"That scared me to death. I thought I was done for. Good thing I spent a fortune making a Substitute Puppet beforehand. What a waste of that puppet, though. I got careless," Cao Liang said, still shaken.
Minato watched in mild surprise as the Cao Liang he had cut in two slowly turned into a puppet. "Ah, what a shame. I thought I'd taken one of you out. Still, you may have escaped once, but how many more times can you manage it?"
Minato turned toward Cao Liang, Xue Wuya, and Xue Wuyi. A bead of cold sweat slowly trickled down Cao Liang's face. That single strike had made the gap between them painfully clear. If Minato attacked again, Cao Liang truly had no confidence that he could dodge.
Cao Liang was not the only one. A crushing weight pressed down on Xue Wuya and Xue Wuyi's hearts as well. When Minato had struck Cao Liang just now, not only had Cao Liang failed to realize how Minato had appeared behind him, but even Xue Wuya and Xue Wuyi, watching from the sidelines, had failed to see it clearly. If Minato had targeted them, they would have been unable to escape either.
Xue Wuya quietly suppressed his fear and said, "Cao Liang, Wuyi, the three of us have to work together. Attack now! We absolutely cannot give him a chance to strike. Hurry!" With that, Xue Wuya immediately unleashed a wide-area attack at Minato.
The cold bursting from Xue Wuya's fist instantly froze everything in front of him. Even space itself seemed to ice over. Sensing the overwhelming power of the attack, Minato did not meet it head-on. He immediately used the Body Flicker Technique to evade it.
Just as Minato escaped the range of Xue Wuya's attack, he sensed