I should have realized sooner

But Kakuzu was not about to let this opportunity slip away. He had deliberately left that opening.

Black threads flashed, and the mask hidden behind him fired a fully charged Water Gun, striking Naruto's real body dead-on.

The water bullet caught Naruto squarely in midair. The tremendous impact sent him flying, and he slammed into the ground, skidding a long way before coming to a stop. He lay facedown, unable to get up for a long time.

"Naruto!" Kakashi and Sakura shouted almost simultaneously.

Kakashi gritted his teeth. The light of the Lightning Blade in his hand surged, and he charged at Kakuzu again.

Sakura let go of Neji's shoulder and hurried toward the fallen Naruto to help him.

Even Sasuke, who had been ignoring what was happening on their side, grew colder. Chidori Stream gathered in his hand once more.

Blue-white lightning compressed in his palm into a long, crackling spear, which he thrust straight at Kakuzu.

Shuofang Si stood with one foot on the last Sound Ninja's back. The man struggled to crawl forward, clawing at the dirt as he dragged himself along, pleading for his life in utter terror.

Expressionless, Shuofang Si struck down with a Heart-Destroying Palm, cutting the pleas short.

Shuofang Si straightened and surveyed his surroundings. More than twenty Sound Ninja corpses lay strewn around him, and the air reeked of blood.

He panted heavily, his muscles trembling slightly.

He lowered his gaze to his hands. Both were covered in the Sound Ninja's blood.

"Twenty-six Sound Ninja killed. 1,300 reward points obtained."

I really have changed quickly. I've already killed more than thirty ninja. Before entering Main God Space, I was just an ordinary person in a concrete jungle.

The environment really does change people, especially somewhere like Main God Space, where backing down means death.

Shuofang Si shook the blood off his hands and pulled the two Thunder Swords from the ground.

Resting the Thunder Swords on his shoulder, he turned toward the distant battlefield, where the fighting had reached a desperate impasse.

Kakashi was down on one knee, a large patch of his short silver hair scorched by fire release. He braced his right hand against the ground, gasping for breath.

Tenten had also been injured and knocked unconscious in the fighting. She now lay beside a broken tree, with Neji shielding her. Blood still seeped from the hole the black threads had punched through his left shoulder.

Sakura stayed beside Naruto, who had just propped his upper body off the ground. A streak of blood marked the corner of his mouth.

Sasuke stood farther away. The markings of his Cursed Seal had retreated to the back of his neck. He no longer had enough chakra even to maintain the Cursed Seal state.

His breathing was rapid and erratic, and anger filled his heart. That bastard Manda actually ran away.

After taking a Water-Lightning Compound Technique from Kakuzu, the beast had dispelled the summoning without even leaving a parting threat, abandoning Sasuke and returning to Ryūchi Cave.

Kakuzu stood opposite them. Of the four masks behind him, only two remained afloat.

Taking advantage of the chaos Manda had caused, Kakashi had destroyed the lightning nature and water nature masks in quick succession.

But he had no strength left to fight, either. His chakra was exhausted. The three-tomoe Sharingan slowly turned in his eye socket, each rotation seeming to tug at his nerves.

He stared fixedly at Kakuzu, calculating. With the wind nature heart Sasuke had destroyed in his initial sneak attack, plus the water nature and lightning nature hearts Kakashi had destroyed, Kakuzu had two hearts left: fire and earth.

On their side, only he and the comparatively less injured Sasuke could still move. Yet everyone's chakra reserves had run dry. They were utterly trapped.

Lightning flashed through the rolling clouds overhead. Blue-white light tore across the night sky, illuminating Kakashi and the others and revealing the despair in their eyes.

Kakuzu stood beneath that lightning, two masks slowly revolving behind him. The eerie green glow above his face covering looked down on the spent Konoha ninja as though they were prey caught in a trap.

"Not bad. You actually destroyed three of my hearts." Kakuzu's voice was hoarse, with a hint of mockery.

"You remind me of the first Konoha ninja I ever fought. That man was the First Hokage."

The pupils of Kakashi and the others who were still conscious contracted sharply. The First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, the God of Shinobi-the legendary ninja who had ended an age of turmoil and founded Konoha.

Was this Kakuzu an old monster who had fought someone of that caliber and survived?

Despair washed over them like a bucket of ice water.

Just then, a voice came from beside them.

"That's hilarious. Trash like you dares to compare himself to the First Hokage? You probably threw a shuriken from eight hundred miles away and ran."

Every gaze instantly turned toward the voice, full of shock and uncertainty.

Shuofang Si stood in the moonlight with two Thunder Swords on his shoulder. Almost all his clothes had been burned away by the lightning strike, and what he wore now had been stripped from those Sound Ninja.

Kakashi froze for a moment.

That face was not Arasaka Si's unremarkable merchant face. It belonged to the young villager who had stood on Konoha's rooftops six months ago.

While recovering after dodging the lightning, Shuofang Si had unknowingly released his Muscle and Bone Contraction Technique. Busy fighting, he had never noticed.

Seeing the strange look Kakashi was giving him, Shuofang Si paused as well.

What's wrong? Why is Kakashi looking at me like that? He instinctively raised a hand to touch his face.

Wait. My cheekbones are in the wrong place, and the curve of my jaw is wrong, too.

He understood at once. His good looks, sealed away for so long, had been exposed.

"Oh, Kakashi. Looks like you're pretty slow on the uptake."

"What? Slow?" Kakashi was taken aback by the abrupt remark.

Then his gaze moved past Shuofang Si to the Sound Ninja corpses strewn along the distant edge of the woods before returning to him.

Those lean, powerful muscles were completely unlike an ordinary merchant's, as was his manner of tossing out taunts without any regard for the situation.

"I should have realized sooner."

Kakashi slowly straightened, his Sharingan reflecting Shuofang Si's face, which matched the photograph in Konoha's records perfectly. "Si. Arasaka Si. Shuofang Si."

Kakashi recalled discovering, after the Konoha Crush, that the villager who had unleashed towering waves from Konoha's rooftops had disappeared.

Later, because Shuofang Si had revealed the truth behind his father Hatake Sakumo's death, Kakashi had gone to the archives to look up the man's records. Only then had he learned his name and discovered that he was merely an ordinary villager with nothing unusual in his file.

In an instant, every clue linked together into a complete chain in his mind.

But how had he survived such grievous injuries back then?

And how had he become so strong in just six months? He had actually killed one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist single-handedly without any chakra.

"Who exactly is this guy? Do you know him, Kakashi?" Beside him, Neji covered his shoulder wound, his Byakugan gaze sweeping over Shuofang Si.

He had never seen this face before, but the man's chakra pathways were identical to those of the merchant Arasaka Si.

"Although his appearance has changed, he is our client, Arasaka Si."

"But you should have heard of his other identity." Kakashi drew a deep breath, his voice low.

"The villager who exposed the Third Hokage's crimes on the day of the Konoha Crush-Shuofang Si."

"What? It's him? He's the one who drove Grandpa Third to that point?"

Naruto, who had been sitting nearby recovering, slowly pushed himself to his feet, supporting his legs, which still refused to cooperate.