Time seemed to truly stop when they noticed the dark red tomoe slowly turning in Yinglang's eye.
The wind on the training ground stopped. The children's gasps caught in their throats, and even the paths of the sunlight seemed to grow thick and slow.
Every gaze converged on that small fist.
Kagami Uchiha's fist, carrying a sharp rush of wind and icy anger, had frozen barely an inch from Yinglang's forehead, unable to advance any farther.
The coldness and murderous intent on Kagami's face cracked and collapsed like ice shattered by a sledgehammer, revealing an almost absurd, uncomprehending shock beneath.
The pupils of his Sharingan, which also bore tomoe, contracted sharply as he locked onto that mark in Yinglang's eye... a mark that should never have appeared at this moment.
He stared fixedly at the tomoe in Yinglang's eye, his pupils contracting from overwhelming shock.
No... impossible...
What kind of joke was this?!
He was only five! Awakening his eyes at five? In all of Uchiha history...
Looking at his shocked face, Yinglang slowly spread his lips into a smile. There was no innocence or pretense in it, only a calm sharpness with even a hint of mockery.
"Surprised, young master Kagami?" he said softly. His voice was quiet, yet it drove into everyone's ears like a nail. "The power of the Sharingan..."
He paused, looking at Kagami's eyes, which also bore tomoe and trembled slightly with shock, then said each word with perfect clarity:
"I have it too."
The instant those words fell, Yinglang moved.
Under the Sharingan's gaze, the path of Yinglang's backward dodge was perfectly clear.
Kagami snapped out of his shock. Rather than drawing back his fist, he suddenly accelerated his downward strike!
So what if you have the Sharingan? In how long I've had these eyes and how well I control them, I'm far above you!
But the instant his fist accelerated, Yinglang's backward lean suddenly changed.
It was not a dodge.
Using the momentum of his backward lean, Yinglang let his entire body fall back as though he had no bones. At the same time, his right foot swept silently upward, toes pointed, striking the inside of Kagami's punching wrist with absolute precision.
Smack!
His wrist went numb, and his punch veered off course, blasting past Yinglang's ear and striking empty air.
Just as Yinglang's body was nearly parallel to the ground, he planted both hands behind him and engaged his waist and abdomen. Like a spring, he bounced up from an unbelievable angle, flipped through the air, and landed three paces away, coming to a steady stop.
The entire sequence flowed seamlessly, strange and unpredictable, completely defying conventional ways of generating force. Even Kagami's Sharingan had only "seen" the movements, without fully "predicting" their path.
Kagami withdrew his fist and steadied himself, his chest heaving as he looked at the "child" opposite him, whose One-Tomoe Sharingan was likewise awakened and whose presence had completely changed.
After the shock came a deeper coldness and... a trace of wariness that even he refused to acknowledge.
Awakening his eyes at five. Talent that defied all reason...
No! It wasn't just talent!
That evasive counterattack just now, his control over his body, his grasp of timing...
This guy had been playing around from the very beginning!
"Very good." Kagami slowly uttered the words, his voice ice-cold. He wasted no more words, rapidly forming hand seals before his chest-though there were only a few simple seals, using ninjutsu during the assessment was already exceedingly rare.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
He opened his mouth and spat out a scorching fireball, its diameter fully half a person's height, which roared toward Yinglang!
The assessment rules prohibited lethal moves, but the Great Fireball was a basic Uchiha ninjutsu. As long as it was properly controlled and did not hit directly, it did not count as a violation.
He would force out this brat's trump cards and see just how much more he was hiding!
The fireball rushed in fiercely, a wave of heat blasting toward him.
Cries of alarm rose from the sidelines. No one had expected Kagami to be forced into using ninjutsu!
Yinglang watched the rapidly enlarging fireball, the tomoe in his Sharingan slowly turning.
The fireball's trajectory, the flow of chakra, and even the most unstable "point" at its core were all reflected clearly in his eyes.
He neither formed hand seals nor dodged.
He merely raised his right hand and reached toward his waist-where his ninja tool pouch hung.
Just before the fireball swallowed him, he flicked his wrist, and three shuriken appeared between his fingers.
This was no ordinary throw.
With the Sharingan's insight, he silently attached an extremely faint yet highly condensed strand of chakra to the rear of each shuriken, using the same fine control as "forcing sound into a thread." They became three chakra threads finer than hair, completely invisible to the naked eye, connected to his fingers.
Then he flicked his hand.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The three shuriken shot out in a triangular formation, not toward the fireball, but toward three positions ahead of its flight path: left, right, and above.
Kagami's Sharingan clearly caught the shuriken's trajectories, and he sneered inwardly. Trying to intercept the fireball or alter its course with shuriken? Naive! The Great Fireball's force and heat could melt ordinary shuriken in an instant.
Yet in the next second, his sneer froze on his face.
The three shuriken, which had already flown past the space before Yinglang and seemed about to miss, suddenly paused strangely in midair. Then they traced three sharp arcs that defied the laws of physics, plunging into the scorching fireball from three directions at once!
Rather than striking it, they seemed to "drill" into it.
Under the fine control of the chakra threads, the three shuriken precisely struck several critical nodes in the flow of chakra inside the fireball, especially that most unstable "core point."
Pff-!
A muffled sound rang out. The imposing Great Fireball shuddered violently in midair, then twisted and swelled like a punctured bubble before bursting with a boom into scattered sparks and chaotic air currents that rapidly dissipated.
Meanwhile, the three shuriken passed through the aftermath of the explosion. Guided by the chakra threads, they traced three graceful arcs and, with three soft taps, landed securely in the open palm of Yinglang, who had just lowered his hand.
Silence.
Deathly silence.
Everyone, including Tetsu Uchiha and the children who had just been terrified by the Great Fireball, stared slack-jawed into the field.
They stared at the five-year-old child holding three shuriken in one hand, standing amid the fading sparks and hot wind.
They stared at the dark red tomoe slowly revolving in his eye.
They stared at the expression on his face, so calm it bordered on indifference.
Shuriken... could fly out... and then fly back on their own?
Just what kind of technique was this? The Uchiha records had never mentioned a jutsu for controlling shuriken like this!
Kagami stood where he was, looking at the three shuriken in Yinglang's palm, then raised his head to meet the Sharingan watching him calmly. His whole body went cold.
Was I... going to lose to him?
Yinglang bounced the shuriken in his palm, raised his eyes toward the pale-faced Kagami, and suddenly spoke, his voice carrying clearly across the field:
"This move is called 'Ninja Art: Shadow Clone Shuriken Technique'! It took me three months to develop."
That was actually a lie to fool Kagami. Yinglang had only just thought of it, merely making clever use of some of the principles behind Wind and Lightning Release: Cross Flying Blades, but it still left Kagami thoroughly astonished.
Yinglang looked at Kagami, tilted his head, and curled his lips as he asked:
"Still want to fight, young master Kagami Uchiha?"
Before you continue