So Today Was My Funeral After All?

In the distance, Kakashi and Kakuzu briefly stopped fighting and looked toward the other battle.

Kakuzu's masks stopped spewing ninjutsu and slowly withdrew into the black threads on his back. The eerie green eyes above his face covering narrowed.

A face I don't recognize. No bounty, then? Boring.

Kakashi used the opening to retreat to a safe distance with Naruto.

Sakura, Tenten, and Neji gathered around them as well, everyone looking toward the clearing at the edge of the woods that the battle had ravaged.

"He was actually serious?" Kakashi murmured.

He remembered the merchant saying back at the Life Curry House that he wanted to fight Raiga Kurosuki one-on-one.

At the time, he had been exasperated at getting stuck with an employer who had no idea of his own limits. Now it seemed he had worried needlessly.

Naruto's mouth fell open, his jaw nearly hitting the ground.

The merchant who had shown Kazahana Koyuki no mercy and knocked her out with a bottle at the Izakaya was actually this strong?

He suddenly felt that ignoring Kazahana Koyuki's demand to go beat up Shuofang Si last night had been one of the wisest decisions of his life.

Neji's Byakugan shifted in his eye sockets, veins bulging faintly around his temples.

His gaze pierced the layers of turbulent air and lightning, locking firmly onto Shuofang Si. Then his brow furrowed deeper and deeper.

His lips trembled slightly at a conclusion he could hardly believe, yet the sight granted by his Byakugan could not lie.

"That guy has no chakra."

"What?!" Sakura and Tenten turned toward him almost simultaneously, their voices filled with disbelief.

They might only have been genin, but they knew the basics. No matter how well an ordinary person without chakra could fight, he should never have been able to trade blows head-on with a jonin-level rogue ninja.

Who was Raiga Kurosuki? Remembering Zabuza, Sakura was even more astonished. The former members of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist were all monsters who had single-handedly carved bloody paths through Kirigakure's pursuit and survived to this day.

And this merchant, who was even gaining the upper hand against him, didn't have any chakra at all?

The instant Shuofang Si smashed through the lightning sphere, Raiga Kurosuki knew he could not stop the man before him with ordinary means.

He brought his two swords together with one hand, lightning release chakra gathering frantically along the blades.

He understood how this man fought now. If he let him get close, he would be torn apart alive. His only chance of winning was to pin him down at medium range with greater firepower and kill him.

Lightning Release: Thunder Dragon Tornado.

The two swords spun at high speed. Lightning burst from their blades, twisting and coiling through the air to form a blue-violet dragon of electricity.

The dragon raised its head, its body of lightning circling Raiga Kurosuki and enveloping him in a blinding electrical glow.

Seeing the lightning dragon taking shape, Shuofang Si picked up his pace.

I'm already a heavily armored fighter. Golden Bell Shield and Eight-Nine Mysterious Art have pushed my defenses to the limit.

If I let this lightning turret, Raiga Kurosuki, dictate the pace, he'll wear me down with one ranged Lightning Release attack after another.

My only chance is to charge straight in and kill him.

Shuofang Si's gaze grew increasingly unfocused, and his muscles swelled even further. Every muscle fiber wrung out its deepest reserves of strength as he unlocked another level of the gene lock.

Tear into him.

Under this ever-mounting Will Impact, he suddenly gained insight into a technique that had previously seemed obscure and incomprehensible.

The Soul-Transferring Great Method, a martial technique involving mental power from the Nine Yin Manual, had eluded him despite his lengthy efforts to comprehend it.

Now, under the pressure of life and death and the catalytic effect of the gene lock, understanding came in an instant.

He abruptly unleashed the Soul-Transferring Great Method on Raiga Kurosuki.

Raiga Kurosuki had been maintaining the lightning dragon's shape when his gaze went momentarily blank. The Thunder Swords spinning in his hands slowed a fraction, and the coiling lightning dragon briefly faltered beside him.

But he was, after all, a battle-hardened member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, a man who had crawled out of the mountains of corpses and seas of blood of the shinobi war. An attack resembling genjutsu would not throw him into disarray.

In an instant, he bit the tip of his tongue, using the sharp pain to wrench himself free of the Soul-Transferring Great Method's mental interference.

But that instant was enough. Shuofang Si's eye apertures were open, his gaze blazing.

He caught Raiga Kurosuki's momentary stiffness with perfect precision.

A gap had appeared in the lightning dragon's circling arc. The wound torn open by the Nine Yin White Bone Claw had also hampered the fluidity of his movements. Right there.

Heart-Destroying Palm.

Shuofang Si drove his palm into the wounded spot on the chest exposed by that awkward movement. The protective lightning scorched his skin furiously the instant his hand made contact, but he did not flinch. The instincts of the gene lock suppressed all pain and numbness.

The penetrating force of the Heart-Destroying Palm pierced the electrical glow of the Lightning Armor, pierced Raiga Kurosuki's skin, pierced his already cracked ribs, and struck his heart with unerring precision.

The palm strike sent Raiga Kurosuki flying backward. He slammed into the ground and slid several meters before stopping, a trace of clarity flickering in his eyes.

He lay there, gazing at the night sky, where faint lightning churned after the earlier clash of Water and Fire Release techniques. Countless memories flashed before his eyes.

The smoke of the Third Shinobi World War, the thick fog of Kirigakure, the comrades and enemies he had killed, and all the funerals he had held.

So today was my funeral after all?

He felt the strength slowly draining from his body. As a battle-hardened ninja, he knew his heart had been shattered.

Only the chakra sustaining his final breath kept him conscious.

Shuofang Si was hardly any better off. The final discharge of Raiga Kurosuki's protective lightning had scorched his entire body black.

He had collapsed to the ground at the very instant his Heart-Destroying Palm struck home.

I can't go on. This is my limit. He dropped out of the gene lock state, and the suppressed numbness and agony swept through his body like floodwater bursting through a dam.

His whole body convulsed as he lay on the scorched earth a dozen or so paces from Raiga Kurosuki.

Temporarily paralyzed, Shuofang Si could only lie there, watching the thunderclouds grow denser in the night sky. Stimulated by the Soul-Transferring Great Method, his ancestral aperture between the brows now gave rise to an ominous premonition.

All he could do was look inward, sensing the Eight-Nine Mysterious Art and the residual power of the second-order gene lock circulating on their own within him, slowly repairing his lightning-scorched body.

"Really..." Raiga Kurosuki tightened his grip on the Thunder Swords with the last of his strength.

He looked at the thunderclouds overhead, formed from the steam that had risen into the sky during Kakashi and Kakuzu's clash of Water and Fire Release techniques. The corners of his mouth curved upward.

Then, still lying there, he mustered his final breath and raised the Thunder Swords high, pointing them toward the sky.

"So I don't leave any enemies behind for Ranmaru... let's be buried together, stranger."

Lightning Release: Thunder Burial.

A massive bolt of lightning suddenly crashed down from the roiling clouds. Like a white pillar connecting heaven and earth, it engulfed Raiga Kurosuki and Shuofang Si together.