Steam slowly dissipated.
The Rotation barrier had vanished.
Neji stood where he was, a little dust on his white clothes. He was breathing heavily, sweat on his forehead.
After using Rotation twice in a row, on top of his earlier high-speed pursuit, he had already used up more than thirty percent of his chakra.
As for Qingyu...
He was twenty meters away, on one knee, both hands on the ground as he gasped for breath. His chakra was nearly depleted too.
The two stared at each other through the thin haze of lingering steam.
"You..." Neji began, his voice a little hoarse.
"You're strong."
"So are you." Qingyu managed an awkward smile.
"But I can still fight."
"Is that so?" Neji resumed his opening stance.
"Then let's use one last move to decide the winner."
His hands slowly traced a circle in front of him. Chakra gathered in his palms, glowing pale blue.
In the stands, Hyuga Hiashi abruptly sat up straight. "That's..."
"Gentle Fist Art: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms..." Fugaku narrowed his eyes.
"Neji's already mastered it to this extent?"
On the field, Neji's presence surged higher and higher.
Qingyu felt a suffocating pressure.
Sixty-Four Palms?! If I take the whole thing, won't I end up full of holes?!
"Kid, give up!" Izuna suddenly said.
"You can't handle that move."
"No," Tobirama countered.
"There's still a chance. Use all the chakra you have left to create a massive, wide-area explosion by mixing fire and water.
You don't need to hurt him, just create chaos, then... use Taijutsu to ambush his blind spot from behind."
"The Byakugan has a blind spot?" Qingyu froze.
"It does! This Hyuga is clearly from the branch family. Their Byakugan has a flaw!" Tobirama said quickly.
"Though the Byakugan is said to have a 360-degree field of vision, a branch family member has a tiny patch of weakened perception at the back of the head, near the cervical spine.
It's about five centimeters in diameter, caused by the Caged Bird. Most people don't know about it, but back then, I... studied it."
Qingyu: "..."
Teacher Tobirama, how many of the Uchiha's natural enemies have you studied?!
Tobirama: It's not like that. I keep an eye on anyone who might threaten the village. The Uchiha just happen to be a higher priority...
Qingyu: A high enough priority that you're thinking, "Why's there no toilet paper in the bathroom?! Damn Uchiha!"?
Tobirama: ...Mind your own business!
"You'll only get one chance," Tobirama said.
"And it's extremely risky. If you fail, you'll take all Sixty-Four Palms head-on. You might survive, but you'll be crippled."
Qingyu looked at Neji, already poised to strike, then at his own trembling hands.
A flood of images flashed through his mind.
Shisui's smile, Itachi's advice, Fugaku's hopes, the system's quest, and... ever since he'd come to this world...
Day after day and night after night, being forced to train by two old fossils.
"..." He muttered a curse.
Then he straightened up and began forming Hand Seals.
Not Fire Release, nor Water Release.
He formed two seals at once, Fire Release with his left hand and Water Release with his right!
"What's he doing?!" Kakashi's one visible eye widened in the stands.
"Using two natures at once? And opposing ones at that? Has he lost his mind?!"
On the field, Qingyu's chakra surged wildly.
A ball of scarlet flames gathered in his left palm.
A ring of azure water spun in his right.
Then the two slowly drew together, colliding and merging before his chest to form an extremely unstable sphere of energy that constantly twisted and warped, split between two colors!
"Water-Fire Release: Great Rotation!"
With the last of his strength, Qingyu pushed the enormous energy sphere, over a meter in diameter, away from himself!
Should've called it Buddha's Fury Fire Lotus...
Just covering my bases here...
He didn't aim it at Neji, but at the ground between them!
Neji's Byakugan had already seen how terrifying the technique was.
Once it hit the ground, it would trigger a massive Steam Explosion that would cover half the field, powerful enough to blow them both away!
Without hesitation, he launched his poised Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms early!
"Gentle Fist Art: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms!"
A storm of palm strikes hammered toward Qingyu!
And Qingyu...
After pushing the energy sphere away, he didn't retreat. He lunged forward!
In an utterly awkward, almost crawling position, he stuck close to the ground and slipped through the gaps between Neji's strikes!
His target: the blind spot directly behind Neji!
"What?!" Neji was shocked, but he had already launched Sixty-Four Palms and couldn't immediately change direction.
Qingyu's hand was already pressed to Neji's back, three inches below the cervical spine.
"Gentle Fist: Two-Finger Thrust!"
He used the simplest Taijutsu technique, one taught at the Ninja Academy.
He gathered the last trace of chakra in two fingers and precisely struck the "weakened perception zone."
Pfft.
A faint sound.
Neji's body abruptly stiffened.
The strikes of Sixty-Four Palms vanished at once.
He slowly lowered his head and looked at his chest. The flow of chakra there had faltered for an instant.
It had lasted only 0.5 seconds, but... that was enough.
Boom!!!
The Great Rotation energy sphere Qingyu had sent out finally hit the ground.
The explosive shockwave surged like a towering wave.
Qingyu felt the heat wash over him as steam swallowed everything like a raging tide.
The stands fell utterly silent.
A few seconds later, the white mist slowly cleared.
Two figures gradually emerged in the center of the field.
Qingyu sat slumped on the ground, drenched as if he'd just been fished out of the water.
His chakra was completely exhausted now. He didn't even have the strength to stand.
Three paces in front of him, Neji was on one knee, one hand braced against the ground and the other clutching his chest. His face looked a little pale.
They stared at each other like that.
After a long while, Neji spoke softly:
"...I lost."
Qingyu froze.
The referee froze too.
The entire audience froze.
"Neji... is conceding?" the referee asked uncertainly.
"Yeah." Neji nodded and slowly got to his feet.
"My chakra network was disrupted by that last strike, and my chakra briefly went out of balance.
It'll recover soon, but... in a real life-or-death fight, a 0.5-second opening like that would be enough to kill me three times over."
He looked at Qingyu, his expression complicated. "You seemed to know the Byakugan's weakness. It was only a temporary trick, but... you won."
Qingyu opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end, all he could manage was a bitter smile. "I... I can't move either."
One of them was standing but unable to keep fighting; the other was sitting but couldn't get up.
But according to the rules, Neji had conceded.
The referee took a deep breath and raised his hand.
"The winner, Qingyu Uchiha of Konoha!"
Silence.
Then—
Hooray!!!
Cheers, applause, and cries of astonishment erupted like a tidal wave throughout the arena!
Qingyu lay sprawled on the ground, staring at the ribbons and paper flowers fluttering down from above, his mind blank.
I won? I beat Neji Hyuga? That genius Neji?
[ Ding! ]
[Time-Limited Mission: Genius Falls? The Three-Year Promise! Complete!]
[Completion Rating: A]
[Mission Reward: Unlocked "Byakugan Insight," weakened version. Slightly increased dynamic vision and chakra-flow perception. Current effects: Dynamic vision +15%, chakra-flow perception range +5 meters.]
[Bonus Reward: By defeating a Hyuga genius in public, your standing within the Uchiha clan has risen significantly. Earned the title "Rising Star of the Clan."]
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