Ultimate Senju Style Swordsmanship

The study door was pushed open at a quarter past midnight.

Chiba walked in front, with Yugao following behind, exactly an arm's length between them. The oil lamp on the table was still lit, left there when Yuhi Kurenai had been reading the scrolls earlier. Its wick had burned down a little, and its flame was smaller than it had been at dusk.

Chiba pulled out a contract from the third shelf of the bookcase. It was the same kind he had given Yuhi Kurenai, with the Senju Clan crest stamped in the upper-right corner.

"Sit."

Yugao sat beside the table, her back ramrod straight and her hands properly placed on her knees, her gaze falling on the contract Chiba had pushed over.

She read it faster than Yuhi Kurenai had. It took her less than a minute to scan the clauses from beginning to end. Fourteen years in the ANBU had trained her to quickly extract the core information from written text.

"Lord Chiba, one of the sword attendant clauses says I must serve as your personal guard and remain within thirty meters of you at all times."

"Is there a problem?"

"Where will I live?"

Chiba tapped the tabletop with a finger.

"There are vacant rooms on the east side of the estate. Tsunade lives in the west wing of the main courtyard, Anko lives in the south courtyard, Kurenai lives in a detached building in the guest area, and you'll live in the east wing. My study is right on the other side of the wall."

Yugao's eyelashes trembled as she lifted her gaze from the contract to Chiba.

"Separated by one wall?"

"It'll make reporting emergencies easier. You're my dedicated sword attendant. If someone comes to assassinate me in the middle of the night, how are you supposed to protect me if you're too far away?"

Yugao pressed her lips into a thin line. After two seconds of silence, she picked up a brush, dipped it in ink, and wrote her name in the signature field at the bottom of the contract.

Her strokes were sharp and decisive, as crisp as her swordsmanship.

Chiba watched the ink of those three characters spread across the paper. After waiting two breaths for it to settle, he put the contract away.

Deep in his mind, a golden panel silently appeared.

[Beauty Register, binding successful]

[Beauty: Uzuki Yugao. Favorability has risen directly to 35 (trust and loyalty stage). Trigger conditions: recognition in battle and protection in a moment of danger.]

[Binding Reward One: Senju Style, Two Heavens One Style ultimate swordsmanship inheritance. The host has obtained the complete swordsmanship memories used by the Senju Clan during the Warring States Era to counter Uchiha Clan blade techniques, including the mechanical principles of overcoming strength with softness, precise chakra pulse strikes, and high-speed iai counterattacks.]

[Binding Reward Two: Wind-nature chakra, ultimate cutting nature transformation. The host has gained the ability to compress Wind-nature chakra to molecular-level thinness. Combined with swordsmanship, this enables silent, invisible long-range cutting attacks.]

[Binding Reward Three: Sensory precision upgraded again. The power of Wind-nature cutting resonates with Wood Release sensory ability, raising the precision of the host's mental perception to the level of detecting the flow within a single meridian inside a target's body.]

As the panel's information poured into his consciousness, a complete set of swordsmanship memories flooded into Chiba's muscles and bones from the void.

This was not knowledge on the level of words. It was memory on the level of the body.

It was a countermeasure system developed by the Senju Clan during the Warring States Era when facing the Uchiha Clan's Sharingan swordsmanship. Its core principle was simple: do not compete in speed, do not compete in strength—compete only in precision.

Find the single weakest point in the structure of the opponent's weapon, then use the least amount of force to create the greatest deflection.

The three strikes Chiba had performed with a willow branch tonight had only been the barest surface of this system.

True Two Heavens One Style could catch a blade barehanded, deflect a full-force jōnin slash with a single leaf, and predict every subsequent trajectory from the instant an opponent began drawing their blade, sealing off every possible variation in advance.

More importantly, there was the Wind nature.

Chiba closed his eyes and sensed the new power within him. Wind-nature chakra flowed from his meridians and condensed at his fingertips into a membrane invisible to the naked eye.

How thin was it?

Molecular-level thin.

An invisible blade a hundred times sharper than any physical weapon in the world. Combined with Wood Release's precise perception, it could carry out scalpel-level cuts on a target from a thousand meters away.

Chiba opened his eyes, rose, and walked to the study window. He pressed together his index and middle fingers, then lightly slashed through the empty air outside.

The movement was gentle, as though he were writing the character for one in the air.

There was no sound, no light, and no visible change that could be caught by the eye.

Yet Chiba's mental power tracked the trajectory of that invisible wind blade. It passed through the gap in the window, crossed the courtyard, went through the outer wall, and flew one hundred and thirty meters.

One hundred and thirty meters beyond the courtyard wall stood an abandoned boulder at the edge of the training ground.

Three seconds later, the boulder, more than twice a man's height, silently split down the middle. Its cut was as smooth as if it had been processed by the most precise water cutter. The upper half slowly slid down and struck the ground with a dull thud.

Yugao rose from her chair. The outline of the boulder split in two reflected in her violet eyes, her lips parted slightly, and her fingers gripped the edge of the table until her knuckles tightened.

"What technique was that?"

Chiba withdrew his hand and turned to look at her, the corner of his lips carrying the satisfaction of someone who had acquired a new toy.

"Senju Style swordsmanship combined with ultimate Wind-nature cutting. Silent, invisible, and without warning."

Yugao swallowed.

"From more than a hundred meters away, without any preparatory movement or hand seals... the target wouldn't even know how they died."

"That's right." Chiba returned to the table and sat across from Yugao, placing the signed contract into a hidden compartment in the bookcase. "This is what you gave me, Yugao. Your insights into Konoha-Style Swordsmanship triggered the system's complete unlocking of the Senju Style's ancient swordsmanship. Combined with Wind-nature transformation, I can now crush opponents not only in close combat—I can kill instantly at mid and long range as well."

Yugao looked at Chiba's hands—the hands that had casually gestured just now and split a boulder more than a hundred meters away in half.

After fourteen years of practicing swordsmanship, she understood better than anyone what that cut represented.

Perfect control of power, perfect compression of nature transformation, perfect distance accuracy.

If that strike landed on a person, they would be split into two before they even felt pain.

"Lord Chiba."

"Mm?"

"I made the right choice."

Chiba leaned back in his chair, crossing his right leg over his left knee in a lazy, relaxed posture.

"Of course. Following me is better than running errands for that old monkey in the ANBU."

The night wind outside rustled the branches and leaves of the Wood Release plants in the courtyard. Chiba's mental power swept across Konoha's night sky. Two new chakra signatures had appeared in the Root Organization's underground passageways—ANBU personnel who had returned from Hokage Rock tonight to make their report.

They were telling Danzō about what had happened tonight.

Chiba's lips curved as he slashed lightly through the air with two fingers, the invisible wind blade passing through the study before dispersing at his fingertips.

"Yugao, sleep well. Starting tomorrow, you'll train with me in the foundational forms of Senju Style swordsmanship."

Yugao stood and walked toward the door. When she reached the threshold, she paused and looked back at Chiba.

Moonlight streamed in through the window and fell across Chiba's profile. In the interplay of light and shadow, the young man's features carried a calm certainty that bordered on arrogance.

"Lord Chiba, how far can that wind blade cut?"

Chiba thought for a moment, tapping his temple with his index finger.

"My current mental perception covers the entire village. In theory, as long as I can sense the target's precise location, the wind blade can reach them."

Yugao's pupils shrank.

Indiscriminate long-range assassination capability across the entire village.

"Good night, Lord Chiba."

"Good night."

Yugao's figure disappeared beyond the study door, her footsteps receding down the corridor toward the east wing.

Chiba sat alone in the study as the oil lamp's flame flickered twice in the night breeze. His mental power pierced through the floor and foundation, probing thirty meters underground.

The Root Organization's report was still ongoing.

Danzō sat in a stone chamber, listening as two ANBU personnel described what had happened on Hokage Rock tonight. On that old face wrapped in bandages, a faint glimmer flashed in the darkness where his right eye should have been.

"Senju Chiba's close-combat ability far exceeds our estimates. A single willow branch broke Uzuki Yugao's Dance of the Crescent Moon, and one kick sent Hayate Gekko flying."

Chiba's lips curled in the darkness.

"Old bastard, what you know is already outdated."

He slashed lightly toward the ground with two fingers of his right hand. An invisible wind blade condensed at his fingertips, then dispersed.

"Next time you send people after me, I won't even need to say hello."