In an instant, the end of the black chakra rod slammed into the ground, blasting out a deep crater over two meters across.
As Shihōin Naraku leaned backward, his right foot had already hooked upward. His toes struck Isshiki squarely in the lower abdomen, kicking him into a backward bend just as he tried to press closer.
Isshiki spat out a mist of blood, his body flipping three times in midair before he landed.
He dropped to one knee and glanced down at the ground stained red by the blood from his mouth.
Isshiki had already noticed that his regenerative ability was gradually weakening.
What that meant was already clear.
With Naraku's repeated attacks and his own bursts of power, Jigen's body was nearing its limit.
He licked his lips, tasted blood, and then began to smile.
His smile was twisted and fervent.
"Still not enough."
He said, "This still isn't enough!"
The ground beneath Isshiki's feet exploded again.
This time, he did not charge in a straight line.
His phantom figure flickered four times in succession, appearing in a different position each time.
First, he feinted ten meters behind Naraku to the left, then appeared fifteen meters directly overhead in a plunging posture. His third flicker took him to the ground on the right for a level charge, before he finally revealed his true form less than two meters in front of Naraku.
These shifts between feints and real movements were completed in a quarter of a blink. Standing in the distance, Momoshiki Otsutsuki even paused the hand controlling the Bōshijin weapon array, because he found he could not lock onto Isshiki's true position to coordinate an attack at all.
Had Isshiki been flickering forward at his normal size, Momoshiki could naturally have locked onto his position.
But at