Human Block Assembly Ability

"What?"

Uchiha Tonghu stared in disbelief, his face filled with shock and incredulity.

He had bullied Long Ye plenty of times before. Long Ye had never dared resist, and he had not even dared utter a word of rebuttal. The sudden reversal left Tonghu unable to react for a moment.

Hearing Long Ye's words, Rin looked at him in surprise. She quietly reached out and tugged at his sleeve, trying to stop him from clashing with Tonghu.

"Rin, don't worry. I know what I'm doing. I won't kill him. Today, I just want him to know who the 'stupid pig' he was talking about really is."

Those words completely bewildered Rin. She could not imagine what Long Ye intended to use against Tonghu.

"Hahahaha..."

Tonghu laughed wildly, but there was no joy on his face. Instead, his expression became exceptionally vicious.

"Good, very good! You're trying to act tough in front of a woman? Since you dare speak to me like that, I'll definitely teach you a bloody lesson today. Let's see if you still dare talk back to me in the future."

Rin knew how formidable Tonghu was. More accurately, people born into the Uchiha were almost never weak because of their bloodline. Even Obito, who was regarded as a disgrace by the Uchiha, was by no means weak among his peers in Konoha.

"Stop, Tonghu! The village has strict regulations. You're not allowed to recklessly use ninjutsu or fight viciously. Do you intend to violate the village's rules?"

Tonghu sneered coldly. "I don't need ninjutsu to teach him a lesson. Brat, prepare to die..."

Before Rin could stop him, Tonghu suddenly attacked.

He snatched the sword from someone beside him, leaned forward, and lunged. When he was ten steps away from Long Ye, he suddenly leaped into the air and brought the blade down with all his strength.

The slash was clearly aimed at Long Ye's shoulder. If it landed, one of his arms would inevitably be severed.

The reason Tonghu dared to strike so ruthlessly was largely because Long Ye did not belong to Konoha. Even if he injured Long Ye, it would not count as violating the laws of the Land of Fire.

Tonghu had attacked without warning, and no one had time to react. Rin wanted to stop him, but she was powerless to do so.

Long Ye remained completely still.

The instant Tonghu brought his blade down from midair, Long Ye's prepared Barrier: Human Reassembly was activated.

Whoosh!

The wind whistled.

A hemispherical light barrier suddenly appeared, enveloping an area more than ten meters across.

Trapped inside the Surgical Barrier, Tonghu immediately felt a repulsive force hindering the descent of his blade, weakening the momentum of his slash by a third.

By contrast, inside the barrier he had released, every aspect of Long Ye's body was strengthened. The descending blade seemed much slower in his eyes.

With a single sidestep, he gently shifted his body. The tachi, powerful enough to cleave a person in two, swept down alongside him.

"He dodged it? How..."

Tonghu was shocked when his seemingly certain strike missed.

Before he could prepare his next move, a palm took advantage of the moment when his old strength had been exhausted and his new strength had yet to gather, pressing against his chest.

"Bzzzt!!!"

A powerful, high-frequency current entered Tonghu through his heart and instantly passed through his entire body.

Tonghu's eyes bulged, and his body went rigid.

"Cough!"

Tonghu coughed dryly, spitting out a mouthful of bloody foam. Blood then began flowing from all seven openings of his face.

Like a puppet, Tonghu fell straight backward onto the ground.

"Ahhh!"

The onlookers cried out in alarm at the sudden reversal.

Behind Long Ye, Rin stood with her mouth wide open, her face full of astonishment.

"That was... Lightning Release!"

"Wasn't this Long Ye unable to even learn how to climb trees? How does he know Lightning Release?"

"Wait! Look at Tonghu's body."

After someone pointed it out, everyone immediately noticed something strange.

There was not the slightest external injury where Tonghu had been struck in the heart. Even his clothes were undamaged.

"Lightning Release is the most violent of all. Its destructive power is universally acknowledged to be immense. Why didn't this person's Lightning Release cause even the slightest external injury?"

Everyone was baffled.

Only Long Ye knew that his move, Heart Shock, was not a "lightning-type" power at all. It belonged to "electricity." The difference between the two was considerable.

Tonghu's entire body was numb and rigid, but he had not gone into shock. Naturally, this was because Long Ye had shown mercy.

Fighting was only a minor offense. If he killed someone, he would have to pay with his life—and the other party belonged to the Uchiha, whose influence was at its peak.

Long Ye walked over to Tonghu and looked down at him.

Apart from shock, Tonghu's eyes held humiliation and unwillingness at having been defeated.

Long Ye nudged the blade with his toe, and the sword in Tonghu's hand fell into his grasp.

"I tried to persuade you nicely and told you to slap yourself and apologize to Rin, but you rejected my goodwill. I told you that if you refused, I would not only beat you until you vomited blood, but also make it impossible for you to care for yourself from now on."

"Long Ye, don't..."

Rin's face went pale with fright.

But it was already too late. Long Ye swung the blade upward from below. The tip scraped across the ground, sending up a spark, then sliced through Tonghu's right wrist. His hand was severed and fell away.

That was not the end. Long Ye flourished the blade and struck again, cutting off Tonghu's right foot.

Throughout it all, Tonghu seemed to feel no pain and did not let out a single scream. Most bizarrely, not a drop of blood flowed from the wounds where his limbs had been severed.

The crowd, already horrified by Long Ye's audacity, wore expressions as though they had seen a ghost when they witnessed the strange scene.

Under everyone's terrified gaze, Long Ye bent down and picked up the severed hand. He turned it around once and pressed it against the stump. Another bizarre scene appeared: the severed hand actually grew back.

What was even more horrifying was that Tonghu's hand had been reattached backward. Its palm faced upward, completely reversed from the direction of his other hand.

Long Ye then picked up Tonghu's severed foot and attached it in the opposite direction as well. In the end, one foot pointed forward while the other pointed backward, creating a horrifying sight.

The scene made the people around them scream repeatedly.

"What kind of ninjutsu is this?"

"Medical ninjutsu. It's definitely medical ninjutsu—and an advanced one that can reconnect severed limbs. I'd only heard of it before. This is the first time I've seen it with my own eyes."

Rin was stunned as she watched from behind.

She was a medical ninja herself, and her teacher, Minato Namikaze, had rated her aptitude for medical ninjutsu as outstanding. Thus, she knew very well that medical ninjutsu capable of reconnecting severed limbs did exist.

However, as far as she knew, this advanced technique was not easy to perform. Yet in Long Ye's hands, it looked almost absurdly simple.

What Long Ye had used was naturally not medical ninjutsu, but the Devil Fruit ability of the Op-Op Fruit. What he had just performed was one of the two abilities of an Apprentice Devil: Barrier: Human Reassembly.

Reconstructing Tonghu's hand and foot had merely been a trial run. If he wished, he could even dismember him into eight pieces and then freely piece him back together like building blocks.