A little earlier, at a secret Qian-Gui Clan base. It was somewhat remote, deep underground. The clan was cruel, extremely closed off, and reclusive. Its way of operating in the village was far more mysterious than that of the Uji and Kusanagi Clans, strictly following the secretive ways of the shinobi.
Yura found nothing in the clan's territory. Though it wasn't quite true to say she found nothing: she came across a particularly unusual bath.
A Blood Pool.
Skulls floated in the stinking, viscous blood. They were small, with thin skull walls, weak brow ridges, and steeply sloping foreheads. Judging by these features, they all belonged to women—young women.
"What is this?" Yura asked, looking at Aoi.
With disgust written all over her face, Aoi said, "That old hag Xun's bath!"
"What do you mean?" Yura asked.
"To preserve her youth." Aoi spoke with loathing. "That old hag Xun enjoys brutally murdering young, beautiful women and bathing in their blood."
Yura lowered her eyes. Sure enough, someone who had mastered the Earth Grudge Fear forbidden technique was here.
Why was it that, given enough time, people would try every forbidden thing imaginable?
"So you escaped because you're ugly?" Yura asked with interest.
Aoi looked at Yura, wanting to say something but stopping herself. After a long pause, she said, "I'm not ugly. I'm just ordinary-looking."
"More or less the same thing," Yura said. "If I think you don't look good, I can say you're cute."
Aoi gritted her teeth furiously. She was so mad, but she couldn't beat Yura.
"Let's go. To the base."
The Qian-Gui Clan's base had a distinctive design—or, one could say, it was crude. It was still the same old approach: find the leader and kill them with one strike, then deal with the remaining shinobi once they were leaderless.
Yura was looking forward to fighting a user of Earth Grudge Fear.
On the surface, it was a secret technique for stealing hearts, but there was more to it than that. First, it allowed the body to be modified to some extent, granting a degree of immortality. Second, could it steal Kekkei Genkai as well as hearts with elemental attributes? Could it only steal five hearts? What about Yin Release and Yang Release hearts?
Would this Earth Grudge Fear user, unlike Kakuzu, manifest a different version of the technique?
Unfortunately, old hag Xun was over in the meeting room, and Aoi didn't know anything about Earth Grudge Fear.
For now, Yura needed to find the Scroll of Seals as soon as possible.
Yura stopped in front of a main building, looking thoughtful. This house had a remarkably ancient architectural style, dating from before the Warring States period. This style was probably called the Buddha Land Pure Soil.
Incense drifted everywhere, and stone lantern towers lined the streets. The great hall before them was brightly lit, with faint chanting coming from within.
"Are they Buddhists...?"
"The Qian-Gui Clan's head..." Aoi said. "The title of Qian-Gui Princess is passed down from generation to generation. They usually eat vegetarian food, pray to Buddha, and seek blessings. The clan members don't come here to disturb them."
Aoi walked up and pushed open the main hall's doors.
The first thing that caught the eye in the spacious hall was five enormous stone Buddha statues, each several meters tall. They all wore stone demon masks, making it impossible to tell which Buddha they represented. Then came the sight of countless small Buddha statues arranged densely across three walls. Every one of them wore a stone demon mask.
The Thousand Buddha Wall!
A solemn, sacred atmosphere pressed in, tinged with a strange sense of oppression.
Beneath the five enormous Buddha statues sat a bhikṣuṇī dressed in a monk's robes. Compared with the Qian-Gui women's usual seductive appearance, even the outline of her figure from behind exuded an air of dignity and holiness.
The chanting stopped abruptly.
In Yura's perception, the entire hall was surrounded by deep resentment, an eerie feeling that seemed to seep into the very bones.
The bhikṣuṇī turned around and stared directly at Yura. A strange glint flashed in her eyes, but her expression remained as still as an ancient well, solemn and dignified.
"Dear patron, your hair is beautiful, but it carries the scent of blood."
She was very beautiful, with a bone structure that made her one in ten thousand. But she was bald.
"Heh..." Yura smiled faintly. "It's the scent of one of my kind—the scent of a demon."
A glint flashed in the Qian-Gui Princess's eyes. "What brings you here?"
Yura looked at Aoi. Aoi paused, then tactfully backed away and left the hall. The Qian-Gui Princess didn't stop her, simply watching as Aoi withdrew. The moment Aoi stepped out, the doors of the hall slammed shut on their own.
"I'm not here to offer guidance," Yura said with a faint smile. "I'd like to ask for an item."
"What item?" the Qian-Gui Princess asked.
"Earth Grudge Fear," Yura replied.
"Then..." She closed her eyes slightly, then abruptly opened them. Her placid expression twisted into a fierce snarl. "There's nothing to discuss!"
Genjutsu: Binding Technique
The world before Yura suddenly changed and flipped upside down. Six enormous, pointed metal stakes plunged into her body. Yura felt no pain at all and calmly looked at the Qian-Gui Princess across from her.
A pain-based genjutsu. Impressive, but Yura couldn't feel pain.
The Qian-Gui Princess raised her hand. A coiled red rope between her fingers whipped out like a lash.
Secret Technique: Vermilion Rope Technique
Before she could strike, two bundles of hair behind Yura's head formed into hands and rapidly made Hand Seals.
Earth Release: Earth Spear
The next moment, deep black spread across Yura's white kimono. Her hair surged through the woven fibers, weaving itself into clothing. She raised an arm and blocked the Vermilion Rope's attack.
The rope, as thick as a finger, struck the wide black sleeve she had raised, producing a series of ear-piercing metallic scrapes.
The attack failed. The Vermilion Rope recoiled into the Qian-Gui Princess's hand, and she stared at Yura's black clothes in disbelief.
No Hand Seals, and she hadn't even raised her hand. The blackness wasn't covering Yura's skin, but her clothes.
"Remarkable chakra control..." The Qian-Gui Princess frowned. "Earth Release: Earth Spear?"
Then she would have to use Lightning Release.
A spark of electricity raced along the Vermilion Rope. In an instant, it burst into dazzling light.
The blackness continued spreading, weaving a pair of black gloves over Yura's hands.
Yura's gaze fell on the rope trailing loosely to the ground from the Qian-Gui Princess. It was made of women's hair—lots and lots of it—soaked in blood and woven using a secret method. A thick resentment clung to it, making it incredibly sharp.
"A Stand user of the same type," Yura murmured with a faint smile. She placed a hand on the hilt and drew Onikiri, taking up a middle guard.
She was baiting her opponent into thinking she was a swordswoman.
The Qian-Gui Princess gave a dismissive scoff. "What do you think my Vermilion Rope is? You think a mere sword—"
Before she could finish, blood-red lines blossomed across her body without a sound. Her eyes filled with shock, and the Qian-Gui Princess stared at the scene in disbelief. Intersecting slashes erupted across the ground around her, and in an instant, her body was carved into pieces.
Yura stood where she was, quietly gazing at the scattered remains.
This wasn't an opponent who would die easily.
"Old hag Xun, how long have you been alive?" Yura asked.
She would need to cut her down a few more times. That depended on how many lives the old hag had—and whether Yura had enough time to cut through them all.
"Damn brat!" A shrill, terrifying female voice echoed all around them, overlapping itself. In an instant, the small statues on the three Thousand Buddha Walls seemed to come to life. They all opened their eyes and began chanting together.
Genjutsu: Thousand Buddha Sanskrit Chant
Yura lowered her eyes. Let me guess where the real one is hiding.
Too hard to guess. I'll just kill them all.
The air rippled and twisted. Layer upon layer of illusory chanting thundered through the hall, generating an oppressive sound wave powerful enough to pin a person in place.
An auditory genjutsu. Impressive.
Yura's hair ruptured her eardrums.
Before her, the five enormous stone Buddha statues rose to their feet. Lines like veins bulged across their bodies, as if pumping blood. The statues had come to life, and five different chakra-based elemental attacks gathered in their mouths.
Ever heard of a disco ball?
It was a lighting device often used at light shows, parties, and stage performances. It could rotate 360 degrees, shooting out laser beams in a range of colors.
This sword technique demanded Yura's intense concentration.
"You're so noisy, old hag."
Yura raised her left hand and turned her palm downward...
Black Secret Technique: Inner Style: Forest of Swords
Her hair grew wildly. All around her, countless strands of hair condensed into thin cords and shot out in every direction, radiating from her in a full 360-degree circle. At the same time, they whipped and slashed rapidly, their cuts arranged in an orderly, crisscrossing pattern.
In an instant, everything within a hundred-meter radius of Yura was completely cut apart.
Dense slash marks formed regular square grids radiating in every direction across the ground, walls, roof, and statues.
Everything around her shattered.
The Thousand Buddha Walls, the stone Buddha statues, the great hall—everything.
Outside the hall, Aoi saw a flash before her eyes. Everything in sight had been cut into neat squares, hanging motionless in the air for a brief moment before crashing to the ground. The great hall collapsed into ruins.
A frantic, wild shriek rang out above the ruins.
"My hearts! No! My hearts!!!"
Standing amid the drifting dust, Yura sighed softly. Her eyes swept over the blood splattered beneath the square stone fragments in the ruins.
Those hearts had all been stored inside the Buddha statues.
On the ground amid the ruins, severed Vermilion tendrils writhed and squirmed.
What did it matter if she had extra lives? Yura could simply keep cutting her down.
With that one strike, Yura could make her owe her more than a hundred lives.
Having lots of hearts didn't make them revival coins. They would revive one by one, strictly according to how many hearts she possessed. Putting them all in one place like this made them easy to wipe out in one fell swoop.
In Yura's eyes, Kakuzu's five hearts were no different from one. As long as they couldn't be separated too far, it was pretty...
The ground trembled. A gigantic vermilion mass burst up from deep underground. The moment it leaped out of the ground, Yura jumped and soared into the air. Countless vermilion tendrils whipped toward her, but she remained still, repeatedly bouncing back and forth among them. Her invisible eight feet stepped on the tendrils, using them as leverage to climb higher until she was beyond their maximum attack range.
These tendrils couldn't slash. They looked like strands of hair, but they were more like strips of meat. They should cut quite smoothly.
In the underground cavern, Yura stood at an angle in midair on strands of hair hanging from the ceiling, looking coldly down at the monster below.
It was entirely vermilion, with dense tendrils writhing all over its body. A demon mask hung on its face as it roared hoarsely at Yura above.
"Chakra! Why can't I absorb any chakra!!!"
Had she completely abandoned her original body and remade herself into a hair monster, with the ability to absorb chakra through physical contact?
Too bad...
Yura didn't use chakra very often.
This little bit of Chunin-level chakra didn't matter to her either way.
For an ordinary shinobi, perhaps she would have been an overwhelmingly powerful enemy.
Yura fixed her gaze on the mask. It roared and opened its mouth, where light began to glow.
Then die.
Suddenly, a round hole punched through the mask. Then came a second, a third, and countless more attacks pierced through it until the entire mask shattered.
How could you dodge or defend against an attack you couldn't see?
For a shinobi, it was an almost impossible assault to counter.
"Damn it, you brat! Who the hell are you?!"
"Goodbye..." Yura said with a faint smile.
According to her perception, this was the only remaining concentration of negative emotions.
Aside from that, the reason she had been able to keep her opponent suppressed throughout the fight was Malice Perception. By reading the sword energy, Yura had maintained the advantage and struck first from beginning to end. If her opponent could get her ninjutsu out in front of Yura, it would count as Yura's loss.
With one last, shrill, frenzied scream, the enormous hair monster crashed heavily to the ground, kicking up clouds of dust. Nearby, shinobi from the Qian-Gui Clan came running from every direction.
Yura's crimson eyes swept over the Qian-Gui Clan shinobi. She raised a finger, and her hair shot out without a sound.
Before you continue