Dance of the Golden Amber

It happened too fast; with Li Tong's current strength, he was completely unable to make any effective reaction!

Pain spread from Li Tong's heart, so intense that it even brought a sense of numbness. This was the first time in his life he had experienced such pain—the pain of a heart pierced through!

Thick fog swirled around. A dark figure wearing a dark mask looked like a ghost crawling out of the abyss of the mist. Only after the pain struck did Li Tong clearly see the assassin; he had a pair of eyes devoid of any emotion!

Name: Uesugi Kama (Sickle Without Hook)
Identity: Kirigakure A-rank missing-nin, Black Market Assassination Squad A-rank assassin!
Reputation: 181
Relationship: Hostile

It's a Black Market assassin! An elite jonin! The thought flashed through Li Tong's mind like lightning. The excruciating pain made it hard to breathe, let alone engage in complex thinking.

"What a simple mission, such a brat..." A playful, bloodthirsty glint flashed in Uesugi Kama's eyes. He jerked his hand, pulling the katana that had pierced Li Tong's heart back out.

Standing proudly on the water's surface in front of Li Tong, he watched Li Tong clutch his chest and slowly collapse. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and began to slowly wipe the blood off his blade, stroke by stroke.

His gaze was cold, yet tinged with a hint of excitement; he truly savored this moment!

As a professional assassin who had killed countless people, he pursued efficiency and cleanliness, yet he loved watching the death throes of his victims. He would make thorough preparations, and once he moved, it was a one-hit kill. Then, he would stare—watching the target suffer, watching them despair, and watching them die!

Uesugi Kama rarely used a second strike; he viewed the one-hit kill as the highest realm of an assassin.

"Damn you, you're dead!" Li Tong took a deep breath, forcing himself to concentrate, and quickly retrieved a Basic Healing Card from his Item Space! The card appeared directly in his hand, but no one else could see it.

Lying on the water, head hanging low, Li Tong bit the Basic Healing Card to activate it.

Special energy rapidly spread throughout Li Tong's body, then concentrated on his heart. The fatal wound on Li Tong's body began to heal rapidly. Splash! The surface of the lake beneath Li Tong broke; he voluntarily retracted his chakra, rendering himself unable to float on the water any longer, and sank into the depths of the lake.

The thick fog still shrouded the lake surface.

Uesugi Kama frowned immediately. He had overlooked one thing... his mission was not just to kill the target, but to hang the body on the flagpole in front of the gates of Konoha. Now that the target was sinking to the bottom of the lake, he had no choice but to go into the water to retrieve him!

In truth, Li Tong was trying to escape!

Although he could heal his own wounds, his odds of winning against an elite jonin with his current strength were less than half a percent. Therefore, he planned to sink to the bottom of the lake to deceive Uesugi Kama, and once the assassin left, he would return to the shore and seek help from the Anbu!

The prerequisite for seeking help was to first get far away from Uesugi Kama; otherwise, if Li Tong showed any abnormality or called for help, Uesugi Kama absolutely had the strength to quickly kill him for real before fleeing!

But what Li Tong didn't expect was that when he faked his death and sank to the bottom, Uesugi Kama actually followed him down!

Uesugi Kama swam through the water, rapidly closing in on Li Tong, who was feigning a death with eyes wide open.

Seeking death! You are truly seeking death! Li Tong wanted to laugh, but he couldn't!

He truly wanted to thank the heavens, for they had given him a chance to kill an elite jonin. Although he had taken a blade to the chest, if he succeeded, the rewards would be several or even a dozen times greater. After all, he had only consumed a single Basic Healing Card!

In the water, any ninja's strength would be affected. The resistance and buoyancy of the water would hinder a person's movement and reaction speed, and the presence of water would also interfere with the execution of ninjutsu.

Twenty meters deep!

Li Tong had already reached the bottom, splayed out in a miserable display of death, his eyes staring blankly upward.

A few seconds later, Uesugi Kama swam to Li Tong's side and grabbed his arm, intending to take him away. At that very moment, Li Tong, who had been posing as a corpse, curled his arm and grabbed Uesugi Kama's arm in return. Immediately, an unusual and violent surge of chakra erupted from his body.

Uesugi Kama's expression changed, realizing he had been tricked. He instinctively drew his blade to strike at Li Tong. His mental reaction speed was undeniably fast, but the underwater environment severely impacted the speed of his strike! He also couldn't quickly shake off Li Tong's hand and was unable to retreat!

The two were extremely close!

"Shikotsumyaku: Dance of the Golden Amber!"

Boom! Rip! Rip! Rip! Rip! Rip!

The close-quarters attack of the Shikotsumyaku Kekkei Genkai exploded in full force. In that instant, from Li Tong's knees, elbows, shoulder blades, ribs, and various other points on his body, finger-thick, meter-long bone spikes erupted!

At this moment, Li Tong was like a hedgehog!

And Uesugi Kama, who was right in front of Li Tong, still maintained his posture of swinging the blade. His head, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and other areas were all pierced through by Li Tong's bone spikes, and blood rapidly dyed the surrounding lake water red.

His head had been pierced through; he was dead instantly! His entire body was "fixed" in front of Li Tong.

One-hit kill!

Under specific circumstances, in a specific environment, and in a specific state of disguise, Li Tong, with the strength of an elite chunin, had killed an elite jonin in a single blow!

Whoosh! A light erupted from Uesugi Kama's body, and dozens of cards flew out from him...

"Ding! Host has completed a cross-rank kill for the first time. Reward: one A-rank Ninjutsu Random Card, one 1-point Reputation Card, and one Drop Rate Boost Card!" Li Tong listened to the notification sound as the bone spikes protruding from his body rapidly retracted back into him.

On the lake surface, the thick fog had not yet dispersed.

The water surface suddenly exploded, and Li Tong's head emerged, gasping for air. At the same time, he instinctively touched his chest; the wound was already healed. Although the Basic Healing Card was named "Basic," it was actually quite powerful. Of course, the fact that it could directly heal Li Tong's heart-piercing wound was also related to the fact that Li Tong's own strength was not yet high enough.

If his strength reached a certain level, he would need to use higher-grade healing cards to treat fatal wounds.

After Li Tong finished gasping for air, he controlled his body to float on the lake in a backstroke position, relaxing himself to recover his chakra.

He had just used another ability of the Shikotsumyaku. Compared to the Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets from before, the Dance of the Golden Amber consumed even more chakra, so his chakra had unsurprisingly hit rock bottom again. There was no helping it; aside from using the Shikotsumyaku to ambush someone, Li Tong couldn't think of any other way to defeat and kill an elite jonin.

Elite jonin were simply too strong! A single elite jonin could handle a group of regular jonin without issue, while Li Tong, even if he exploded with all his might, could at most wrestle with a regular jonin.

The white mist over the lake gradually thinned, and Li Tong could vaguely make out the woods on the shore.

Chen He, standing within those woods, caught sight of Li Tong once more, appearing and disappearing within the haze. He felt nothing, for Li Tong had been killing beneath the water; at a depth of twenty meters, the aura of the Shikotsumyaku was completely insulated.

Suddenly, Li Tong flipped over and dove headfirst back under the surface.

Not long after, in the shallows by the shore.

Li Tong surfaced again, gripping the corpse by its ankle, and slowly dragged it onto the bank.

A scene all too familiar!

Chen He's expression changed drastically!