Uchiha Ren slashed diagonally with the Zanka no Tachi.
A terrifying sword strike shot forward, stretching from heaven to earth. It looked as though the entire world had been split in two by that single attack.
"Senjutsu: Flying Thunder God — Guiding Thunder!"
Minato Namikaze had originally intended to evade with the Flying Thunder God Technique. But instinctively, he realized something—
If he dodged, that slash might destroy half of Konoha.
So at the last moment, he changed his plan.
Countless sealing formulas appeared in midair before him, forming a special space–time formation.
When Ren 's Ashes of Heaven and Earth collided with the runic barrier, it was as if the strike had cut into a sponge. The attack sank directly into the formation.
But the stalemate lasted less than a second.
Under the terrifying pressure of the slash, the Guiding Thunder formation began collapsing.
"Not good—!"
"Summoning Technique!"
Minato's expression changed drastically. His hands rapidly formed seals before slamming down onto the ground.
BOOM!
A cloud of dense white smoke burst forth.
A gigantic toad the size of a small hill appeared beneath Minato.
"Gamabunta! Use Water Release!"
There was no time for explanation. Minato continued forming hand seals while shouting the command.
The moment Gamabunta appeared, he sensed a life-threatening danger.
After years of fighting together, their coordination was instinctive. Upon hearing Minato's warning, Gamabunta immediately gathered all the chakra in his body and began forming seals.
"Water Release: Toad Oil Bullet!"
At the same time—
"Senjutsu: Wind Release — Tornado Tempest!"
"Combination Ninjutsu — Vacuum Water Tornado Barrier!"
Through the combined efforts of Minato and Gamabunta, a colossal wind-and-water vortex formed instantly, sweeping forward with tremendous force.
At that moment, Ren 's Ashes of Heaven and Earth shattered the remaining defense of Flying Thunder God: Guiding Thunder and collided head-on with the combined technique.
"Gamabunta, retreat!"
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
Seeing that the barrier could only stall the attack temporarily, Minato acted immediately. After giving Gamabunta an order, he created three shadow clones and teleported to four different corners of the training ground using Flying Thunder God.
"Flying Thunder God: Guiding Thunder — Continuous Transfer!"
All four Minatos formed hand seals simultaneously.
Large numbers of sealing formulas appeared out of thin air, enclosing the entire space.
Flash!
At the center of the training ground, a tiny black point suddenly appeared.
The entire surrounding space twisted violently as everything within it began collapsing toward that singular point.
At the same time—
More than ten kilometers outside Konoha, a massive spatial vortex suddenly appeared.
A terrifying torrent of energy erupted from the vortex, annihilating everything across a stretch of land more than ten kilometers long. Even the ground itself was shaved away by several meters.
"Whew…"
Minato let out a long breath.
His legs went weak, and he collapsed directly onto the ground.
The three shadow clones burst into smoke and disappeared.
"Did you really have to push yourself that hard?" Ren 's voice sounded beside him.
"You know that running out of chakra can kill you."
Ren appeared beside Minato with a flicker, shaking his head.
Minato glared at him angrily.
"Ren , you went too far this time!"
"If I hadn't blocked that strike, the whole village might have been destroyed!"
Minato was genuinely furious.
Ren clicked his tongue and explained calmly,
"Didn't you notice that my slash was angled upward?"
"If you hadn't tried to block it head-on, the attack would have flown into the sky."
"At most, it would've destroyed the training ground."
Minato froze.
After replaying the moment in his mind, he realized Ren was right.
Because he had been standing so close—and the slash had been aimed at him—the pressure had been overwhelming. He had focused entirely on the power of the attack and overlooked its trajectory.
Minato gave a wry smile.
"Sorry… looks like I overreacted."
"Not overreacting—self-inflicted trouble," Ren replied, shaking his head.
"And when you go home, don't tell Kushina I beat you up like this."
"I'm not taking the blame for that."
Honestly, Minato was extremely difficult to deal with.
With the Flying Thunder God Technique, almost no one in the world could trap him unless he made a fatal mistake.
But ironically, Konoha itself had become Minato's greatest weakness.
If someone wanted to defeat him, they only needed to repeatedly launch large-scale destructive attacks at the village.
Minato would be forced to protect Konoha at all costs, eventually exhausting all his chakra.
Just like now.
In order to protect the village, Minato had spared no effort to redirect the attack outside Konoha.
If Ren had harbored ill intentions, the chakra-depleted Minato would now be completely helpless.
Minato gave another bitter smile.
"Don't worry. I'm fine."
"I just used too much chakra. I'll recover after resting."
Even as he said that, his face looked extremely pale, and he seemed exhausted to the extreme.
Chakra was formed from a person's physical energy and spiritual energy.
Completely exhausting it could be life-threatening, and even heavy depletion could damage the body.
This was one reason why shinobi generally had shorter lifespans than ordinary people.
"You should take a look at yourself before saying that," Ren replied.
He didn't dwell on the topic further and instead continued:
"Minato, your strength is already impressive—but your weaknesses are just as obvious."
"You need to develop stronger offensive techniques and find a way to compensate for your low chakra reserves."
From Ren 's perspective, Minato was like a low-attack assassin.
Most shinobi were fragile, so Minato's weakness wasn't obvious.
But if he ever had to face enemies like the Ōtsutsuki, Minato's attacks might not even break their defenses.
And what kind of assassin can't break through an enemy's defense?
Of course, part of this problem came from Minato's chakra capacity not being particularly outstanding.
The Flying Thunder God Technique itself consumed large amounts of chakra. The larger the object teleported, the greater the chakra cost.
Because Minato specialized in Flying Thunder God, he rarely had spare chakra to perform large-scale destructive ninjutsu.
Minato himself was well aware of this.
That was why he had worked so hard to develop the Rasengan.
But compared with the countless variations of Rasengan his future son Naruto Uzumaki would later create, Minato's original version seemed somewhat limited.
Minato nodded thoughtfully.
"I actually already have some ideas."
He thought about his previous experiments attempting to add chakra nature transformation into the Rasengan.
It seemed he would need to dedicate more time to turning that idea into reality.
"As long as you know what you're doing."
Ren suddenly glanced in a certain direction.
"Someone's coming."
"I'll leave the cleanup to you."
Having sensed several presences rapidly approaching, Ren lost interest in continuing the conversation.
After giving a brief farewell, his figure vanished from the spot.
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