Chains and Thunder
Noon.
The main broken bridge at Black Dragon Ravine, Thunderfire Border.
The blazing sun hung high overhead, its blinding rays striking the steep, reddish-brown cliffs on both sides, causing wisps of scorched earth to rise from the cracks in the rocks. Between the two precipitous cliffs stretched an old wooden bridge, over ten meters wide. The center of the bridge had long been eroded by the relentless winds, leaving a gap. Cold winds swept up from the depths of the canyon, howling and whistling through the rotten planks.
On the edge of the bridge pier on the opposite bank, a tall, thin man wearing a dark gray short jacket and with three crisscrossing scars, old and new, stood there. His cloud- Hidden Cloud Forehead Protector had a diagonal line drawn across it with a sharp weapon. In his hand, he was playing with a rough, black porcelain sealing tube, which contained the half of the key blueprint that had been taken from the sealed vault of the Uzumaki Abandoned Residence the night before.
Three sweating men were tightly bound back-to-back to a rotten wooden stake at the man's feet.
Those were the three old craftsmen responsible for the foundation of the Uzumaki New Residence. The hemp rope was digging into their flesh, and three Lightning Release Explosive Tag, emitting a blinding blue light, were pasted on their necks. The ends of the talisman patterns were wrapped with lightning threads as thin as rust and attached to the hook of the man's scabbard.
"Uzumaki brat, get your people out of here, or if this bridge collapses, nobody will survive!"
The scarred leader's voice was hoarse, carrying the harshness of years of wind and sand from the frontier. He gestured with his chin towards the deep valley, his palm resting on the hook of his scabbard, his fingernails glowing blue from the Lightning Release Chakra within him.
Naruto had his hands in the pockets of his dark blue robe, his straw sandals resting on a broken piece of wood on one side of the bridge pier, his knees not even bending. The wind rushed into his collar, and his blond hair whipped wildly across his forehead.
"Alright, that's enough. Let's call it even." The scarred leader craned his neck forward, suppressing his rage as he roared, "You and those three behind you retreat five miles. I'll tear up half of the blueprints and return them to you, and I'll leave the men alive!"
Naruto raised an eyelid, not even glancing at the tube in the other person's hand, and said with a curt "Since when did you Hidden Cloud start making a living by kidnapping craftsmen?"
This sentence, devoid of any emotion, is like a bucket of ice water poured over your head in its plain language.
The scarred leader's face twitched violently, and the lightning bolt on the edge of his palm flickered half an inch. He fixed his narrow iron eyes on Naruto's face and cursed, "We're not doing this for Hidden Cloud, we're doing this to survive! The village abandons its old brothers on the border after the war? In this world, if we don't use Sealing Jutsu to exchange for rice on the black market, how are you Hidden Leaf's big shots going to support us?"
The air was heavy.
Standing on the edge of the rocks behind him Kakashi flicked off his black mask, revealing half of his injured chin. "Shinobi World the second ceasefire agreement was signed, Hidden Cloud disbanded the entire border garrison north of the Eight-Horse Relay Station. These people have no pay, no permanent assignments, so they simply became local bullies along the border."
"Bastard..." The scarred leader's face twisted in pain, and lightning shot three feet up from his hand in an instant.
The humiliation of being laid off, along with the humiliation of competing with the Grass Ninja and wandering ninjas for business in the black market, were all exposed by that twelve or thirteen-year-old Hidden Leaf brat speaking plainly under the broken bridge, the sun showing no mercy whatsoever.
"If you want to make money, go somewhere else. You've chosen the wrong grave if you dare to use my old house beams as a workman's tool for business." Naruto's ankle sank slightly, and the old, rotten wood under his foot made a dull thud.
The scarred leader let out a vicious roar, "Let them be buried with you!"
His thumb snapped the wire at the sheath's opening.
A blinding beam of electric light shot from the man's palm straight to the bridge pier. The Explosive Tag tied to the chests of the three craftsmen suddenly burst forth with intense lightning and fire. Unable to withstand the pull of the high-voltage electric fire, the main bridge exploded in two with a deafening roar!
Crushed lime slag covered the sky and the earth.
The three strong, middle-aged craftsmen, bound together, couldn't even scream as they crashed into the bottomless Black Dragon Ravine, along with the hundreds of pounds of bridge pier timber!
In the eyes of any proper Jonin, if they were to choose the living, they wouldn't have time to snatch the scroll; if they were to go for the blueprints, they would have to watch the three craftsmen turn into abyssal mud.
Taking advantage of the shockwave from the broken bridge, Scarface, the leader, planted his back foot on the rock wall, picked up the sealing cylinder, and turned to head towards the old copper-colored mine a few dozen steps behind him.
Call--
A strong wind blew down splinters of wood, but a figure in a deep blue robe tore through the dust and mist, descending from the void!
Naruto leaped off the edge of the broken bridge, not even bothering to touch the ninja tools in his pouch. Within the Perfect Uzumaki Sage Body, the pure primordial bloodline surged through his back with each powerful heartbeat.
Three golden Chakra Chains, each as thick as a baby's arm, burst forth from his back and abdomen in a hand seal-less state!
The chains were covered with ancient and rugged sealing inscriptions, and the golden light illuminated the dark canyon. The two Adamantine Sealing Chains from a bow, creating an extremely terrifying gust of wind as they pierced into the hard rock walls dozens of meters away on either side!
Boom!
The Granite was blasted into a crater the size of a large bowl, and a golden chain was embedded more than half a foot deep inside, stretching out into two straight, solid diamond ropes.
The longest and most flexible chain in the middle section swung out in a half-circle, then with a precise jerk in mid-air, fifteen meters above the ground, it cut directly into the knot of the rope binding the piece of driftwood. The chain then spun around, forcefully severing the rough hemp rope used by the hoisting craftsmen, and pulled the three large, plummeting men to their feet.
The immense force of the fall landed on Naruto's shoulder, the muscles beneath his long robe taut with clear lines, yet he didn't even stumble.
"Sasuke!"
At the very top of the cliff, a young man Tomoe in black stood like a bow. Sasuke's eyes darted about, and with one hand, he swung a large handful of steel wire, using the momentum of his leap from the tree trunk to throw it downwards. "Don't worry, bro, I know all the rules of this line of work, I'll follow them!"
Seven or eight steel wires wrapped with sealing needles precisely hooked onto the middle section of the gold chain from which the craftsman was hanging, pulling them to their deaths and dragging the three of them upwards.
Simultaneously, Kakashi landed and struck the deep valley mud slope with a single palm strike.
A commotion arose.
Two thick Earth Release stone walls rose from below to form a load-bearing railing, just in time to catch the three falling bodies where the steel wires had exhausted their strength.
Sakura, clutching a first-aid kit, burst out from behind the stone wall, her hands already glowing with emerald green medical Chakra. She first slapped the craftsman's neck, burned by lightning, and said quickly, "Don't breathe heavily, lower your head first, the explosive ash is poisonous!"
From the leader breaking the bridge and the living falling, to Naruto breaking free of the lock and the three landing safely, the whole process was completed in the blink of an eye.
That deadly gamble designed to force Hidden Leaf to back down was Genin by this team of genin, who had only been formed for two months, using their hard-hitting axes as a weapon.
Naruto stepped onto the stone platform below the rock, and golden light slowly merged into his body from behind. He casually flicked a bit of debris off his collar and stared intently at the dark, old mine on the opposite bank.
Although the broken bridge was trampled to pieces, the ruts of the steel-framed freight cars on the other side were still there.
The scarred leader of the Hidden Cloud Sect ran so fast that he kicked through the heels of his straw sandals, and plunged headfirst into the inch of the cave entrance, suddenly standing on the damp moss and turning halfway around.
The man suddenly produced an entrenching pickaxe with a black iron handle and used it to strike an iron pipe buried under the pillar at the entrance of the cave.
Sizzle!
A strangely viscous, dark blue arc of electricity, emanating a fishy smell, surged up from the bottom of the mine abyss.
The moment the scroll in the scarred leader's hand came into contact with the blue light, the Uzumaki anti-counterfeiting mark on the paper withered and died, just like a caterpillar that had been soaked in salt water.
The next moment, a deep, muffled thunderclap resounded from within the earth, like a massive drumbeat coming from the depths of a mountain.
Buzz--
The red rocks on the entire surface of Black Dragon Ravine trembled three feet at the same time, and the grass that originally grew between the rocks sputtered up from the Root, creating a spiky static electricity.
"The earth's Chakra... isn't that kid's own!" Kakashi kicked a piece of broken bridge wood across the valley with one foot. The wood had just landed on the opposite bank and hadn't even struck a lightning bolt when it was burned by tiny electric snakes that suddenly jumped up from the ground, sending up a puff of white smoke.
"Brother," Sasuke stood by the bridge, sword in hand, one foot firmly planted on the ground, his eyes flashing with a fierce light, "the Lightning Release Chakra below is moving, not in a human's path, it has a heartbeat."
That was the first time he had truly seen the power of Tailed Beast with his own eyes after Zabuza in the Wave Country and scouting the border.
Enormous, frenzied, all savage voltages laced with poison.
Naruto stretched, his bones cracking audibly beneath his clothes. He took half a step forward, his boot sole dangling over the ten-meter-deep chasm, and looked down at the swirling blue lightning at the cave entrance.
"The villager ate the bait, leaving no main catch for the owner, and then tried to go into the mountains to doze off. There's no such cheap deal in this Shinobi World."
He adjusted his Forehead Protector in his pocket, a playful yet sharp glint in his eyes beneath his blond hair.
"Let's go to their Thunderdeep Kiln and teach them how to write 'pay back debts'."