Natsu's Clone Battles Sasuke
His simple beige casual clothes accentuated his neat figure, and his dark eyes remained calm as he quietly surveyed the battlefield below, where flames were raging.
Despite the deafening roar of Ninjutsu and the earth-shattering battles within the arena, his eyes remained calm. To him, this extremely dangerous life-or-death duel was merely a precise and controllable tempering exercise to hone his sharpest blade.
Beside him, Uchiha Izumi, dressed in an elegant dark blue Clan Uniform, leaned gently against his lap, her warm body dispelling the coolness of the evening breeze.
She looked up at the exploding lightning and fire below, a hint of worry appearing in her delicate eyes. She spoke softly, her voice tinged with a gentle helplessness. "Won't things get dangerous if this keeps going?"
Sasuke is still young and immature. Every battle he faces is met with relentless suppression and leaves him battered and bruised. Aunt Mikoto would surely be heartbroken if she saw this."
Natsu slowly raised his hand, his warm palm encircling her shoulder, pulling her securely to his side. His movements were gentle yet firm, and his deep voice was calm and even. "Don't worry, my clone knows what it's doing."
Suppression, tempering, and hammering—every bit of force is precisely controlled, which will only temper his foundation and hone his fighting spirit, and will never damage his Origin meridians or lifespan.
Sasuke lacks now is not pampering or indulgence, but the extreme life-or-death tempering that comes from being put in a life-or-death situation.
The moment the words left his mouth, a new round of intense, dangerous, and intertwined battle erupted in the barrier battlefield below.
In the center of the battlefield, thirteen-year-old Uchiha Sasuke stood still. The boy's slender figure had long since shed the immaturity and timidity of his peers, and he was surrounded by a fierce and ruthless aura that far exceeded his age.
He gripped the finely crafted, narrow sword tightly in his palm. The cold blade gleamed with a chilling luster in the light and shadow. Fine, silver-blue lightning coiled around the spine of the sword and clung to his arms, crackling Space Rend with a piercing, numbing force.
Within his eye sockets, the crimson Three-Tomoe Sharingan spun rapidly, the Tomoe patterns flashing in an instant, precisely locking onto every inch of his opponent's limb movement and every fluctuation of Chakra, leaving no slight flaw undetected.
The Wood Release Clone opposite him was a special training vessel personally condensed by Natsu. Its Chakra was strictly locked at the Peak Kage Level. Its strength on paper seemed limited, but it possessed a terrifying foundation that could crush its peers and intimidate Super-Kage Level -level beings.
Natsu had already mastered the essence of the lifelong battles between the two prodigies of the chaotic era, Madara Uchiha and Izuna Uchiha, and had broken down and recombined these two extremely contradictory top-level combat systems, making them his own.
One is Madara Uchiha's domineering battle style, like a tiger descending a mountain, causing ten thousand armies to retreat. His attacks are overwhelming and devastating, with powerful and unstoppable force that can break through all laws. He crushes all defenses with absolute power, making him tyrannical, unbeatable, and unrivaled in the world.
Secondly, there is Izuna Uchiha's unpredictable killing methods, like a venomous snake lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike. His movements are elusive and unpredictable, his moves are cunning and ruthless, he targets blind spots and gaps in the opponent's power, and his changes of moves are as fast as lightning, killing people invisibly.
One forceful, one unpredictable; one orthodox, one unorthodox—these two extreme fighting styles seamlessly alternate and switch at will within a single clone, without a fixed rhythm or any discernible pattern. This is the root cause of Sasuke's repeated crushing defeats in the past two months, despite his all-out efforts in thirty battles.
One second it's a ferocious, overwhelming attack that dominates the entire arena, the next it's an unpredictable, ghostly sneak attack. The chaotic and ever-changing rhythm completely shatters the opponent's fighting strategy, crushing them layer by layer from techniques to mentality, leaving them passive at every step and exhausted both physically and mentally.
Within the clone's eye sockets, the Mangekyō Sharingan bloomed eerily, its blood-red pupils cold and lifeless, devoid of any emotion, displaying only absolute calmness and precise calculations of killing intent.
It had no emotional fluctuations; it only precisely targeted Sasuke's every weakness, using Madara's absolute power to destroy his defenses and Izuna Uchiha's cunning tricks to crush his mentality. Every move precisely struck Sasuke's flaws.
The five Chakra attributes of fire, lightning, wind, earth, and water flow endlessly, allowing for the instantaneous execution of Ninjutsu, Forbidden Technique, Taijutsu, Swordsmanship, with seamless transitions between them. Isshiki is imbued with the ultimate combat experience accumulated over a thousand years of battlefield experience.
The atmosphere on the battlefield suddenly froze; the wind stopped and the leaves fell still, as if the air within the barrier was frozen by the killing intent.
Without probing in the slightest, the clone's form suddenly became ethereal, and with Body Flicker Technique, it shattered a circle of sand with a stomp of the ground. Its movements were elusive and ghostly, perfectly replicating Izuna Uchiha's assassination steps, silently closing in on Sasuke.
Without any Ninjutsu preparation or prelude to charging up power, he gathered sharp Chakra into a blade with his five fingers, deliberately avoiding all conventional defensive zones. The angle was tricky and unpredictable, aimed directly at Sasuke's fatal point between his eyebrows. His attack was ruthless and vicious, each move aimed at a fatal blow.
In that Setsuna of utter stillness, Sasuke's mind suddenly tensed, a chilling sense of crisis instantly enveloping his entire body.
He was all too familiar with this fighting style. It was Izuna Uchiha's specialty: silent hunting. He never confronted his opponent head-on, but patiently waited for the opponent's momentary lapse in concentration, seizing the slightest opening to deliver a fatal blow.
If it were me, just starting out in special training, I would definitely panic and hastily raise my hand, revealing even greater weaknesses, and be instantly defeated.
But the memories of those thirty bloody defeats were already etched into his muscle memory and the depths of his soul.
At this moment, he doesn't need the Sharingan to predict, nor does he need his brain to think and judge; his body's instincts react before his consciousness.
With a sudden burst of extreme power from his waist, his upper body slid backward half an inch, narrowly avoiding the fatal blow.
A sharp Chakra fingertip grazed his brow, a gust of wind snapped the stray hairs from his forehead, and a chilling killing intent brushed against his skin—a near miss.
In the instant he dodged, Sasuke was perfectly clear-headed: in a desperate situation, retreating even a half-step would mean total defeat.
He refused to retreat and disengage from the fight. Instead, he lowered his center of gravity, spun around, and flipped his wrists rapidly. The accumulated Lightning Release Chakra exploded simultaneously— the Night Owl Guard's exclusive forbidden Swordsmanship Forbidden Technique, Thunderclap Flash, was instantly unleashed and countered!
The silver-blue lightning suddenly surged several feet, the sharp lightning blades tearing through the airflow and sweeping back at the clone's waist and abdomen with a piercing explosion.
The dodge, turn, and counterattack are executed seamlessly, with zero stiffness in the transition between offense and defense. This is the top-level battlefield rhythm honed through countless life-or-death situations.
A deafening clang of metal clashing rang out, followed by a frenzied spray of sparks and shattered lightning.
After missing its target, the clone's fighting style suddenly changed, completely abandoning Izuna Uchiha's cunning and treacherous nature and instantly switching to Madara Uchiha's signature tyrannical and domineering style!
Without dodging or evading, without dismantling or dismantling, the hard Wood Release body withstood the impact of the lightning blade, using the momentum to close in and press down hard. The elbow, wrapped with heavy Earth Release Chakra, slammed into Sasuke's chest with tremendous force.
At the same time, hand Hand Seals formed instantly at his fingertips, and the Chakra surged and overlapped. A giant rock and earth wind blade overturned in mid-air, sealing off all of Sasuke's escape routes from top to bottom, whether he could jump, retreat, or dodge to the side. It was a domineering and suffocating attack.
A fierce wind swept across the entire Training Ground, scattering all the rubble and debris. Thick air currents rolled and spread outwards, causing the barrier's light screen to tremble violently and ripple continuously.