The blade cleaved through the air with a sharp whistle.
Baishi's ambush had struck at a viciously precise moment—right when Obito thought victory was assured and had let his guard down completely, his fingers just about to touch the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style.
The poison-coated Short Blade went straight for Obito's throat.
But Obito was still Obito. His Scarlet Three-Tomoe Sharingan spun wildly, and his dynamic vision caught the killing intent hidden in the Lightning within 0.01 seconds.
Space ripples suddenly surged.
Baishi's right hand, along with half his shoulder, passed through Obito's neck without resistance.
Intangibility.
"Boring ambush." Obito's hoarse voice sounded beside Baishi's ear, filled with lofty contempt. He had made his upper body intangible, but his right leg, hidden beneath his black robe, suddenly rose and viciously kicked toward Baishi's abdomen with a dull rush of wind.
Under Kamui's mechanics, the user had to become tangible at the instant of attack.
Obito intended to cripple Baishi in the instant after his old force had been spent and before he could summon new strength.
But there was not a trace of panic in Baishi's eyes.
He knew Kamui's weakness all too well.
"Detonate." Baishi's thin lips moved slightly.
He had crushed the fuses of three High-Explosive Tags in advance. Instead of throwing them at Obito, he flung them directly onto the Stone Slab beneath his own feet!
Boom!
The deafening explosion erupted between them. A violent shock wave mixed with shattered stone and scorching heat, sweeping indiscriminately outward in a hemisphere.
Obito's Sharingan contracted sharply.
If he continued his kick, his right leg would definitely be blown off by the Explosive Tags. Faced with this completely suicidal fighting style, Obito could only forcibly withdraw his attack, turning his entire body intangible and allowing the flames of the explosion to pass through him.
That was exactly what Baishi wanted him to do.
He squeezed out the last bit of Lightning Release Chakra in his body, forcibly twisting himself within the blast wave and shooting backward like a cannonball.
Bang.
His Military Boots landed heavily on the Stone Slab covered in amniotic fluid and blood.
Baishi landed steadily in front of the delivery bed. His left hand hung at his side, the back scorched black over a large area by the blast wave from the Explosive Tags, filling the air with the pungent smell of roasted meat. But he stood ramrod straight, like an impassable iron wall, firmly blocking Kushina from Obito.
The smoke and dust gradually cleared.
On the delivery bed, Kushina struggled to open her eyes.
Sweat blurred her vision. Just minutes ago, Minato had vanished with Naruto in the golden light of Flying Thunder God. She did not blame Minato. That was the responsibility of a Hokage, as well as a father's instinct.
But the moment Minato left, the cold, blood-soaked cave held only her, facing that monster in the tiger-striped Mask.
The Nine-Tails inside her roared, and the seal tore apart. Despair drowned her mouth and nose like icy seawater.
She thought she was certain to die.
Yet now, a not particularly broad back had entered her line of sight.
A pure white Mask bearing the character "Sparrow," a gray ANBU uniform, and the Short Blade still dripping poison.
The air was thick with the pungent smells of ozone and blood.
"Who are you...?" Kushina's voice was terribly hoarse, her throat aching as if blades were lodged in it.
Baishi did not turn around. He merely tightened his reverse grip on the Short Blade, Lightning Release Chakra gathering over the blade once more and ringing out with the sharp cry of countless Chidori.
"Stay calm." Baishi's voice came through the Mask, cold and hard, leaving no room for argument. "As long as I have one breath left, he won't touch a single hair on your head."
There was no lengthy oath, no slogan about the Will of Fire.
Only the purest protectiveness.
Kushina trembled all over, warm liquid welling up once more in her dry eye sockets. In this desperate place where the entire world had abandoned her, that cold promise was like a red-hot iron nail, driven firmly into the most vulnerable part of her nerves.
"So the rat in the tree earlier was you."
Obito slowly emerged from the smoke that had yet to disperse. He brushed the dust from his black robe, killing intent flickering in his exposed right eye.
"When did Konoha's ANBU get a Lightning Release expert like you? You're even willing to throw your life away for a Jinchuriki who's bound to die?"
Baishi narrowed his eyes.
Obito was stalling for time. He had forcibly turned intangible to evade the explosion, and his Chakra circulation had become slightly sluggish.
"In an intelligence battle, you talk too much."
Baishi gave Obito no chance to catch his breath. He suddenly drove his foot down, crushing two Stone Slabs, and transformed into a streak of blue lightning as he charged at Obito again!
The Short Blade swept horizontally, aimed straight at Obito's eyes.
Obito snorted coldly and neither dodged nor evaded. The blade pierced through his head once again.
But at the instant it passed through, Baishi's left hand swept upward at an extremely strange angle, two extremely fine steel wires pinched between his fingers.
The other ends of the wires were connected to the two ANBU Ninja Blades that had fallen to the ground during the explosion!
"Rise!"
Baishi flicked his wrist.
The two Ninja Blades shot out like venomous snakes from their holes, viciously twisting toward Obito's lower body from both sides and from his blind spots.
Kamui's intangibility covered the entire body. If Obito did not end the technique, the Ninja Blades would pass through him; but if he wanted to attack Baishi, he had to become tangible. In that instant, the blades would sever both his legs!
He was forcing Obito to choose.
Obito's expression finally changed.
This ANBU was not only astonishingly skilled in Lightning Release—his tactical acumen was vicious to an extreme. Every move calculated around Kamui's mechanics.
"Seeking death."
Obito completely lost his patience. Minato could return via Flying Thunder God at any moment. He could no longer afford to waste time with this troublesome ANBU.
His Scarlet Sharingan widened sharply, its ocular power erupting as if it had become tangible.
He did not evade the Ninja Blades on the ground. Instead, he thrust out his right hand and seized Baishi's right arm—the one holding the dagger!
At the instant of contact, Obito's arm became tangible.
Squelch!
The Ninja Blades on the ground sliced into Obito's calf, spraying blood.
But Obito did not care in the slightest. His five fingers clamped around Baishi's forearm like iron pincers, while space ripples spun wildly around his palm.
Kamui: Strangulation!
The space around Baishi collapsed in an instant. An immensely terrifying force of distortion acted directly on his right arm.
"Crack, crack, crack—"
The sound of bones breaking under unbearable strain rang clearly through the cave. The muscles in Baishi's right arm were forcibly twisted into a rope by the power of space, and blood instantly soaked through his ANBU uniform.
Pain like a tsunami swallowed his nerves.
Baishi clenched his teeth hard and did not utter a single cry. The veins on his forehead bulged beneath the Mask, and cold sweat poured down like rain.
"No!" Seeing the twisted, deformed arm, Kushina let out a shrill scream. Her heart felt as if an invisible hand had seized it in a crushing grip. The figure in her simulated memories who had died beneath the Nine-Tails' claws while saving her overlapped perfectly at that moment with the ANBU before her, whose arm had been twisted apart while protecting her!
A cruel arc curled across Obito's lips.
"It's over, rat."
The spatial vortex suddenly expanded, on the verge of sucking Baishi's entire body into that lightless Other Dimension. At this instant between life and death, an extremely dazzling burst of Lightning suddenly erupted from the Short Blade about to fall from Baishi's twisted right hand.
It was not an attack on Obito.
Instead, he stabbed backward directly at the joint of his own right arm!