Water Clone Lures the Enemy Deep, a Secret Route Around the Blind Spot

At the top of the limestone cave, a turbid drop of water slid slowly down the tip of a stalactite, tracing a nearly straight path through the air before splashing into the knee-deep water below.

"Plop."

The faint sound of the splash rippled through the empty cave, only to be instantly torn apart by a violent rush of wind.

"There!"

Jingting, the sensory ninja, let out a shrill scream, his hands—which had been maintaining his sensory technique—suddenly pointing toward the space behind a stone pillar on the left side of the cave. In his sensory field, a dense and restless surge of chakra was bursting out of the water like an enraged beast, lunging toward Heavy Hammer on the flank of their formation with lethal intent.

Wildcat and Heavy Hammer reacted almost simultaneously. As elites of the Mist Anbu, they had escaped death in the blood mist countless times; this combat instinct, carved into their very bones, allowed their bodies to assume a defensive stance before their minds had even processed the threat.

"You're courting death!"

Heavy Hammer let out a low growl like muffled thunder, his short axes glowing with a dark cyan light as he infused them with chakra. Instead of retreating, he took a heavy step forward, the force of his movement instantly displacing the standing water and sending a ripple outward.

"Hoo—!"

The short axes carved a sharp, lethal arc, aiming precisely at the black shadow rushing toward him. In Heavy Hammer's mind, this strike was enough to cleave any enemy attempting a close-quarters assault in two.

However, the moment the blade touched the shadow, Heavy Hammer's expression shifted.

There was no resistance of steel biting into flesh, nor the sound of shattering bone. The seemingly ferocious shadow twisted and disintegrated under the axe blade, ultimately collapsing into a puddle of lifeless, murky water that splashed all over him.

"A Water Clone?!"

Wildcat's pupils contracted sharply, and a profound sense of crisis crawled up his spine. He realized with a jolt that his squad had made a fatal error—they had become too reliant on the sensory ninja's judgment.

In this cave where chakra fluctuations were inherently unstable, the enemy had exploited the sensory ninja's frayed nerves to create a "false signal" convincing enough to deceive them all.

"Jingting! Watch your back!"

Wildcat's voice turned shrill with terror. He didn't even bother aiming the kunai in his hand, throwing it blindly toward the sensory ninja's blind spot based purely on instinct.

But it was already too late.

At the very moment the Water Clone erupted to draw their attention, the real Mizuki Han was clinging to the slick rock wall at the top of the cave in a manner bordering on self-torture. Like a transparent ghost, he slid silently toward the position directly above the formation.

The chakra within him was precisely divided into countless fine threads, each one clinging tightly to the crevices in the rock to negate any sound caused by gravity. His lungs had almost ceased to expand, his heartbeat slowed to the absolute limit, and he had become one with the cold, damp environment.

This was the core of Han's "Three-Part Chakra Principle": never let the enemy see your true trump card, not even your location.

As the attention of Wildcat and Heavy Hammer was fully captured by the exploding splash of water, Han dropped silently from the rock wall.

He did not land directly in the water, as the splash would have instantly revealed his coordinates. Half a meter above the surface, Han flicked his toes, and two layers of extremely thin, resilient ice instantly condensed beneath his feet.

He landed on the water as lightly as a falling feather. The moment the ice touched the standing water, he used micro-manipulation of his Ice Release to dissolve the recoil force into the rhythm of the ripples.

One step, two steps.

Han glided across the water, his movements as elegant as a dance of death. He skirted around Wildcat's frantic, spinning kunai and avoided the residual chakra waves unleashed by Heavy Hammer's rage, cutting precisely into Jingting's visual blind spot.

Distance: two meters.

Jingting, the sensory ninja, was currently trapped in a state of massive psychological chaos. His hand seals had been interrupted by the deception of the Water Clone, and the sensory map in his mind was now like an old television suffering from signal interference—filled with static.

He tried in terror to re-gather his chakra, desperate to find the hunter who had vanished.

But all he could feel was a chill suddenly descending upon the back of his neck, cold enough to freeze his soul.

Han's figure emerged from the darkness. His face, pale and delicate yet as cold as a statue, looked particularly eerie in the dim light. His right hand was already raised, and between his fingers, an ice blade condensed from the filthy stagnant water emitted a faint, ghostly cyan glow.

The blade had no edge, yet it carried an extreme, biting cold.

Jingting wanted to turn around, wanted to scream, even wanted to activate a Body Replacement Technique.

But under the gaze of Han's ink-black eyes, he found his body frozen, unable to move. It was not the result of a ninjutsu binding, but rather the sheer, terrifying killing intent of a superior looking down upon an ant, which had shattered his spirit.

Killing never required superfluous movement.

Han's right hand was steady, without a tremor, the tip of the ice blade already pressed against the most vulnerable gap where Jingting's skull met his cervical spine.

One more inch, and this ninja who served as the "eyes" of the squad would become a cold corpse.

Wildcat had turned around by now. He watched helplessly as the boy they had dismissed as a "rat" stood behind his subordinate with the posture of a sovereign.

"Stop—!"

Wildcat let out a heart-wrenching roar. He unleashed every ounce of his chakra at that moment, the rock beneath his feet cracking under the pressure. He lunged like a cannonball, his ninja sword trailing a sharp, lethal streak of lightning, aiming straight for Han's throat.

It was a desperate gambit to save his comrade, a move of mutual destruction.

He was gambling that Han would withdraw his attack to save his own life.

The corners of Han's mouth curled upward—a look of disdain and cruelty.

In his calculations, it would take Wildcat 0.4 seconds for his blade to reach his throat.

And it would take his ice blade only 0.1 seconds to pierce Jingting's brain.

The remaining 0.3 seconds were more than enough to trigger the final trap he had prepared long ago.

"Puchi."

The sound of the ice blade entering flesh was crisp and short. There was no massive spray of blood, because the moment it pierced the skin, the terrifying low temperature had already completely sealed the blood vessels around the wound.

Jingting's body stiffened violently, the light in his eyes extinguishing in an instant like a machine whose power had been forcibly cut, and he slumped down limply.

First kill, complete.

However, Wildcat's ninja blade, wreathed in crackling lightning, was already less than three inches from Han's skin; the violent lightning-natured chakra had already singed the hair at Han's temple.

In this split second between life and death, Han did not dodge. Instead, he slammed his left hand downward, pressing it against the back of the corpse that had yet to collapse.

"Ice Release: Crystal Explosion!"

Han's frigid voice echoed throughout the limestone cave.

"BOOM!"

The corpse of the sensory ninja, which had served as cover, suddenly emitted a blinding blue light. Countless fine ice crystals erupted frantically from every pore of the body, transforming the entire corpse into a massive, lethal ice-crystal bomb!

Wildcat's inevitable strike slammed violently into the center of the exploding ice crystals.

The violent lightning and the freezing ice crystals collided mid-air with a roar, the resulting shockwave shattering the surrounding stagnant water into a thick, white mist.

"Cough, cough..."

Wildcat staggered back from the white mist. His right arm was covered in tiny, bloody lacerations—marks from the shards of ice—but what terrified him more was the sinister, cold chakra attempting to invade his meridians through the wounds.

He snapped his head up, staring intently into the depths of the mist.

"Heavy Hammer! Seal the passage! He's injured, he can't get far!" Wildcat ordered his subordinate on the other side while gasping for air.

However, the only response he received was dead silence.

Wildcat's heart skipped a beat, and he whipped his head toward the direction where Heavy Hammer had been.

The burly assault specialist was still holding his axe in a swinging posture, but he stood frozen like an exquisite ice sculpture, unable to move. Beneath his feet, a dense, spiderweb-like network of translucent ice threads had spread out at some unknown moment.

Those ice threads had crept up his legs, locking him firmly in place.

Behind Heavy Hammer, Haku's small, slender figure stood trembling, clutching a kunai. Though her face was pale, her eyes shone with a sense of resolve.

"Damn brat..."

Wildcat gritted his teeth and turned his head back toward the center of the mist.

The mist gradually dissipated, and Mizuki Han stood there quietly. His left arm trembled slightly from the backlash of the explosion, and a trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth, yet his eyes remained so calm they induced despair.

He did not flee; instead, he walked toward Wildcat step by step.

"Now," Han raised his right hand, gently wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth, his voice cold and devoid of inflection, "only you remain."

Feeling the sluggish flow of chakra within his body and the plummeting temperature around him, Wildcat felt the emotion known as "fear" for the very first time.

He realized that the Anbu tactics he took such pride in were nothing more than a clumsy farce in front of this boy.

Just as Wildcat prepared to fight to the death, his peripheral vision caught a glimpse of something deep within the pile of destroyed supply crates: a black scroll engraved with eerie runes, emitting a faint, ominous red glow.

That was... the final order for the Great Purge?

Han's gaze shifted toward the scroll as well, his pupils constricting sharply.