"Stop!"
"Secret Sword: Moon Shadow!"
In the nick of time, Kenzaki arrived. He suddenly appeared between the two, blocking Jie Uchiha's fatal strike meant for Joren, who was currently trapped in a genjutsu.
Kenzaki had originally been a step behind Joren. When Joren teleported to the central tower using the Flying Thunder God Technique, Kenzaki had no choice but to rush there on foot. He thought he would arrive to see Joren successfully recruiting Jie Uchiha to become their comrade.
He never expected to see Joren losing ground under Jie's relentless assault from afar. In fact, if he hadn't arrived just in time, Joren would have died right then and there under the young Uchiha's blade.
'Thank goodness I learned the Moon Shadow and have decent mastery over the Body Flicker Technique, otherwise I really wouldn't have made it,' Kenzaki thought, breathing a heavy sigh of relief. A profound sense of fortune welled up inside him.
"Heavenly Fiend, how could you attack your superior? You should know Joren is an Anbu squad captain!" Kenzaki blurted out subconsciously.
However, his heart skipped a beat when he looked up and met the crimson, three-tomoe Sharingan swirling in Jie Uchiha's eyes. He seemed to have stumbled upon a terrifying secret.
'A six-year-old elite Jonin?' Kenzaki froze in place.
"You have a helper? Then die together!" Jie said coldly.
Jie and Kenzaki had met once before and gotten along reasonably well...
And Kenzaki had now seen his hidden secret and was actively pleading for Hiruzen Sarutobi's lackey, so jie had no choice but to send him and Joren on their way together.
Without another word, Jie raised his short sword. He channeled a massive amount of chakra into the blade until a faint white light enveloped the steel. There would be no more accidents this time.
"Wait! Is there some misunderstanding between us?" Thanks to Kenzaki's delay, Joren finally broke free from the genjutsu. Seeing Jie's lethal stance, he hurriedly spoke up.
"A misunderstanding?" Jie said coolly. "What misunderstanding? It's simply that you tried to kill me, but lacked the skill and got counter-killed instead."
"Kill you? I never thought about killing you!" Joren's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. "I just came to see how my subordinates were performing in the Anbu assessment, that's all!"
Kenzaki nodded frantically from the side, silently vouching that Joren's words were true.
Jie paused his movements. He wondered if this was just a stalling tactic from the two Anbu, or if there genuinely was a misunderstanding.
Previously, if someone had discovered his secret, Jie would have killed them without hesitation, regardless of any misunderstandings. After all, the Uchiha clan was already feared enough by the upper echelons of the Hidden Leaf. If word got out that he had awakened a three-tomoe Sharingan at the age of six, Hiruzen Sarutobi and the others probably wouldn't be able to sleep at night.
To the village elders, the only good Uchiha was one without a Sharingan. A six-year-old with a fully matured Sharingan was something Hiruzen and the Konoha elders could never accept.
To prevent Hiruzen's faction from doing anything desperate, Jie had to hide a portion of his strength. He could show off extraordinary talent, but he absolutely could not expose his three-tomoe Sharingan too early.
However, the rewards calculated by the System after he defeated the group of trainee Anbu had sparked a new idea in his mind.
[Curse Mark: Tongue Eradication Seal]
It was the cursed seal Danzo used to control the members of Root. Anyone branded with it was absolutely incapable of speaking any secrets about the caster. Among the trainee Anbu Jie had just defeated, there had been a former Root shinobi. Thus, after taking him down, Jie had received this exact jutsu as a System reward.
With the Curse Mark: Tongue Eradication Seal in his arsenal, Jie no longer needed to worry about Joren or Kenzaki selling out his secret to the Third Hokage.
After a moment of thought, Jie decided to listen to their story to see if they could provide a convincing explanation. If they couldn't even offer a simple, logical justification, then they were completely worthless to him anyway.
"Talk. What exactly is the situation?" Jie lowered his short sword and spoke calmly.
Since his Sharingan had already been exposed, he didn't make any unnecessary attempts to deactivate or hide it. Besides, with his visual prowess active, Jie wasn't afraid of Kenzaki or Joren launching a sudden sneak attack. To borrow a phrase: under these eyes, any petty tricks were meaningless.
Stared down by that crimson gaze, Joren and Kenzaki felt their breath hitch. The psychological pressure radiating from the boy was far greater than any physical pain.
Faced with a life-or-death crisis, and considering this was all a massive misunderstanding to begin with, Joren was incredibly forthcoming. He spilled everything cleanly and thoroughly, leaving no detail out.
Kenzaki kept nodding continuously from the side, even interjecting to clarify whenever Joren missed a detail or was too vague. He was terrified that if Jie didn't understand, the boy's sword would simply fall.
So it really was a misunderstanding? 'An Anbu squad captain came to observe his subordinate's assessment, but due to his profound lack of strength, almost died by said subordinate's hand?'
Thinking of this, a deep sense of absurdity washed over Jie.
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