Chapter 425: Missed Opportunity
"How is this possible?"
"Why did the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star fail?"
"This can't be happening?"
Naruto and Sasuke got up, ignoring the injuries on their bodies, their faces filled with terror as they looked at Li Yao, who was still unharmed high in the sky.
"What happened?"
"Why didn't it succeed?"
Sasuke's face was blank, and his usual calm, cool demeanor was gone. He was somewhat... at a loss.
Naruto felt the same as Sasuke. Neither of them could accept the failure of the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique.
After coming out of the Pure Land space, the Six Paths Sage had given them the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique, which was their greatest assurance to defeat Li Yao.
Both Naruto and Sasuke knew how powerful Li Yao's space ninjutsu was, and only the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique, which could seal space, would guarantee a killing blow to Li Yao.
For this reason, when Sasuke electrocuted Li Yao's consciousness into a state of confusion with his lightning, Sasuke had the chance to condense lightning and strike Li Yao's head, and Naruto also had the opportunity to strike Li Yao's head with the Truth-Seeking Ball before his consciousness recovered.
However, because they were wary of the possibility that Li Yao might have a spatial intangibility ability like Obito's to dodge the attack, thus losing this rare opportunity, and to ensure they could completely remove Li Yao as a threat, both chose to use the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique, not giving Li Yao any chance of escaping.
But now!
They had finally found the chance to use the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique on Li Yao.
And the result was what it was now.
Neither of them could accept it.
If they had failed to hit Li Yao with the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique, that would have been one thing.
But they had clearly hit him with the technique, and yet Li Yao had somehow used an unknown space ninjutsu to break it.
The sheer strength of Li Yao's direct counter to the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique left both of them in despair, unable to accept their earlier choice.
In their minds, they kept wondering.
What if they had directly condensed the lightning or used the Truth-Seeking Ball to attack Li Yao's head? Would that have been better? Would they have killed Li Yao instantly?
While they couldn't accept the outcome, regret welled up in both of them.
In truth, they should have regretted it.
"Ha..."
"Ha..."
In the sky, Li Yao's dark purple chakra flickered. His illusory form was in a state of exhaustion, one hand clutching his chest as he breathed heavily.
"That was close!"
"I almost died!"
Li Yao's eyes, filled with lingering fear, flashed as he was thankful to still be alive.
This time, he truly had a second chance at life.
Li Yao was very fortunate. To maintain his chakra reserves during the battle, he had improved the Time Reset ninjutsu to be passively triggered. Every few seconds, it would automatically trigger, allowing his body and mind to return to their peak condition.
When Li Yao was struck by Sasuke's lightning, which contained the Six Paths Yin Release power, and his consciousness fell into confusion, the Time Reset ninjutsu was triggered at that very moment.
Li Yao's body and mind reset, and his consciousness woke up from the confused state.
The moment his consciousness returned, Li Yao instinctively used the Flying Thunder God technique to teleport away. However, the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique had already locked the space, sealing off his escape route.
At that moment, Li Yao couldn't think, and his instincts led him to use his most reliable defensive ninjutsu, the time-space ninjutsu—Time-Space Mirage!
At that very moment, Naruto and Sasuke's hands had already touched Li Yao's cheeks, and the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique's seal had been placed on him.
In that instant, all the chakra in Li Yao's body entered a state of complete stillness, like space freezing into ice. Li Yao's body and chakra were completely immobilized, awaiting the fate of being sealed.
Fortunately!
Li Yao was saved just in time.
Fortunately, at that very moment, Li Yao's time-space ninjutsu—Time-Space Mirage—was successfully activated.
In an instant.
Li Yao, whose body was about to be turned into a core of space and subjected to the endless gravitational forces of the space sealing, entered another time-space in that split second.
It seemed as though he was still in place, but in reality, it was like the moon in the water or a flower in a mirror—visible yet unreachable.
As a result, the spatial gravity nodes that had been placed on Li Yao, gathering endless spatial power, could only spin in place, unable to locate Li Yao's true body.
In the end, without Li Yao's body as the vessel to gather the spatial power, the explosion occurred, and the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique failed.
From this, one could clearly see.
Space abilities are domineering, and truly unsolvable.
But time-space abilities are even more domineering, even more unsolvable.
If it weren't for the Time-Space Mirage, Li Yao would have been completely defeated this time.
But the key to all of this was that Li Yao's Time Reset passive trigger gave him that fleeting moment, allowing him to activate Time-Space Mirage just as the Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique was about to launch.
Otherwise, with his chakra sealed and immobilized, Li Yao would have truly been finished.
Besides being thankful for the passive Time Reset technique, Li Yao also had to thank Sasuke and Naruto for their misjudgments.
In fact, at that moment, if Sasuke had chosen to directly condense lightning to pierce Li Yao's head and not remove the lightning field, then with the speed of the lightning, Li Yao would not have had the time for the Time Reset and would have been pierced through the head and died.
Or if Sasuke had kept the lightning field to extend Li Yao's state of confusion, Naruto could have directly controlled the Truth-Seeking Ball to attack, and with the speed of the Truth-Seeking Ball, he could have killed Li Yao before his consciousness recovered.
Unfortunately!
Li Yao could guess that Naruto and Sasuke, to be on the safe side and to ensure they could deal with him 100%, chose to trust the Six Paths Sage's Six Paths Earth-Bursting Heavenly Star sealing technique, abandoning the two other choices that, although they seemed incapable of killing Li Yao, could have struck him down.
Only because of this, Li Yao survived.
"Indeed, one should never underestimate anyone!"
"And also... in battles of equal strength, intelligence on abilities is truly crucial!"
Li Yao learned a lesson from this life-or-death experience.
This time, he did not underestimate Sasuke and Naruto. Their abilities were as good as they were in the anime, but anime, after all, is just anime, and the actual display is limited.
Real people think, and who would have thought Sasuke would use a lightning field move like this?
The key was that Sasuke's lightning, infused with the Six Paths Yin Release power, could directly attack the soul, causing Li Yao's consciousness to fall into confusion.
"Fortunately, I still have the Time-Space Mirage."
This was Li Yao's luck, but also his oversight.
Sometimes, knowing too many ninjutsu techniques isn't always good, as in battle, one might instinctively overlook some ninjutsu that seem useless but are actually very important.
But this was also related to Li Yao's initial battle strategy.
Facing the Six Paths-level Naruto and Sasuke, he had focused entirely on enhancing his neural reaction speed, paired with a vast range of teleportation ability and the invincible defense of the Black Hole Space Mantle. He believed that with these, he would be unbeatable, and thus didn't consider using Time-Space Mirage.
(END CHAPTER)
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