Everything happened in less than a second.
Yan did not stand up.
He merely extended his right foot and lightly stepped on the ground.
"Buzzz—"
A deep hum, as if it had risen from the depths of the earth's crust.
The floor of Naka Shrine—those bluestone slabs that had existed for nearly fifty years, worn smooth beneath the feet of countless generations of clan members—began to turn red beneath Yan's foot at a rate visible to the naked eye.
It was not fire.
It was magma.
Real magma—scalding, flowing dark-red magma that surged up from beneath his feet.
With a crack, the stone slabs shattered. Magma seeped from the fissures like blood gushing from a wound, swiftly covering the ground within a meter in front of Yan. Then, the torrent split into two streams with unbelievable precision, each forming a fire serpent as thick as an arm that shot toward the jonin charging from either side.
"Scraaaape—!"
The two katana simultaneously emitted the piercing sound of metal softening under extreme heat.
The two jonin froze in midair, their movements stopping with perfect synchronicity. Not because they had withdrawn, but because their blades—the Uchiha clan's inherited refined-steel katana—had instantly begun to glow red and soften from their tips the moment they touched the magma serpents. Then they dripped down in rivulets, turning into pools of molten iron.
Both men stood there, stunned.
All that remained in their hands were smoking sword hilts.
The temperature inside the hall rose by at least twenty degrees in those three seconds.
The flames in the oil lamps danced wildly under the heatwave. The wooden pillars groaned under the strain, moisture even beginning to seep from their surfaces. Sweat rolled down the elders' cheeks, yet no one raised a hand to wipe it away.
They could