He suddenly coughed up a mouthful of bubbling blood and stiffly looked down. A hand had pierced through his chest, and a Shadow Guard materialized behind him. There were no footsteps, no sound of air being torn apart—only a hand reaching in from his blind spot, its fingertips pressing precisely against the center of his back, the force in its wrist releasing like a spring compressed to its limit.
That hand passed through his chest cavity cleanly and decisively, like completing a disassembly step rehearsed countless times, without a single unnecessary movement.
"Damn it... when did he get close... I can't accept this..." His body tipped forward for a second, then collapsed into the pooled water of the alley like a sack of sand that had lost its support.
With the spell interrupted, the teleportation tunnel burst like a bubble and vanished.
When the Shadow Guard pulled his hand back, it was covered in thick blood mixed with fragments of organs. He tore off part of the man's wizard robe and wiped his hand clean, his movements casual, as though brushing dust from his sleeve. "A bug that dared defile the Uchiha has no use for a heart."
With the witch hunter leader dead, Kentaro released the Sharingan illusion. The surviving witch hunter remnants in the alley regained their senses one after another. First, they were horrified by what they had done to their comrades. Then, led by several of their number, they charged at the Shadow Guard.
Ryūichirō and his son had no intention of stopping them. With a Body Flicker, they brought the two pure-blood representatives over to the Ministry of Magic official to watch the show. Those witch hunters did move—but they never had time to form an encirclement.
By numbers alone, the four Shadow Guards seemed