Staring at Saiki, who had successfully paralyzed the enemy with fear, Shinku Yuhi let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Although Saiki was a child, his absolute power made him the anchor of the battlefield. Shinku decided to focus on staying alive so he didn't become a burden.
In truth, Shinku was never in danger. Saiki was keeping a constant eye on him; if Kurenai's father died because of his presence, he'd never be able to face her again.
Seeing the Cloud ninja hesitating to attack, Saiki's blade flared with renewed intensity.
He pushed off the ground, leaving a crater behind. A Cloud ninja, momentarily distracted by a fight further away, found Saiki standing directly in front of him.
CLANG!
The man's reaction wasn't slow, but he was moving through molasses compared to Saiki. He raised his katana in a desperate block, but the steel didn't hold for a single microsecond.
With a sharp CRACK, Saiki's chakra-vibrating blade sliced through the enemy's sword as if it were made of cheap glass.
The momentum didn't slow. Saiki's blade continued its arc, buried deep into the man's chest.
Squelch!
As they passed each other, blood sprayed into the air. The Cloud ninja, who was nearly twice Saiki's height, collapsed wordlessly into the mud.
Saiki loathed wasting words, but seeing the Cloud's reaction, he couldn't help but sigh. "Fearless brutes? You can't even keep your head in the game in the middle of a war."
He turned his gaze back to the scattered survivors.
Saiki had wide-area "screen-clearing" jutsu, but they were massive chakra sinks. Wasting energy wasn't in the nature of a cautious survivalist like him.
Whether Konoha won or lost mattered little; staying safe and keeping his sword wet was the goal.
"Is this all the Cloud has to offer?"
Seeing the men trying to back away, Saiki taunted them with a cold smile.
The most powerful jutsu in this world was undoubtedly "Talk-no-Jutsu." Hearing Saiki's mockery and seeing the blatant disdain in his eyes, the Cloud ninja's tactical retreat turned into a blinding rage.
Saiki had no loyalty to the Leaf, but these men had been raised in the Cloud. Insulting their village was an unforgivable sin. It was their religion, their reason for being in this war.
"You little brat! You've gone too far!"
"Ignorant child! You kill a few of our brothers and think you're a god?"
"He's too fast! We need to surround him! I don't care how fast he is, he can't escape a circle of twenty men!"
"Kill him! Tear that arrogant bastard to pieces! Show him the price of insulting the Cloud!"
Mockery had worked perfectly. Their fear was gone, replaced by a suicidal determination to kill Saiki at any cost.
"GO!"
A Cloud ninja finished a sequence of signs and issued the command. The entire unit lunged at Saiki simultaneously.
Seeing the leader weave signs, Saiki braced for a powerful offensive jutsu. But nothing happened.
Well, not exactly nothing. He felt the chakra circulating in his body flicker for a split second under the influence of his Pre-natal Qi.
"Genjutsu?"
He realized instantly what they had tried. Unfortunately for them, his Qi acted as a permanent anchor; he was functionally immune to illusions.
To catch Saiki in a Genjutsu, you'd need Shisui's Kotoamatsukami or the Infinite Tsukuyomi itself.
Now that he had officially "entered the Dao," even the ultimate Tsukuyomi would likely fail against his stabilized spirit.
The Cloud weren't entirely stupid. They had planned for one man to use an illusion to freeze Saiki in place while the fastest among them delivered the killing blow.
In the second they thought they had won, Saiki—who had "frozen" for a heartbeat to analyze the feel of the illusion—struck again.
Lightning flared as Saiki blitzed the Genjutsu user at a speed that made their charge look like it was in slow motion.
The man was still holding his seal, expecting Saiki to be paralyzed. He didn't even have time to reach for his sword.
Squelch!
A clean decapitation. The head spun through the air several times before hitting the dirt, followed shortly by the body.
"Dammit! Kill him! KILL HIM!"
Seeing their specialist executed so easily didn't scare them this time; it only fueled their bloodlust. This child had taken too many of their brothers. They were past the point of reason.
Facing the raging mob, Saiki didn't panic. Holding his sword in his right hand, he used his left to weave a rapid, one-handed sequence of signs.
His Flower-Flower powers had allowed him to practice thousands of seals simultaneously in his mind; one-handed signing was child's play for him now.
Since they tried to play the illusion game, Saiki decided to show them how a master did it.
"Huh? What's happening?!"
"Why is it so dark?! I can't see anything!"
"AAH! I'm blind! I can't see my own hands!"
The aggressive charge turned into a scene of pure, unadulterated panic.
"Bringer-of-Darkness Jutsu." This was a technique Saiki had stolen from Tobirama Senju's scrolls. It manifested a localized zone of absolute, metaphysical darkness that erased the enemy's sense of sight.
In this void, only the caster and their allies remained unaffected. It was a jutsu specifically designed by the Second Hokage to slaughter the Uchiha.
It was already night, and the ambient light was low. The jutsu worked perfectly, stripping away the final shred of visual feedback the Cloud ninja had.
In this darkness, even sensory jutsu were dampened and distorted.
Ninja master many skills, but very few train to fight with their eyes closed. The slaughter began in earnest.
Squelch! Squelch! Squelch!
Saiki became a bolt of lightning dancing through the void. Everywhere he passed, blood painted the grass and screams filled the night.
The Cloud had the numbers, but in the dark, numbers were just more targets. Usually, a three-man Leaf squad would be fighting five or six Cloud ninja.
Had it not been for the terrain and the fact that the front was held by Leaf elites, the village would have fallen already.
This was why Shinku Yuhi hadn't come to help Saiki; he was busy trying not to die against his own group of enemies.
However, as the chorus of pained howls grew too loud to ignore, someone else on the battlefield finally took notice.
"STOP RIGHT THERE!"
A thunderous roar echoed across the plains, drowning out the sounds of steel.
Saiki looked up to see a silhouette wreathed in crackling black electricity hurtling toward him. He moved like a bolt of black lightning, covering a hundred meters in a heartbeat.
Saiki wasn't naturally bloodthirsty, but this was war. Facing the incoming threat, he didn't stop. He accelerated, cutting down the last of the blinded Cloud survivors.
"I SAID STOP!"
BOOM!
The black silhouette leaped into the air and slammed into the ground like a meteor. The impact shattered Saiki's Bringer-of-Darkness zone and carved a massive crater into the earth.