The metal parts of the guns warped into scrap in the heat. Ammunition cooked off in a crackling chorus, like a pot of popcorn popping.
Yongye leaped lightly from the top of the lamppost. On his way down, he formed hand seals again.
"Wind Release... Great Breakthrough."
He opened his mouth, and a whirlwind packed with violent air blasted out before him, straight into the sea of fire that had yet to die down.
Wind fed the flames. The fire, already mostly spent, surged back to life as a towering tornado of flame, swallowing every gunman in the center of the square who had failed to scatter.
Bane was scorched and battered. The heat wave shoved him several meters back, his boots carving two blackened furrows through the broken paving stones.
He yanked one of his men in front of him as a human shield. The man turned to charcoal the instant the flames touched him.
Bane threw him aside. Beneath his mask, his breathing came heavy and fast.
The fire had not yet died down, but Yongye was already walking over the embers into the heart of the square.
His right hand swept past his belt, and three kunai with a dull metallic sheen appeared between his fingers. He hurled them forward in one motion.
The kunai traced three arcs through the air, flying straight toward the enemies the flames had not yet reached.
"Ninja Art..." He formed hand seals again with his left hand, chakra dancing at his fingertips. "Shadow Shuriken Technique."
All three kunai changed at once.
Ripples spread around each kunai like a stone dropped into water. Then dozens of identical phantom kunai burst from the center of each ripple.
The phantoms carried cutting winds that felt all too real. Like a storm of metal driven