"Urrrgh!"
With a series of screams, the Cloud rear-guard squad was wiped out in an instant as a streak of lightning tore through them.
Only the last ninja survived the first pass—lightning flared around his body as he activated a partial Lightning Chakra Mode, barely blocking that opening strike.
But then the lightning retreated just as quickly, revealing Uchiha Feiyu—and the right arm he'd already raised.
He thrust his arm forward, thumb folded in to form a hand-blade. Dense lightning crawled over his whole body, crackling and jumping.
The Cloud ninja who had just entered Lightning Mode stared in horror and shouted:
"N–No, that's impossible—!"
"Hell Stab – Four-Finger Spear."
Pshk!
Raging lightning compressed into an unmatched spear of thunder, piercing straight through the Cloud ninja's chest.
Feiyu exhaled, slowly withdrawing his arm.
Right now, he was still young, but he already possessed an absurd collection of techniques:
Orochimaru's Cell Activation,
Hatake Sakumo's White Fang Sword Style,
and both the Third and Fourth Raikage's Lightning Chakra Mode—things most people couldn't obtain in a lifetime.
He shook off the blood on his hand and grimaced.
"Tch… I can barely handle Four-Finger Hell Stab, and I'm already feeling the strain.
Guess the Raikage's Lightning Armor really isn't something you master in a few days…"
On the one hand, Lightning Chakra Mode was a highly technical way of using chakra.
On the other hand, the demands it placed on the body were brutal.
Feiyu's physique was strong, sure—but compared to those two musclebound Raikage? He was at least a tier or two below.
He curled his lip.
"And seriously, what is it with this father-and-son pair?
Did they train so much taijutsu their brains turned into biceps?
Why insist on punching and poking things with your fingers?
Ever heard of using a sword? Does it kill you to pick up a blade?"
He extended his hand again, grasped the soul, and drew it in.
After sampling that Cloud ninja's skills, Feiyu casually discarded the weaker spirits and then summoned a giant snake to mop up the corpses.
Along the way, he'd been repeating this routine:
Kill.
Harvest souls.
Filter out trash.
Send bodies to Ryūchi Cave for the blood pool.
Layer by layer, he was building the foundation for future leaps in power.
"No idea how many Cloud I've killed by now…
But I'm pretty sure their village's foundations are going to be shaken for real this time."
This was already the third day since the Cloud army began its retreat.
In those three days, Feiyu had switched between frontal assaults and sneak attacks, slaughtering an uncountable number of Cloud ninja along the route.
Now that he had both Raikage souls in hand, he'd immediately set about learning the full Lightning Chakra Mode from them. With his prior base – the half-finished version he'd reverse-engineered before, plus the White Fang style's lightning-stimulation training – his progress was fast.
"Give it a couple of years to fully digest all this—
I'll definitely be able to push my strength up another level or two.
Maybe even become the strongest taijutsu-type ninja in the world."
He looked down at his arm, still faintly tingling from the overclocked lightning.
"Still… short-term, there's no way I'm reaching those two meatheads' level.
Their physical stats are just on a different planet."
Right now, among Cloud's top fighters, only Killer B was left.
But while B also knew Lightning Chakra Mode, he wasn't a purist close-combat specialist like the Raikage.
For pure speed, he was a long way behind Feiyu.
That meant:
Feiyu couldn't easily take B down, thanks to the Eight-Tails.
But B also couldn't catch Feiyu.
And Feiyu was free to massacre as many ordinary Cloud ninja as he liked.
After their defeat, the Cloud forces had lost all cohesion. Their formation and unit structure were in tatters.
They couldn't assemble any concentrated force strong enough to pressure Feiyu.
Along their withdrawal route, Feiyu had basically turned the path into a road of blood and shredded corpses.
He wiped his hand again, frowning at the blood on his sleeve.
"Anyway… from here on out is the Land of Lightning.
The rest of the 'materials' will have to wait for another time."
He stopped at the distant border, then quietly turned around.
Crossing that line into Lightning territory would dramatically increase the danger.
Even the Third Raikage, as monstrous as he was, had eventually been beaten to death by over ten thousand ninja.
Right now, Cloud was gravely wounded, but if they really scraped everything together, they could still muster ten thousand shinobi.
And after losing the decisive battle at the front, their reinforcements and relief forces would already be waiting near their own border.
So Feiyu didn't push his luck.
He pivoted, turned into a streak of thunder, and vanished from the battlefield.
Chasing the Cloud had taken him three days.
Getting back to the Leaf camp took only a few hours.
The moment he returned, he went straight for his "cheap teacher."
In the command tent, Orochimaru was in the middle of organizing the withdrawal.
The miserable state he'd been in on the battlefield was completely gone—he looked energized, almost glowing, even the usual pallor of his face touched with a faint flush.
When he saw Feiyu step in, he smiled.
"Well?
How was the harvest?"
Feiyu thought for a moment, then answered lazily:
"Probably killed… around a thousand Cloud ninja.
Oh right, I also took down two bloodline-limit users.
I can hand their bodies over to you later, Sensei."
Orochimaru's eyes lit up.
"Cloud bloodline limits?
If I recall correctly, those brutes don't have many—other than Storm Release, there shouldn't be much of note."
"There was also a Magnet Release guy," Feiyu said. "But he was way worse than Sand's magnet users. Felt like a bootleg knockoff."
He had run into a Magnet Release user named Troy.
The man's ability was rather odd: by touching someone, he could magnetize them—and then throw metal weapons that would automatically home in.
Unfortunately, his shuriken were slower than Feiyu.
By the time he finished his hand seals and tossed his tools, his own throat was already slit.
If Feiyu hadn't grabbed his soul out of habit afterward, he might not even have realized the man was a bloodline-limit user.
By comparison, the Storm Release ninja had been much more notable.
The jutsu looked like bending, homing beams of light—like guided lasers—making it very troublesome for a speed-type like Feiyu and somewhat of a hard counter.
Even so, that ninja's personal strength was only around low-elite jōnin level.
After spending a bit of effort, Feiyu still cut him down.
After finishing his brief report, Feiyu reached into his cloak and produced a scroll. He unrolled it and slapped it onto the floor.
Poof!
Two corpses appeared on the ground.
"These are the two bloodline-limit users' bodies.
They should be pretty useful to you, Sensei, right?"
Orochimaru chuckled, then gave Feiyu a long, meaningful look.
"Very useful.
Speaking of which—
The corpses from battlefield cleanup have all been sealed into storage scrolls already.
They're in the third rear tent… and I've decided to put you in charge of them."
Feiyu's eyes brightened.
"Ah. So the 'materials' are ready."
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