While Shen fought the Kirigakure captain, Nawaki and Nayou each squared off against their own enemies.
"Senpai-level Mighty Punches—continuous!"
Nawaki unleashed a relentless barrage of punches against the Iwagakure captain, striking through layer after layer of earth walls erected in rapid succession.
With those sweeping attacks, he quickly closed the distance between them.
"You're still too young! Take this!" The Iwagakure captain roared as he sent the ground beneath Nawaki's feet surging upward.
Then, clapping both hands together, he reshaped the previously shattered earthen wall into a long spear, thrusting it violently into the sky.
In midair and weightless, Nawaki faced the dense storm of flying earth spears and raised his right hand, launching a powerful punch into empty space.
Amplified by the Strength of a Hundred Seal, the strike rippled through the air itself.
"Boom!"
The shockwave from the massive chakra explosion instantly shattered the incoming earth spears, sending fragments raining down from above.
Still airborne, however, Nawaki knew his danger hadn't passed.
[Earth Release: Earth Dragon Spear!]
Just as Nawaki was about to land, countless jagged stone spikes erupted from the ground below.
"A Senju with nothing but brute strength—how sad to see your decline. You didn't even see through such a basic trick," sneered the Iwagakure captain with a sly grin.
To him, his opponent was just a child—there was no way he could evade what he considered a flawless combination of techniques.
"Don't underestimate the Senju Clan!" shouted Nawaki, raising his right fist high while plummeting toward the sharp stone spikes below.
As Team One broke through the wall, Nayou launched a surprise attack on the stealthy Takigakure captain.
[Earth Style: Mud Wall!]
The Takigakure captain placed both hands on the ground, summoning an earthen wall for defense. He wasn't the least bit surprised to have been spotted.
The Byakugan's 360-degree vision was an ability he'd long wanted to face.
Nayou fired an Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm and vanished in an instant, closing the gap with blinding speed.
Her hands glowed with a purple lion's head shape, and her eyes locked onto two identical enemies ahead.
"A shadow clone, huh? So it's true what Shen said—that every hidden village knows this technique."
Unable to identify the real one with her Byakugan, she made a move toward the leftmost figure.
Realizing her mistake immediately, she spun on the spot, preparing herself.
The Huitian chakra barrier surrounded her, forming a complete shield.
Seeing his thrown shuriken repelled by the Huitian chakra barrier, the Takigakure captain showed no disappointment.
That was exactly his plan—to drain her chakra reserves.
[BOOM][BOOM]
Violent tremors shook the earth, giving Nayou the perfect opportunity to stop rotating and break free from defense.
Feeling that the tremor came from Nawaki's attack, she sprang across the fractured battlefield and charged into close combat against the Takigakure captain.
Just as Nawaki was about to land, Shen—who had been swiftly analyzing the battlefield—found himself in an extremely dangerous situation.
"This won't work. My brain's working fine, but my body's too slow to react!"
He fully activated his Lightning Nature Chakra Mode, yet his retreat speed still couldn't match the opponent's advancing speed.
This wasn't simply about a difference in their speeds. It was similar to a car reversing—naturally, someone moving backward couldn't be as fast as someone charging forward. Added to that was Uchiha Shen's lack of specialized taijutsu training all along, making it impossible for him to outpace his battle-hardened opponent.
"If I dodge left, right, up or down, my hands would get sliced open by his strikes. Forward, these little arms might get completely severed. Backward, I definitely don't have that kind of speed."
The Kumogakure Captain's palm strikes that cut through flesh sent Shen's nerves into high alert.
His powerful analytical abilities let him feel the pain from every cell in his targeted arm.
"Damn it, so this is the true power of a jonin!"
In just a few seconds, Shen had already retreated nearly one hundred meters, slightly regretting why he had come to get involved in this Uzumaki village situation in the first place.
But that was just a fleeting thought; complaining wasn't really his style—not for Uchiha Shen anyway.
"That's right, genjutsu! As long as my Sharingan reaches the three-tomoe stage, I can freely use genjutsu. The people from Kumogakure are big brutes with relatively low resistance to illusions." Driven by his strong will to survive, Shen finally found a countermeasure.
Lord Madara had successfully used genjutsu to make The Fourth Raikage lose control of his body. If it weren't for that elderly flying savior intervening, he'd have been skewered by Susanoo long before.
The number of tomoe in the Sharingan corresponded to different abilities.
This characteristic immediately came back to Shen's mind:
The single tomoe granted powerful observational skills. Since he already possessed this ability, he skipped straight to double tomoe when he first awakened his Sharingan.
The double tomoe granted the ability to copy ninjutsu and rapid thinking capabilities. While he'd already gained the analytical thinking ability (no AI processor could rival the human brain's computing power), the physical control improvements from double tomoe were minimal.
As for the natural genjutsu ability possessed by triple tomoe, it was something he hadn't thoroughly explored yet.
If he hadn't become complacent just because he had the double tomoe Sharingan, he wouldn't have ended up in such danger now.
"At a moment like this, even without evolution? Could it be that my determination isn't enough? Maybe I thought having White Zetsu meant I was immune to death?"
Analyzing the conditions for awakening new abilities, Shen decided to use his special advantage to forcefully advance his Sharingan to the triple tomoe stage.
He immediately started using his processing power to simulate various gruesome deaths from this attack.
Instantly, he began feeling terrible, enduring discomfort while running scenarios. In just one second, he witnessed himself "dying" more than a dozen times.
"No good! I need to add others!" After simulating only three seconds, Shen decided to include "death scenarios" involving Team One.
Immediately, despair engulfed his mind.
"Not enough yet..." When negative emotions reached near-peak levels, he added everyone else he knew.
On the verge of mental overload, his pupils dilated uncontrollably, losing focus completely.
The Kumogakure Captain, already moving at his maximum speed, felt a surge of joy seeing the situation unfold.
Staring into those Sharingan eyes, he seemed to foresee the corpse that would soon be sliced in half by him.
"Swish—"
In the blink of an eye, Shen Uchiha before his eyes was split cleanly in two by his chakra-infused palm strike.
He dissipated the chakra from his hand and immediately reached toward those wide, astonished Sharingan eyes.
"Were you feeling happy just now?"
The split-in-half Shen before him surprisingly supported his upper body with both hands and locked gazes with him.
"You... you're not supposed to still be alive!"
"Then what exactly do you think you're looking at right now?"
"Genjutsu? Let me break it!" The Kumogakure Captain quickly realized.
No matter how hard he tried, even after dozens of desperate attempts, the illusion still refused to break.
A thread of fear immediately rose from deep within his heart.
"What exactly did you do to me?"
"Can you guess?"
The next moment, Shen Uchiha opened his mouth wide — so wide that the flesh tore violently at the corners of his lips, stretching beyond the limits of human anatomy.
"No matter what kind of thing you are, as long as I kill you, it'll be fine!" With these words, the Kumogakure Captain infused chakra into both palms and instantly charged forward toward the horrifying face.
"Shriek!"
The pale-blue palm blade cut Shen's body into pieces one after another.
Yet the bloody chunks rolling onto the ground gradually transformed into grotesque creatures with completely different appearances.
The sight of those dozens of "creatures" sent a jolt of horror straight through the Kumogakure Captain's spine. This sight, entirely alien to him, caused that initial bit of fear inside him to rapidly swell.
"Heheheheh—"
He quickly turned around, only to see an eerie doll-like child holding a small dagger, staring at him with an ominous laugh.
"The slaughter is about to begin~"
At this mischievous voice, like that of a playful child, he was instantly swallowed up by the swarm of monstrous beings.
"Stay away from me! Get back, you monsters!"
The Kumogakure Captain wildly slashed his arms at the dozens of creatures swarming around him.
Panicked, he didn't care whether his attacks would end up hurting his own body.
"It's nightfall. Time to close your eyes."
Seconds later, countless eerie creatures let out laughter in unison.
Meanwhile, the blood-soaked Kumogakure Captain suddenly collapsed into a pool of blood, darkness swallowing him whole.
Could anyone survive after being mentally ravaged like this?
The answer is…
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