Dust Settles

"Bai Xiaoqi! Why aren't you doing anything? Why!" Xian Yu struggled to kill another bandit blocking his way. He didn't know why, but even though he'd been giving it everything he had, more than thirty bandits had already died at his hands in just a few minutes. Yet the bandits seemed endless, each one fearless of death. Every time he killed one who stood in his way, another would rush out to stop him.

And this distance of barely twenty meters... Why... couldn't he get through?

The Three-Tailed Fox, Bai Xiaoqi, turned back slowly, her beastlike eyes glinting fiercely as she stared at her master. "I've had enough of you for a long time. You're always ordering me around. Save someone? If you're so capable, go save them yourself. Or maybe you should beg me?"

Xian Yu froze. Gradually, he closed his eyes and murmured, "My Xiao Qi is so clever. There's no way she'd do something stupid. If Xiao Qi has started acting stupid... there's only one possible explanation! I've been caught in a genjutsu."

A certain fox shed tears of gratitude: There was no way she'd do something stupid. She'd survive only by listening to her master. Her master was so brilliant and so good with words. She adored him...

Now that he knew it was a genjutsu, things were simple.

There were three ways to break a genjutsu.

The first was to have an ally outside the genjutsu send their chakra into your body, helping to calm the chakra swirling inside you.

The second was self-harm. Pain would stimulate your nerves and help you escape the genjutsu.

But although self-harm sounded simple, it had two difficulties of its own.

First, if your will wasn't strong enough, you might only be controlling your self inside the illusion to hurt yourself. That would do nothing but increase your suffering.

The second difficulty was that you might mean to stab your thigh with a kunai, only to break the genjutsu and discover you'd stabbed your own heart...

The third method was more of a test of skill: you tried to control the chakra inside your body.

When you were caught in a genjutsu, your own chakra was bound to be in disarray.

Think of it like an army that had lost its general. Your consciousness was the general, and your chakra was the army.

Now the general had been locked in a dark room, and without anyone to command them, the soldiers had fallen into chaos.

The victim couldn't feel that their chakra was in disarray. It was like the general was locked in a dark room while the scouts who made it inside brought back nothing but false reports.

So the first step was to make things even more chaotic! Try to control your chakra, throwing the chakra that felt 'calm and obedient' into disarray.

The more chaotic, the better. Once it became so chaotic that you could feel the discomfort yourself, everything in the genjutsu would slip beyond the caster's control.

At that point, the scenes you'd been seeing and the sounds you'd been hearing in the genjutsu would start to waver and distort.

Then, as the second step, you tried to calm the chaotic chakra. The genjutsu would be broken.

The reason Itachi Uchiha's genjutsu was so powerful... was that it couldn't be broken by the third method.

In the blink of an eye, Xian Yu recalled the way genjutsu was broken in his previous life and combined it with the teachings of his father, Danzo. He immediately decided to use a fourth method to break the genjutsu. (?òωó?)?

Xian Yu closed his eyes and began using the Heavenly Thunder Orthodox Method's Yang Five Thunder to transform the chakra in his body into Yang Thunder.

Gradually, lightning surrounded Xian Yu, crackling all around him.

When Xian Yu opened his eyes again, he saw Shinozaki Ayumi's back as she reached out to pull a kunai from her shoulder.

Back to what had happened: when Xian Yu noticed the four bandit leaders sneaking toward Shinozaki Ayumi, his attention was drawn to them. He didn't notice the young man approaching him, who also had a ninja tool pouch hanging at his waist.

But Shinozaki Ayumi saw him!

Xian Yu was always watching out for her safety, and she was watching out for his too.

When she saw Xian Yu use a Wind Release kunai to slice a bandit in half at the waist, then stand motionless, drenched in blood, she cried out in alarm, "Young Master! Look out!"

But at that moment, the four bandit leaders attacked her all at once!

Gritting her teeth, Shinozaki Ayumi quickly retreated several steps to avoid their combined attack. At the same time, she formed Hand Seals and unleashed a powerful technique that consumed a great deal of chakra: "Wind Style: Vacuum Serial Waves!"

Heavens above! The four bandit leaders were just ordinary men who happened to be strong! They'd gone head-to-head with a B-rank ninjutsu, Wind Style: Vacuum Serial Waves?

The next moment, dozens of spinning Wind Cutters swept through the four bandit leaders and everything within a fan-shaped area, shredding it all to pieces! The Wind Cutters even plowed up the ground, leaving a series of terrifying trenches three inches deep!

Shinozaki Ayumi felt that her chakra was nearly depleted. Her legs gave way, and she almost fell. Gritting her teeth, she poured the chakra she had left into her feet and used the Body Flicker Technique. The distance of more than twenty meters took her less than two seconds to cross. She barely made it in time to put herself in front of Xian Yu before a kunai struck through her shoulder.

"What a shame, what a shame. I was this close to taking one of them out." A gray-haired man in his mid-twenties, with a scar across his face and a ninja tool pouch at his waist, stepped out from behind several bandits.

Xian Yu's face was frighteningly grim. He surveyed the area. Including the black-haired man, only eleven bandits remained on the battlefield. They were gathering around the young man. All the others were dead.

The twenty-seven able-bodied villagers in the distance took advantage of the opening and rushed over. Two slower bandits were intercepted by a burly villager. The twenty-seven villagers, their eyes bloodshot, swarmed around the bandits and beat them into a pulp with hoes, woodcutting axes, and every other kind of weapon they could find.

"Ayumi, take care of the small fry. I'll handle him," Xian Yu said quietly.

Once he dealt with this young ninja, the eight ordinary bandits left wouldn't be able to make any trouble. The villagers' rage alone would drown them.

"Understood, Young Master. Be careful. He won't be easy to handle," Shinozaki Ayumi warned as she slowly backed away.

At that moment, Xian Yu didn't have the heart to correct how Ayumi addressed him. He silently nodded.

"You ruined my plans and killed so many of my brothers. You're dead, kid." A scar ran from the black-haired man's right ear to the corner of his mouth, making him look especially vicious. Before he'd even finished speaking, he was already in front of Xian Yu.

"Look out, Young Master!"

As Ayumi cried out, the black-haired man's kunai plunged into Xian Yu's heart. Yet a strange smile appeared on the face of the Xian Yu whose heart had been pierced.

Shadow Clone!

"Wind Style: Vacuum Great Sphere." Not far behind the black-haired man, Xian Yu had somehow already taken a deep breath and formed the Hand Seals. An invisible air cannon blasted from his mouth.

"Hm? This is bad!" The black-haired man's heart lurched, and he immediately threw himself forward.

"Boom!" Dust billowed into the air. At the center of the explosion, a circular crater more than ten meters wide had been blasted into the dirt, sinking more than three inches deep. The black-haired man lay prone at the edge of the crater, his life or death unknown.

Xian Yu sprinted over. Wind blades hissed from the kunai in his hand; he had already used Wind Release: Kunai.

After using a B-rank ninjutsu with such power, Xian Yu's chakra was almost depleted too. He rushed a few steps closer to the fallen black-haired man and stabbed his kunai toward the man's back.

Just then, the black-haired man suddenly sprang up from the ground and thrust his kunai at Xian Yu's chest! At this critical moment, Xian Yu only had time to turn slightly to the side. With a soft thud, the kunai still sank into his heart.

The black-haired man looked up with a victorious smile, but it suddenly froze on his face... because Xian Yu was smiling too, despite having his heart pierced.

That was the last thing the black-haired man saw. Then his vision went dark, and he knew nothing more.

The system's voice rang out: "Chunin killed. Killing Points +100."