Flash Step of the Soul Reaper!

"Again, you!" Naruto was shocked and furious. He tried to form hand seals, but his earlier Multi Shadow Clone had drained too much chakra, and he had yet to recover.

Sasuke immediately flung several shuriken, but when they struck the water senbon, they only splashed up a few droplets before being knocked aside. They could not break through that dense barrage of needles at all!

Sakura's face turned deathly pale as she stood protectively in front of the groggy Kakashi and Tazuna.

The boatman was so terrified that he collapsed onto the bottom of the boat.

Ling Yue's heart sank straight to the bottom. It's over! Fighting Haku at sea? This is practically serving ourselves up as targets! The area is so wide, there's nowhere to hide!

[Warning! An extremely high-energy reaction has been detected! The host's life is under severe threat!]

"Ice Release: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals!"

Haku gave them no time to react. His hand seals changed!

The surrounding seawater suddenly grew frigid. Smooth, mirror-like sheets of incomparably hard ice condensed out of thin air, instantly enclosing the entire boat and forming a massive, sealed prison of ice! Every mirror reflected their terrified faces.

"W-what is this?!" Naruto stared at the densely packed ice mirrors around them, his scalp tingling.

Sasuke tried smashing an ice mirror with a kunai, but only left a faint white mark. The mirrors were unimaginably hard!

"It's useless." Haku's voice came from every direction. His figure instantly merged into one ice mirror, and then his image appeared in every single mirror. There was no way to tell where his real body was!

"It's over."

Countless water senbon shot out from all directions, from every ice mirror above, below, left, and right! They came like a torrential storm, leaving no blind spots!

There was nowhere to evade! Nothing to block them with!

"Ahhh!" Naruto clutched his head in terror.

Sasuke desperately swung his kunai to block them, but there were too many and they came too fast. Cuts instantly opened across his arms and shoulders!

Sakura screamed and threw herself over Kakashi, trying to shield him with her body.

Ling Yue's pupils constricted as the stench of death rushed toward her! [Paper Arts] was completely useless against this indiscriminate, all-directional attack!

I'm going to die!

At that critical moment!

Ling Yue's consciousness practically charged into the system interface! Those 1,150 dimensional points were blindingly conspicuous!

Draw! I have to draw now! Immediately! Ten consecutive draws! I have to gamble!

"System! Ten consecutive draws! Use the points! Hurry!!!" she screamed frantically in her mind!

[Dimensional points x900 consumed. Initiating ten consecutive draws...]

The system's roulette interface did not even have time to fully appear before it began spinning madly. Prize information flashed past like streaks of light, too fast to see clearly!

Outside, the deadly senbon had already reached them!

The first wave of senbon had already struck Sasuke's blocking kunai, hit a fragile clone Naruto had hastily summoned, pierced through the boat's deck, and come within mere centimeters of Sakura's back!

[Congratulations, host, for obtaining: Soldier Pill (Small) x3, Hemostatic Bandage x2, Chakra Test Paper x1, Kunai (Refined) x5, Thank You for Participating x1, skill [Basic Swordsmanship Mastery], skill [Flash Step] (from Bleach, incomplete fragment)!]

A string of notifications exploded in Ling Yue's mind. Most of it was junk, but the last two...

[Basic Swordsmanship Mastery] instantly fused with her. The basic forms of countless sword techniques and methods of exerting force flooded into her mind.

And when the information for [Flash Step (Incomplete Fragment)] poured in, Ling Yue's eyes lit up!

Though it was only an incomplete fragment containing the most basic exertion techniques and secrets of short-range movement, nowhere near true Flash Step, it was... enough!

Almost the instant she learned it, her body moved on instinct!

Chakra surged into her feet in an unprecedented manner!

It was not the explosive force of [Thunder Breathing], but a subtler technique focused more on instantaneous movement and evasion!

Countless senbon pierced through the afterimage she had left behind, turning the deck into a porcupine!

Ling Yue herself, however, used small, rapid movements that completely defied common sense to evade at the limits within the cramped space enclosed by the ice mirrors!

Her body twisted into every imaginable angle, always narrowly avoiding the dense rain of senbon by a hair's breadth! She moved so fast that faint afterimages trailed behind her!

"What?!" Haku cried out in disbelief from within the ice mirrors.

This girl's speed and evasion style... had changed again?! It was even stranger and harder to predict than on land!

Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were all dumbfounded!

"Yue... she's so fast!" Naruto's mouth fell open.

Sasuke's Sharingan desperately tried to follow her movements, but all he could see was a blur of trajectories! This was not the speed of an ordinary genin at all!

Ling Yue herself was both shocked and delighted! This incomplete [Flash Step] fragment was too powerful!

Though it consumed a massive amount of chakra and could only perform short-range bursts of movement, it was practically a divine skill at a moment like this!

As she desperately dodged, her mind raced.

I can't keep dodging! I have to break these ice mirrors! Or... find Haku's real body!

[Basic Swordsmanship Mastery]... What if she used a kunai to strike a weak point in the ice mirrors?

She took the refined kunai she had just drawn from her system inventory! It really did feel much better in her hand than a standard kunai!

Spotting a gap between waves of senbon, she activated [Flash Step] again. In an instant, she closed in on an ice mirror and viciously stabbed her kunai toward what she remembered might be a structural weak point!

The kunai penetrated a tiny bit, but the ice mirror was simply too hard! She could not break it in one blow!

Then Haku's attacks came again, forcing her to evade once more.

"It's useless! My ice mirrors are not something you can break!" Haku's voice was icy as his attacks became even denser.

Ling Yue clenched her teeth. Her chakra was draining rapidly. Both [Flash Step] and [Paper Arts] placed enormous strain on her stamina and mind. She could not hold out much longer!

I have to find a way!

Her gaze swept over her terrified companions, then over the groggy Kakashi, before finally falling upon the kunai in her hand.

[Thunder Breathing]... Could she infuse it into the kunai?

Like [Thunderclap and Flash], could she concentrate the power of lightning at one point?

Try it!

She activated [Thunder Breathing] again. This time, rather than pouring that stimulating chakra through her entire body, she forcibly compressed it and directed it into the refined kunai in her hand!

Blinding white lightning suddenly burst from the kunai! It coiled around it like a lightning serpent!

"That is...?!" Sasuke stared fixedly at the lightning-wreathed kunai, his Sharingan unconsciously trying to activate again.

"Lightning-nature chakra transformation?!" Even Kakashi, whose consciousness was still hazy, forced his eyes open. The moment he saw that lightning, his eyes filled with shock.

This girl... had actually comprehended the practical application of chakra nature transformation on her own under such pressure?!

"Now!" Ling Yue fixed her gaze on an ice mirror. [Flash Step] erupted beneath her feet at full power, and her entire body became a streak of lightning skimming across the ground!

"Break!"

The lightning-wreathed kunai, carrying all her strength and hope, stabbed viciously toward that ice mirror's weak point!

A crisp cracking sound rang out!

Before everyone's horrified eyes, that incomparably hard ice mirror was forcibly pierced through! Spiderweb-like cracks instantly spread across its surface!

"Impossible!" Haku's shocked voice came from behind the shattered mirror!

A gap had been torn open in the prison of ice mirrors!

Though it was only one gap, the perfect blockade had been compromised!

"Naruto! Sasuke!" Ling Yue shouted through ragged breaths. She dropped to one knee. That strike had nearly drained the little chakra she had only just recovered, and the lightning faded from her kunai.

She did not even need to call out!

The instant the ice mirror shattered, Sasuke moved! Like a leopard, he rushed toward the gap, his kunai stabbing straight at the blurred figure behind the mirror!

"Damn it! Take this!" Naruto snapped out of it as well. Several Shadow Clones appeared and pounced toward the gap from different angles!

Haku seemed to panic for an instant after the ice mirror was broken. Faced with Sasuke and Naruto's pincer attack, he instinctively retreated and blocked.

That was the moment!

Ling Yue suddenly raised her head and shouted toward Haku with the last of her strength, "Zabuza isn't dead, is he?! Those senbon were a fake death technique! You're not a Hidden Mist hunter-nin at all!"

Her words were like thunder, exploding beside Haku's ears!

His movements instantly froze. Behind his mask, his eyes widened abruptly, revealing disbelief, shock, and panic!

"You... how could you..."