Another Reversal

Heichen carefully studied the boy before him. After a moment, his gaze fixed on the boy's neck.

Looking at the enormous, grotesque artery throbbing beneath the boy's skin, Heichen raised an eyebrow slightly, suddenly understanding.

"So that's it. I really didn't expect you to have learned a forbidden technique that burns through your body at such a young age."

For a ninja, techniques that burned through the body were rare opportunities. Everyone knew that in an emergency, such a technique could completely change the tide of battle.

Some powerful techniques of this kind could even let a Genin fight at the level of an elite jōnin for a short time.

As for the vitality lost after the battle, or the various injuries that were difficult to heal, those were problems only the survivors had the luxury of worrying about.

For some reason, a deep flash of envy suddenly appeared in Heichen's eyes.

That was right. At that moment, he really was jealous.

As a veteran jōnin who had fought his way through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, Heichen had endured countless bloody battles to reach his current position.

Every technique he possessed had been painstakingly exchanged for with battle merits, at tremendous cost.

How many indignities had he suffered along the way? How many comrades had he lost? How many times had he stood on the brink of death? Even he could no longer remember.

Yet the boy standing before him had obtained all of these things with ease.

Neither the powerful Konoha secret technique from earlier nor the technique the boy had used to gain strength by burning through his body was something he should have possessed at his age.

Heichen narrowed his eyes slightly, a mocking smile appearing on his face.

"Heh. Someone from a great clan, are you?"

Heichen curled his lip in disdain, and his eyes suddenly turned ice-cold.

"The people I love killing most are so-called prodigies like you, from great clans!"

As he spoke, Heichen abandoned his earlier defensive approach and charged forward.

Heichen's surging killing intent made the boy across from him break out in a cold sweat.

At that moment, the boy truly felt the deep, overwhelming killing intent. It was something only a person who had fought their way through mountains of corpses and seas of blood could possess. Though the boy was strong, at his age he could never have such intense killing intent.

Even Chiba, who knew nothing about it, suddenly felt his whole body go weak. He was certain that if he could move, he would have been too weak to even stand.

"So this is the power of ninjas?"

At last, Chiba fully understood the immeasurable gap between ordinary people and ninjas.

"It's just like a lion and a sheep. It's like the higher levels of the food chain suppressing the lower ones. Just one look is enough to make an ordinary person lose the will to resist."

Though Chiba was just as terrified by that overwhelming killing intent, what he felt more strongly at that moment was a yearning for such power.

Meanwhile, after the boy paused in surprise, his eyes grew colder and colder.

He was the one who should have hated Heichen, yet the man had suddenly become inexplicably hostile toward him.

The boy had no idea why, but that didn't stop him from making the right choice.

"Hah!"

With the boy's roar, the already grotesque veins on his body became even more pronounced.

"Thump. Thump."

At that moment, the boy's heartbeat was clearly audible.

The veins across his body throbbed violently in time with each beat.

It was obvious that the boy was burning through his body even more intensely.

Seeing this, Heichen's expression grew darker.

"You think you're the only one with a technique like this?"

In an instant, all the muscles in Heichen's body boomed in unison and rapidly swelled.

From a distance, Heichen looked as though he had grown a size larger.

Bang!

The two collided violently. Even the earth beneath their feet seemed unable to bear the pressure, cracking slightly.

Bang! Bang, bang!

Every clash between them shattered Chiba's understanding of the world.

"So this is the power of ninjas."

Chiba stared intently at the two fighting.

Though he could barely make out their blurred silhouettes as they clashed, he still felt a surge of excitement deep within him.

Even Chiba himself couldn't quite explain what he was excited about.

Bang! Bang, bang!

Dull collisions rang out in the air. The cracks that appeared on the ground from time to time let Chiba imagine how fierce the battle was, but he couldn't even see the fighters, let alone judge how the fight was going.

"Pfft!"

After fighting for a long time, the two finally stopped.

Heichen seemed to be the first to buckle under the pressure. He spat blood, staggered backward, and collapsed limply onto the ground.

The boy across from him walked over step by step, expressionless, holding a blade.

The hand holding the blade trembled constantly, and he was clearly at his limit too. But no matter how you looked at it, he would be the winner.

"Looks like your so-called way of the ninja isn't as impressive as you claimed."

As he spoke, the boy swung his blade down hard.

But just as Heichen was about to be killed, the blade in the boy's hand suddenly stopped in midair.

"What..."

The boy's face turned ashen.

With a clatter, the blade slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. The boy himself could no longer stay on his feet and suddenly pitched forward.

"How is this possible?"

He spat out a large mouthful of blackish blood, his face full of disbelief.

"When did you poison me? Could it be..."

Heichen's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. "You're not as stupid as you look. Did you really think it would be so easy for you to save that child at the start?"

"So it was a mixed poison..."

The boy's face was full of unwillingness, but no matter how unwilling he was, his eyes could only grow dimmer and dimmer.

"Heh!"

Heichen gave an ugly smile and struggled to lie on his side against a nearby tree, gasping for breath.

"Looks like I still won. I told you: a naïve brat like you isn't suited for this battlefield."

Glancing at his wounds, Heichen reached for his equipment pouch, trembling as he tried to open it.

After struggling for a while, Heichen gave up. He had truly reached his limit. The fight had unquestionably drained every last bit of his strength.

The aftereffects of the forbidden technique had also torn most of his muscles. It would probably take a long time before he recovered.

He quietly gathered his chakra, trying to recover from his injuries as quickly as possible.

Though this was on the edge of the battlefield and people rarely came here, there was no way to be certain.

Besides, even a wild animal could finish him off.

But just when he was at his weakest, a figure suddenly flashed past the corner of his eye.

Chiba was quite excited to have finally regained control of his body, but before he could even enjoy it, the injury to his leg made him stumble.

He slowly circled around to stand directly in front of Heichen, silently watching him gasp for breath.

Heichen, in turn, stared fixedly at Chiba.

It was as if time had stopped.