Temari and Kankuro's Shock! The Fire of Vengeance Burning in the Desert

Fifty Anbu guards formed hand signs at the same time, their figures instantly turning into fifty black afterimages. They followed close behind Yuan, directly leaping over Hidden Leaf Village's high walls. No one bothered to greet the gatekeepers; Hidden Leaf's barrier team was nothing but decoration before them.

The squad sped through the dense forest like a black arrow, shooting straight west.

Less than ten kilometers after the squad left Hidden Leaf, Yuan did not even lift his eyelids. His Sage Art Sensing had long since locked onto that sneaky orange figure in the woods behind them.

Naruto was keeping his body low, leaping across tree trunks as he tried to maintain a safe distance while following them. He gritted his teeth, wanting to see just what Yuan was going to do.

Yuan gave a cold laugh and could not even be bothered with him. A dead-last who could not even control his chakra properly—if he wanted to follow, then let him. Let him see with his own eyes what a real battlefield looked like, so he would stop filling his head all day with that childish Will of Fire.

At noon a few days later, the squad officially stepped into the vast desert on the border of the Land of Wind.

The environment here was harsh to the extreme. Fierce winds swept yellow sand across the sky, blotting out the sun. Visibility was extremely low, and the sun was blocked outside the dust, leaving only a dim yellow halo. The sand underfoot felt soft when stepped on, and the temperature was high enough to melt the soles of their shoes.

The fifty Anbu guards still maintained a tight formation, and not a single person voiced a complaint.

Suddenly, Yuan's footsteps came to an abrupt halt. He raised his right hand, and the entire squad instantly nailed itself in place like iron spikes.

"Click, click... creak..."

An extremely eerie sound of wooden joints grinding came from beneath the surrounding dunes.

Without any warning, the sand within a hundred meters around Yuan exploded open. More than a hundred wooden puppets draped in white windproof cloth burst up from underground like zombies escaping their cages. These puppets had twisted shapes; some had four arms, while others held senbon in their mouths that flashed with a ghostly blue poisonous light, surrounding the Uchiha squad from all sides.

This was the trump-card interception force Hidden Sand Village had deployed along the border—the Hundred-Puppet Grand Formation.

Behind a dune dozens of meters away hid the Hidden Sand Anbu responsible for controlling these puppets.

The Anbu guards immediately drew their ninja swords, ready to face the enemy.

"Put your swords away," Yuan said coldly, taking one step straight out of the formation.

He did not form hand signs. He had no need to form signs for such low-level ninjutsu at all.

Yuan pressed his palms together, and the vast chakra inside him, like an ocean abyss, erupted with a roar. Crimson firelight mixed with dazzling black lightning instantly coiled around both his arms.

"Flame-Lightning Chidori: Sea of Fire Scorches the Plain!"

Yuan slammed his palm down onto the scorching sand.

"BOOM—!"

A wave of destructive heat comparable to a volcanic eruption swept madly outward in a ring with Yuan at its center. This was no ordinary Fire Release. It was corrosive flame fused with the ultimate destructive power of Lightning Release and poisonous-mist chakra.

Wherever the blazing sea of fire passed, those intricate mechanical puppets did not even have time to shoot the poison needles from their mouths before they were burned directly into charred waste wood by temperatures of several thousand degrees.

Even more terrifying was that the soft yellow sand beneath their feet instantly melted under this unreasonable heat. In just a few breaths, the desert within a hundred meters turned into a vast, crystal-clear red glass hell that radiated deadly heat!

The puppets hidden beneath the sand layer, attempting a sneak attack, along with the chakra threads on them, were all sealed firmly inside the solidified glass.

One move. Total annihilation.

At the top of a massive dune eight hundred meters from the battlefield.

Hidden Sand's princess Temari and Kankuro were lying in the sand, binoculars in hand, their bodies already completely drenched in cold sweat.

"What kind of joke is this... He melted a hundred elite puppets along with the sand in an instant? Is that something a human can do?!" Kankuro swallowed, his voice trembling.

Temari gritted her teeth hard and did not dare make a sound.

Just then, in the binoculars' field of vision, Yuan suddenly turned his head.

Those scarlet Mangekyo Sharingan eyes, through eight hundred meters of yellow sand filling the sky, aligned with the lenses of the binoculars with perfect precision!

Temari felt as if a steel needle had stabbed viciously into her brain. She cried out in shock, and the binoculars in her hands fell straight to the ground.

Yuan stood at the center of the glass sea of fire, tugging up the corner of his mouth toward the direction where they were hiding, revealing an extremely cruel cold smile. He casually drew the short blade at his waist and slashed through the air.

"Whoosh!"

A half-moon-shaped wave of force visible to the naked eye tore through the wind and sand, striking the dune five meters in front of Temari and Kankuro and carving out a massive trench two meters deep.

This was a warning, and also him deliberately holding back.

Yuan had not killed them. He had intentionally let these two rats go back to deliver the message, so he could draw out all of Hidden Sand's higher-ups at once and save himself the trouble of finding them one by one.

"Move." Yuan sheathed his blade and led the squad straight across that still-steaming glass ground, continuing to advance.

Two hours later, the squad reached the entrance of Hidden Sand Village without obstruction—the outer perimeter of Thread-of-Sky Canyon, known as an absolutely impassable natural barrier.

In front of the canyon, more than a thousand elite Hidden Sand ninja were arrayed in dense ranks.

Standing at the very front of the army was a massive mass of gold dust suspended in midair. Atop the gold dust stood the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa, wearing the Kazekage's ceremonial robe.

Rasa's face was cold and stern as he looked at Yuan striding toward him in the distance, his eyes full of fear and fury. He had already received the intelligence Temari had sent back. That killing god from Hidden Leaf had really come knocking.

"Uchiha Yuan! Hidden Sand is not a place where you can run wild!"