The air in the antechamber was as stagnant as a vast slab of cold iron.
Three hours had already passed. Every second dripped by like icy water, drawn-out and agonizing. Captain Hozuki sat cross-legged on the Basalt Throne, still in his original pose, eyes shut and body utterly motionless, like a stone Buddha fused with the darkness.
Yet Mizuki Han knew that beneath that stone exterior lurked an ancient beast, ready to spring up and devour its prey at any moment. The gem embedded in his brow, pulsing with a steady crimson light, was the beast's open eye, mercilessly monitoring every speck of dust in the room.
This was a deadly game of patience and endurance, where the first to make a mistake would lose.
Mizuki Han hid deep in the shadows of the weapon rack, his body already acclimated to the cold surroundings until even his breath carried a trace of frost. He couldn't wait any longer. The prolonged chakra drain and intense concentration had pushed his body close to its limit. More importantly, the seventy-two-hour countdown to his death hanging over his head left him no time to waste here.
He had to make Captain Hozuki move.
Mizuki Han lowered his eyelids slightly and reached his intact right hand deeper into the drainage channel beneath him. A trace of chakra flowed from his fingertips into the web of ice threads that already covered the entire room.
"Ding."
A faint metallic tap sounded in the distance, near the ventilation duct's exit. Like a tiny pebble falling into a deep well, the sound sent a barely perceptible ripple through the deathly stillness.
It was the signal he had arranged with Haku.
Inside the ventilation duct, Haku had been curled up in the darkness. At the familiar faint resonance of ice crystals, her tense body jolted. Following Mizuki Han's instructions, she pulled a cold Kunai from her ninja pouch and put all her strength into dragging it across the rough metal wall of the duct!
"Skrrr—!"
A sharp, grating metallic scrape rang out without warning from the upper left corner of the antechamber!
This sound was utterly unlike any of the faint noises before it. It was deliberate and provocative, like a mouse frantically clawing at its cage to draw the hunter's attention.
On the stone throne, Captain Hozuki's tightly shut eyelids twitched almost imperceptibly.
He didn't move.
But through the web of ice threads connected to him, Mizuki Han clearly "sensed" a brief spike in the rhythm of his chakra.
He had taken the bait.
An experienced ninja wouldn't shift position just because of a suspicious sound. He would analyze it, assess it. The sound came from the upper left, where the ventilation ducts were clustered. Was the intruder bluffing, or trying to draw him away?
In the half-second Captain Hozuki's attention was drawn to the sound and his mind began racing through the possibilities, Mizuki Han seamlessly launched the next step of his plan.
He controlled another ice thread, attached to a ceiling beam, and used it to gently tilt a cunningly angled ice mirror he had set up in advance.
The palm-sized mirror shifted by the tiniest degree under the thread's pull. That slight adjustment precisely caught a ray of cold light spilling from the Moonlight Stone in the ceiling, then reflected it onto an empty patch of wall on the right side of the antechamber!
"Whoosh!"
A blurry, human-shaped white afterimage flashed across the wall!
The sound was on the left, the shadow on the right!
A feint to the left and a strike to the right!
It was the oldest and simplest kind of tactical misdirection. But executed with such fine attention to detail and timing, it was enough to shake even an elite chūnin's ironclad resolve.
"Hmph..."
A scornful snort escaped Captain Hozuki's nose.
At last, he moved.
He didn't stand. Still seated cross-legged, he and the Basalt Throne beneath him slowly rose into the air, hovering soundlessly half a meter above the ground!
The crimson gem in his brow blazed brighter. A chakra far more immense and ferocious than before erupted from his body!
"Playing tricks, you rat..."
Captain Hozuki's voice was cold and hoarse, brimming with the fury and cruelty of a superior whose authority had been challenged. He had lost patience with this game of hide-and-seek. If the intruder refused to come out, then he would burn every possible hiding place, along with the entire room, to ashes!
He slowly raised his right hand and began forming Hand Seals at a dizzying speed!
Rat—Tiger—Dog—Ox—Rabbit—Tiger!
These weren't standard Water Release or Earth Release hand signs! Mizuki Han's pupils shrank to pinpricks!
Energy hot enough to warp the air rapidly gathered in Captain Hozuki's palm. The temperature around them soared at a terrifying rate! The thin layer of frost on the floor evaporated instantly, turning into wisps of steam.
The transparent ice threads Mizuki Han had laid out began to crackle under the strain. Starting at the outer edge, they melted and snapped one after another!
His trap network was being physically destroyed by the heat!
"Fire Release..."
Two words heavy with the promise of destruction fell from Captain Hozuki's lips.
"...Flame Wave Burning Kill!"
He thrust his right hand forward, unleashing the terrifying energy he had gathered!
"BOOM—!!!"
There was no earth-shattering explosion. Instead, a fan-shaped wave of orange-red flames swept across the room, blotting out everything in its path! Like a flood of molten lava breaching its banks, the fire clung to the floor and surged outward in every direction with unstoppable force!
In an instant, the flames devoured all the darkness!
The entire antechamber was transformed into a blazing hell!
The weapon rack caught fire with a series of crackles! The shuriken hanging from the ceiling glowed red-hot and clattered down like raindrops!
Mizuki Han's carefully laid twelve linked traps were laughably fragile before such overwhelming power! The cunningly angled ice mirrors hissed as soon as the wave of fire touched them. They didn't last a second before melting completely into steam!
A deadly crisis had struck in a way he had never expected!
Mizuki Han's Ice Release was utterly countered by Fire Release!
The scorching blast hit him head-on. The weapon rack where he hid caught fire instantly, and the surging heat nearly vaporized his blood. His skin stung, and even his breath turned searing hot.
All his plans and calculations were utterly crushed by this indiscriminate, large-scale attack that recognized no rules!
Captain Hozuki hovered in midair, his crimson eye sweeping coldly over the sea of fire. In his mind, the leaping rat had either already been burned to a crisp or would soon come scrambling out of hiding, only to be crushed with ease.
The flames churned and roared, bent on reducing everything to ashes. They had already reached Mizuki Han.
The weapon rack sheltering him collapsed with a crash. Nothing remained to shield him.
Fire Release had completely countered his Ice Release. His traps had been destroyed in an instant, and his hiding place was exposed.
How would he face the vast, all-consuming blaze?
Before you continue