Uchiha Pride

As Phoenix Sage Fire streaked away, Uchiha Yuji felt the pressure on both sides ease. He immediately made his decision.

Susanoo braced both hands against the rock face and slid rapidly downward, landing firmly on the ground. The pitch-black Susanoo then quietly dissipated, revealing Uchiha Yuji within.

Uchiha Yuji acted as if nothing had happened and took a bite of rabbit meat. Even seasoned, wild rabbit that wasn't cooked through tasted truly awful.

Still, it was much better than a Military Ration Pill, so he hurriedly took a couple more bites.

"You got here so quickly? We only rested for a little while. Were you really so eager to come and die?"

Before them was a semicircular wall of scorched rock. Phoenix Sage Fire wasn't especially powerful; it had only left a mark on the rock face.

After watching for only a moment, two figures shot out from the squad. The White Fang Short Blade, glinting with faint arcs of lightning, and a fist wrapped in azure chakra struck the rock from either side at the same time.

The chakra-reinforced rock was as soft as cake beneath their blows. The sealed rock wall broke apart, but the ninja who should have been inside it was nowhere to be seen.

The ninja burrowing beneath the earth saw the earthen wall smashed by a single punch, and his heart lurched.

He had been the one to say he would end this man's youth right here. But if he had been even a little slower going underground, his own youth would have ended instead.

Quickly regaining his composure, he said in a low voice, "White Fang, an unknown Taijutsu expert, and a group of Uchiha with Three-Tomoe Sharingan. No wonder the front line was breached so quickly."

They couldn't see him at all, but his voice echoed across the open rocky ground. That was the disadvantage of having no sensory ninja.

"Pure Earth Release, that amount of chakra, and a voice that lets me roughly judge your age—you must be Kitsuchi, Ōnoki's son," Hatake Sakumo immediately concluded.

Young and hot-blooded, he had dared to ambush an elite squad all by himself. Well, he was a young man, after all.

"But how could that fool Ōnoki have such an idiotic son? After seeing our squad's lineup, he still took the initiative and attacked."

Hatake Sakumo's eyes quickly swept the area.

His right hand tightened around the White Fang Short Blade. He was waiting for an opening, waiting for the hotheaded young man to attack so he could strike the instant his assault left him exposed.

He aimed to kill him in one blow.

The rocky ground suddenly warped. Hatake Sakumo's raised White Fang Short Blade slashed downward at once. His feet shifted rapidly, his waist twisting as the blade followed his movement.

One by one, the earthen spikes were severed at their bases.

Hidden by the night and the Iwa ninja's unique camouflage techniques, Hatake Sakumo couldn't see a single figure.

The Azure Beast had simply smashed the stone pillars, and even his instincts couldn't pinpoint the enemy's location.

"Get out of the way!"

A loud shout rang out. Without a second thought, everyone jumped up or quickly put distance between themselves and Uchiha Yuji.

Their bodies had barely left the ground when a terrifying shockwave swept past them.

The reversed currents of air formed by the force surged skyward in a pale wave. The ground beneath the blow shattered like building blocks, and the air swept the broken stones into the night sky. The cracks spread faster than the eye could follow.

The shattered ground rapidly expanded outward in a circle: ten meters, a hundred meters, a thousand meters.

The shockwave moved a little faster than the destruction of the ground. The terrain did almost nothing to hinder it, and the raging white line continued flying toward the distance at incredible speed.

Hatake Sakumo clutched his waist, scraped by a stone, and stared in disbelief at the landscape that had been completely transformed.

I could understand you changing the terrain with a giant battle construct. That wasn't an ordinary ninjutsu, after all.

But what was this?!

One punch had changed the landscape like an earth dragon turning over. Could even Tsunade, with her monstrous strength, do that?

The shockwave from the airflow alone had left my chest feeling tight. You weren't secretly born from a union between the Senju Clan and the Uchiha Clan, were you?

"Cough, cough."

The unfortunate Kitsuchi had been digging and hiding underground. He took twice the damage from the quake. Even though he had hardened his body immediately, the tremors had still badly injured his internal organs.

Even breathing hurt his lungs.

Kitsuchi crouched halfway to the ground, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, but he had no time to wipe it away.

A group of Uchiha had surrounded him. Three-Tomoe Sharingan fixed on him from every direction; all they had to do was make him look up, and they could hit him with a genjutsu.

They were clearly planning to take him alive.

As the Third Tsuchikage's son, he was worth far more alive than dead.

Kitsuchi admitted that he had been hotheaded and careless earlier. He had thought that, from his perch on the high ground, one two-handed strike would be enough to squash them all like meat pies.

He hadn't known the Uchiha Clan had a jutsu like that: a chakra giant formed from the most extreme Yin Release Chakra.

Nor had he expected this squad, without a sensory ninja, to use such a devastating attack to force him out.

Too many things had gone wrong. But now, all he could do was what an Iwa ninja was supposed to do.

Unfazed by howling winds and driving rain! Unbowed by the surging, boundless flood! Defiant and unyielding to the very end!

"I am Kitsuchi, son of the Third Tsuchikage—Ōnoki of Both Scales."

He kept his eyes shut, his stony face solemn. Though his lungs hurt as if cut by knives, his sturdy build lent him an air of even greater boldness.

"I bear the name of the Shadow's son! I am the heir to the Will of Stone! Come, Konoha ninja! I'll stake my life on it—let me show you the resilience of the Iwa ninja!"

As an enemy, he was worthy of respect.

Hatake Sakumo slowly moved the blade, which had been aimed at an indescribable spot behind Kitsuchi, and pointed the gleaming white edge at the back of his neck.

Uchiha Yuji deliberately walked forward, each step crisp and clear, letting Kitsuchi turn toward him by following the sound.

"Your resolve is admirable. But you're too young, too weak."

"It'd be a shame for a young man with such resolve to die here."

Aren't you even younger than him? How could you call him a young man?!

"If the future of the Shinobi World has no interesting opponents, I'll be lonely. So... I'll leave a mark on you."

A streak of red light suddenly shot from his fingertip. Kitsuchi instinctively turned his face aside, but the beam still tore a small piece of flesh from his cheek.

The rich smell of charred flesh was nauseating.

The enemy's strength was terrifying.

"Remember today's disgrace. Remember this humiliation. Get stronger!"

"Once you're stronger, die gloriously at my hands!"

That was the Uchiha pride, the Uchiha arrogance! I'm strong, and I'll keep getting stronger!