The Executioner Who Needed No Hand Seals

The rogue ninja saw the red eyes behind the mask, and his smile froze for three-tenths of a second—then split wider, becoming even more twisted than before.

"Uchiha?" He licked his lips, greed flashing in his eyes. "I'm pretty lucky. I hear Uchiha eyeballs fetch a good price on the black market." His fingers drew an arc through the air, and Water Style chakra condensed into six whip-like streams around him, their tips hardening into ice spikes.

"Kid, be smart—dig out your eyes and hand them over, and I'll let you die quickly."

Yan did not respond. The emotion-detection function of Observation Haki Lv. 2 provided an exact reading: of the emotional spectrum of the man before him, seventy percent was the smug superiority of toying with prey, twenty percent was the exhilaration after battle, and the remaining ten percent—an extremely faint ten percent—was wariness toward the Uchiha Sharingan. He was guarding against Yan awakening his eyes.

Tiger's hoarse voice came from behind him. "Lava... run..." His breathing was so weak it was nearly fading away. He was badly wounded, his ribs shattered. Deer was still struggling in the mud, his chakra depleted to the point that he could not even use the Substitution Technique.

Rabbit had collapsed beside the ditch, trembling all over. A medical ninja had no ability to fight back in a direct confrontation to begin with.

Three battle-hardened ANBU veterans had been rendered utterly helpless before a rogue ninja at jonin level. This was the brutal reality of the ninja world.

There were no graceful, move-for-move duels like in manga—only treacherous traps, sudden ambushes, swift casualties, and one-sided crushing defeats.

The weak had no room whatsoever to resist the strong.

Yan took a deep breath. He was not afraid. Not because he had gone numb—he had already experienced the taste of death in the final moments of his previous life.

Those who had died once possessed an exceptionally high threshold for fearing death. What he feared was not death itself, but dying without meaning.

The rogue ninja's patience ran out. The six Water Style whips lashed out at once—blindingly fast, sealing off every route of retreat from all six directions.

Any ordinary thirteen-year-old genin would have been beaten into a sieve in this situation.

Yan moved. He did not retreat or evade—he charged forward instead. As he took his first step, his right arm began to change.

His skin split apart, and dark-red magma surged from between the fibers of his muscles, rapidly enveloping his entire forearm. The temperature—this time, he did not suppress it in the slightest.

Forty thousand degrees. This had already far exceeded the scope of the "kekkei genkai" he had displayed during the graduation exercise.

The instant the six Water Style whips touched his body—"Ssssss!" Six explosive bursts of steam sounded at once.

The Water Style began violently vaporizing the moment it hit the layer of air around Yan formed by the extreme heat. By the time it reached his body, it had already become harmless steam.

The ice spikes melted and evaporated before they even had a chance to touch his skin. This was absolute suppression on a physical level.

Before extreme heat, water was merely the precursor to steam.

The rogue ninja's smile finally stiffened, then vanished completely. In its place came genuine shock—and profound fear.

Observation Haki clearly caught the drastic shift in his emotional spectrum: his superiority instantly dropped to zero, his wariness surged, and an instinctive urge to flee began frantically sounding alarms throughout his nervous system.

"You—" He began backing away, his hands forming seals wildly. "Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!" A massive water dragon roared out of a nearby underground river, opening its gaping maw as it lunged toward Yan.

The water dragon was enormous, over three meters in diameter—enough to wash away an entire house.

Yan did not dodge. His stride did not change in the slightest. He drove his right fist straight toward the water dragon's head. The instant his Lava Punch made contact with it—there was no imagined collision, nor any spray scattering in all directions.

There was only a prolonged, low boom. Beginning with its head, the entire water dragon evaporated at a speed visible to the naked eye. A white column of mist formed by the steam explosion shot into the sky and burst above the jungle canopy. Within a hundred-meter radius, leaves were swept by the steaming heatwave, rustling violently as they fell in droves.

The rogue ninja's single eye stared fixedly at the sight before him, his mind completely blank. His Water Dragon Bullet was powerful enough to crush an ordinary chunin head-on, and even jonin had to deal with it cautiously.

Yet before this Uchiha child, it had vanished after a single exchange? This was not Fire Style at all! What he felt was a temperature more violent than flames, more terrifying than magma—an "outside-the-rules power" capable of utterly changing the state of matter.

"Monster..." The word slipped from his lips. Instinctively, he tried to use Water Style to burrow underground and escape, but his Observation Haki caught a deeper, broader wave of magma chakra gathering beneath Yan's feet.

It was the pulse of the earth itself, enough to seal every path of escape from this area.

Yan gave him no more time to think. After evaporating the Water Dragon Bullet, the magma transformation in his entire right arm reached its peak.

A dark-red glow formed a blurry force field around his body, and the air warped under the heat. He explosively pushed off the ground and charged at the rogue ninja.

"Lava Rush!"

His entire body was instantly wrapped in crimson magma. Yan became a blazing meteor hurtling straight at the rogue ninja. He moved so fast that the air itself burned into afterimages, leaving a charred trail behind him.

The rogue ninja let out a terrified roar, his hands forming seals wildly as he tried to summon a water wall to block the attack. But before the wall had fully formed, the scorching charge pierced straight through it.

"Pfft!"

Magma-transformed Yan slammed into the rogue ninja's chest like a red-hot hammer. There was no sound of bones breaking, because at the instant of contact, the flesh and blood in the rogue ninja's chest were vaporized by the extreme heat.

A transparent hole the size of a bowl appeared in his chest. The rogue ninja's body froze for a moment. His eyes widened, and the terror in them reached its peak.

He did not even have time to scream before his body, under the impact of Yan's magma transformation, rapidly began carbonizing, crystallizing, and then disintegrating from within.

In less than two seconds, a living Hidden Mist rogue ninja at jonin level, along with the forehead protector bearing the Hidden Mist emblem on his body, had completely turned into a pile of charred, glassy fragments scattered across the ground. Their lingering heat scorched the earth, producing a sizzling sound.

The air was filled with the pungent stench of burned protein.

Yan withdrew his magma transformation and returned to being that expressionless boy, the skin of his right arm completely unscathed. He stood before the heap of glassy shards emitting white smoke, without the slightest ripple in his black eyes.

This was killing on a real battlefield. No unnecessary movements, no flashy ninjutsu—only the most direct, purest suppression of power.

He turned and looked at the three Konoha ANBU members behind him, who were still in shock.

Captain Tiger struggled as he slid down from the tree trunk and coughed up blood, but his gaze remained nailed to Yan.

That was not the look one gave a subordinate. It was a complex emotion one felt when facing the unknown, when facing something beyond one's understanding.

Deer finally pulled himself free of the mud. He slumped onto the ground, gasping for breath. In his gaze at Yan, beyond the relief of surviving a catastrophe, was an uncontrollable tremor.

Rabbit sat on the ground with her knees hugged to her chest, her body still trembling faintly. But the contempt in her eyes was gone, replaced by utter reverence.

Yan ignored their stares. He walked directly toward the rogue ninja's ashes. Using a kunai to push aside the charred debris, he quickly found a parchment scroll that had not fully carbonized—the border deployment map of the Land of Fire.

To prevent pursuers from taking it, the rogue ninja had hidden it inside his body, but its edges had still been burned away by the extreme heat.

Yan picked up the scroll and verified its contents. Then he walked over to Captain Tiger and handed it to him.

"The target has been eliminated. The deployment map has been recovered." Yan's voice remained calm, without a trace of the emotional fluctuation a thirteen-year-old should have possessed, like a mechanical report. "We need to withdraw immediately. Captain Tiger's injuries are too severe. He requires medical treatment."

Even Captain Tiger's hand trembled faintly as he accepted the scroll. He stared at Yan's mask—no, more precisely, at the pair of black eyes behind it.

Those eyes were deeper than those of any Uchiha clansman he had ever seen, even more inscrutable than the gaze of the Third Hokage.

"You..." Captain Tiger seemed to want to ask something, but in the end, only managed a hoarse syllable.

"My abilities are under the Hokage's direct authority." Yan cut him off, his voice carrying an unquestionable chill. "If you have any questions, report directly to the Third Hokage after we return."

Within the ANBU system, those words were practically equivalent to displaying the highest-level immunity pass.

Being directly under the Hokage meant that any questioning or investigation had to go through the Third Hokage himself.

Captain Tiger immediately swallowed every question he had. He knew this was not the arrogance of a thirteen-year-old child; it was absolute authority granted to this child by the Third Hokage.

Deer and Rabbit's faces turned even paler.

They finally understood that this "kid" assigned to "cover the rear" was no burden at all, but an unparalleled weapon personally honed by the Hokage and hidden in the shadows.

All their previous contempt and disdain had now turned into bone-deep chills.

[Ding—]

[Achievement obtained: Night Shadow's First Cry! Lv. 2]

[Reward: Magma-Magma Fruit evolution +10%]

[Current evolution: 60%]

[Observation Haki: Lv. 2 (Perception radius: 800 meters!)]

[System Notification: The host completed a lethal elimination through his own strength while at an extreme disadvantage, and successfully protected his teammates. The dimensions of "decisiveness" and "ruthlessness" have risen again, while the "leadership" dimension has been activated for the first time, accelerating fruit integration.]

Yan looked at the numbers on the panel, and the stir in his heart was barely perceptible. Sixty percent. A true milestone. I'm getting more and more curious about what I'll receive at 100%.

An Observation Haki radius of eight hundred meters could provide an incomparable advantage in this kind of environment.

And the word "leadership" made him pause slightly. He did not care about so-called leadership. He only cared about his own plans.

He turned toward Rabbit, and his voice finally carried a hint of command, though his tone remained emotionless and calm. "Rabbit, treat Captain Tiger. Deer, keep watch. We need to leave this place as soon as possible."

Before absolute power and cold efficiency, no one dared question him again.