Chapter 313: Beneath the Mask

Kaede walked toward the masked man one step at a time.

The image of Mei’s battered, miserable state was still burned into his mind.

Right now, all he wanted was to tear the culprit in front of him to pieces.

Fu stood silently a dozen meters away.

As though he couldn’t sense the killing intent boiling off Kaede, he raised one hand and flung more than a dozen black rods tipped with black seeds.

Kaede responded by throwing several kunai, knocking every rod out of the air.

An afterimage flashed.

He was already inside Fu’s close-combat range.

A heavy punch, carrying all of his fury, blasted straight toward Fu’s face.

Fu had no choice but to cross his arms in front of his head and take the blow head-on.

Bang!

His entire body slid backward several meters before he managed to steady himself.

As he skidded across the ground, his hands formed seals.

The earth exploded.

Several thick black roots burst upward like venomous snakes, lunging at Kaede from every direction.

Kaede snorted and formed a seal with one hand.

Boom!

Even thicker emerald-green vines tore through the earth, surging forward like raging pythons.

Two entirely different forms of Wood Release clashed beneath their feet, twisting, crushing, and ripping into one another as splinters and broken branches flew everywhere.

The two men crashed into close combat again.

Amid the blur of fists and kicks, Kaede caught one tiny detail.

When Fu blocked his elbow strike, the man’s left arm spasmed uncontrollably at the instant of impact.

‘Hm?’

Kaede’s eyes sharpened.

‘His body… is trembling?’

He immediately understood.

A battle at this intensity, combined with the burden of the Rinnegan, was putting enormous strain on Fu’s body.

‘I see.’

‘In that case…’

Kaede’s gaze turned cold, and his entire strategy changed.

He stopped trying to end the fight with a single decisive blow.

Instead, his assault became brutally relentless.

Water Style, Fire Style, and Lightning Style flowed into one another at extreme speed, while his taijutsu rained down like a violent storm.

He refused to give Fu even half a second to breathe.

Fu’s Rinnegan could indeed absorb ninjutsu, and its visual prowess was more than enough to follow Kaede’s movements.

But Kaede’s attacks were simply too dense.

The instant Fu absorbed a fireball, a vicious sweeping kick was already at his head. The moment he blocked a heavy punch, a kunai came stabbing toward his ribs from an awkward angle.

Under that unbroken pressure, Fu could do nothing but defend, and his movements grew more ragged with every exchange.

What disturbed him even more was the strange sense of familiarity.

The longer they fought, the stronger it became.

That feeling began to disturb the dead stillness inside his mind, stirring something that should have remained buried.

When Kaede’s next sweeping kick came crashing toward his neck, Fu knew he couldn’t remain on the defensive any longer.

He forced power into his Rinnegan.

“Almighty Push!”

An invisible repulsive force erupted from his body, violently blasting Kaede away.

But the moment the technique ended, Fu’s entire body convulsed.

“Urgh!”

Blood poured from beneath the edges of his mask in great mouthfuls.

The backlash had come far sooner than expected.

Kaede noticed it while airborne. He flipped backward, landed firmly, and looked at Fu without the slightest trace of pity.

Then he charged again.

This time, Kaede used an extremely tricky sideways sliding step, lowering his body until he was almost skimming across the ground as he swept toward Fu’s legs.

The instant Fu saw that movement, his pupils contracted violently.

Deep inside his mind, it was as if a door sealed beneath years of dust had just been smashed open.

A sunny afternoon.

Cicadas chirping irritably beside a training ground.

A blurry figure performing the exact same sliding step in front of him.

‘Who… was that?!’

A violent headache struck, slowing Fu for the briefest instant.

At that very moment, beneath the ground where Kaede was closing in, Black Zetsu prepared to launch a killing blow.

It could also see that Fu was nearing his limit.

If this battle was going to end, Black Zetsu would have to do it itself.

Fu only needed to hold Kaede for one more second.

No—even half a second would be enough.

Above ground, Fu could feel his life force rapidly draining away.

He decided to gamble everything on one final attack.

Purple light blazed from the Rinnegan as dozens of barbed black vines erupted around him.

“Wood Release: Black Wood Binding!”

If those vines caught Kaede, they would drain every last trace of chakra from his body in an instant.

Yet faced with the overwhelming mass of deadly black vines, Kaede advanced instead of retreating.

He deliberately exposed an opening on his left.

A huge cluster of vines took the bait and crashed down, smashing the ground with a deafening roar.

Kaede used that opening to lower his center of gravity and slip through the now-exposed middle like a ghost.

The distance between them shrank to less than three steps.

His right hand swept a kunai from his waist, wrist rotating inward.

It was a vicious opening move aimed at the lower body, one that carried an unmistakable trace of Kaede’s personal fighting style.

Fu, already preparing to counter, stared fixedly at the movement.

His entire body suddenly froze.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl.

The thick fog smothering his memories was finally blown away by that painfully familiar motion.

The vague figure who had once taught him became perfectly clear.

That person looked at him with a tone Fu knew so well—one he had missed for years.

“Techniques are ever-changing. Don’t be rigid!”

Memories burst through the dam inside his mind like a raging flood.

For the first time, Fu’s deadened eyes filled with an emotion close to collapse.

He had already raised a black rod, ready to drive it mercilessly through Kaede’s heart.

But now, his wrist trembled violently.

The deadly rod veered several inches off course and stabbed through empty air beside Kaede’s shoulder.

The black vines that had been twisting back to encircle Kaede also lost control in midair and dropped helplessly to the ground.

Beneath the earth, Black Zetsu nearly went mad at the sight.

That useless fool had actually dropped every defense at the most critical moment!

Without Fu holding Kaede from the front, Black Zetsu’s surprise attack would accomplish nothing.

It could only watch the situation slip completely out of control before sinking back underground in bitter frustration.

The instant Fu abandoned his defense, Kaede sensed something was wrong.

Suspecting another trap, he adjusted his attack in the fraction of a second available to him.

The kunai that had been aimed at Fu’s throat shifted aside.

Kaede twisted his waist and drove a brutally powerful side kick straight into Fu’s mask.

The full force of the blow erupted without restraint.

Fu flew away like a kite with its string cut, tracing a long arc through the air before crashing heavily into the distant ruins.

Crack!

His mask split apart in midair, scattering into countless fragments across the ground.

The night wind blew through the battlefield, slowly carrying away the dust hanging over the rubble.

Kaede approached with a cold expression, kunai still in hand.

Then the moonlight revealed the face in the ruins.

Kaede froze.

That face…

Blood hung at the corner of the man’s mouth as he struggled to push himself upright.

The kunai slipped weakly from Kaede’s fingers.

He took half a step forward before he could stop himself.

The sheer terror and absurd impossibility of what he was seeing made his voice tremble so badly he barely recognized it.

“How… could it be you?”