Let Me Try Out My Blade

After finding a decent-looking inn in town and checking in, Yura planned to stay there for a while.

Before heading to Takigakure to seize its secret techniques, she would first take stock of the abilities she possessed.

She had spent the past three days thinking about this and trying out a few simple ways to develop her skills.

First were the techniques she already knew: the basic Three Body Technique—Clone, Substitution, and Transformation. Then there was the Body Flicker Technique, which Chunin could learn. It was an ordinary ninjutsu-based Body Flicker. That was the extent of her support techniques. If she hadn't joined Takigakure, she wouldn't even have learned those, much less Water Walking or Tree Climbing.

As for actual ninjutsu, she had only one measly Earth Release technique: Earth Release: Earth Spear. The village had specially bestowed it on her as a last meal, in recognition of her assassination of the God of Shinobi.

Thus, in just half a month, she had only managed to get the barest grasp of it.

The technique was powerful, capable of both offense and defense, but if she couldn't use it, it was as good as nothing.

A free test at the village had revealed that her chakra natures were Earth and Water. Aside from basic chakra control, all of the combat prowess Yura had possessed in her previous life lay in her vicious blade techniques.

Now that she had become a yokai, her chakra reserves hadn't increased by much. They were still unremarkable for a Chunin, nowhere near even one card.

The other kind of power within her, however, had been growing steadily and rapidly. It didn't need to be refined like chakra; it improved constantly. As time passed, Yura was sure it would naturally grow to a terrifying level.

Put simply—

Fear +1 +1 +1, resentment +1 +1 +1 +1, and so on...

There was nothing to be done about it. That was simply how yokai were.

Yura had tried combining it with chakra, like in Sage Mode, but she couldn't manage it yet. Whenever she tried, the two energies would accidentally explode inside her, leaving bloody holes. But a mere fatal injury was nothing to worry about. That was the perk of being immortal.

As a result, apart from the small amounts of yokai power required by some of her innate abilities, she still had no way to make use of most of it.

Yura guessed that, just as chakra was used to perform ninjutsu, she was missing the key techniques for releasing yokai power—in other words, yokai arts. She had no idea how to develop them effectively, either.

Still, her innate abilities to control her hair and Demon Fire gave her plenty of ideas.

Sitting on the inn bed, Yura raised a hand and watched a ball of blue flame dance in her palm. The fire had naturally turned blue after becoming highly concentrated. In terms of destructive power, it surpassed ordinary Fire Release. And since it was an innate ability, it required no Hand Seals, giving her a tremendous advantage in battle.

She could develop her fire abilities toward greater power and scale. In a way, they were similar to Pakura's Scorch Release.

Yura clenched her fist, snuffing out the flame in her palm. She closed her eyes slightly and shifted her thoughts. Five balls of ghostly blue Demon Fire appeared around her. At her command, they circled her, darting through the air with speed and agility. The heat warped the air and light wherever they passed, creating waves of distortion. Within the watermelon-sized flames, she could just make out the silent, howling skulls of vengeful spirits.

A closer look revealed a tiny strand of hair at the center of each fireball. Fine filaments ran from them all the way back to Yura's hair.

The core of this fire-producing ability still relied on her hair.

Red Secret Technique: Five Ghosts Slaughter

With a mere thought, requiring none of the precise chakra control ninjutsu demanded, the five fireballs instantly transformed into five burning, hideous skulls. A moment later, the five balls of fire around Yura vanished into thin air.

By comparison, Yura valued her hair-manipulation technique even more. It was an ability much like the String-String Fruit—versatile, uncanny, and unpredictable.

She could freely control the countless fine strands of her hair, changing them however she pleased. It was like magic that let her manipulate her hair at will.

From that, she could develop countless ways to fight. It was a terrifying close-combat art, capable of endless variations.

Yura of the Demon Hair from Inuyasha had a delicate touch but lacked power. Doflamingo from One Piece had power to spare but lacked finesse. Combining the two brought to mind the First-Class Mage from Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, the terrifying scythe-wielding woman whose hair reeked of blood: the "Pacifist," Zanze.

Her unique hair magic involved layering multiple spells to strengthen her hair, turning it into a weapon with power, skill, destructive force, and defensive ability. That hair could easily destroy defensive magic or tear through a human body.

Just like this...

In an instant, Yura's short hair grew wildly, lifting behind her. In the blink of an eye, it gathered into eight bunches and transformed into eight black scythes. They coiled around her like venomous snakes, poised to strike. She looked like a humanoid spider demon with eight legs.

The curved hair scythes were pitch-black, their surfaces gleaming with a cold metallic sheen. The blades alone were over a meter long, and that didn't include their thick handles, which connected to her head. Their range was...

With a sharp whoosh, the scythes shot forward like venomous snakes, turning into a blur of black as they crossed the five or six meters of the room in the blink of an eye. At Yura's command, they stopped neatly in front of the opposite wall. A mosquito was impaled on the tip of a blade and pinned to the wall, but the wall itself remained unscathed. Effortless control.

The inn room was too cramped, though, leaving her little space to work. Yura felt their range was more than five or six meters. It should be several times that.

The scythe slowly retracted and floated beside Yura with the other seven.

Now her hard-earned swordsmanship had a more fitting stage on which to shine.

Black Secret Technique: Outer Style: Eightfold Swallow Reversal

Yura's adoptive family had once been a samurai clan. Long ago, they had foreseen the samurai's decline and made the inevitable transition into a shinobi clan. Like the Hatake Clan and other samurai families, they had been renowned during the Warring States period for their sharp, ruthless swordsmanship.

Over the centuries, the family had produced many talented individuals. The family's orthodox inheritance was its classical sword style; sword techniques independently developed by outsiders like Yura were collectively called the Outer Style.

Yura wasn't a ninjutsu genius. The family had taken an interest in her because she was a swordsmanship genius.

On the day she was three, the family had pulled her from a pile of corpses. When they callously tossed a kunai at her to take her life, Yura had instinctively drawn a broken blade from the heap and knocked the kunai aside. That was when they recognized her talent with a blade.

Swallow Reversal was a sword technique created by Sasaki Kojiro. It was named after the tale of him cutting down a swallow in flight. The technique centered on an ultra-fast draw, using the Nodachi's long reach to deliver an unavoidable, lethal strike in an instant.

Adopted at three, Yura had endured a year of beatings, starvation, and conditioning. At four, after hastily learning to refine chakra, she had been thrown onto the battlefield. Amid the narrow gap between life and death, she had completed this ultimate secret technique.

The small sword at Yura's waist was her very first weapon. It was the only thing that had ever made her feel safe, and she had treasured and protected it ever since.

In short, the Outer Style was all about innovation and freedom of expression.

Then...

Black Secret Technique: Outer Style: Sixteenfold Swallow Reversal

The next moment, her hair grew wildly, and each scythe split in two. Their size remained unchanged, leaving sixteen scythes circling her.

At her command, the sixteen scythes danced quietly around her, like sixteen arms under her control. They quivered and darted through the air like sixteen agile swallows. After years of training with a blade, Yura could tell this wasn't her limit.

Then.

Black Secret Technique: Outer Style: Thirty-Twofold Swallow Reversal

They split in two again. Thirty-two scythes, their blades glinting coldly, hovered densely around her. A ferocious, bloodthirsty aura spread through the room, enough to fill anyone who saw them with fear.

"Hmm..."

Yura rubbed her chin, mulling it over. More blades weren't necessarily better. Attacking all at once with this many could block every possible escape route and create an effect like a multidimensional refraction. Blades closing in from three directions could "simultaneously" cut down an opponent in a single deadly strike—the secret sword Swallow Reversal. More terrifying still, the enemy probably couldn't even see these blades. In a sense, they were an unavoidable attack.

But she shouldn't make absolute claims. In theory, the attack was unavoidable. In reality, it could definitely be dodged. Otherwise, it would be as laughable as the "absolute defense" in the Shinobi World.

Still, this was more than enough. Yura's secret sword, Swallow Reversal, specialized in dense strikes across short and medium range.

Other people's Ninja Blades were sixty centimeters long. Yura's might as well be sixty meters.

And this many blades wasn't the limit of her innate ability. It was the limit of her mental control. Any more, and she instinctively knew she wouldn't be able to manage them. Yura didn't want to do something foolish like trip over her own feet.

Extending them too far would also weaken the force of their swings, reducing their destructive power. A sword that flopped around couldn't cut anyone.

That was as far as this technique went for now. She would have to keep honing her swordsmanship and improving her precision and strength of control.

Next, Yura shifted her thoughts. The thirty-six scythes suddenly transformed, their blades twisting around their central axes to become thirty-six enormous, spiraling spikes as thick as bowls. They whirred fiercely as they spun at high speed.

Against sturdy defenses, these drills had greater penetrating power. Since they didn't need to be swung continuously, they also had greater range.

Black Secret Technique: Outer Style: Thirty-Two Points of Light

The next moment, the drills stopped spinning. The two halves changed shape and merged, forming four enormous oni-face shields that hovered around Yura, covering her front, back, left, and right. Each face was round like a shield, with hair spinning rapidly across its curved surface like a vortex. Then they joined together, fitting seamlessly around Yura and settling over her like a shell.

Black Secret Technique: Outer Style: Onefold Spiral Gate

Then all the hair scattered, rapidly reassembling and growing. In its place appeared a huge black spider, five meters long and large enough to fill the entire room.

Black Secret Technique: Spider Style: Nesting Chariot

The spider raised its head. Its head split down the middle, revealing Yura as she emerged. Supported by the strands of hair, she floated lightly, almost as if flying, and landed barefoot on the floor.

The spider behind her turned to ash and vanished in an instant. Her long, glossy black hair fell to her waist. Yura lifted a hand and brushed a strand behind her ear, then studied a lock of hair wrapped around her finger.

Yura's hair was fireproof and extremely tough. She could make it cut through objects at will, and it was sharper than piano wire. It could even slice through metal harder than steel. In her tests along the way, it had cut straight through kunai. Even fine-crafted Ninja Blades couldn't withstand it. If only she could coat it with Armament Haki...

Well, there was no Haki in the Shinobi World, but there was chakra.

To a certain extent, Yura's hair was formed from her yokai power. It wasn't metal wire; it was part of her body, made of a kind of protein. In other words...

She couldn't fuse chakra with it, but she could transmit chakra through it.

As chakra flowed into every strand, the hair naturally formed tough Chakra Threads. On the surface, there was no visible change...

Yura lifted a strand infused with chakra and brought it close to another that wasn't. The moment they touched, the strand without chakra was severed.

"Heh, just as I thought..."

That meant she could strengthen it, just like Zanze's hair magic. She could use multiple spells layered together to strengthen her hair, turning it into a combat weapon with power, skill, speed, precision, destructive force, and defensive ability—all under her control and capable of endless variations.

For example, Yura raised both hands and slowly formed Hand Seals, carefully and methodically.

Earth Release: Earth Spear

The chakra, now altered in nature, surged through all of her hair. Nothing much seemed to change, so Yura lifted a lock to examine it.

"Looks like it got a little darker..."

If she applied the Earth Spear technique to her hair, then in theory, people would be able to see it with the naked eye.

"Tch..." Yura clicked her tongue and remarked with slight dissatisfaction, "The texture got stiffer..."

So what if they could see it? Could they withstand it?

Adding only Earth Spear was nowhere near the limit of her hair.

She would call this technique Black Secret Technique: Inner Style: Chakra Earth Spear Mode

In her family, Inner Style meant a secret art kept in reserve.

Yura flicked her hair. It swayed behind her, then rapidly shrank until it was short again.

Humming merrily, she carefully tidied up her room.

"Mouse poison~ Mouse poison~"

"They gave me some rat poison~"

"After two packets, I felt so high~"

It was a cute little song, with a hellish level of cuteness.

Once she'd finished tidying the room, Yura left the inn to find something to eat. She found a barbecue restaurant and calmly ordered a mountain of food all by herself. When it arrived, she devoured it like a starving ghost, and soon a stack of plate piles had grown beside her. Yura simply wanted to make up for all the nutrients she'd missed out on before. Besides, if the food wouldn't kill her, she might as well eat until it did. Yura was a very greedy girl.

Back at the inn, she happily flopped onto the soft bed and rubbed her round little belly. She pulled the blanket over herself and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. A sense of security unlike anything she'd ever known enveloped her. With an immortal body, she no longer had to worry about someone stabbing her while she slept.

Even so, her petite body curled up tightly like a little mouse, her precious small sword clutched fiercely in her arms.

"Mom... sob..."

The whimper was unconscious. Habits formed over many years weren't easy to change.

The night passed quietly. Daylight came, and Yura sat up in a daze, stiff as a corpse. She looked around, seeming to remember something, then flopped straight back down. A while later, both her little feet shot up, kicking wildly in the air with all the strength and frustration she could muster. After making up her mind, she sat up again.

She didn't want to leave her dreams, but sooner or later, everyone had to return to reality.

She washed up, went out for breakfast, and left town. After finding a secluded patch of woods, she began training.

Kakuzu had definitely been locked up by the village by now. The young man was still too green; he hadn't truly grasped the nature of this cruel Shinobi World. There was no need to hurry back, though. She would focus on getting stronger first.

She trained until noon. She hadn't brought a bento, but she wasn't hungry. She just unwrapped a piece of candy and popped it into her mouth. Its faint sweetness put her at ease. She lay back on the soft grass, and gentle sunlight filtered through the trees, falling across her little face. She couldn't help squinting comfortably.

Even yokai had to know how to enjoy life.

After a half-hour nap, she continued training until evening. Then she cheerfully stepped home, one foot after another over the moonlight and her shadow. Electric lights glowed in the distant town.

She headed straight for a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant. She'd nearly run out of money after yesterday's barbecue, but Yura wasn't worried. She ate as she pleased, piling up another mountain of plates. The plump owner's face split into a smile.

This time, Yura had learned her lesson. She still ate ravenously, but countless fine strands of hair emerged from her stomach, esophagus, and throat, slicing up the food into tiny, liquid-like pieces to help her eat.

Black Secret Technique: Double Your Dinner Technique

When it was time to pay, Yura slapped ten Explosive Tags onto the counter.

The owner frowned.

"Customer?"

Yura tilted her head forty-five degrees and gave the owner a sidelong glare, wearing a deadpan expression.

"Explosive Tags. That's my payment."

You knew how it worked.

The owner's face stiffened.

"Customer, surely you can't do that."

Yura tilted her head slightly, revealing the small sword at her waist. She flicked her thumb, drawing part of the blade.

"I'm a shinobi."

The owner looked bitter, hesitating for a moment.

"Fine... All right..."

Nothing beat the intimidation of her actual body. Yura sheathed the blade, then cheerfully headed back to the inn. She jumped, flopped down, climbed into bed, and pulled the blankets over herself in one smooth motion. The moment her head touched the pillow, she fell fast asleep, curled into a tiny ball. She slept soundly.

The next day, when the sun rose, everything went on as usual: revenge eating, sleeping, training. Day after day, with her heart set on a goal, she made steady progress.

Yura had long grown used to loneliness in her previous life. She did have a little habit of talking to her precious small sword as though she were crazy, though, and she still hadn't managed to break it.

"I've never given you a name. Little Blade, from now on, your name is Hongxia~ Hehe~"

On the fifth day, another band of bandits attacked the town. There were more of them than last time, but Yura ignored them. She savored their emotions from the sidelines and waited for them to kill enough people and leave before returning to her training.

Then, five days later, at dusk, some special guests arrived in town.

Standing on the city wall, Yura looked down at the three who had entered town.

Three shinobi.

"Just as I expected." The corner of Yura's mouth curled into a cold smile.

The former daimyo, now the town mayor, had inevitably sent a request to the shinobi village to wipe out the bandits around the area.

From their appearance, they were shinobi from Konoha: a Pineapple Head, a blond, and a fat guy. The Ino-Shika-Cho trio were in their twenties. They were seasoned shinobi with formidable combat strength, hardened by fighting their way through the Warring States era.

"Let me try out my blade..."

In her scarlet eyes, a surging killing intent simmered beneath the surface.