Dance of the Golden Amber!

It had come far too fast. With Li Tong's current strength, he couldn't make any effective response!

Pain spread from Li Tong's chest, so intense it left him numb. It was the first time in his life he had experienced such pain—the pain of being run through the heart!

Thick fog swirled around them. A dark figure wearing a black mask looked like a ghost crawling out of the miasma of some abyss. Only after the pain hit did Li Tong make out his attacker. The man had a pair of eyes utterly devoid of emotion!

Name: Uesugi Kama (Sickle Without Hook)

Identity: A-rank missing-nin from Kirigakure in the Land of Water; A-rank assassin in the Black Market's assassination unit!

Reputation: 181

Relationship: Hostile

"He's a Black Market killer! An elite jonin!" The thought flashed through Li Tong's mind like lightning. The agony made it hard to breathe, let alone think clearly.

"What a simple job. This little—" A mocking, bloodthirsty glint flashed in Uesugi Kama's eyes. He yanked his hand back, pulling the katana from Li Tong's chest.

Standing proudly on the water before Li Tong, he watched as Li Tong clutched his chest and slowly collapsed. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and leisurely wiped the blood from his blade, stroke by stroke.

His gaze was growing colder, yet there was also a hint of excitement. He loved this moment!

As a professional assassin who had killed countless people, he valued efficiency, but he also loved watching his victims struggle in their final moments. He prepared thoroughly, and once he made his move, he struck to kill in a single blow. Then he watched—watched them suffer, watched them despair, watched them die!

Uesugi Kama rarely needed a second strike. He considered killing with one blow the highest level an assassin could attain!

"You bastard, you're dead!" Li Tong took a deep breath and forced himself to focus. He quickly pulled a Basic Healing Card from his Item Space! The card appeared directly in his hand, but no one else could see it.

Floating facedown on the water with his head hanging low, Li Tong bit down on the Basic Healing Card and crushed it.

A special energy quickly spread through Li Tong's body, then gathered around his chest. His fatal wound rapidly healed. Splash! The lake water beneath him burst apart as he deliberately stopped channeling chakra, letting himself sink beneath the surface and drift toward the lakebed.

The thick fog still shrouded the lake.

Uesugi Kama frowned. He had overlooked one thing... His mission wasn't merely to kill his target. He also had to hang the body from the flagpole in front of Konoha's gates. Now that the body was sinking to the lakebed, he had no choice but to dive in and retrieve it!

Li Tong had actually been trying to escape!

He could heal his wound, but against an elite jonin, his odds of winning were less than one in ten. So he planned to sink to the lakebed and fool Uesugi Kama. Once Uesugi Kama left, he would return to shore and call for help from the Anbu Ninja!

But to call for help, he first had to get away from Uesugi Kama. If Li Tong showed any sign of being alive or cried out, Uesugi Kama would have more than enough time to truly kill him and escape!

What Li Tong hadn't expected was that Uesugi Kama would follow him underwater when he pretended to be dead and sank to the lakebed!

Uesugi Kama swam toward Li Tong, who was posing as a corpse with his eyes wide open.

"Looking for death! You're really asking for it!" Li Tong wanted to laugh, but he couldn't!

He really wanted to thank fate for giving him the chance to kill an elite jonin. Even though he'd taken a blade to the chest, success would bring him several times—or even more than ten times—the reward. After all, he'd only used up one Basic Healing Card!

Underwater, every ninja's abilities were affected. Water resistance and buoyancy reduced their speed and mobility, while the water itself also interfered with their ability to perform ninjutsu.

Twenty meters below the surface!

Li Tong had reached the bottom. He lay sprawled in a pose of gruesome death, staring blankly up at the surface.

A few seconds later, Uesugi Kama swam up beside Li Tong and grabbed his arm to carry him away. At that moment, Li Tong—who had been pretending to be a corpse—wrapped his arm around Uesugi Kama's and grabbed hold. A strange, violent surge of chakra erupted from his body.

Uesugi Kama's expression changed. Realizing he'd been tricked, he instinctively swung his blade at Li Tong. His reflexes were undeniably fast, but the underwater conditions severely slowed his strike! Nor could he wrench free of Li Tong's grip quickly enough to retreat!

They were extremely close!

"Shikotsumyaku: Dance of the Golden Amber!"

BOOM! SSS! SSS! SSS! SSS! SSS!

The close-range attack of the Shikotsumyaku Kekkei Genkai erupted in full. In that instant, bone spikes as thick as fingers and nearly a meter long burst from Li Tong's knees, elbows, shoulder blades, ribs, and every other part of his body, front and back!

At that moment, Li Tong looked like a porcupine!

Uesugi Kama, right in front of Li Tong, was still frozen in the act of swinging his blade. The bone spikes pierced his head, chest, stomach, shoulders, and other parts of his body. Blood rapidly turned the water around him red.

His head had been pierced through. He died instantly, his body "pinned" in front of Li Tong.

A one-shot kill!

Under the right circumstances, in the right environment, while perfectly disguised, Li Tong had killed an elite jonin in one blow—even though he was only an elite chunin!

Splash! Light burst from Uesugi Kama's body, and dozens of cards flew out...

"Ding! The host has completed their first kill of someone above their level! Reward: one random A-rank Ninjutsu Card, one Reputation Card worth 1 point, and one Drop Rate Boost Card!" As Li Tong heard the notification, the pale bone spikes protruding from his body quickly withdrew.

The thick fog still hadn't lifted from the lake.

The water suddenly exploded, and Li Tong surfaced, gasping for breath. At the same time, he instinctively touched his chest. The wound had already healed. Though the Basic Healing Card was called "basic," it was incredibly effective. Of course, Li Tong's relatively low strength was also why it could heal a wound that had pierced his heart.

If he grew stronger, he would need a higher-grade Healing Card to mend a fatal wound.

Once he'd caught his breath, Li Tong floated on his back and relaxed, recovering his chakra.

He'd just used another ability of his Shikotsumyaku. Compared to Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets, the Dance of the Golden Amber consumed far more chakra, so he'd unsurprisingly run dry once again. He couldn't help it. Aside from using the Shikotsumyaku to catch his opponent off guard, Li Tong couldn't think of any way to defeat and kill an elite jonin.

Elite jonin were far too strong! A single elite jonin could take on a group of jonin, while Li Tong, even at full power, could barely go toe-to-toe with a jonin.

The white fog over the lake gradually thinned. Li Tong could just make out the trees along the shore.

Chen He, still in the woods, spotted Li Tong again, his figure appearing and disappearing in the mist. He hadn't sensed anything, because Li Tong had killed his target underwater. The twenty meters of water had blocked the chakra signature released when Li Tong used the Shikotsumyaku.

Then Li Tong suddenly rolled over and plunged beneath the surface.

A short while later, in the shallows by the shore.

Li Tong surfaced again, holding the corpse by the ankles and slowly dragging it onto the bank.

A familiar scene!

Chen He's face paled!