"My name is Genshoku," said the wandering shinobi, his appearance austere, almost ascetic. "As a member of the Black Snake Group, I can guarantee your safe departure."
"Black Snake Group—" The Wood Clone's voice was flat, stripped of emotion, yet his words cut precisely into the cracks of Genshoku's claim. "Then tell me, Genshoku… can you speak for the entire Black Snake Group? Will Jubei, the Chayama Gang's leader, agree? And what of your other companions?"
Each question landed like a stone plunging into deep water, testing the hidden currents beneath the surface.
Genshoku's jaw tightened. He had almost answered reflexively when a spark of alarm jolted through him.
No…!
The Konoha shinobi's aim wasn't to negotiate—it was to draw out information! If he hesitated, the balance would shift. He had already laid his trap. There was no room left to wait.
"Naturally…" he began, but his words trailed off into silence as his right arm, concealed beneath his wide kasaya, suddenly whipped upward!
The ancient bronze bell on his wrist—engraved with the character Shoku ("Food")—quivered violently.
"Ding—!"
The bell's sound rang out sharp and shrill, like a funeral knell.
At once, the floor, the walls, even the ceiling of the inn chamber flared with light!
Dark red markings surged outwards, writhing like living veins, weaving themselves into a sinister sealing array that spread in an instant.
The air seared as the array came alive. From its core, several chains of condensed crimson energy erupted like bloodthirsty serpents, lunging straight for Roshi's form.
But instead of triumph, a sharper instinct screamed in Genshoku's chest—warning, urgent and unrelenting.
"Chila—!"
The opposite window shattered with a deafening crack! Splinters of wood and shards of glass sprayed outward, scattering across the midday sun, glinting like blades.
A figure burst through the wreckage in a clean arc, landing squarely in the middle of the deserted street below, dust curling at his feet.
Roshi.
His stance was steady, his presence cutting through the silence like a blade, facing the very shadows where Genshoku hid.
"A clever trap," Roshi said coolly. "But just a little too slow."
A flicker of fury sparked in Genshoku's chest at the slight—being underestimated—but he smothered it at once, burying the anger beneath cold calculation. To lash out was to stumble into another snare.
Without another word, his hands moved in a blur. Several luminous shuriken whirled out, tearing through the air toward Roshi's upper, middle, and lower openings simultaneously!
At the same time, his left hand's fingers blurred through seals, the movements too fast for the untrained eye to follow.
All around—the cracks in the stone pavement, the damp shadows clinging to the alley walls—dark red sealing arrays flared to life. Smaller than the first, but just as vicious, they pulsed hungrily, leeching chakra from the air and warping space around them.
The result was a twisting, invisible vortex, a distorted field meant to drag Roshi's movements into sluggish hesitation.
Roshi's gaze narrowed slightly.
As a Wood Clone, his chakra was finite, and unlike his true body, he could not refine more. Reckless techniques would only hasten his undoing.
His toes brushed the gravel, his body flickering aside with fluid precision. He evaded the glinting shuriken and skirted the drag of the invisible vortex beneath his feet.
The shuriken slammed into the ground and walls behind him with heavy thuds, quivering in place.
And in that same instant—his own hands had already completed a silent string of seals.
Wind Release: Chiba Slice.
Roshi's palms clapped together, and before him a compressed cyclone burst to life—a disc-shaped whirlwind no larger than a shield, pale green in color, spinning so rapidly it seemed woven of countless razor-fine wind blades.
It wasn't a raging storm but a compact, surgical edge of wind, condensed to deadly precision.
The incoming shuriken struck the rotating shield with a shriek of metal on metal, sparks flying as steel was shredded by invisible blades.
The shuriken, fragile as paper caught in a gale, were shredded mercilessly by the whirlwind of blades—twisted, torn apart, and scattered in a glittering rain of steel fragments that clattered against the walls and cobblestones.
"Wind Release: Turbulent Arrow!"
Roshi's seals shifted in a blur. From the compressed air around his palms, several pale-white bolts of wind shot forth, sharp and visible to the naked eye, streaking straight for Genshoku in the shadows.
But halfway across the courtyard, the seals that Genshoku had prepared—tiny, blood-red patterns hidden beneath his feet and along the walls—suddenly ignited.
"Puff! Puff! Puff!"
The dark arrays flared, and with each pulse, the wind arrows slowed as if striking invisible tar. The red force fields twisted, dragged, and finally swallowed them whole, leaving nothing but a faint, shivering breeze in the aftermath.
The instant Roshi's attack dissolved, Genshoku's eerie green eyes flared with triumph.
Now… caught you.
A hiss slipped from his throat—half ecstasy, half pain. The copper coin clenched between his fangs clattered from his mouth, spinning through the air before dropping into a crack in the stone.
The restraint was gone.
"Wild Dog's Dream…"
His fingers snapped into a grotesque seal, hands moving with savage speed. A guttural growl rumbled from deep in his chest, the sound of a starving hound worrying rotten bone.
The Shoku bell on his wrist shrieked as it vibrated, its tone twisting higher and sharper, until it became a soul-piercing howl—
"Awooooo—!!!"
The bell amplified the sound, unleashing a wave of raw chakra. Black and viscous, like a flood of tar breaking through a dam, it seized the chakra signature Roshi had left in the air and surged forward, smashing through smoke and distance alike.
It hit the Wood Clone with brutal force.
Roshi froze.
An emptiness tore through him—so profound it was as if his organs had been ripped out, leaving only a hollow cavity gnawed by plague. That void burned into frenzy, stripping reason away, flooding him with the raw, primal urge to destroy and consume.
A ravenous instinct, molten and suffocating, burst from the pit of his consciousness. His vision spun, awash in crimson haze; his heartbeat thundered like a war drum; his ears filled with the snarls and howls of countless starving dogs, fighting and tearing in some abyssal pit.
The dam of reason cracked, buckled—on the verge of collapse.
The Wild Dog's Dream had descended. Drool seemed to drip from the edges of his mind, cold and feral, as if he had been chained in hell's kennel and the leash had finally snapped.
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