The Hand Demon was afraid.
Utter terror, rising from the depths of its soul, seized every inch of its flesh.
The boy before it was unlike any swordsman it had encountered in the past fifty years.
Even at the moment of death, all that burned in those disciples' eyes was anger and defiance.
But there was nothing in this boy's eyes.
No anger, no pity, not even hatred.
Only cold, pure emptiness.
As though he were looking at a bug by the roadside.
No, something beneath even a bug.
He was merely carrying out an action.
An action called "cleansing."
"No... don't come any closer!"
The Hand Demon let out a shrill roar, mingling terror with madness.
It frantically pulled back its remaining arms, along with the dozens it had just regenerated.
All its arms and flesh gathered around its neck, writhing and squeezing together.
Finally, they formed a huge, hideous, tightly sealed ball of flesh.
Its sole weak point, its fragile neck, was wrapped tight at the very center.
This was its last and strongest defensive stance.
It refused to believe that any blade could cleave through this absolute defense of dozens of arms and densely packed muscle.
As long as it could hold out, as long as it could wait until dawn...
Sasuke watched the constantly writhing ball of flesh, his lips curling in utter mockery.
"Foolish."
He slowly took a few steps back, putting distance between them.
Then his hands began forming hand seals again, moving too fast for the naked eye to follow.
Snake-Dragon-Rabbit-Tiger.
"Think you'll be safe just by curling up?"
The Hand Demon heard his voice, but dared not relax in the slightest. Instead, it compressed the ball of flesh even tighter.
It could only hope that this monster would leave on his own after failing to break through its defenses.
But it soon discovered just how terribly wrong it was.
A heat more concentrated and dangerous than the earlier Great Fireball Technique began gathering before Sasuke.
"Fire Release: Dragon Fire Technique!"
With a low shout.
A lifelike dragon of densely concentrated flames roared from his mouth.
The fire dragon circled through the air, then coiled precisely around the enormous ball of flesh with the might to burn everything.
Hiss-!
The pungent stench of scorched protein instantly filled the clearing.
"Aaargh-!!!"
An utterly inhuman, agonized scream erupted from inside the ball of flesh.
Flames were the natural enemy of every defensive stance.
No matter how tightly you wrapped yourself up, the heat would seep through every gap and steam you thoroughly from the inside out.
The Hand Demon felt as though it had been thrown into a giant oven.
Every inch of skin, every muscle twisted and warped beneath the scorching flames, crying out in pain.
It could no longer maintain its defensive stance.
Boom!
The enormous ball of flesh abruptly burst apart.
Dozens of half-cooked arms trailing black smoke flailed wildly in the air, trying to beat out the flames on its body.
The Hand Demon's enormous single eye had turned red and bloodshot from the heat.
It stared at the boy standing beyond the flames, his expression completely unchanged, and at last, only pure despair remained in its eye.
It had been wrong.
What it had provoked was no swordsman at all.
It was a devil in the truest sense, one who commanded flames and lightning.
And this was precisely the opportunity Sasuke seized.
At the very instant the ball of flesh burst apart, leaving a fatal opening in the Hand Demon's defenses.
He slowly raised his left hand.
Chirp, chirp, chirp-!
That clear, piercing sound, like a thousand birds crying out at once, rang out again.
A mass of incomparably brilliant, incomparably violent lightning gathered and took shape in his palm.
The Hand Demon froze.
It recognized this technique.
This was the very technique that had effortlessly torn through its arms minutes earlier.
But this time, the danger it sensed was more than ten times greater.
Because Sasuke did not charge straight at it.
He slowly pressed his lightning-wreathed hand against the pitch-black wakizashi held in his right.
Crackle-!
The violent Lightning Release Chakra surged madly into the blade, as though it had found an outlet.
In an instant, the entire pitch-black wakizashi was enveloped in dazzling, leaping lightning.
The blade trembled and wailed, as though unable to withstand this world-destroying power.
Even the air around its edge warped beneath the powerful electric current.
Chidori Sharp Spear.
Though it was still only an immature prototype.
It was enough to deal with the fiend before him, which had already broken down.
Holding this blade of lightning in one hand, Sasuke slowly raised it toward the sky.
Beneath the moonlight, his figure and the lightning-bright blade formed a tableau of divine punishment.
At the sight, the Hand Demon abandoned all resistance.
It knew everything was over.
All its defenses, all its regenerative abilities, were nothing but a joke before this absolute power.
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