Chapter 190: Fugaku’s Genjutsu

Chapter 190: Chapter 190: Fugaku’s Genjutsu

After being forced apart from Shisui, Hyuga Kagami, now surrounded and attacked by multiple opponents, had no time to worry about him.

Duck!

Kagami lowered his body, narrowly avoiding a Uchiha’s side kick. In the same motion, he twisted around and surged forward, his left hand bracing against the Uchiha’s ribs while his right leg pinned the man’s left knee.

His right fist opened into a palm, and with his hand shaped like a blade, he thrust straight toward the man’s throat.

Whoosh!

At that moment, a kunai shot toward Kagami from an extremely tricky angle, forcing him to abandon his attack and lean backward to evade it.

But the instant he leaned back, the corner of his eye caught sight of a steel wire tied to the kunai’s handle.

Immediately afterward, the wire was yanked backward.

Taking advantage of the motion, it wrapped around the Uchiha elite Kagami had just restrained and dragged him out of Kagami’s attack range, disappearing with him into the dense mist.

"Tch..."

Clicking his tongue, Kagami rapidly formed hand seals.

"Ice Style: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals!"

Crack... Crack... Crack...

Accompanied by the sound of rapidly freezing ice, one crystal-clear ice mirror after another appeared across the battlefield.

This time, Kagami was using the traditional form of the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals. The numerous ice mirrors formed a hemispherical dome, enclosing the entire battlefield within it.

Every single ice mirror served as an extension of Kagami’s senses.

As a result, within just a few breaths, he had grasped the situation across the entire battlefield. The effect was hardly inferior to his Byakugan.

On the battlefield, however, Shisui was currently in a rather sorry state.

There was no doubt that he still couldn’t get past that hurdle in his heart. When fighting against his own clansmen, he constantly held himself back, unable to bring himself to fight without restraint. At most, he was using only thirty or forty percent of his full strength.

In that regard, Shinichi was far better than Shisui. At the very least, Shinichi wouldn’t suppress himself the way Shisui did.

Then again, if Shisui, a man who possessed Kotoamatsukami, were truly ambitious and ruthless, Kagami probably wouldn’t have dared associate with him in the first place.

The appearance of the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals immediately caught the attention of the Uchiha elites.

One of the Uchiha elites who had encountered the technique before shouted, "Everyone, be careful! This Ice Release is troublesome!"

Another Uchiha elite stepped forward and shouted, "Watch me destroy these ice mirrors with Fire Release!"

In an instant, he completed his hand seals and spewed out a fierce torrent of flames.

Boom!

The flames slammed into an ice mirror.

But instead of shattering it, the fire spread outward in every direction!

The reason for this was that Kagami had previously used the Water Style: Great Waterfall Technique and the Ice Style: Ice Condensation to create a vast sheet of ice across the forest, lowering the surrounding temperature by more than ten degrees.

This made the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals even sturdier, while simultaneously suppressing the power of Fire Release.

"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Technique!"

"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"

Realizing that Fire Release alone wasn’t enough to destroy Kagami’s Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, two of the Uchiha elites leaped forward. One unleashed a Fire Style technique, while the other used Wind Style.

The fire rode upon the wind, and the wind fueled the flames!

Amplified by the Great Breakthrough, the Dragon Flame Technique truly transformed into something resembling a gigantic dragon of fire, ferociously surging toward the ice mirrors suspended in midair.

Crash!

In a single strike, one of the ice mirrors shattered.

Just as the Uchiha elites were about to seize the opportunity and escape through the opening in the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, Kagami, hidden within the mirrors, made his move.

His figure moved like a phantom, flashing from one ice mirror to another. The moment he spotted an opening, he shot out and instantly took down one of them.

He repeated this several times.

In only a brief span of time, three or four of the Uchiha elites trapped within the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals had been taken down in this manner.

And the price Kagami had paid?

Merely a few wounds on his body.

At this point, Fugaku, standing outside the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, could no longer remain patient.

The occasional screams of his clansmen coming from within the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals made Fugaku realize just how serious the situation had become.

Suddenly, it occurred to him that perhaps these two bounty hunters hadn’t escaped from the Third Hokage through sheer luck after all.

Having decided to intervene personally, Fugaku’s expression darkened as his hands slowly formed seals.

"Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"

Boom!

A raging mass of flames descended as though falling from the heavens, completely engulfing Kagami’s Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals from above.

Under the ferocious blaze, the entire upper portion of the ice dome melted away in mere moments.

Whoosh!

A figure shot straight through the flames and landed steadily inside the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals.

When the Uchiha elites saw that the figure descending from above was none other than their clan head, Fugaku, they hurriedly supported one another and gathered around him. Every one of them hung their heads in dejection, their expressions utterly humiliated.

Fugaku glanced briefly at his clansmen before saying coldly, "Fall back. I’ll deal with them."

The arrogance the Uchiha elites had displayed earlier was nowhere to be seen. Their faces flushed with shame as they all withdrew to the side.

Fugaku turned his gaze toward Kagami and Shisui across from him and said in a deep voice, "It seems I underestimated you two. But this ends here."

Kagami chuckled softly and was just about to fire back with a retort.

Suddenly, the scenery around him turned black and white.

Everything became hazy and indistinct.

Even the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, which served as extensions of his own senses, blurred into nothing more than mottled, indistinct scribbles.

"I’m caught in a genjutsu!?"

Kagami froze for a moment before finally realizing what had happened.

Truthfully, aside from the demonstrations his teachers had given back at the Ninja Academy, Kagami had hardly ever been caught in a genjutsu before.

Back when he was still small fry, no enemy would bother wasting chakra to cast genjutsu on him. After all, if they really wanted to finish him off, a single kunai or an explosive tag would have been more than enough.

And after awakening the Tenseigan, ordinary genjutsu simply couldn’t affect him.

As a result, he had practically never experienced being trapped in one.

"Heh, I can’t believe I actually got caught!"

This experience made Kagami realize that he had a small weakness he had previously overlooked.

Whenever he used the Tenseigan’s Soul Descent Technique to control a clone, the clone itself didn’t possess the Tenseigan. Because of this, his resistance to ocular genjutsu dropped to roughly the level of an ordinary Byakugan user.

Still, Kagami wasn’t worried.

Shisui was still outside, and he possessed the Mangekyo Sharingan as well. Moreover, Shisui’s mastery of genjutsu was certainly no worse than Fugaku’s, so it was highly unlikely that Fugaku could instantly subdue him with genjutsu.

With that in mind, Kagami began examining the illusory world around him with great interest.

"Could this be Fugaku’s Mangekyo Sharingan ability?"

Even while controlling a clone, Kagami considered his resistance to ocular genjutsu exceptionally high.

For Fugaku to make him fall under a genjutsu instantly, without Kagami even realizing it had happened...

There was no way this was an ordinary genjutsu.

Just then, a trace of purple chakra appeared against the black-and-white sky.

"This is..."

As Kagami stared at it in surprise and uncertainty, more and more purple chakra began gathering together, gradually taking the form of a huge, angular purple sphere.

Kagami furrowed his brows.

"Huh? Why does that look so familiar?"

At that moment, the plump purple sphere turned around, revealing the side bearing a dragon’s head and facing it toward Kagami.

In an instant, the black-and-white world around him receded like a falling tide...