Merely seeing through it was nowhere near enough.
Uesugi Sasuke had never believed that learning someone else's moves made them his own strength.
Thunder Breathing was powerful.
That explosive burst of speed was indeed a potent weapon for slaying demons.
But to Sasuke, its greatest value lay in being the perfect piece to complete his own puzzle.
Evening came.
Sasuke did not linger at the dojo. Alone, he headed toward the mountain behind it.
His destination was the waterfall.
It was where he had first used Chidori, and where he had first tasted failure.
He would go there and reclaim that past failure, with interest.
Not far behind him, a golden-haired head poked out from behind a tree.
Zenitsu Agatsuma bit his nails, his face full of indecision and fear.
He did not know why he had followed.
Reason told him to stay as far away from that monster Sasuke as possible.
But curiosity kept scratching at his heart like a kitten.
He wanted to know what other secrets the guy who could learn Thunder Breathing in an instant was hiding.
Higher up the slope, Jigoro Kuwajima stood quietly with his cane, his clouded eyes fixed on the slight figure below. There was no telling what he was thinking.
Beside the waterfall, the water roared.
Sasuke stood before the boulder that had once left him in such a sorry state, his expression cold.
He closed his eyes.
In his mind, the feeling of losing control surfaced again-moving so fast that his vision blurred, nearly crashing into the mountainside.
A fatal flaw.
Without the aid of dynamic vision, Chidori was a suicidal technique that took the user down with his enemy.
But things were different now.
Sasuke snapped his eyes open. In his right eye, two black tomoe slowly revolved.
He did not gather chakra immediately.
Instead, he first assumed a starting stance for Thunder Breathing and drew a deep breath.
He could feel his lungs working like bellows, sending power into every corner of his body.
His muscles, bones, and nerves all mobilized in that instant, reaching a state of perfect readiness for battle.
That was the feeling.
His body was ready.
Next came the infusion of power.
Sasuke raised his left hand.
Bzz... bzzzt...
Blue-white arcs of electricity began dancing in his palm.
For the third time, piercing birdsong rang through the valley.
Behind the tree, every hair on Zenitsu's body stood on end at the sound.
He had seen this technique before.
On the day they had first become apprentices, Sasuke had used this move to change their master's mind.
The Lightning Release back then had been wild and chaotic, brimming with destruction.
But this time, Zenitsu sensed a difference.
The Lightning Release in Sasuke's palm was contracting inward at an astonishing speed, condensing.
The arcs that had spread outward were forcibly bound together by an invisible force.
At last, they formed a fist-sized ball of Lightning Release so bright that it was impossible to look at directly.
The cries of those thousand birds seemed to have been compressed together as well, becoming a single clear, piercing buzz.
Sasuke looked at his handiwork, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
Using Thunder Breathing's compression technique to control chakra worked even better than he had imagined.
His power was ready.
He raised his head, his blood-red eyes locking onto the enormous rock ahead.
Then he charged.
Like an arrow loosed from a bow, his figure vanished from the spot in an instant.
Too fast.
To Zenitsu's eyes, Sasuke left behind only an afterimage.
He had not even seen how Sasuke moved. All he knew was that the Lightning Release had already reached the boulder.
Zenitsu's heart leaped into his throat.
He remembered clearly that last time, Sasuke had nearly smashed headfirst into the rock and died because he was moving too fast.
This time, would he...
Yet through Sasuke's Sharingan, the world looked entirely different.
There was no blur.
No loss of control.
It was as though the entire world had been put into slow motion.
He could clearly see every pebble kicked up beneath his feet as he sprinted.
He could clearly see the uneven texture on the boulder's surface.
He could even clearly see how the moisture in the air, drawn in by the Lightning Release, swirled around his palm to form a white vortex.
Everything was under control.
He was no longer a blade that could not be pulled back once swung.
He was the hand gripping its hilt.
Half a meter from the boulder, Sasuke turned his body slightly and thrust the Lightning Release in his hand forward at an exceptionally tricky angle.
"Chidori."
His low voice was swallowed by the waterfall's roar.
There was no earth-shaking crash.
Not even a violent explosion.
Like a red-hot table knife slicing through butter, the ball of Lightning Release, compressed to its utmost limit, sank soundlessly into the hard rock.
Time seemed to stand still.
Sasuke had already emerged behind the boulder. He slowly came to a stop with his back to it, his left hand still extended in a forward thrust.
Zenitsu stared blankly.
Nothing happened?
Did it fail?
The instant that thought crossed his mind-
Crack.
An almost imperceptibly soft sound.
A fine crack appeared on the enormous rock, which stood fully twice a person's height, centered on the point where Chidori had pierced it.
Then came a second, a third, a tenth, a hundredth...
Within a single second, spiderweb-like fractures covered the entire boulder.
The next second-
Crumble-
The enormous rock collapsed and crumbled soundlessly, as though it had been made of sand.
It became a layer of fine powder on the ground.
Zenitsu's mouth slowly fell open, wide enough to almost fit a fist.
He looked at the pile of powder, then at Sasuke, who was completely unharmed, without even a wrinkle in his clothes. His mind went blank.
That was a boulder...
Not tofu.
Just like that... gone?
A chill shot from the soles of Zenitsu's feet straight to the crown of his head.
His legs buckled, no longer able to support his weight, and he slumped to the ground. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, yet he could not utter a single word.
Up on the slope.
Veins bulged on Jigoro Kuwajima's hand as it gripped his cane, trembling slightly.
Reflected in his eyes were the boulder reduced to powder on the ground and the boy standing motionless beneath the moonlight like a statue.
That was not the Thunder Breathing he had taught.
It was a technique he had never seen before-purer, more efficient, and colder, existing solely for "killing."
Kuwajima let out a deep sigh, turned, and hobbled back to the wooden house.
From behind, he looked impossibly old.
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