Dance of paper? The Skilled Mist Technique melted it all!
Three days later.
Late at night.
Uzumaki Estate.
The moon hid behind the clouds, and only the faint light from the Gathering Spirit Formation patterns flowed through the cracks in the stone slabs in the courtyard.
Naruto sat on the roof of the backyard, one leg dangling, twirling a Kunai in his hand.
He's waiting.
Three days ago, he released the paper butterfly, leaving behind the message, "You owe me a favor."
A normal person would have tucked their tail between their legs and run back to Amegakure, never daring to show their face again.
But the other party was Konan.
She was the only person by Nagato's side.
She won't abandon the mission because of a single warning.
Naruto understands this type of person all too well—the more a woman dedicates everything to someone, the less likely she is to back down because of her own safety.
Instead, they will be even more careful and discreet when they try again.
"This is the second time."
Naruto tilted his head, a smirk playing on his lips.
The Perfect Sage Body's Biological Radar detected that extremely faint anomaly thirty seconds ago—an extra layer of dryness in the air, unlike anything found in Hidden Leaf at night.
The smell of paper.
Lighter than last time.
More fragmented.
It was dispersed into at least a hundred nodes, forming a semi-encircling pattern within a 300-meter radius of the mansion.
Very smart.
He disintegrated himself into dust-like fragments, each with almost no Chakra fluctuation, trading quantity for concealment.
Pity.
Naruto tucked the Kunai into his sleeve and stood up.
"I gave you face last time and said I wouldn't kill you."
He muttered to himself, a lazy chuckle in his voice, "But I didn't say I'd let you go a second time—Angel Sister."
He disappeared from the spot.
Northwest corner of the mansion.
On the old locust tree outside the wall.
A piece of white paper, about the size of a fingernail, was pasted into a crack in the bark, blending seamlessly with the mottled trunk.
Konan's consciousness attached itself to it.
This time she made much more thorough preparations.
The Paper Clone was disassembled into 127 independent fragments, its Chakra compressed to zero, and its position changed only by wind and natural fall, making it weaker than the life signal of a mosquito.
Three days of observation.
Three days of waiting.
She needed to confirm one thing—just where the blond boy's sensory limits lay.
The last failure wasn't because she wasn't careful enough.
It's because she doesn't understand her opponent.
Now she understands.
His perception is based on a dual focus on "smell" and "vital energy fluctuations".
Therefore—as long as there are no life fluctuations, and as long as all Chakra flows are cut off, it is theoretically possible to achieve this—
The piece of paper on the tree trunk trembled violently.
Wrong.
Temperature.
The air temperature around the piece of paper she was attached to rose by four degrees in the past 0.3 seconds.
Konan's consciousness erupted instantly—one hundred and twenty-seven pieces of paper simultaneously exploded from their respective hiding places, frantically converging into the sky like startled birds!
There was no time to hide it.
The blond boy's figure had already appeared three meters above her in the void.
His hands were in the pockets of his bathrobe.
Looking down at her.
Laugh.
I already said that, didn't I?
Naruto's voice boomed down from above, light and airy, carrying a casualness that sent chills down one's spine.
"--I can smell you."
Konan did not hesitate.
One hundred and twenty-seven pieces of paper were reassembled in mid-air in 0.5 seconds.
With short blue hair, amber eyes, and a delicate, aloof face—as her Paper Clone reverted to human form, her hands clasped together.
"The Paper Person of God Technique!"
It's instinct.
It wasn't judgment, it wasn't calculation; it was an extreme outburst driven by the instinct for survival.
The space behind her seemed to have been torn open by an invisible hand—countless white paper pieces poured out like an avalanche, each edge gleaming with a silvery-white luster, its sharpness no less than that of a finely crafted Shuriken.
Thousands, tens of thousands, everywhere.
The sea of paper surged, carrying a devastating cutting force as it crushed towards Naruto behind him!
This attack was enough to slice a ninja mansion into pieces.
Naruto stared at the overwhelming tsunami of paper blades.
He didn't dodge.
That's it?
He raised his left hand.
One-handed hand Hand Seals.
The Chakra circuits within his body simultaneously completed the fusion of two nature transformations—water and fire.
Two diametrically opposed attributes were forcibly kneaded together under the absolute control of the Perfect Sage Body, forming a brand new product that only Kekkei Genkai could give birth to.
Naruto's lips curled up.
This move was taught to him by a certain Mizukage.
No—to be precise, he "took" it from her.
"The Kekkei Genkai-- "
"Boil Release: Skilled Mist Technique"
Naruto exhales his breath.
A white mist billowed from his mouth and nose.
It's not ordinary water vapor.
That was a highly acidic boiling mist with a temperature exceeding 300 degrees Celsius and a pH value close to zero.
The fog spread at an absurd speed, forming a death zone with Naruto as the center and a radius of twenty meters within 0.3 seconds.
"Hiss hiss hiss hiss hiss--"
Konan's paper blade tsunami rushed into the acid mist area.
Then--
It melted.
It wasn't torn apart, it wasn't blown away, it was disintegrated at the molecular level.
Tens of thousands of Ninjutsu paper strips enhanced with Chakra, and even the Explosive Tag disguised among them, began to emit white smoke from their edges the moment they came into contact with the Boil Release acid mist. Their fibrous structures disintegrated, turning into brown, viscous pulp that fell to the ground.
One second.
A flurry of paper blades, all reduced to zero in a second.
Konan's amber pupils contracted sharply in the white mist.
She lived for thirty years.
He followed Nagato through countless battlefields.
I've seen the Chakra Cannon of the Tailed Beast, and I've seen the ultimate moves of Kage Level ninjas.
But she had never seen anyone who could turn her painstakingly crafted "Paper Person of God Technique" into wastewater with a single breath.
Her mind was racing.
Boil Release.
The Kekkei Genkai of water and fire.
Kirigakure, the Fifth Mizukage of Terumi Mei a signature ability.
When did he--
The thought process hadn't even had time to complete the entire logical chain.
The moment the white mist dissipated, Naruto's figure crashed into her field of vision from the front.
Quick.
She was so fast that she hadn't even completed half of the motion of raising her hand.
His five fingers gripped her neck.
It wasn't a chokehold.
It's about control.
His palm was pressed against the artery on the side of her neck, and his thumb was pressed against the indentation of her jawbone, the pressure precisely positioned on the line that would "immobilize you without suffocating you."
The next instant, his back slammed into something hard.
The brick wall of the chimney.
The rough brick surface rubbed against my back through the thin paper clothing, and my knees unconsciously came together.
Konan was pinned against the wall of the rooftop chimney.
Naruto lunged at him.
The bathrobe hung loosely on his shoulders, and the muscle lines below his collarbone were clearly visible in the moonlight.
The left hand gripping her neck showed no sign of loosening, while the right hand braced against the brick wall beside her ear, completely blocking all her escape routes.
The two were so close they could hear each other breathing.
Konan's head was pressed against the wall, her face tilted upwards.
Amber eyes reflected the face of the blond boy looking down at them.
He was smiling.
It wasn't mockery, nor was it a sneer; rather, it was a kind of... possessive satisfaction, like seeing something good.
"I said it."
Naruto's voice was very low, his breath brushing against her nose.
"If you come a second time, don't even think about leaving."
Konan's fingers clenched tightly inside her sleeve.
Paper—gone.
Everything was dissolved into wastewater by that cloud of acid mist.
His mental strength was completely suppressed by the scorching energy emanating from his palm, leaving him no room to even fold a paper crane.
Right now, she's just an ordinary woman, being choked and pinned against the wall, powerless to even kill a chicken.
His throat moved slightly.
"... What do you want?"
Her voice was hoarseer than she had expected.
With the Adam's apple pressed against the web of the thumb, producing sound requires extra force, giving the tone a certain... inappropriate quality.
Naruto tilted his head slightly.
His azure eyes slid from her forehead down to her lips, and then from her lips to the collarbone line half-covered by his palm.
Slow.
Deliberately slow.
It looks like they're inspecting the goods.
"Hmm... let me think about it."
Naruto gently brushed her neck with his thumb.
It wasn't applying pressure; he just moved slightly, as if sensing the temperature of her skin.
Konan's breath hitched for a second.
In my mind.
The system alert sounded.
[Ding--Target: Konan (Angel of God) Affection level is changing...]
[Current Affection Level: +25 (An Irresistible Sense of Suppression)]
[Cumulative Favorability: 40]
[System Assessment: Significant cracks have appeared in the target's psychological defenses. It is recommended that the host continuously apply pressure through a combination of absolute strength difference and physical contact to accelerate the conquest process.]
Naruto's lips curved into a smile.
You're forty now.
He lowered his head and whispered in Konan's ear.
His breath brushed against her earlobe, carrying the burning heat unique to a young man.
"Go back and tell Nagato-- "
"Don't send you next time."
There was a pause.
"I'm afraid I won't be able to control myself."
Konan's ear tips got burned.
She didn't know if it was because of anger or something else.