Your Little Light Isn't Even Enough to Light My Lamp

The Raikage's roar exploded from the communication formation like rolling thunder, making the entire ruined watchtower hum and tremble.

"What did you say?! He 'ate' the Lightning Prison Cage with his bare hands?! Raiga, are you insulting my intelligence? Absurd!"

Raiga knelt on the ground, his body shaking violently from fear and blood loss. He pressed his head low as a hoarse voice forced its way from his throat. "Lord Raikage... I... I saw it with my own eyes. He didn't break it with brute force, nor did he find the formation's core. He... he rewrote the logic governing how the barrier functioned!"

Before his words had even faded, the blizzard raging outside the tower came to an abrupt halt without warning.

Dead silence.

A silence more terrifying than the howling wind and snow enveloped the land.

Raiga abruptly raised his head. Through a hole in the window, he saw a tall black silhouette standing soundlessly before it, as though he had been there from the very beginning, fused with the darkness.

It was that man!

Xuan slowly stepped into the watchtower, the dim light within outlining his cold, stern profile.

His indifferent gaze swept over the utterly horrified Raiga before finally settling on the still-flickering communication formation.

Within the scarlet pupil of his right eye, three tomoe slowly rotated before connecting into a strange, magnificent six-bladed pinwheel pattern—the Mangekyō Sharingan.

In an instant, Xuan's vision was completely overturned.

The entire watchtower was no longer a structure of bricks and wooden beams in his eyes, but an energy web woven from countless fine, intricate chakra patterns.

Every rune, every node, and the trajectory and frequency of every energy flow were laid completely bare before him.

"Using Thunder Vein Resonance technology to draw upon the underground thunder veins and maintain the watchtower barrier's stability..." A nearly imperceptible curve formed at Xuan's lips, his low voice carrying a hint of mockery. "Too primitive."

He casually raised a hand, his long fingertips brushing over a core rune on the wall.

There were no hand seals, no violent fluctuations of chakra. Only an invisible, intangible force seeped into it like spilled mercury.

[Rule Overwrite]—Activated!

The next moment, a horrifying change that made Raiga's soul nearly leave his body occurred!

The defensive barrier, originally a sturdy wall that repelled all intruders, had its energy flow forcibly reversed.

The resonance frequency forming the barrier was retuned in reverse, and its defense instantly transformed into greedy devouring!

Bzzzz—!

The entire watchtower seemed to become a gigantic energy black hole, madly swallowing the lightning-nature chakra scattered throughout the surrounding world.

Raiga felt the chakra within his body instantly descend into chaos, as though it were about to be drained dry by that bizarre suction force. Stabbing pain surged through his meridians.

"Not good!" His eyes nearly split apart. Enduring the agonizing pain, he gathered his last bit of strength and tried to form hand seals, intending to detonate the self-destruct explosive tag array buried beneath the watchtower and perish together with this demon.

However, before he could complete the seals, a swift, lightning-fast shadow darted out from behind Xuan.

With a sharp crack, a puppet gleaming with cold metallic light used its hardened steel claws to accurately and cruelly shatter both of Raiga's hands.

Overwhelming pain struck, and Raiga let out a scream before collapsing limply to the floor.

Saori's figure appeared behind the puppet. Expressionless, she withdrew her chakra threads as though she had merely done something trivial.

Xuan did not even turn around. His gaze fell upon a dropped badge beside the communication formation.

It was a badge only elite Hidden Cloud Village ninja were qualified to wear, engraved with a mark personally bestowed by the Raikage.

He bent down, picked it up, and lightly crushed it between his fingertips.

Baba Tesshin had somehow already arrived at his side. A handful of black iron sand poured from his palm, instantly enveloping the badge.

Under the insane pressure of magnetism, the alloy badge that symbolized honor and sturdiness crumbled like a biscuit into powder, sifting through Xuan's fingers.

"Your Fourth Raikage, A, always says, 'The strongest spear must be matched with the strongest shield.'" Xuan's voice was calm, yet it traveled clearly through the communication formation to the other side, reaching the Raikage's ears. "Unfortunately, the shield you take such pride in is not even qualified to be modified by me."

A faint stream of data flashed through his right eye.

"Notice: Successfully acquired 3 small-scale barrier technique samples."

"Notice: [Rule Overwrite] proficiency +8%."

"Notice: Analysis complete. Main communication frequency of the Hidden Cloud Village border warning network discovered."

Xuan slowly turned and looked toward the endless snowfield beyond the window, toward the depths of the Land of Lightning.

His voice carried the coldness of a verdict. "The warm-up for this game is over. Next, I'll make the defenses of the entire Land of Lightning... open their gates for me."

The moment the order was given, the team immediately sprang into action with ruthless efficiency.

Baba Tesshin took a strangely shaped device from a scroll and swiftly implanted it into the watchtower's communications hub.

His hands moved like phantoms across the device. Using the primary frequency Xuan had just analyzed and the Hidden Cloud Village key data stolen during previous missions, he began fabricating one high-priority emergency order after another and sending them to different defense zones.

"Watchtower No. 7 on the eastern line has come under attack by an unidentified thunder beast! Requesting emergency support!"

"Alert! Abnormal fluctuations detected in the thunder veins of Area B3! All nearby squads are to proceed immediately and investigate!"

At the same time, Saori controlled dozens of puppets as they scattered in every direction. Each puppet contained specially prepared chakra and began simulating the energy fluctuations of Lightning Release ninjutsu in different locations, creating the illusion of multiple Hidden Cloud Village squads urgently assembling and rushing toward the "incident sites."

For a time, the communications network and reconnaissance systems across the entire eastern defensive line descended into chaos.

Meanwhile, Xuan closed his eyes and stood motionless atop the watchtower.

Within his mind, the ability [Law Simulation] was operating frantically at a speed beyond that of a supercomputer.

The border warning network Hidden Cloud Village was so proud of, composed of seven main defensive lines—its complex switching mechanisms, backup energy plans, and coordination logic—was rapidly dismantled, deduced, and reorganized in his mind.

Only two minutes later, Xuan suddenly opened his eyes.

"Found it." He spoke three words, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. "The weakest link—the Third Thunder Gate."

All of that checkpoint's energy supply was heavily dependent on an ancient underground thunder vein.

This seemingly powerful energy source would instantly become its most fatal weakness once disrupted by high-frequency vibrations of a specific frequency.

At the third watch of midnight, when the night was at its darkest.

Xuan led the team to the Third Thunder Gate like phantoms.

It was precisely the time when the guards were changing shifts, when their vigilance was at its weakest.

Suddenly, every Hidden Cloud Village ninja on patrol felt a strange hum rise from beneath their feet, as though some enormous creature were awakening deep underground.

Immediately afterward, the defensive runes flashing with lightning along the checkpoint walls, the Lightning Release cannons atop the towers, and even the miniature Lightning Release communication devices on their bodies—all of them malfunctioned at the same time, their light dimming.

"What's going on?!" the commander shouted in shock.

Xuan, stepping through the air, was his answer.

He walked through the sky as though treading on solid ground. The Mangekyō in his right eye suddenly lit up, locking onto the terrified commander.

[Soul Devourer]!

An invisible suction force erupted. The commander's intense negative emotions—shock, panic, confusion—were instantly absorbed by Xuan's ocular technique and converted into the purest chakra, replenishing the energy Xuan had expended on his earlier Law Simulation.

The commander's eyes rolled back, and he fainted from overwhelming terror.

Xuan formed a hand seal with one hand. A highly compressed energy sphere filled with violently flickering lightning formed in his palm.

[Myriad Thunder Core · Compressed Type]!

With a casual wave, the energy sphere pierced through the Third Thunder Gate's several-meter-thick alloy doors at a speed too fast for the naked eye to follow.

It did not explode immediately. Only after penetrating the gate and reaching the checkpoint's inner core did it trigger a terrifying secondary detonation.

BOOM—!!!

Destructive lightning burst forth from within. The violent energy shockwave tore the entire sturdy checkpoint fortress to pieces.

The Thunder Gate, said to be capable of withstanding the bombardment of a Tailed Beast Bomb, collapsed like it was made of paper.

"Notice: Successfully breached 1 Hidden Cloud Village border defense line."

"Notice: Your 'Cognitive Dimensional Influence' has spread into territory directly controlled by the Raikage."

Amid the ruins, Xuan stood silently atop a section of broken wall.

In his hand, a mass of Lightning Release chakra extracted from the checkpoint wreckage constantly changed shape—at times becoming lightning armor covering his arm, at times condensing into an incomparably sharp blade of lightning, and at times extending into chains of lightning capable of binding all things.

As though playing with a novel toy, he murmured to himself. Yet his voice traveled through special chakra fluctuations into the communications network still mired in chaos thousands of miles away.

"Raikage... is your lightning meant to protect your nation? Or is it... meant to block the world's path forward?"

Inside the distant Hidden Cloud Village command center, Darui was desperately dealing with the flood of chaotic reports pouring in.

Suddenly, static erupted from a backup communicator in his hand, and Xuan's calm yet oppressive voice clearly reached his ears.

Darui's entire body shuddered. The communicator slipped from his hand and hit the floor with a snap.

He stared fixedly at the chaotic tactical map, his fingers trembling faintly with fear.

A terrifying thought rose in his heart.

This invader was not attacking, not destroying... He was using a method never seen before to declare to the entire Land of Lightning, to the entire ninja world—he intended to redefine the purpose of "lightning."

No one noticed that high in the distant sky, a crow with a purple Rinnegan embedded in one eye socket was silently circling overhead.

It let out a low caw, picked up a plaque scorched black by the explosion but still faintly bearing the words "Third Thunder Gate," then spread its wings and flew toward the cold moon, toward the distant other side.

At the edge of Xuan's vision, deeper within the Land of Lightning, the wind and snow seemed to have ceased.

Yet the air grew heavier and more oppressive.

An invisible pressure emanated from that direction, as though an ancient beast slumbering there was slowly opening its eyes.

The wind began to carry a faint, pungent scent of ozone.

It was the unique smell produced only when extreme lightning energy churned through the air—dense and dangerous, as though warning all living things that ahead lay the forbidden domain of gods.