The Fire Temple was already nothing but rubble.
The battle between four S-rank missing-nin had turned the place into scorched earth.
Deidara circled in the sky on his clay bird, both hands constantly diving into the pouches at his waist, kneading clay into spiders and centipedes that rained down on the ground in a continuous bombardment.
"Art is an explosion! Feel my art, Kakuzu, hm!"
He shouted in excitement, every blast carving a look of satisfaction across his face.
On the ground, Kakuzu dealt with everything in cold blood. The four masks on his back each fought on their own, unleashing streams of ninjutsu with different chakra natures.
"Katon: Zukokku (Fire Style: Head Mincing Pain)!"
A massive fireball shot up toward the clay spiders in the air, detonating them mid-flight.
"Suiton: Suijinheki (Water Style: Water Formation Wall)!"
A wall of water rose up from the earth, blocking the shockwaves of the explosions.
Kakuzu's fighting style was straightforward—and brutally effective.
He was like a war machine, always choosing the nature that countered his enemy's attacks and using it to neutralize Deidara's clay bombs.
Deidara's clay explosives were earth-natured. Fire countered wind, wind countered lightning, lightning countered earth. Kakuzu pushed this chain of advantages to the absolute limit.
The longer Deidara fought, the more wrong it felt.
He realized that Kakuzu's way of fighting was different from before.
Kakuzu had always been strong, but in the past he leaned more toward judging battles purely by brute strength and money.
Now, every move Kakuzu made was full of calculation. Ninjutsu from all five chakra natures flowed together in seamless combinations, perfectly countering Deidara's clay bombs.
He could even predict Deidara's throwing trajectory and fire his jutsu in advance to intercept.
"Kakuzu! Since when did you get this smart, hm?!" Deidara yelled from the air.
Kakuzu didn't bother answering. There was no "small talk" option in his mind—only "carry out the order" and "collect the bounty."
The mission was to wear down Deidara and Sasori, creating the best conditions for the later capture. Every movement, every bit of chakra he spent, was calculated with precision.
On the other side of the battlefield, things looked even stranger.
Sasori of the Red Sand was controlling Hiruko as he tangled with Hidan. The steel scorpion tail on Hiruko's back moved at terrifying speed, stabbing constantly at Hidan's vital points, its tip coated in Sasori's specially prepared poison.
These were attacks that would be instantly fatal to an ordinary ninja—but they did absolutely nothing to Hidan.
"Hahahahaha! It's useless, totally useless!"
Hidan laughed madly, letting the scorpion tail punch through his body again and again.
He yanked the tail back out without a care. The wounds closed themselves up after just a few breaths. Blood streamed down, but he only seemed even more excited.
"Sasori! You coward hiding in a turtle shell! Your poison is useless against the holy body bestowed on me by my Lord!"
He swung his massive triple-bladed scythe in a completely reckless style, trading injuries for injuries, hacking at Hiruko without the slightest concern for defense.
Every swing of the scythe forced Sasori to retreat or block. Steel met armored shell again and again, filling the air with a shrill screech.
Sasori felt the situation turning troublesome.
His proudest poisons had no effect on Hidan. Under this kind of insane assault, his human puppet Hiruko, crafted from the body of the Third Kazekage, had already picked up several deep gouges.
To him, this kind of damage was absolutely intolerable.
He had devoted his entire life to pursuing eternal art, turning living beings into undying puppets.
But the lunatic in front of him had realized another form of "eternity" altogether.
In the distant forest, Kakashi wore a special one-lensed goggle over his Sharingan eye. On the single lens, real-time data from the battlefield and Shinju's pre-set tactical instructions were displayed.
Chakra flow, heart rate, attack patterns, weakness analysis—every piece of information streamed across his vision in flowing rows of data.
"Hidan, forget about defense. Go all-out on the puppet's core control link—three o'clock direction, angle down fifteen degrees. He's about to switch puppets."
Through the comms device, Kakashi calmly relayed the order.
Out on the field, Hidan received the command, and the fanatic light in his eyes burned even hotter.
He ignored the scorpion tail lunging straight for his heart. Twisting his body into an unnatural angle, he brought the scythe down precisely toward Hiruko's right shoulder joint.
That spot was one of the main chakra thread nodes Sasori used to control the puppet.
Sasori's heart lurched, and he was forced to abort his attack, pulling Hiruko back in a hurry. The angle of that strike was too vicious—right where his chakra threads were the densest. If it was destroyed, Hiruko's right arm would immediately go out of control.
Hidan's strike cut through empty air, but he didn't care at all, laughing as he rushed in again. His job was to keep Sasori tied up and tear apart his puppets.
Up in the air, Deidara lost his patience after failing to decide things quickly.
"Stop playing with that psycho! Watch this!"
He formed a hand seal, then reached into his largest clay pouch and pulled out a massive chunk of clay, stuffing it into his mouth to chew.
"I'll let you see my greatest work of art! C3: Jūhachi-gō (No. 18)!"
He sculpted an enormous clay doll shaped like a giant owl. It swelled rapidly in size.
A powerful wave of chakra pulsed out from the doll's body. This was one of his most devastating bombs, more than enough to erase a village from the map.
"Die, hm!"
Deidara dropped the gigantic C3 bomb from the sky, aiming straight for Kakuzu and Sasori in the center of the battlefield. He planned to drag everyone into the blast.
The moment Sasori saw C3, he immediately made Hiruko retreat, pulling back to open up distance. He knew all too well how powerful C3 was and had no intention of being caught in it.
Kakuzu, however, remained where he was, making no move to dodge.
Just as C3 was about to hit the ground, he slammed both palms onto the earth.
Earth-natured and water-natured chakra erupted at the same time.
"Doton: Doryuheki (Earth Style: Earth Flow Wall)!"
"Suiton: Suijinheki (Water Style: Water Formation Wall)!"
Two enormous walls surged up instantly. These were no ordinary barriers. The earth wall's surface was shaped into a huge, smooth arc. A split second later, the water wall poured over it, forming an even sturdier, slicker double-layered defense.
Rumbleeeee!!!
C3 hit the ground and detonated. The terrifying shockwave and heat rolled outward, more than enough to level several miles around.
But when that destructive force slammed into Kakuzu's curved, double-layer wall, most of the energy was redirected into the sky.
A thick pillar of fire roared straight up, blooming into a massive mushroom cloud in the heavens. Down on the ground, the impact had been reduced by over ninety percent.
The art of that explosion had been casually defused and wiped away.
Deidara stared from the sky, dumbstruck.
His C3, which could wipe a village off the map, had actually been blocked that easily?
Was this really the same Kakuzu who only knew how to throw around brute strength?
Sure, Kakuzu had always had plenty of battle experience.
But this exquisite control over ninjutsu shapes and his deep understanding of explosive force mechanics were absolutely not something Kakuzu could have come up with on his own.
Deidara had no way of knowing that this particular tactic was a plan Shinju had uploaded into Kakuzu's combat program before the fight—an anti-C3 counter specifically tailored for him.
By calculating the chakra content and descent speed of C3, the system had derived the optimal defensive angle and material combination.
While Deidara and Sasori were still reeling from the fact that C3 had been stopped, the Hidden Leaf's elite jōnin, who had been lurking in the shadows all this time, finally made his move.
"Now."
Kakashi's voice came through the comms device to Kakuzu and Hidan at the same time—
And to Team 7 behind him.
A blinding flash of lightning tore across the battlefield.
(End of Chapter)
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