Chapter 132
2-in-1-chapter
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Clang!
A clear, ringing note of steel echoed. Shisui, flung upward as though struck by a hammer, was sent soaring even faster. His beloved short blade, one he had carried for years, snapped cleanly in two.
The razor edge of the hidden sword missed by a hair's breadth, grazing his cheek as it streaked into the sky. With the heightened vision of the Sharingan, he even saw the fine hairs sliced from his own skin drifting in the air.
His left hand flashed through seals, and in the next moment Shisui used Body Flicker to reappear on the reefs below. From there he could clearly see the weapon: a gleaming longsword that had thrust upward through the serpent's head, almost skewering him along with it. That blade was lethally sharp.
He glanced at the broken remnant of his short sword. Years of use, ended in an instant.
It had been cut through by that double-edged longsword.
Boom!
Orochimaru released the Summoning Technique. The dead serpent vanished back to Ryūchi Cave as a corpse. The other serpents burrowing underground were likewise dismissed. When the cover of the snakes dissipated, Shisui finally saw Orochimaru himself—mouth open, a serpent extending outward, the serpent's mouth stretching into a blade.
That blade, already extended to a tremendous length, swiftly contracted and was drawn back into the serpent's gullet. Orochimaru then closed his mouth and swallowed the serpent whole.
The sight made Shisui frown deeply.
It was grotesque.
And yet, setting aside the disgust it inspired, Orochimaru's abilities truly lived up to the name of one of the Legendary Sannin. His bizarre, unfathomable techniques posed no small trouble even for Shisui.
"Why, Shisui? Have you given up already? Didn't you say you were going to drag me back to Konoha? Just standing there won't put me in your village's prison." Orochimaru stood smiling atop a jagged reef, his golden eyes glinting with mockery. "Since you don't intend to come to me, I'll just come to you."
He sneered and once again parted his jaws, performing his grotesque snake trick. From his mouth a serpent slithered out, and from that serpent's maw slid the blade of a single-edged katana. Unlike the earlier double-edged longsword that could extend indefinitely, this was a true katana with a single sharp edge.
Shisui kept his composure. He did not move rashly, but his scarlet eyes never left Orochimaru as the man advanced with the sword in hand. The reason he remained still was simple—there were three Orochimaru approaching him.
After drawing out the blade, Orochimaru had used a cloning technique, making it impossible to distinguish which body was real.
Swish!
One of the Orochimaru suddenly flicked his arm, hurling the katana like a kunai. Shisui frowned, then swung the half-length wakizashi in his hand, deflecting three blades into the crashing surf.
Two burst into smoke as they struck, clearly false weapons born from the clones. Only one was real, and when the waves rolled in again, that katana had already vanished beneath the sea.
Meanwhile, the Orochimaru who had raced across the surf to the line where water met sand suddenly halted. His hands moved even as his legs did, completing a string of seals. Orochimaru inhaled deeply and exhaled with a snap, spitting a storm of wind bullets that whistled like rifle fire.
Each shot punched craters into the reefs behind Shisui, leaving the stone pitted like honeycomb. More than a dozen holes gaped across the rocks, the sea hissing through them.
Had it not been for Shisui's unmatched mastery of the Body Flicker Technique, he would already have been torn to shreds in that deadly barrage.
Wind Style: Vacuum Bullets.
A mere C-rank jutsu, but both Wind Style and Fire Style were known for destructive power. And this one was being wielded by Orochimaru of the Legendary Sannin. Such devastation was only natural. To him, however, this was little more than an opening exchange, an appetizer before the main performance.
The true display came next. Orochimaru and his two clones unleashed a storm of ninjutsu in tandem. Water, lightning, fire, and earth, joined with wind—every elemental nature was summoned in sequence.
The onslaught was like a tempest, leveling nearly the entire reef field until only a few scattered rocks remained, jutting up from the waves far out from the shoreline.
Shisui took in the battlefield at a glance. Orochimaru was deliberately driving him into the sea. But what difference did it make? For any shinobi who had graduated even a year or two ago, Water Walking was a basic technique as essential as breathing.
Or had he overlooked something?
His thoughts were cut short as Orochimaru and his clones skimmed across the water toward him. Shisui tightened his grip on his broken blade. He still had kunai in his weapons pouch, but he was used to fighting with a sword.
This shortened wakizashi was nearly the same length as a kunai, and far more familiar in his hand. Better to keep it.
Not that a weapon would matter much longer. The crimson in his eyes deepened, the three tomoe spinning with such force that his visual power was already surpassing that of an ordinary three-tomoe Sharingan, without yet shifting into another form.
Orochimaru reached the reef and lashed out again with Hidden Shadow Snake Hands. Venomous snakes shot forward in a feint, while the other two closed in from the flanks. One formed seals and commanded the sea itself to surge down upon Shisui in a crushing wave, while the other loosed another Wind Style: Vacuum Wave, splitting the rock beneath his feet.
"You are not the one."
Shisui leapt into the air, his gaze locking on the Orochimaru before him. Genjutsu: Shackling Stakes activated in silence. One snake clone faltered instantly as the genjutsu invaded, disrupting its chakra balance. It collapsed into a writhing mass of serpents that splashed into the sea.
"Nor you."
It had taken only a heartbeat to destroy the frontal clone. Shisui turned his head slightly toward the one on the left, whose wind technique had just torn through the reef. Another illusion struck, and that clone too burst apart into snakes.
"And you are not, either."
The one on the right, controlling water, dissolved the same way. Still only a clone.
The next moment, a hand clamped onto Shisui's ankle, pulling him down. Orochimaru's head emerged from the sea, his neck lengthening unnaturally like a serpent. His mouth spread into a grin as he opened it once more, snake upon snake spilling forth, a blade gleaming between their fangs. Shisui, caught by the leg, could not Body Flicker away this time.
And from behind, a katana glinted as it rose silently from the sea and darted for his back.
"Got you."
But the voice was not Orochimaru's. The one with his mouth stuffed with snakes could not have spoken.
It was Shisui who said it.
He looked down at the blade that had drawn so close, his face showing no fear. In that instant, Orochimaru saw only crimson—the endless scarlet of the Sharingan consuming his vision!
Caw—caw—!
The sudden cries of crows tore through the air. A flock that had long been silent now swooped down, crashing into the flying katana and knocking its course askew. The weapon pierced Shisui's shoulder instead of his heart, blood scattering into the sea spray.
Painful, but not fatal.
The chain of traps and counters reached its conclusion. Shisui had seized the smallest of victories. By sacrificing his shoulder, he had caught Orochimaru's true body in genjutsu. As Orochimaru froze, his body locked and unable to move, Shisui regarded him with a strange expression.
Was Orochimaru's resistance to illusions really this weak?
Had he known, he would have used genjutsu from the very start.
...........
....
.
The crimson eyes resembled a blood-soaked abyss. Orochimaru shifted his gaze, and out of the corner of his vision he saw the massive metal stakes driven through his body, which had surfaced above the sea. He knew with certainty that this was genjutsu, an illusion, something false—yet he still could not sense any control over his own body.
His consciousness remained intact, his thoughts sharp and active, but his body refused to respond to his will.
Those countless metal stakes bore an impossible, overwhelming force that completely suppressed the command of his spiritual awareness over his flesh, leaving him incapable of any resistance. This puzzled Orochimaru. It was not as though he had never crossed blades with the Uchiha before.
Could the three-tomoe Sharingan truly be this powerful?
By his strength, there was no reason he should be subdued so easily. It was true that genjutsu was not his specialty, but in order to contend with enemies who excelled in it, he had poured great effort into studying methods of breaking illusions. He had even tested these countermeasures against masters of the Uchiha clan, proving them effective.
Was Uchiha Shisui's genjutsu simply too strong? Or was something wrong within himself?
"What a magnificent and exquisite dōjutsu. To think that I would be caught by such a binding illusion."
Though his mouth still held the Sword of Kusanagi in the stance of Snake Sword, making speech impossible, his mind was unrestrained. In fact, his thoughts surged with unprecedented activity, excitement surging so intensely that it even eclipsed the fear of death.
"So this is the power of the Sharingan… What a beautiful and formidable force this is."
In his pursuit of eternal life he required vessels, flesh that could bear his soul, tools to grant him immortality. And now, in this moment, he had discovered the most perfect vessel of all—the Uchiha.
The Sharingan, with its beauty and its overwhelming might, was utterly captivating.
Even if his Living Corpse Reincarnation carried the inherent weakness of soul exhaustion, that did not mean just anyone's genjutsu could restrain him. His own flaws did nothing to diminish the Sharingan's greatness.
Curse those decrepit old fools of the Uchiha clan—wasting the eye's potential, making him underestimate its true worth. Sitting upon a mountain of treasure yet failing to dig deep, they forced him to seek far and wide for meager scraps.
But now that he knew, it was not too late.
"Your spiritual awareness is flawed."
Shisui gazed at Orochimaru, his scarlet eyes as though they had pierced every layer of him.
"Your consciousness and body are misaligned… is this the result of a forbidden technique? The reason it is called forbidden is because it cuts both ways. It harms others, but it also wounds oneself." These words were not directed to Orochimaru but rather spoken as a reminder to himself.
Indulgence in forbidden arts never came without unseen costs.
Orochimaru, in his state, had become a living lesson for Shisui.
At the same time, Shisui shifted the broken short blade from his right hand to his left. His right shoulder had been pierced through by Orochimaru's hidden sword from beneath the sea, leaving that arm incapable of movement. He would have to wield the blade with his left hand to end Orochimaru's life.
His earlier words about sending Orochimaru to Konoha's prison had been nothing more than deception. Capturing alive a renegade of such extreme danger was far too troublesome.
He also disliked relying on the power of Kotoamatsukami to cleanse or rewrite another's will. Moreover, he had noticed that Orochimaru's obsession with forbidden techniques had left his spirit deeply compromised, his consciousness carrying an indescribable strangeness.
Rather than risk transporting him all the way back to Konoha, it was far cleaner to execute him here and now.
After all, for a villain as steeped in sin as Orochimaru, killing him was simply killing him.
Thus, without hesitation, Shisui swung his blade at Orochimaru's unnaturally elongated, pallid neck. To ensure Orochimaru could not break free from the illusion, Shisui refrained from enhancing the strike with Wind Style chakra.
The plain steel alone was enough to bring the execution to its conclusion.
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