Trailing Fire (Part 1)
The severed head rolled across the forest floor, its expression twisted between agony and disbelief.
What had happened in that instant carried a cruel mockery—
To the enemy, this was humiliation at its purest.
Even a ninja confident in their strength could experience a sudden reversal.
His death was simply one of the many inevitable costs of war.
First came shock.
Then fury.
Shuriken filled the air, whistling violently toward Yu Gongyuanzhen.
But Yu Gongyuanzhen had anticipated the counterattack. The moment his feet touched the ground, chakra burst beneath them, propelling him backward. He vanished behind a thick tree trunk.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Steel needles punched into the earth, tearing a line across the path he had just taken before clattering against the tree's outer bark.
One enemy ninja, who had not joined the barrage, squinted through the trees, carefully tracking Yu Gongyuan's movements. His hands blurred through familiar seals. Then, stepping just two or three body-lengths aside, he exposed Yu Gongyuan's position.
"Suiton: Teppōdama!" – Water Release: Water Bullet!
A dense mass of compressed water surged forward, roaring through the misty forest.
Yu Gongyuan remained steady. He had been in the ninja world for one full year—still inexperienced, but no longer green. At the very least, he possessed a real ninja's composure.
His hands rose. Fingers danced.
**"Katon: Gōenka!" – Fire Release: Great Flame Bullet!
An enormous fireball—nearly two meters wide—hurtled to meet the incoming water bullet.
Among all Fire Release clans, their basic jutsu often shared similar hand seals, chakra molding, and even names: Great Fireball, Explosive Flame Bullet, Flame Ball, Great Flame Bullet… trivial variations of the same foundational technique.
Fire and water collided with a thundering hiss.
The flames died; the water vaporized.
A massive cloud of white steam erupted, rolling outward and swallowing the battlefield.
The enemy had no sensory ninja present.
That alone tilted the environment sharply in Yu Gongyuan's favor.
Dense steam erased their numerical superiority—and Yu excelled at silent kills.
Pressing against a nearby trunk, he activated the Mayfly Technique again. His body softened, chakra dispersing into the moisture of the tree's surface, and he faded seamlessly into the wood like a swimmer slipping beneath water.
Relying on memory and the echoes of movement, he glided through the trees, emerging soundlessly behind the ninja who had used the Water Release.
The man, blind in the steam, wisely kept his back pressed to a trunk to avoid ambush from behind.
But this time, his caution doomed him.
Yu Gongyuan's upper body emerged from within the tree, silent as a phantom.
His right arm clamped around the man's neck.
The left struck forward—fast, relentless, and merciless.
Thudthudthudthudthud—
Twenty, thirty blows, all driving chakra-hardened fingers into flesh.
The crisp wet sounds of piercing meat, the mechanical rhythm, the cold precision—
All of it was pure, emotionless killing intent.
In seconds, the man's chest cavity was pulped beyond repair.
He collapsed before he could even scream.
Yu sank back into the tree and vanished once more.
As he moved, he felt it again—
Changes in his body.
Before, every ninjutsu came with a wrenching sensation, as if chakra tore away part of his life force and vitality. He always felt drained, hollow, almost brittle afterward.
But not today.
With each kill, each burst of chakra, an intoxicating strength welled up within him.
Cells hummed with activity, his limbs grew lighter, his senses sharper…
If before he had been utterly drained, now he felt—comparatively—a ridiculous surge of fullness, like a flat chest suddenly swelling to a full 36D.
A crude metaphor, but the feeling was real.
Yu Gongyuan realized:
Ordinary bodies truly weren't meant for chakra.
To some people, chakra consumption didn't just tire them—
It shaved off pieces of their lifespan.
"Who's under attack? Report your situation!" an enemy shouted from the fog.
Speaking at all in this thick steam was a mistake.
Yu immediately adjusted course toward the voice.
"Three left," he counted silently.
As he slid toward his next assassination target, a faint, sharp hiss reached his ears.
A warning.
"…A trap."
Beyond the steam, the enemy ninja curled his lips into a cruel smile and formed his final hand seal.
Yu dove into the ground using the Mayfly Technique just as the man's chest ignited.
The enemy had strapped several explosive tags to his own body.
All of them flared at once.
A blinding flash tore the forest apart.
The explosion rippled outward like a miniature sun—
soil vaporized, branches shredded, several nearby trees blown clean in half.
Yu was forced violently out of a tree as the shockwave tore through the area.
His skill with the Mayfly Technique was far from perfect. He had escaped the center of the blast, avoiding fatal damage, but the concussive force still dislodged him and stripped away the concealment.
The explosion ripped away the fog, revealing the battlefield in brutal clarity.
This level of suicidal resolve was… madness.
The enemy hadn't even understood how Yu killed his comrades.
He only noticed two deaths, guessed at Yu's rough trajectory, and—using flawed, incomplete intel—jumped straight to self-destruction.
Not bravery.
Not strategy.
Just numbness.
A willingness to gamble his life on an unverified assumption.
In reality, his explosion struck nothing but empty air.
Yu wasn't offended by the attempt.
If anything, he almost pitied the man.
His enemy's own lack of experience meant his guesses were easy to read—
and Yu had simply moved cautiously enough to avoid the true blast radius.
The result was the same:
a meaningless death.
In this battlefield, life felt worthless—
while death seemed almost like relief.
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