the white-haired man, Hiruko, gleamed with a joy that bordered on madness. He stared at Gari with eyes full of greed and hunger.
Gari gave a subtle signal to one of his teammates.
The teammate closed his eyes and carefully sensed the surroundings, then slightly shook his head in response.
"Earth Style: Hell Swamp!"
"Earth Style: Earth Dragon Bullet!"
Two Iwagakure shinobi stepped forward in sync, each unleashing their specialty jutsu.
One transformed the ground around the cave entrance into a swamp, aiming to restrict the enemy's movements.
The other summoned the head of an earth dragon in front of him, launching chakra-infused stone bullets wildly toward the swampy area where the enemy was believed to be hiding.
Gari calmly observed the enemy's reaction. Since they had deliberately lured the Iwa team here, they clearly had some kind of plan. Find the newest release on novel(ꜰ)ire.net
Naturally, he wanted to gauge their strength.
The figure of Hiruko in the swamp turned into a wooden log and was swallowed into the ground.
The sensor ninja in the Iwa team suddenly detected something, quickly turning around and pointing into the rain behind them.
Orbs of lightning crackled through the air, streaking toward them one after another.
"Lightning Style: Light Fang!"
"Earth Style: Earth Wall!"
A thick stone wall suddenly rose from beneath the Iwa shinobi, blocking the incoming lightning blasts one by one.
However, the moment the wall intercepted the attacks, Gari and his team used it as cover to shift their positions and change formations.
Seeing the jutsu the opponent used, Gari immediately made a guess.
Even though he didn't see the opponent's forehead protector, in special situations, a ninja might remove it to hide their identity.
The war between Iwagakure and Konoha had already ended. There wasn't much conflict now with Kirigakure or Sunagakure either.
But Kumogakure… their Kage had been killed by Iwagakure.
Knowing the personality of the newly appointed Fourth Raikage, it wouldn't be surprising if he tried to stir up trouble for Iwagakure during its weakened state.
Of course, there was also a strong chance that this person was a bounty ninja from the Bounty Station who had accepted a mission targeting him. Those hyenas would do anything for money.
Light bullets pierced the stone wall, blasting large holes through it.
Earth Style: Earth Splitting Palm!
Gari's expression darkened. His hands moved quickly, forming hand seals, and then he slammed them onto the ground.
The earth beneath Hiruko suddenly split open. Chunks of broken rock swallowed him into the ground, then quickly sealed shut again.
At the same time, a deep muffled explosion echoed from underground.
That was Gari using his kekkei genkai. He transmitted the blast through the ground, turning the rock into explosives.
In such a confined underground space, the destructive power would be far greater than on the surface. Normally, a regular enemy should have died instantly. But Gari felt a sense of doubt.
He realized that the power of his Explosion Style attack was strangely weak. It was as if some force underground had suppressed the explosion before it could fully spread.
Was it Lightning Style?
Earth Style was naturally weak against Lightning Style—that was common knowledge.
The Third Raikage, apart from his own immense strength, also had an elemental advantage in battle.
The next moment, Gari no longer needed to guess.
A blinding flash of lightning suddenly shot up from underground into the sky. Thick, pitch-black thunderclouds rapidly spread outward, following the lightning.
The next moment, a barrage of pale, intense lightning rained down from beneath the clouds, striking the ground like a furious cleansing.
One of the bolts grazed a member of Gari's squad, and instantly, as if magnetized, more lightning strikes followed, slamming into him until his body was reduced to a corpse.
In just the blink of an eye, Gari was the only survivor left from the Iwagakure squad he had led. He had barely escaped the range of the storm clouds by using the explosive force of his Explosion Release to launch himself out.
Brilliant arcs of lightning, shaped like the fins of a shark, tore through the ground and charged toward Gari with explosive force.
From the torn earth, Hiruko leapt out, his entire body crackling with powerful lightning.
Wrapped in a storm of light, he moved like a ghost. In Gari's horrified gaze, the blinding lightning gathered in Hiruko's palm and shot straight toward him.
Gari only had time to curse in his heart before the lightning in Hiruko's hand rushed at him with flickering speed, filling his vision entirely.
Explosion Release: Landmine Fist!
Relying on instinct, Gari activated his best Bloodline Limit. His stone-covered fist rose to block the strike, and before the attack landed, he detonated a blast to push himself backward and evade.
But his heart instantly sank.
As if predicting his move, a thin bolt of lightning shot out from Hiruko's palm, piercing straight into Gari's fist.
The searing current numbed his entire body, and the chakra he had gathered froze up for a split second.
The stone in his hand, used as the explosive medium for his Explosion Release, completely lost its power under the crackling lightning. Surrounded by the electric light, Gari's consciousness slipped into unconsciousness.
His opponent clearly knew everything about him—his every move and his best techniques had been thoroughly studied.
Having successfully captured Gari the bomber, Hiruko sharply turned toward the curtain of rain in the distance. His senses picked up a powerful chakra rapidly approaching.
"Uchiha... a ninja from Konoha?"
Noticing the forehead protector on the approaching figure, along with those iconic blood-red eyes, Hiruko instinctively frowned.
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