"Still want to chase me?"
No one answered.
A Jonin from the Land of Lightning gritted his teeth and formed hand seals.
"Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder!"
Several lightning snakes surged across the forest floor, hurtling straight toward Chisen's feet. Clearly, they meant to force him to dodge so the men on either flank could close in.
But Chisen never retreated.
He stamped his foot, and chakra erupted instantly. The entire ground seemed to flatten under crushing force, jolting the incoming lightning to a halt. The next instant, a white light even more dazzling than Lightning Release burst from his palm.
It wasn't Chidori.
It looked more like lightning and fire compressed to the extreme and fused into a single line.
The Lightning Release ninja at the front saw only a flash of white before the blast hurled him backward as though it had pierced straight through him. The shock wave knocked down two others behind him as well.
"Retreat!"
No one knew who shouted first.
The survivors finally realized that if they kept chasing him like this, holding him back would be the least of their worries. They might not even make it home alive.
Yet the moment they retreated, Chisen stopped pursuing them.
He simply turned, blurred into motion, and vanished deep into the sea of trees.
By the time the pursuers reacted and tried sensing him again or searching for tracks, there was already nothing ahead of them.
The trees were still trees, and the wind was still wind.
It was as though he had never appeared.
"Where did he go?!"
"His chakra signature disappeared!"
"How could it disappear that fast?!"
"The Sensory Unit! Where's the Sensory Unit?!"
"We can't lock onto him! There's residual chakra and blast damage everywhere. We can't tell which trail is real!"
Amid