133. The Blossoming of Might Duy

On the battlefield.

Under the gaze of thousands of soldiers on both sides, the giant Susanoo blazing with black light was torn in two by Kisame, who ripped it apart with his bare hands.

“Ugh.”

As the Susanoo shattered, Uchiha Fugaku let out a muffled groan. Bloody tears streamed from both eyes, and his face turned deathly pale.

He stared at Kisame in terror, stumbling backward several steps with an unsteady gait before finally collapsing onto the ground.

In the distance.

“What a disappointment. Is that really all the head of the Uchiha clan is capable of? I hadn’t even had my fill of the spectacle yet,” White Zetsu complained, his face full of disappointment.

“Uchiha Fugaku was naturally no match for Lord Madara,” Black Zetsu said. He was not surprised in the least; he had expected this outcome from the start.

Kisame walked toward Fugaku step by step and held out two fingers.

“Uchiha Fugaku, you are utterly useless. I have seen through your heart. There is nothing inside but indecision and cowardice. You are unworthy of those eyes, so let me keep them for you.”

As he spoke, he reached out to gouge out Fugaku’s eyes.

Just then—

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

With a chorus of blades slicing through the air, a great number of shuriken flew toward Kisame from afar.

Uchiha Mikoto had made her move. She charged forward without hesitation, determined to stop him.

Though it was futile.

Kisame neither dodged nor evaded. He allowed the shuriken to strike his body, producing a series of metallic clangs before they all fell to the ground.

Under the effects of the Strong Strike Compound, the skin covering his body had been strengthened to an unimaginable degree. Shuriken were useless against him. Even exploding tags would be unable to penetrate his defenses.

As Mikoto charged toward him with a kunai in hand, Kisame blurred and appeared beside her. With a single slap, he knocked her to the ground.

“Mikoto!”

Seeing this, Fugaku’s eyes nearly burst with rage. He was about to activate his Mangekyo ability once more and fight Kisame to the death.

But Kisame was faster.

With a flash, he appeared in front of Fugaku and plunged his fingers into the man’s eye sockets.

“Argh!”

Amid Fugaku’s agonized scream, Kisame ripped out both his eyes, leaving behind two black, blood-soaked hollows.

Kisame carefully put away the newly acquired Mangekyo and cast Fugaku a contemptuous glance.

Uchiha Fugaku might have been a good father, but he was certainly not a competent clan leader.

His character was a classic case of outward fierceness masking inner weakness. He appeared to be a stern, unyielding man who rarely smiled, but in truth he was timid and weak-willed. When the higher-ups of the Leaf oppressed the Uchiha, he had done nothing but retreat and yield.

As the Uchiha clan head, when his clan faced the disaster of annihilation, he had not even possessed the courage to drag the Leaf down with them. Instead, he had simply given up and waited for death.

Keeping the Mangekyo Sharingan in the hands of such a worthless man truly was a waste.

Kisame grabbed Fugaku by the collar and spoke to Mikoto, who lay on the ground.

“Go back and raise your son properly. Once your son, Uchiha Itachi, awakens the Mangekyo Sharingan, send him to challenge me and reclaim his father’s eyes. Of course, that is assuming he can defeat me.”

With that, Kisame turned around and carried Fugaku to the village gate, where he tied him to a pillar beside Hiashi.

He glanced at Hiashi and saw the latter’s face filled with terror. Rarely for him, Kisame offered a word of consolation.

“Relax. I’m not going to gouge out your eyes. The Byakugan of the Hyuga clan is too useless. I wouldn’t take one even if you gave it to me. You’d better keep them and use them to peek into the women’s bathhouse.”

Kisame already possessed a Byakugan. He had no need for another.

At those words, Hiashi’s face turned pale, then livid.

Although he had escaped with his eyes intact, Kisame’s words were sharper than knives, stabbing viciously into the heart of the Hyuga clan head.

To Hiashi, it was a humiliation beyond measure.

The main branch of the Hyuga had gone so far as to attack its own clansmen in order to keep the Byakugan from falling into outsiders’ hands. They had exhausted every means to create the system of the Caged Bird seal.

Yet in the end, the Byakugan they took such pride in and guarded with their lives had, in another man’s eyes, only one use: peeking at women while they bathed.

How ironic.

After tying Fugaku and Hiashi together as hostages, Kisame turned once more and looked out over the vast army of Leaf shinobi spread across the mountains.

Under his sweeping gaze, everyone retreated in fearful silence. Not a single person dared take one step forward.

They had been beaten into submission.

After the battle just now, every Leaf shinobi present understood one thing: against an enemy like Kisame, superior numbers were useless.

At that moment, Kisame’s gaze locked onto Might Dai in the crowd. His figure flashed, and he charged straight toward him.

Dai’s expression changed. He hurriedly said to his son, Might Guy, who stood behind him, “He’s coming this way. Guy, take the others and leave. There is no shame in running away.”

“What about you, Father?” Guy asked anxiously.

“Don’t forget. I have the Eight Gates,” Might Dai replied calmly, as though he had already made his decision.

Guy’s entire body shook when he heard this.

“Guy, remember those four words: self-restraint. I hope that one day you will surpass me in your mastery of the Eight Gates. I’m going.”

Without turning around, Might Dai finished speaking, pushed off the ground, and charged toward Kisame.

Whoosh!

As he ran, the skin across his body rapidly flushed red. Green energy radiated from within him as he opened the First Gate, the Gate of Opening; the Second Gate, the Gate of Healing; the Third Gate, the Gate of Life; the Fourth Gate, the Gate of Pain; and the Fifth Gate, the Gate of Limit.

But Might Dai knew that this level was not enough. Without slowing down, he opened the Sixth Gate, the Gate of View, and then the Seventh Gate, the Gate of Wonder.

When he opened the Seventh Gate, the sweat on his body evaporated, forming waves of blue steam.

In Might Dai’s judgment, he needed to open at least the Seventh Gate to have any hope of defeating Kisame, this powerful enemy.

Now, he would strike.

Although he was injured and had only one arm remaining, Might Dai’s aura after opening the Seventh Gate was astonishing, in no way inferior to Kisame’s.

Whoosh!

He shot forward like a cannonball and collided with Kisame at the center of the battlefield. Their fists crashed together with tremendous force.

In an instant—

Boom!

Centered around Might Dai and Kisame, the air erupted into a shock wave. A violent gale swept out in every direction.

Caught in the blast, the Leaf shinobi nearby could barely remain standing. They all retreated dozens of meters, their faces filled with horror.

What was happening?

At that moment, everyone stared dumbfounded at the center of the battlefield, their eyes fixed on the one-armed man in the green jumpsuit.

Might Dai—the Leaf Village’s perennial genin.

Because of his poor abilities and bizarre appearance, he had been mocked by his fellow villagers for years, even publicly humiliated.

Yet now, when thousands of Leaf shinobi had been cowed by Kisame’s presence and not one of them dared step forward, this perennial genin had suddenly revealed his true strength and held back Kisame, a man capable of tearing apart the Susanoo with his bare hands.

Witnessing this scene, many finally realized that their previous understanding of Might Dai had probably been completely wrong.

Kisame looked down at Might Dai from above. He was not at all surprised by the strength the man had unleashed. Instead, he suddenly grinned.

“I thought you would open the Eighth Gate, the Gate of Death, right away. I didn’t expect you to stop at the Seventh. Are you looking down on me?”

Might Dai was startled.

So Hoshigaki Kisame had known about the Eight Gates all along. That was why he had targeted him.

Taking advantage of the shock in Might Dai’s heart, Kisame continued, “You have only one hand, while I have two. How are you planning to fight me?”

Before the words had even left his mouth, he raised his other massive hand and struck at Might Dai with lightning speed.

Might Dai frowned but said nothing. With a flash, he vanished from where he stood, evading Kisame’s attack.

The next moment, he began circling Kisame. Empowered by the Seventh Gate, he moved at such incredible speed that countless afterimages appeared around him.

Then—

Whoosh!

Might Dai’s real body burst out from among the afterimages and attacked Kisame from the side.

So fast.

For the first time, astonishment appeared on Kisame’s face. Although his Mind-Reading Technique had allowed him to sense the path of Might Dai’s attack, his opponent was simply too fast—he had already surpassed the speed of sound.

At such close range, even Kisame had no time to react before Might Dai’s fist sent him flying.

Might Dai pressed his advantage. He leaped into the air and launched a barrage of punches at Kisame from a distance, throwing hundreds of straight punches in an extremely short span of time.

Hiss, hiss, hiss!

His fists scraped against the air, producing brilliant flames. Shock waves and fire, created by striking the air itself, poured continuously toward Kisame.

Faced with Might Dai’s fierce assault, Kisame could not evade in midair. He could only cross his arms before his body and endure the hundreds of blows head-on.

Bang, bang, bang!

Kisame became a living target, subjected to a merciless beating by Might Dai.

“Clan Head Hiashi, what happened?” Uchiha Fugaku, now blind, asked the man beside him in alarm.

“A Leaf shinobi suddenly unleashed astonishing power. He has even suppressed Hoshigaki Kisame…” Hiashi said, his eyes wide with disbelief.

Within the field of his Byakugan, the enormous chakra surging from Might Dai’s body was almost equal to Kisame’s.

“Who is he?” Fugaku pressed.

“I… don’t know.” Hiashi furrowed his brows. He had no impression of Might Dai whatsoever.

After all, in the eyes of nobles like them, even if they happened to encounter Might Dai in the village, they probably would not spare him so much as a glance. How could they possibly remember his name?

On a hill in the distance.

“Oh my, what kind of jutsu is that? It’s incredible,” White Zetsu exclaimed, stunned by the power Might Dai had displayed.

“That is the Eight Gates Formation, a legendary form of taijutsu. I never expected a Leaf genin to cultivate the Eight Gates to such a level. Truly remarkable,” Black Zetsu said, clicking his tongue in wonder.

On the battlefield.

Kisame fell from the sky. His enormous body staggered backward for quite some distance.

After taking hundreds of Might Dai’s punches head-on, his body was covered in dents of varying depths. Fortunately, his physical constitution was powerful enough that he seemed largely unharmed and recovered quickly.

But Might Dai still had one final technique.

And it was his strongest.

“Roar!”

As Might Dai concentrated every ounce of his strength into a single point and launched one final supersonic punch at Kisame, a deafening roar rang out across the battlefield and soared into the heavens.

His punch compressed a vast amount of air to its absolute limit before releasing it all at once, ultimately forming a gigantic cannonball of air shaped like a tiger.

Daytime Tiger.

In the original story, Might Guy had used this technique after opening the Seventh Gate to defeat Kisame.

However, Might Dai could not compare to Guy at his peak, and he had also lost an arm. Thus, although it was the same technique, the power he could unleash with the Daytime Tiger was clearly far inferior.

Moreover, Kisame was no longer the simple, honest man he had once been.

Compared to his former life, he was not only stronger; he was also no fool. He would never stupidly use the Great Shark Bullet Technique to clash directly with the Daytime Tiger, allowing his opponent’s technique to counter him.

As the roaring Daytime Tiger came rushing toward him, Kisame thought to himself:

It is time to test the results of my cultivation so far.

He wanted to use this opportunity to see exactly where the limits of his body lay.

He had been born with a powerful physique. Later, by exploiting his cheat-like ability, he had devoured countless ninja tools and further strengthened his body. In the battles before this, he had used the power of Flounder: Strong Strike to absorb the strength of a thousand people, pushing his physical body to its absolute limit.

Therefore—

“Roar!”

Kisame threw back his head and let out a tremendous roar. Chakra surged into the sky, forming a presence around his body resembling a tailed beast cloak.

At that moment, he seemed like a demon god descending upon the world.

Fearless, he charged straight toward the Daytime Tiger.

Boom!

Kisame threw a punch. A powerful wave of air erupted from it, and the blow tore straight through the Daytime Tiger. Kisame passed through the interior of the air cannon and emerged before Might Dai.

Bang!

Caught completely off guard, Might Dai was sent flying more than a hundred meters by Kisame’s punch. He crashed down among the Leaf shinobi, smashing a crater ten meters in diameter into the ground.

The battlefield fell utterly silent.

At that moment, in the Leaf Village’s intelligence headquarters—

A member of the Yamanaka clan hurriedly removed his helmet and reported to Hiruzen Sarutobi, his face filled with panic.

“Lord Hokage, this is bad! The Fifth Mizukage, Hoshigaki Kisame, has single-handedly defeated nearly a thousand of our shinobi. He has also taken the head of the Uchiha clan hostage and gouged out his eyes. The frontline is requesting immediate reinforcements!”

“What?!”

Upon hearing this news, everyone in the hall, including Hiruzen Sarutobi, was stunned.

“As expected, we could not afford to underestimate that man…” Tsunade murmured, her face filled with shock.

When she heard that Kisame had appeared on the battlefield, she had already sensed that something terrible was about to happen. She had not expected her premonition to come true so quickly.

Before anyone could recover, another urgent report came in from the front line. It stated that the genin Might Dai had suddenly unleashed tremendous power and was fighting Hoshigaki Kisame to the death.

Might Dai?

The name sounded strange and unexpected to all the Leaf elders.

Regardless, the fact that someone had stepped forward at such a crucial moment and managed to hold Kisame back was excellent news for the Leaf.

With that thought, Hiruzen Sarutobi immediately ordered Minato Namikaze, “Minato, go! We are counting on you.”

“Yes, Lord Hokage.”

Minato Namikaze nodded gravely. The moment he finished speaking, he vanished in a flash.

Inside the hall, Tsunade and Jiraiya exchanged a glance.

They wanted to go to the front line and help as well, but without a technique comparable to the Flying Thunder God, they could only remain where they were and continue waiting for further reports.

Everyone wore solemn expressions, their hearts burning with anxiety.