Let Body Techniques Be As Graceful As Gymnastics!

## DONE## Chapter 44: Making Taijutsu as Graceful as Gymnastics. Ouch!

What does it feel like to leap off a four-hundred-meter-high cliff while holding a Maiden?

The wind from below whipped at his hair roots. Uchiha Ci strained his eyes open against the gale, his crimson gaze sweeping left and right, desperately searching for a spot to tread and cushion their impact.

"Eeeeeeeek?!"

Mei Terumi, held in his arms, shrieked in terror. She instinctively grabbed onto anything she could, one hand yanking Uchiha Ci's face while the other clutched his soft waist.

With that tug...

"Owwww!" Uchiha Ci yelped in pain, forced to release one hand to rip away her face-pulling grip.

"Miss, stop shaking me, you're blocking my vision!"

"You're crazy, you're crazy, you're crazy!" Mei Terumi screamed, watching the ground rush closer. Even for ninja, falling like this meant certain death.

"Brake!!!"

"Calm down!" Uchiha Ci roared. "Listen up, I'll count to one, and then I'm throwing you!"

"Grab onto the cliff face yourself!"

"If you can't, you're dead!"

Mei Terumi glanced back at the youth before her. In her panic, she forced herself to calm down, to calm down, to absolutely calm down.

Bah, how could I possibly calm down!

This is a cliff dive!

Why am I jumping off a cliff with this guy?!

We've known each other for less than a day. Even the scripts for Domineering CEO novels wouldn't dare write a flash marriage and love suicide like this!

Just as Mei Terumi was fuming, Uchiha Ci's gaze sharpened. He drew a kunai and plunged it fiercely into the cliff face.

Pfft-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch!

Rock fragments flew, dust stung his eyes. Uchiha Ci resisted the urge to rub them, forcing his eyes wide open, his whites quickly filling with blood threads.

The kunai slid down the rock face, slightly slowing their descent. Uchiha Ci calculated the timing. Just as the kunai lodged in a crevice, he pulled with one arm, chakra erupting, exerting a force that threatened to snap his muscle fibers.

"One!" he roared, using the kunai as a fulcrum to fling Mei Terumi upwards!

"What, what? That was one already?" Mei Terumi gasped.

The next moment, she felt herself being thrown upwards, her landing spot precisely on a tree growing from the cliff face.

A bandage was tied around the tree trunk, a kunai dangling from one end. The other end...

well, it was dangling Hidan.

Hidan, who Uchiha Ci had kicked off the mountain cliff earlier, was somehow still alive. He was suspended in mid-air, clutching a length of bandage, desperately trying to climb upwards with a terrified expression.

He looked up...

and saw Mei Terumi flying directly at him.

Hidan's face contorted, his eyes wide. "This Master really is screwed!"

"Don't come near meeeeeee!!"

Fortunately, Mei Terumi wasn't an ordinary ninja. After her initial surprise, she quickly regained her composure, controlling her body like a spirit cat to land gently on the tree trunk. The trunk barely swayed. She even had enough energy to reach out and pull Hidan up.

Meanwhile, the kunai Uchiha Ci was using snapped with a click. He continued his rapid descent.

However, seeing that the two members of his team were safe, he finally relaxed. He then turned his attention to the rapidly approaching ground.

Uchiha Ci rapidly formed hand seals, then faced the ground, adopting the starting stance for a Kamehameha.

Then—

"Wind Style: Severing Air Wave!"

A massive amount of chakra condensed in his palms, transforming into a powerful blast of air pressure and ultrasonic waves that surged towards the ground!

Whoosh!

The gale pushed down, causing the dense forest at the base of the cliff to sway violently.

Birds startled and flew in a flurry!

Using this momentum, Uchiha Ci not only stopped his descent but was flung upward again.

Immediately after, his Sharingan lit up the night sky with a brilliant crimson glow.

Like a professional gymnast, Uchiha Ci performed a series of flashy maneuvers in mid-air: a single-arm 360-degree spin, a grand circle with a tuck, a hip-to-knee rotation, and a back-hip aerial flip.

With a splat, he embedded himself into the cliff face.

"Aow!"

Standing on a tree branch nearby, Mei Terumi and Hidan watched Uchiha Ci, secretly applauding.

"As expected of an Uchiha. Is this the escape route you meticulously planned?"

"Speaking of which, this is the first time I've heard a cliff make a sound like that?"

Mei Terumi walked sideways along the cliff face and pulled Uchiha Ci out of the rock, marveling.

"Ptooey, ptooey!" Uchiha Ci spat out two pebbles and wiped the blood from his forehead.

He let out a breath and grinned smugly at Mei Terumi:

"Standard procedure, don't overthink it. Except for the last part, my eyes couldn't quite keep up. Otherwise, I'd give it a ninety-eight!"

Then, he distributed chakra to the soles of his feet and stood up from the sheer cliff face.

Tilting his head back, he saw the distorted face of his Little Brother, Hidan, below, looking like some creature from the shadows.

"Hahaha, you motherf***er."

"You still have the nerve to talk?!"

"This Master will kill you! Do you know what would have happened if I hadn't grabbed that bandage when I fell?"

Hidan's eyes flared with rage, and he held the bandage up to Uchiha Ci.

Implying, look, look, how dangerous was that?

Is this how you save people?

Uchiha Ci said nothing, snatched the bandage from Hidan's hand, and put the kunai at the end back into his ninja tool pouch.

After a long pause, he spoke slowly:

"You better have grabbed that bandage or that tree..."

Hidan blinked, sensing that Uchiha Ci's words held a hidden meaning.

"Speaking of which, was the bankbook you gave Kakuzu real?" Mei Terumi suddenly asked, recalling the heart-stopping scene from moments ago.

"Nonsense, of course it was fake."

Uchiha Ci turned around and looked up the cliff face, his gaze serious.

"It only contained enough money for Set Number Three. I doubt it was enough to buy our lives."

Mei Terumi was taken aback, her knowledge hitting a blind spot. She asked foolishly:

"Set Number Three? What's that?"

As soon as she finished speaking, eight massive, dark tentacles burst from above the cliff face. A single swing could crush rock and tear through the cliff, terrifyingly powerful.

The next moment, the tentacles dug into the cliff face, drawing back like a bow.

The bow body quickly bent like a full moon, the tentacles taut and creaking!

Whoosh!

A figure with a face as dark as the bottom of a pot shot straight down!

Kakuzu, with eight enormous, dark Jigokudō tentacles on his back, had a terrifyingly grim expression.

His face was filled with the fury of being tricked, and he roared in rage:

"You poor wretch, you dared to trick this old man!"

"Die for me!"

Uchiha Ci was momentarily speechless, unsure how to explain the situation to Mei Terumi. He could only let out a dry laugh, scratch his head, and look up at the descending Kakuzu, his gaze growing serious:

"Well, it's probably a scraping massage set that any man would like."

Then, he turned back, formed hand seals, smiled at Mei Terumi, and asked:

"Are you ready?"

"The real battle is about to begin!"