Chapter 169: The Unsheathed Fang(Bonus Chapter)
Today, the White Fang was finally drawn.
Until this moment, no one had truly understood: Hatake Sakumo had fought his entire duel—parried thirty-five consecutive, escalating strikes—with his legendary blade still sheathed. The scabbard itself, reinforced with chakra, had been weapon enough. Now, the blade was free.
What would its true edge reveal?
On one side, Hatake Sakumo's face was a mask of stern, unwavering focus. On the other, the White Fang blade shimmered with cascading arcs of silver-white lightning. The radiance pierced the storm-darkened sky, a single, defiant pillar of light in the howling tempest.
Kyūmiya Emon, borne aloft on his self-made gale, saw the change. His pupils contracted sharply beneath his mask. All this time… he was holding back?
But there was no retreat. The arrow had left the bow. Thirty-five strikes of accumulated momentum, a lifetime of devotion to the sword, his very soul—all of it was poured into this final, ultimate slash. He was no longer merely Kyūmiya Emon; he was the wind itself, honed to a killing edge.
"GALE CUT: BREATH OF ANNIHILATION!"
He dove. The cyan wind chakra around him condensed into a spear of absolute cutting force. Countless invisible sword trails spiraled in his wake, scarring the very fabric of the air. This was his peak, his enlightenment, his everything.
Hatake Sakumo looked up at the descending god of wind. His expression did not change.
"You are a skilled opponent," he said, his voice carrying calmly over the shrieking gale. "But I will not lose."
IIIING—!
The White Fang blade sang.
The lightning arcs upon it did not just intensify; they ascended. The electricity became blinding, pure, a thread of liquid silver that contained both form and spirit. It was not chaotic; it was utterly, terrifyingly controlled.
A spark of electricity flickered in Sakumo's eyes. He looked directly into the heart of the onrushing tempest.
"White Fang Severance."
No grand incantation. No elaborate build-up. Just a statement of fact.
He leaped.
And in that instant, Hatake Sakumo became the light.
A single, radiant bolt of white lightning streaked across the grey void. It pierced the massive, churning vortex of Emon's ultimate technique as if it were mist. It passed through the curtain of infinite sword energy as if it were morning dew.
The air stopped.
All the wind—the howling, the screaming, the raging tempest—ceased. It collapsed inward, then outward, then was simply… gone.
Kyūmiya Emon hung motionless in the air for a frozen heartbeat. Then, his body drifted downward like a broken kite, limp and unresisting. He struck the mud with a soft, final thud.
"How…?" His voice was a ghost of a whisper, disbelief saturating every syllable. "I lost…? How…?"
On the other side of the arc, the white lightning solidified back into the form of Hatake Sakumo. He turned, his breathing only slightly elevated, his blade already being wiped clean with a slow, deliberate motion.
"You are a ninja worthy of respect," he said, his voice quiet but clear. "Your skill with the blade, your art—the Thirty-Six Consecutive Strikes is a technique I have never seen before. It is magnificent."
He paused, looking down at the fallen swordsman.
"But I do not have the luxury of dedicating my life solely to the sword. I have duties, responsibilities, comrades to protect. So my blade has remained sheathed for twenty years. I have only one slash to give."
His gaze was steady, without malice, without gloating. It was simply the truth.
"Can you stop a sword I have been sharpening for two decades with one technique, however brilliant?"
Emon's breath caught. Twenty years… of waiting? Of holding back? For this single moment?
"And one more thing," Sakumo continued. "A ninja who severs all bonds, who discards friendship and loyalty… ceases to be human. You are a master of the sword, yes. But you have become its slave. A tool that wields a tool."
He looked down at the White Fang blade, still humming faintly with residual lightning. "To me, this is not a tool. It is a partner. You kill for the sake of killing. I fight to protect. That is the difference between us. And that is why you could never defeat me."
The words hung in the air, heavy with finality.
Emon's body trembled—not from pain, but from the unbearable weight of that truth. He was not dead. Sakumo's slash had been precise, disabling, but not immediately lethal. He lay in the mud, defeated in body and spirit.
"I… am not… reconciled…" he choked out, the words scraping from his throat. "I am NOT reconciled!"
Hatake Sakumo walked towards him, his face grim. He raised the White Fang blade.
"This is a battlefield. We are enemies."
He swung.
CLANG!
A wedge of jet-black sand iron slammed into the path of the blade, deflecting it with a shower of sparks. Sakumo's eyes snapped towards the source.
In the distance, the Third Kazekage stood with one hand extended, his expression cold and imperious. He had intervened personally.
"Stay where you are," the Kazekage's voice carried across the field, flat and absolute. "Move, and the sand iron will perforate your body in an instant."
The black particles swirled, forming a floating, defensive ring around the fallen Emon and a barrier between him and Sakumo.
Emon, gasping, used the last reserves of his strength to scramble to his feet. He did not look back. He fled—stumbling, broken, but alive.
Sakumo did not pursue. The sand iron hemmed him in, a cage of potential death.
"Tch, tch, tch." Nōhei shook his head, a thin smile on his lips. "So the White Fang is so formidable that even the Third Kazekage feels compelled to intervene personally."
"A swordsman of his caliber dying here would be a waste," the Kazekage stated, as if discussing a broken tool he still wished to keep in his shed. His tone held no gratitude, no concern for Emon's life—only cold, strategic calculus.
Nōhei's smile was hollow. He knew what this meant. Emon's defeat would haunt him forever. Who was Kyūmiya Emon, next to Konoha's White Fang, the acknowledged greatest swordsman in the entire shinobi world? To lose to that legend was not shameful; it was expected. But to have one's ultimate technique dismantled so utterly, to be spared only by a Kage's intervention… that was a wound that would never heal.
"How despicable!" Tsunade's voice rang out, sharp with outrage.
"Heh. A defeated general. No longer relevant," Orochimaru dismissed, but his eyes held a rare flicker of genuine shock. That slash… even he, with all his twisted preparations, doubted he could evade it. The White Fang was not just a title. It was a promise.
"Our captain really showed them," Jiraiya grinned, though his own heart was pounding. "Gave Konoha quite the display."
BOOM!
The ground erupted.
Not from the duel of swordsmen, but from the black, silent swamp where the Five-Tails Jinchuriki had been submerged. The earth bulged upward, then detonated outward in a shower of mud and rock.
A single, massive white tail—now pulsing with malevolent, crimson-tinged chakra—burst from the crater. It was not the three-meter appendage from before. This tail was dozens of meters long, a coiling serpent of pure, condensed power. It swept across the battlefield in a devastating arc, sending Konoha ninja—chunin and jonin alike—flying like scattered leaves.
"Spread out!" Tsunade shouted.
The Sannin scattered, instincts screaming.
CRACK! THOOM!
A second tail erupted. Then a third. Three colossal, writhing tails now thrashed above the battlefield, their shadows swallowing half the Konoha position. Each lash created a thunderclap, the air itself detonating from the sheer force.
The ground completely collapsed. From the smoking crater, the red-armored figure of Gōki rose.
His body was now cloaked in a boiling, scarlet coat of Tailed Beast chakra. Crimson chakra bubbles formed and burst continuously along his skin. The three tails swayed behind him like monstrous, sentient whips, each movement a promise of obliteration.
"What kind of monster is this?!" Tsunade breathed, her fists raised, her medic-nin's mind racing through counter-strategies and finding very few.
Gōki's dull, empty eyes found them—Tsunade, Jiraiya, Orochimaru. The three brightest chakra signatures in the Konoha lines.
"Destruction," he intoned, the word devoid of emotion, a simple statement of function.
The three tails rose, intertwining, converging at their tips. They formed a tripod, a focus. In the center of their convergence, something began to coalesce.
It started as a pinprick of darkness. Then it grew, swelling into a pulsing, unstable sphere. Black at its core, bleeding into an ominous, electric blue at its edges. The sphere did not glow; it sucked light, a miniature void gathering mass and malice.
The air itself began to be drawn towards it, a faint, growing suction.
A Tailed Beast Bomb.
(End of Chapter)
✨If you're enjoying this story, consider supporting me on Patreon —
Patreon.com/TofuChan
Where you can read Extra Advance Chaters
Bonus Chapter For Every 100 Power Stones
Lets hit the goal of 300 Patreon Members now for 5 Extra Chapters 💕