Chapter 180: Ultimate Power
The result of the clash between the kunai and the ice blade was completely beyond Sasuke's expectations.
The moment the two collided, the Ice Style nature transformation chakra attached to the ice blade was transferred over, rapidly lowering the kunai's temperature to an extremely low degree, causing its toughness to drop dramatically in an instant. Then Sasuke watched in astonishment as, after a second of confrontation, the ice blade shattered the kunai into a pile of iron slag, as if cutting glass!
He subconsciously leaped back a big step, only then remembering that the one who had cut his kunai was not Kimimaro, but his teammate Sakura. The latter would clearly not actually cut him.
The girl covered her mouth, squinting her eyes as she smiled. "Why such a big reaction? Were you scared?"
Sasuke shook his head, not mentioning the incident where Kimimaro had cut his kunai with a bone blade and had almost seriously injured him.
He just said with lingering fear, "It's nothing. I just find it very strange."
Sasuke briefly explained.
He had noticed the abnormality of the ice blade just now and had infused his kunai with a large amount of chakra to strengthen it, but it was to no avail—after all, at that temperature, the strength of steel was not much stronger than a block of tofu, so no matter how much it was enhanced with chakra, it was impossible to compete in hardness with an ice blade that had a Mohs hardness of 7 or even 8.
Comparing steel to a block of tofu was not an exaggeration. In fact, when the temperature drops to more than two hundred degrees below zero, ordinary steel will become even more fragile than a potato chip!
And for Haruno Sakura, who could bring the Ice Style nature transformation to its extreme, this temperature was just a matter of consuming a little more chakra...
"This is the 'cold brittleness' you were talking about, right?" Sasuke asked, shaking his hand. The chill from the kunai had transferred to his palm, making it numb.
"Hn." Sakura nodded. The so-called low-temperature brittleness of metal was just that.
In principle, the yield strength of some metals—that is, the limit of the force a metal will use to try and return to its original shape when you slightly bend it—will increase sharply as the temperature decreases, while the breaking strength does not change much with the decrease in temperature.
This means that when the temperature drops to a certain critical point, the yield strength will increase to be higher than the breaking strength, so that when a collision occurs, the metal will have already fractured before it deforms, much like glass. This is the so-called becoming brittle.
"It's not just metal. In fact, basically all materials will lose their toughness at low temperatures," Sakura added.
Sasuke pinched the cuff of his sleeve. It had accidentally brushed against the ice blade just now and had now become hard and brittle. He just gave it a light squeeze, and it shattered into pieces.
"So if you unleash the full power of your Ice Style, the effect will also be quite considerable, right?" he said, rubbing the fragments of his sleeve, his brows furrowed. "When facing Ice Style, one must fight with extreme caution. Not only can you get frostbite if you're not careful, but even the weapons and equipment in your hands, in a moment of carelessness, can come into contact with your ice chakra and become abnormally fragile. This is especially true for close-combat ninja; it's very easy for a weapon to suddenly break, and then you'll be screwed by her..."
"Tsk, Ice Style is really insidious!" the Sharingan youth finally concluded. Speaking of which, Sasuke only then realized that he was the first one to be tricked by it.
Haruno Sakura smiled faintly.
Although she preferred to pursue powerful frontal combat abilities, being able to occasionally trick an enemy was also a good diversion, just like the Ice Clone and the Ice Dart Explosion Technique.
Especially now that the Yuki clan had gradually disappeared into the currents of history, most of the ninja of the current generation lacked experience in fighting Ice Style ninja and probably didn't know that Ice Style had such an effect.
The effect, at least in a battle at the level of Kimimaro and Sasuke, could still produce a miraculous result.
Of course, Sakura's goal was the Kage-level, and for an enemy of that level, this was probably just a petty trick...
Just like her using the Swallow Snowstorm to cast the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, it was paying too much attention to detail, too petty, and not necessarily effective.
It was hard to imagine that figures like Orochimaru and Jiraiya would be flustered because the weapon in their hand had suddenly failed.
The truly grand approach was still to create some exquisite and effective ninjutsu, like using the Cold Frost Ice Funeral to set the stage for the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals.
For example, like learning from Sasuke's Chidori Battle-Suit and also creating a Frost Armor?
This was not difficult, especially since she already had an Ice Style armor ninjutsu that imitated the Land of Snow's armor. As long as she improved it a bit and added the Ice Style's nature transformation to it...
This ninjutsu could already be used in actual combat, but it was a pity that it didn't match very well with the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals for the time being, because this kind of armor still hindered her movements somewhat and would affect the high-speed combat tactics of the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals.
When she was fighting the Sound Four and Kimimaro, that jutsu had never been put to use: the former was because she didn't need to use this ninjutsu to deal with the Sound Four at all, and the latter was because in that kind of extreme-speed combat, wearing this suit of armor would slightly affect her speed, and this slightest of differences was a fatal wound in that frenzied Body Flicker battle.
To integrate the ice armor into her tactical system, it would have to be greatly modified, changing it from a full-coverage type to a vital-point defense. All modifications had to be based on the principle that the armor would not affect her movement at all. After all, the ice armor had the existence of a physical ice block, while the lightning cloak was a purely energy-state defensive ninjutsu.
With Haruno Sakura's personality, the Frost Armor would certainly not be the end of Ice Style. In the low-temperature and ultra-low-temperature aspects, there was still a lot of content that could be explored.
For example, after lowering the temperature to more than a hundred degrees below zero, the air would be liquefied or even solidified into liquid and solid by the low temperature, forming liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, etc. In a closed environment, this move could quickly reduce the air density and cause the enemy to suffocate...
Going even lower, one could also discover Bose-Einstein condensate phenomena such as superconductivity and superfluidity.
Until the temperature was lowered to near absolute zero, then one could touch what might be the largest source of energy in the universe, the vacuum zero-point energy.
This energy, every cubic meter of space, contains 10^113 joules.
With a little calculation, one would know that the space occupied by Haruno Sakura's whole person contained enough spatial energy to burn the Naruto planet... 3 x 10^99 times!
Then again, in the world of Naruto, it seemed she couldn't use such a huge amount of energy.
On the contrary, the ultimate power of Water Style was very suitable for her to crush all ninjutsu and ninja. Presumably, once that kind of energy was unleashed, even the Sage of the Six Paths would not be its opponent.
And that kind of energy, she knew far more deeply than the vacuum zero-point energy...
In fact, while recovering from her injuries these past few days, she had been pondering this very matter.
And that was... the so-called nuclear fusion energy.
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