Trick Room

Yet, faced with this almost certain hit, Uchiha Gen smiled.

The instant the blade was about to touch the skin of his neck, Uchiha Gen's body suddenly became a translucent phantom.

The Sunagakure Jonin's blade passed straight through him. The wind blade it stirred up failed to sever even a strand of the phantom's hair. As the blade passed through, the phantom dissolved entirely into several Phantom Crows that scattered, and in that brief opening...

Uchiha Gen's real body suddenly appeared behind the Sunagakure Jonin.

The Sunagakure Jonin reacted extremely quickly, moving to put distance between them again.

However...

Crackle!!

A streak of lightning danced over Uchiha Gen's hand, the current bursting into blue-white sparks in the air as it wrapped precisely around the Sunagakure Jonin's body.

"Damn it! An Uchiha Genjutsu Clone!"

Bound by lightning, the Sunagakure Jonin's movements stalled for half a second.

The current spread through his body, instantly numbing his muscles. But the Sunagakure Jonin reacted extremely quickly, immediately detonating a ball of wind beneath his feet. Using the recoil from its explosion, he flipped sharply backward, his toes tapping repeatedly against empty air as he forced a ring-shaped wind vortex into being beneath his feet.

The vortex spun at high speed, sweeping the surrounding rubble into a white miniature tornado that immediately bore down on Uchiha Gen.

"You think you're the only one holding something back?"

Uchiha Gen's eyes were cold as he watched the Sunagakure Jonin fly backward.

In this Shinobi World, anyone who became a Jonin was underhanded enough.

From the beginning, the Jonin before him had never revealed his extreme speed. He had even used a technique like Rock Armor to conceal the fact that he could evade attacks through speed alone, putting on a show to reinforce that impression.

Finally, he had attacked in the instant before Uchiha Gen's weapon took shape.

An ordinary shinobi might really have been run through by that lightning-fast strike.

Unfortunately, before Uchiha Gen's Sharingan and Observation Haki, no detail could escape his perception.

"Sun Breathing, First Form: Dance."

Uchiha Gen's voice was ice-cold.

The fragments of the Demon Blade Thousand Blades suddenly joined together, forming a long blade roughly ten feet in length, orange-red flames flowing along its edge.

He swung his blade into the tornado. The moment the flames collided with the wind vortex, the air ignited into rolling waves of fire. The wind blades crackled as the flames scorched them, actually condensing into countless sparks in midair.

The next instant, those sparks flared explosively and shot toward the Sunagakure Jonin.

"Ha, useless! So what if you dodged that strike? Before my Swift Release, I can evade any attack I want! And you'll never catch up to my speed! Swift Release: Instant Prison Shadow Kill!"

The Sunagakure Jonin darted through the waves of fire, his figure moving so fast that it left layers of afterimages as he began to taunt.

As his words fell, the Sunagakure Jonin suddenly split into four afterimages that attacked simultaneously from four directions. Each held an identical ninja sword, their blades overlapping with wind blades to weave an impenetrable net of steel around Uchiha Gen.

"Tch, so any random nobody can pull out a kekkei genkai I've never even heard of."

The three tomoe in his Sharingan spun rapidly, the details of all four Sunagakure Jonin's movements reflected in Uchiha Gen's eyes. In slow motion, he soon discovered where the real body was: within the afterimage behind him to the left, because its rhythm was half a beat faster than the other three.

But rather than finding the real body and defeating him, wouldn't it be more interesting to shut down the power he took such pride in?

With that thought, Uchiha Gen raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

"Trick... Room."

In an instant, an invisible force enveloped the entire sea of fire.

As the space unfolded, the four afterimages instantly dissipated, revealing the Sunagakure Jonin's figure.

"My Swift Release?!! My speed... I can't speed up."

The sudden change made the Sunagakure Jonin rapidly drive the green wind enveloping his body, only to discover that he could no longer regain his previous speed.

At the same time, Uchiha Gen suddenly vanished from where he stood.

Where had his speed gone? What a difficult guess.

In the blink of an eye, Uchiha Gen appeared thirty feet behind the Sunagakure Jonin. With a swing of his blade, the fragments of the Demon Blade Thousand Blades shot out like a torrential downpour.

Each fragment was wreathed in brilliant blue electricity, the currents linking together in midair as though forming a massive electric net.

The Sunagakure Jonin spun around, his ninja sword tracing a circular wind blade as he tried to cleave apart the electric net formed by countless electrified blade fragments.

But those blade fragments moved as though alive, weaving nimbly through the wind blades before suddenly changing course and shooting in unison toward his sword-wielding right hand.

Faced with the change in the attack, the Sunagakure Jonin was forced to draw back his sword to block.

But without his extreme speed, his attempt to block was as slow as could be.

After all, not just anyone could intercept something propelled by electromagnetism.

In an instant, countless sprays of blood blossomed across the Sunagakure Jonin's body.

The outcome was decided!!

The instant the blood blossomed, thinking that he could not waste such speed, Uchiha Gen made a series of instantaneous leaps through the burning forest before Trick Room dissipated.

Every swing precisely broke through a Chunin's Wind Release defense and slashed straight into the enemy's heart.

In just a dozen or so breaths...

The remaining five Sunagakure Chunin all fell into the Pure Land, perishing in this burning sea of trees.

Each of these Sunagakure Chunin held a black, diamond-shaped block. Uchiha Gen had struck so quickly precisely because his Observation Haki had sensed a threat from those little black blocks.

As the last Sunagakure shinobi fell, a palm-sized insect burrowed out of the ground at Uchiha Gen's feet.

"Gen, you've made too much noise. The Sunagakure squads at the other three locations have all noticed the commotion here."

The insect spoke in a human voice. It was Shibi Aburame's voice.

"I didn't use any large-scale ninjutsu. All of this was caused by Sunagakure."

At those words, Uchiha Gen simply ignored the flames still burning around him and replied calmly.

"I'm not blaming you, just letting you know. Fighting has already begun at the other three locations too. Since you've finished here, you can go take a look. Also, remember to put out these fires. Protecting the Land of Fire's forests is every resident's responsibility."

Hearing this, the insect shook its head in a humanlike manner and continued speaking. Once it finished, it burrowed back into the ground and disappeared.

"The other three locations? That direction should be Team 7, Team 5, and Team 4's responsibility, right?"

With a raise of his hand, the surrounding flames immediately surged toward Uchiha Gen's palm, forming a compressed fireball that finally went out soundlessly at his fingertips.

After extinguishing the fire, casually sealing the seven corpses into a scroll, and putting away the seven small black blocks looted from the seven Sunagakure Shinobi, Uchiha Gen could not help looking toward the area Team 7 was responsible for.

He was considering whether to go steal their kills and make Obito and Kakashi squirm a little.