Chapter 215: A Living Hell
As the Cloud ninjas swarmed them, a startling thunderclap suddenly exploded in the night sky. Sasuke's Shiden drew a deep purple arc of lightning, forcing three Cloud ninjas back more than five meters.
"Kunai trajectory spotted at the twelve o'clock position!" Neji's Byakugan glowed with a blue light in the darkness. The Eight Trigrams Staff in his hands danced with the force of a roaring tiger, repelling those who tried to break through from his side.
In Sasuke's Sharingan, three tomoe spun in a sea of blood. A Cloud ninja directly in front of him was instantly caught in Sasuke's genjutsu. In the next second, Shiden cut through the neck of this blocking Cloud genin like a hot knife through butter. The scorching lightning almost instantly seared the wound black. Until this Cloud genin clutched his neck and fell powerlessly, not a single drop of blood was shed.
After the trio had charged forward several dozen meters, sixteen bolts of lightning descended from the sky like a cage. Lightning-wreathed chains intertwined among the treetops, forming a net that trapped the three within a ten-meter radius circle of scorched earth.
Eight Cloud Jonin emerged from the shadows, Lightning Release chakra dancing on their skin like flowing armor.
"This is as far as you go, Konoha brats," the leading Cloud Jonin formed the Snake Seal, and the lightning on the chains suddenly intensified. "Pay the price for your arrogance."
Purple plasma surged between the iron chains, and the air filled with the smell of ozone from ionization.
Watching the tightening encirclement, Sasuke threw out seven shuriken. Metal and lightning collided, bursting into dazzling spots of light. "A Lightning Release barrier? A pity I'm not yet like my teacher, able to freely manipulate the enemy's Lightning Release."
Neji planted his Eight Trigrams Staff into the ground and pushed forward with both palms. The chakra vortex of his Heavenly Spin deflected all the incoming lightning arrows. The veins around his Byakugan bulged as he turned to look at Sasuke. "The key to the barrier is on the female ninja in the northwest corner with the forehead protector on her neck! Her chakra is maintaining the barrier's balance!"
"Can you hit her with a shot?" Sasuke asked.
"I'll try," Neji said. The summoning formula on his right wrist guard lit up, and a strangely shaped sniper rifle appeared in Neji's hands. After Neji injected chakra into it, he fired a shot. A chakra bullet instantly whistled towards the opponent.
However, just as the bullet was about to hit, the barrier in front of the target suddenly condensed a bolt of lightning that collided with the bullet, blooming into a blinding white light in the air.
"No good. If I want to break through the barrier's defense, the charging time will be very long," Neji said, retracting the chakra sniper rifle developed for him by Tenten back into the scroll on his wrist, then shaking his head.
"Then leave it to me!" Sasuke, carrying Shiden, stepped on lightning and charged in the direction Neji had pointed, the chirping of his Chidori tearing through the night sky.
Purple lightning ripped through the darkness. The Sharingan precisely locked onto the chakra meridians pulsating beneath the forehead protector. However, four bolts of lightning suddenly cut off his path—Cloud reinforcements had arrived.
Three ninjas wearing Thunder Beast masks descended from the sky. The lightning swords in their hands carved charred trenches in the ground. Sasuke was forced to change direction, and Shiden collided with the lightning swords, creating a blinding arc.
Fortunately, at this moment, Neji suddenly cut into the battle. The Eight Trigrams Staff in his hand shot out like a nimble snake, striking a vital point on the waist of one of the lightning sword ninjas. The moment his chakra was blocked, Sasuke's left hand instantly condensed a Chidori that pierced through the opponent's right shoulder. A mist of blood evaporated in the lightning's glow.
The Cloud Jonin controlling the barrier sneered upon seeing this and slammed both palms on the ground, "Lightning Release: Earth Runner!"
Yellow electric snakes slithered rapidly towards the trio along the damp moss.
"Naruto!"
"Got it," Naruto nodded with a heavy heart. After his hands flew through seals, three whistling gales swept out in all directions, instantly shredding the surging lightning snakes.
However, in the next moment, five lightning arrows suddenly attacked from the side, aiming straight for Naruto. In the nick of time, Sasuke threw out a steel wire, wrapped it around his lower back, and with a sharp pull, used his Sharingan's predictive ability to help Naruto narrowly avoid the fatal attack.
"What are you doing?" Sasuke couldn't help but yell upon seeing this. "Focus during a battle!"
"Sorry..." Naruto said with an apologetic look on his face.
"Help me hold them off. I'll go finish that one," Sasuke, seeing the situation, didn't say much more.
"Okay," Naruto took a deep breath. After pulling himself together, he wreathed his body in wind-natured chakra and, together with Neji, took the initiative to engage the two remaining lightning sword ninjas who had appeared to block Sasuke.
As for Sasuke, he put away Shiden and condensed raging electrical currents in both hands. The sharp explosive sound was like a thousand birds chirping at once.
"Chidori!" Sasuke became a bolt of lightning, his hand holding the purple current as he charged towards the female ninja maintaining the barrier's stability. Although Chidori was a jutsu Sasuke had mastered long ago, after learning the more advanced Lightning Release ninjutsu from Uchiha Douhuan, Sasuke had only used a simplified version of it as a finishing move in close combat. He hadn't used the full version of Chidori in a long time. But at this moment, the piercing power of the full version of Chidori and the speed boost it provided on top of his Lightning Release nintaijutsu state were exactly what Sasuke needed.
At this moment, the female ninja maintaining the barrier only saw a blinding white light flash before her eyes. In the next instant, Sasuke had already pierced through her chest. The female Cloud ninja, with a hole through her chest, fell powerlessly.
"Asai!" Seeing this, the comrade beside the person Sasuke had killed cried out in disbelief.
Sasuke expressionlessly flicked his hand, the lightning in his hand evaporating the blood that had stuck to it. With the person maintaining the barrier's chakra stability gone, the barrier blocking their path disappeared. Neji used his Heavenly Spin to knock back the Cloud Jonin entangled with him and Naruto, then shouted, "Now, let's go!"
One after the other, the two accelerated and regrouped with Sasuke, charging out of the encirclement. At this moment, Deidara, flying in the air, opportunely dropped a string of explosives, delaying the Cloud ninjas' time to reorganize their encirclement.
However, after the frantic bombing just now, Deidara's chakra was almost depleted. After a few bombing runs, seeing that his three little brothers still didn't seem to have successfully broken through, he planned to lower his flight altitude to pick them up directly. But just as he descended a little, shuriken laced with lightning flew over like a curtain of rain, forcing Deidara to ascend again.
Just as the Cloud's encirclement was about to close in again, a green signal flare suddenly exploded in the northeastern night sky.
The howls of the Inuzuka clan pierced through the sound of thunder, and the Aburame clan's insect swarm blotted out the moonlight like a black cloud.
"Our support has arrived!" Sasuke finally let out a long sigh of relief after shattering an entangling lightning chain with a single slash.
The nearest border troops had rushed over immediately after hearing the commotion.
The Cloud commander, seeing this, had no choice but to temporarily give up on surrounding and killing Sasuke's trio and, gritting his teeth, met the advancing army of Konoha ninjas. Under the night sky, the two sides instantly clashed.
"Fire Release: Great Fire Dragon Technique!"
Raging flames illuminated the entire night sky. A massive fire dragon roared towards the Cloud ninjas. A gap soon appeared in the Cloud's formation under the impact of this furious fire dragon. At this moment, a team from the Hyuga clan, led by three branch family Jonin, charged into the Cloud formation.
Subsequently, a team of Uchiha clan ninjas also rushed in under the leadership of a Jonin from their clan. Under the impact of the two clans, the Cloud's formation soon showed signs of strain.
It was hard to imagine that the two great dōjutsu families, who were considered incompatible rivals in the village just a few years ago, would now cooperate with such默契 (mòqì - tacit understanding/rapport).
The shared vision ninja tool developed by Tenten displayed its special power at this moment. The super long-range vision of the Hyuga clan's Byakugan and the Uchiha clan's Sharingan's ability to capture motion trajectories were shared at this moment. The assault team formed by the two clans moved through the Cloud formation as if it were an undefended territory. After dealing with the enemies along the way, they arrived in front of Sasuke's trio.
"Young Clan Leader."
"Young Clan Leader."
The members of the two clans' assault teams nodded respectively to their own young clan leaders. At this point, Sasuke naturally took over command of this unit. "Let's go together! With our comrades outside, let's finish these people!"
"Yes!" Neji and the clan members under his command nodded in unison.
Only Naruto, at this moment, stared blankly at everything around him. The blood and fire of war were now so close to him.
Compared to the previous battles, after the two armies began to clash, in just a few short minutes, the cruelty of war was displayed to Naruto.
Burning trees twisted into fire serpents in the night wind. Miserable screams rose and fell in the thick smoke.
A certain Konoha ninja, with half his body scorched by lightning, was still mechanically stabbing the ground with a kunai. A Cloud ninja had a gaping bloody hole in his abdomen, yet he simply stuffed his intestines back into his abdomen, roughly stitched it up with chakra threads, and then continued to charge at the Konoha ninja in front of him with his sword.
Kunai and lightning wove a web of death through the forest. The third wave of charging Cloud ninjas leaped over a trench, stepping on the charred corpses of their comrades. A steel wire net set by a Konoha ambush team suddenly sprang up from the rotten leaves, instantly cutting twelve Cloud assault team members into pieces. But the splashing flesh and blood happened to cover for the hand seals of the Lightning Release team behind them—seventeen lightning snakes retaliated along the steel wires, burning the five Konoha ambushers in the treetops into charcoal sculptures.
At this moment, the ninjas on both sides seemed to have transformed into merciless killing machines. Under the stimulus of the blood and fire of the battlefield, almost everyone had lost their reason, with only the enemy before them in their eyes.
An Inuzuka clan's ninja hound detected an unusual movement underground. Just as seven ninja hounds let out warning howls, the Cloud's explosive tag squad had already charged out from underground. Hundreds of explosive tags bloomed in the center of the Konoha forces.
Including this suicide squad, twenty-three ninjas were obliterated in this explosion. The shockwave slammed eight medical kits into tree trunks, and the scattered scalpels happened to pierce the throats of three Cloud ninjas who were in the middle of forming hand seals.
"This... this..." Naruto looked at the battlefield before him, which in just a few short minutes had turned into a living hell, his hands trembling slightly.
(End of chapter)
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