My Patreon for more chaps:
Patreon.com/IndifferentVillain
"Chapter 35 is out on my Patreon*
+100chap/month for only 5$
____________
A drop of cold sweat slid down Hyuga Koten's forehead.
He suddenly realized that while Uchiha Xuan was speaking, the boy had unknowingly materialized directly in front of him.
"Die!"
Koten roared, viciously swinging his longsword at Xuan.
With a sharp clang, the blade sheared off the tips of the metallic spikes protruding from the ground, but it didn't touch a single hair on Xuan's head.
"It's useless.
You already know this is a Genjutsu.
It's fundamentally impossible for you to hurt me here.
Goodbye.
Sayonara!"
Xuan's figure reappeared behind him, floating higher and higher into the air.
Once he reached a certain altitude, the entire mountain of blades reacted.
Countless razor-sharp spikes instantly erupted from the ground, surging past head-height in a dense, inescapable thicket of steel.
Within the illusion, Hyuga Koten's body was simultaneously impaled by three massive blades.
At that exact same moment in the real world, Uchiha Xuan's kunai smoothly slit across the Hyuga ninja's motionless throat.
Ding!
[Killed a Hyuga Clan Special Jōnin. Reward: 2,000 Points.]
[Quest Triggered: Support Uchiha Madara and kill the Hyuga Jōnin squad leader. Reward for completion: 5,000 Points. Penalty for failure: Obliteration!]
"System, you bastard!"
He had barely finished off Hyuga Koten when the System's voice chimed in his ear.
The victorious smirk hanging on Xuan's face instantly froze.
He never in a million years expected the System to issue a Quest at a time like this—and such a thoroughly screwed-up Quest, at that.
Originally, the battle plan he had hammered out with Madara was simple: Xuan would kill the enemy's Special Jōnin, and then the two of them would join forces to repel the enemy Jōnin before turning back to clean up the remaining Chūnin.
Notice the operative word there: repel. Not kill.
When Xuan and Madara were scheming, neither of them had ever entertained the delusion that they could actually slaughter an enemy Jōnin.
As members of the Uchiha clan, they had intimately witnessed the terrifying might of true Jōnin.
To put it bluntly, even though the title "Special Jōnin" had the word "Jōnin" in it, the gap in power between the two ranks was unimaginably vast.
Based on Xuan's calculations, he could kill a Special Jōnin in a head-on fight.
But against a genuine Jōnin?
He could probably hold out for ten minutes before being forced to cut his losses and run.
Even teaming up with Uchiha Madara, the absolute best they could do was slightly suppress the man.
Killing him would be as difficult as ascending to heaven.
Don't let Uchiha Madara's pre-fight trash talk fool you.
All that domineering crap about "killing the enemy" and "using him as a stepping stone" was just him running his mouth to hype himself up.
Anyone who actually believed a word of it was an idiot.
But now, the System's Quest explicitly demanded the word kill.
The difficulty level had just skyrocketed.
A Jōnin pushed into a corner was a terrifying force of nature; one wrong move, and Xuan could easily end up dead.
The most damning part, however, was the failure penalty.
Obliteration.
The System was literally forcing him onto the path of death.
Taking a deep breath, Xuan forced himself to calm down.
The more dire the situation, the more he needed to keep a cool head.
He quickly scanned the battlefield to assess the current situation.
Uchiha Hayate was still locked in a brutal deathmatch with the enemy's other Special Jōnin; it didn't look like a victor would emerge anytime soon.
The three Uchiha Chūnin had successfully paired off against three of the Hyuga Chūnin.
Elsewhere, Uchiha Izuna, wielding a katana, had actually managed to draw the aggro of a Hyuga Chūnin in a one-on-one fight.
Although he was heavily suppressed due to his young age, the kid was gritting his teeth and fighting like a rabid dog.
Miraculously, he was holding the line against the enemy's offensive and wasn't in any immediate life-threatening danger.
On the other hand, taking a single glance at the eighty-seven kids of his generation almost made Xuan die of anger.
Six enemy Chūnin were actually running rampant through their ranks, completely unopposed.
Within two or three moves, another kid would drop dead.
"Even eighty Ninja Academy students could exhaust six Chūnin to death.
What a bunch of trash," Xuan gritted his teeth.
Mathematically speaking, eighty-plus Genin should have been able to wipe out six Chūnin at the cost of maybe ten lives—provided those Genin were normal.
But these kids were clearly greenhorns who had never seen blood.
Initially, they had charged in with burning enthusiasm, trying to swarm the enemy.
But the moment the Hyuga drew their blades and instantly slaughtered three of them, terror set in.
Especially when their comrades' hot blood splashed across their faces, reality finally caught up to them.
This wasn't one of their usual playtime missions.
This was a genuine, life-and-death struggle.
People actually died here.
As a result, some of the kids suffered mental breakdowns and tried to flee.
The entire formation devolved into absolute chaos.
Unable to display even a fraction of their true strength, it naturally turned into a one-sided massacre.
Xuan retracted his gaze.
He had anticipated this outcome from the very beginning.
After surviving this crucible, the ones left standing would shed their naive ideals, undergo a metamorphosis, and finally grow into true ninjas.
That was, assuming they lived.
Xuan then turned his attention toward Madara's battlefield.
He saw blood dripping from the corner of Madara's mouth.
His clothes were shredded into rags, and his breathing was ragged and heavy as he desperately parried the enemy's attacks.
No matter how you looked at it, the boy was at his absolute limit.
Yet, Xuan sharply caught the sight of the single tomoe in Madara's eyes slowly spinning, locking onto his opponent's every twitch.
A feral, ferocious glint shone in his expression.
There wasn't a single shred of retreat in his posture.
Faintly, Xuan could already see the shadow of the tyrant who would one day subjugate the entire ninja world.
"Hurry up and help me!"
Madara roared.
The blood welling up in his throat could no longer be suppressed, and he violently coughed up a mouthful of crimson.
He had managed to steal a glance at Xuan's side and knew the Special Jōnin was dead.
A faint smirk tugged at the corner of Xuan's mouth.
He muttered to himself, "If he still has the breath to scream that loudly, it looks like he hasn't hit his limit just yet!"
With that, he drew a kunai with a backhand grip and bolted—not toward Madara, but straight toward the battlefield where Hayate was locked in combat with the second Hyuga Special Jōnin.
"Madara, change of plans!
Hold on for five more minutes; I'll be right there!"
Xuan roared.
He was already closing in on the Special Jōnin.
He hurled the kunai and wove a sequence of hand signs in a flash.
"Fire Style: Flame Slash!"
He unleashed his second B-Rank Jutsu without a second of hesitation.
With absolute resolve to end this quickly, Xuan plunged into the fray.
"Fuck you!
In five minutes, you'll be collecting my damn corpse!"
Madara roared, nearly coughing up another mouthful of blood from sheer fury as he swore out loud.