Chapter 258: Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm

 

Kidōmaru twisted away from Neji's palm and tugged the spider silk attached to his body. Yellow-brown metal hardened from his skin into an arrow.

Instead of aiming at Neji, he drew a bow of woven silk and fired toward Shikamaru's departing team.

A kunai bearing an explosive tag crossed the arrow's path.

The detonation knocked the golden projectile aside. Kidōmaru watched helplessly as Shikamaru, Naruto, and Kiba vanished among the trees.

He turned toward Neji with open irritation.

"Then I will kill you first. You do not truly believe your fat friend can defeat Jirōbō, do you?"

Neji did not answer. Chakra gathered beneath his feet, and he sprang from one trunk to the next. Shuriken flew ahead of him to close Kidōmaru's escape routes.

"Naive."

The first state of the Cursed Seal spread across Kidōmaru's face. He had intended to toy with the Hyūga, but the intercepted arrow had ended his patience.

He spat a wide web across Neji's approach without moving from the branch.

The thrown weapons struck Kidōmaru's body with metallic clangs. A hardened golden coating had formed beneath his skin.

Neji swept both palms across the web.

"Gentle Fist."

His chakra severed the flow sustaining the strands, and the net came apart around him. At the same time, Byakugan registered the armored layer.

"His body secretes a metal-like substance. I must break it before Gentle Fist can reach his chakra pathways."

Kidōmaru shaped the same material into a spear. They met at close range in a storm of thrusts, palms, and flashing tools. White webs shot between the weapons, but Neji cut their chakra or redirected them before they could bind him.

Neji's first combination struck the armor twice at the same point. A hairline fracture appeared, then vanished beneath a fresh secretion of gold. Kidōmaru used two silk lines to change direction in midair, turning what looked like a retreat into a downward spear thrust. Neji saw it through the branch and pivoted aside before the point reached his shoulder.

Kidōmaru analyzed the exchange as quickly as his opponent. Neji's Gentle Fist countered the webs, and the Byakugan exposed attacks from every direction. Yet the Hyūga specialized in close combat. If Kidōmaru protected himself from shuriken and explosive tags, he could still control the distance.

One of Tonbo's clones watched from concealment.

He was pleased to see Neji finally using ordinary ninja tools. Except for Lee, every trained shinobi learned the Clone Technique and shuriken use. Neji once relied so completely on the Byakugan and Gentle Fist that he ignored options any academy graduate should possess.

Carrying a few tools did not burden him. It multiplied the angles from which he could attack and forced an enemy to react before Neji entered Gentle Fist range.

A thrown blade could make Kidōmaru raise one armored arm, obscure a web anchor, or herd him toward a trunk. The tool did not need to wound him to create value. Neji began using each shuriken to shape the next exchange rather than treating it as a weaker substitute for his palms.

Tonbo had emphasized those weaknesses in Neji's Thousand Ninja Slashes simulation. If Neji could reproduce every effect with Gentle Fist alone, Tonbo would accept the choice. Until then, refusing basic tools made him behave more like a warrior than a ninja.

A thousand simulated deaths had corrected the habit.

Tonbo formed the Tiger seal. His chakra resonated with the nerves hidden in both fighters, and their physical data began to flow toward him.

At full power, the Sound Four were stronger than Tonbo remembered. He wanted to see whether Neji could still win after four separate illusion training sessions. Among Konoha's young shinobi, Neji's rate of improvement stood behind only Sasuke's. Even Naruto did not match it.

The nerves reported every collision between Gentle Fist and the golden armor. Tonbo recorded how the coating distributed chakra, how quickly Kidōmaru secreted a replacement, and how the first and second states altered that rate. The same contact also showed how precisely Neji shaped chakra at his fingertips.

Neji's old belief in fate had been a cage. Once he stopped surrendering his potential to that idea, his talent began to show.

Farther along the trail, Naruto glanced back.

"Shikamaru, can Neji really handle him? That enemy felt dangerous."

"Trust him," Shikamaru said. "Our task is to bring Sasuke back."

He believed in Chōji and Neji because he understood how much both had changed after the invasion and Tonbo's training. Even if they could not defeat their enemies, Shikamaru believed the experience driven into them would help them survive.

Kiba ran beside him with Akamaru.

"Two enemies remain. I will take the next one."

He had corrected the weakness Naruto exploited during the Chūnin Exams. His sense of smell had grown stronger, and he learned how to filter foul odors instead of becoming helpless before them. The filter reduced sensitivity, but Kiba's taijutsu had improved as well, and not every enemy would know how to attack his nose.

"Stay focused," Shikamaru told him. "Our purpose is Sasuke, not proving who is strongest. Do not waste what Chōji and Neji bought for us."

"I know, I know."

Behind them, the forest erupted.

Trees snapped beneath a massive golden arrow. It pierced one trunk after another and struck the ground hard enough to leave a crater.

Kidōmaru had entered the second state of the Cursed Seal. Six arms spread from his transformed body, several holding weapons while the others controlled bow and web. A strand attached to the arrow let him retrieve and redirect it.

"Why keep running?" he called. "Was that spinning defense not supposed to be powerful?"

Neji had vanished from sight.

He moved between the arrow's impacts, using the shattered trunks to break the hunter's view. Rotation could deflect the weapon, but standing still and repeating the defense would let Kidōmaru study its timing. Neji wanted the enemy searching, turning, and drawing the bow without knowing which direction mattered.

Kidōmaru searched the forest. He had not expected a close-range specialist to possess such refined stealth. In his experience, no shinobi except Orochimaru could master every range. The Hyūga genius forced him to admire how thoroughly he had developed beyond his clan's obvious strengths.

"But you are a ninja, and so am I."

Kidōmaru suddenly turned. Neji stood only three meters behind him.

The bow came around with the arrow already drawn.

"At this distance, no one can dodge."

The release cracked the air.

Neji did not evade. He thrust one palm forward.

"Eight Trigrams: Vacuum Palm!"

Compressed chakra struck Kidōmaru in the chest. The golden arrow pierced Neji at the same instant.

Smoke burst from the wound.

Kidōmaru's triumph vanished.

"A Shadow Clone..."