ACSP: Chapter 201: A Pair of Eyes That Can Control Life and Death!
"This thing is dangerous; we absolutely cannot let it reach the ground..." Kurosaki warned, his expression dead serious as his hand instinctively gripped the hilt of his katana.
Although he had never encountered a clay construct of this specific design before, he recognized the thousands of overlapping paper talismans instantly. A giant doll completely papered in high-grade explosive tags was nothing less than a catastrophic, strategic-grade bomb. If this monstrosity made impact with the courtyard, the entire historical structure of the Imperial Palace would be reduced to a crater.
"If my records are correct, this should be an advanced clay payload packed with compressed Explosion Release Chakra," an elderly, heavily scarred man standing half a step behind Ryuichi Yuwa spoke up, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the descending threat. "There is a known rogue Explosion Release Contractor in the Great Xia Kingdom named Li Dala. This structural design is his signature technique—though our file indicates he shouldn't possess any high-altitude spatial displacement skills..."
This speaker was Musashi Ichiro, the Captain-General of the East Island Intelligence Department. While the other clan lords were paralyzed by confusion, Musashi knew the tactical profiles of Great Xia's elite contractors inside out; tracking foreign assets was his primary directive.
"Baka-yaro!" Yamamoto Kin roared, the veins on his forehead bulging with fury. "Those sub-human Great Xia Contractors actually have the audacity to deliver a localized weapon of mass destruction directly to our Imperial Palace steps? This is a declaration of absolute disrespect!"
"Watch me blow it out of the sky right now!"
In a fraction of a second, Yamamoto Kin violently synchronized with his contracted character, Kinkaku. A dense, boiling crimson shroud erupted from his skin as he immediately bypassed the baseline forms and entered the terrifying, skeletal Nine-Tails semi-tailed beast state. He opened his jaws wide, dark blue and red chakra particles rapidly condensing in front of his teeth to form a highly compressed Tailed Beast Ball to intercept the payload.
"Hold your fire, Kin-kun!" Musashi Ichiro suddenly lunged forward, physically blocking the golden-haired warrior. "The foundational kinetic yield of that specific clay formula is already classified as village-destroying. Now that it has been packed with thousands of cascading explosive tags, a direct impact from your Tailed Beast Ball will trigger a premature atmospheric detonation. The resulting downward shockwave alone would still be more than enough to flatten this entire district. We cannot intercept it with raw kinetic force!"
"We can't shoot it down?!" Yamamoto Kin snapped, his slitted eyes glaring down at the intelligence director through his crimson shroud. "Then tell me, wise old man, how exactly do you propose we stop a mountain of explosives from crushing our heads?"
Musashi Ichiro didn't answer the hot-headed Jinchuriki. Instead, he silently turned his gaze toward the unmoving figure of Ryuichi Yuwa standing at the front of the courtyard. Seeing this, the rest of the dozens of elite lords shifted their eyes over in perfect, tense unison.
Ryuichi Yuwa remained entirely expressionless. He knew mathematically that within this courtyard, only his specific skill set possessed the vector control necessary to cleanly neutralize an atmospheric threat of this magnitude. Without a word of complaint, he calmly raised his hand and pinched the specialized flesh-toned contact lenses obscuring his vision, peeling them away.
The next microsecond, a pair of eerie, multi-layered purple concentric rings rippled outward across his eyes. The legendary, god-like pattern of the Rinnegan instantly bared itself to the world.
"Is that... His Majesty the Emperor's legendary Rinnegan? To see it up close is truly a humbling experience."
"It is exactly as the ancient stone tablets prophesied—the eyes that govern the absolute laws of creation and destruction. The Eyes of the Heavenly Way. The default sub-skills inherent to those rings alone are more than enough to completely eclipse a peak Super-Kage Level Contractor!"
"The ignorant masses on the global forums only ramble endlessly about the versatility of the Sharingan or the sight lines of the Byakugan, entirely unaware that the Rinnegan stands alone as the undisputed apex of all dōjutsu!"
"Heh, how can mass-produced, low-level bloodlines like the Sharingan or Byakugan even be mentioned in the same breath as His Majesty the Emperor's eyes?" a clan head sneered arrogantly. "The Sharingan and Byakugan are common commodities you can farm if you dig deep enough into the right secret realms. What right do those basic eyes have to be compared to the sovereign majesty of the Rinnegan?"
Witnessing Ryuichi Yuwa reveal his true eyes, the initial panic in the courtyard dissolved into a collective wave of fanatical, near-religious adoration. Many of the veteran lords present had personally witnessed the absolute devastation the Emperor could unleash when those purple rings flared. In their geopolitical calculations, the standard bloodlines dominating the current meta were simply lower-tier garbage by comparison.
Whoosh!
Ryuichi Yuwa's body smoothly defied gravity, lifting off the stone tiles as he soared directly up into the sky like an ascending god.
Before the massive clay tumbler doll could enter the lower palace airspace, the Emperor casually spread his arms wide, locking his purple gaze onto the descending face of the doll, and violently pushed his palms outward into the empty air.
—Shinra Tensei!
In an instant, an invisible, omnidirectional wall of absolute physical force exploded outward from Ryuichi Yuwa's core. The localized space warped violently, transforming into a terrifying, unbreakable repulsive barrier that slammed directly into the underbelly of the giant clay doll, rewriting its downward trajectory and forcing it backward into the upper stratosphere.
—RUMBLE!!!
Because the white clay matrix was forcibly squeezed and compressed by the sheer, brutal intensity of the spatial repulsive barrier, the delicate chakra stability inside Li Dala's modified core shattered instantly.
The C3 No. 18 detonated prematurely in the high atmosphere. A chain reaction of apocalyptic, deafening roars ripped through the clouds as thousands of explosive tags ignited simultaneously, painting the sky above the East Island Imperial Palace in a blinding, terrifying sea of cascading white and orange firelight.
Wave after wave of terrifying, apocalyptic explosive impact radiated outward, transmitting a violent downward pressure that defied the laws of physics. The very sky above the capital seemed to shake, and the earth below the courtyard began cracking under the sheer acoustic and kinetic load.
The citizens of the entire imperial city were instantly alarmed, millions of people looking up in absolute horror at the artificial sun burning in the upper atmosphere.
Fortunately, those cascading explosive impacts and the soaring, ravenous flames were ultimately all intercepted and held at bay by the invisible spatial barrier created by the Emperor's repelling force. Otherwise, never mind this historic East Island Imperial Palace being turned to ash—even the dense, sprawling urban sectors within a twenty-mile radius would have been instantly leveled to the bedrock.
—CRACK!
However, although the direct thermal and kinetic impact of the modified clay doll was successfully blocked from making direct contact, the terrifying vibrational force and low-frequency shockwaves still rippled through the barrier, causing structural fractures and deep cracks to snake across the walls of countless traditional houses and concrete buildings below.
Ryuichi Yuwa was not feeling particularly well either. Although the Rinnegan's absolute dōjutsu, Shinra Tensei, could mathematically repel all physical matter and energy, the raw explosive impact of the clay doll just now—packed as it was with thousands of overlapping, chakra-laced explosive tags—was simply too monstrously dense. The immense pressure had almost caused him to suffer a severe, catastrophic backlash from his own repulsive vector.
"Damn it... how exactly did this clay doll bypass our coastal radar and sensory barriers to get here? It was delivered directly to this precise geographic coordinate?"
Ryuichi Yuwa silently swallowed a throatful of iron-tasting blood, enduring the sharp, throbbing pain of his internal organs nearly being displaced by the pressure wave, and smoothly floated back down to the stone tiles of the ground.
"Your Majesty the Emperor! Are you alright?"
The dozens of elite lords and shrine guardians immediately gathered around him in a tight circle. Seeing that Ryuichi Yuwa's posture remained upright and his purple eyes remained stable, they collectively breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
But within seconds, that relief evaporated as their tactical minds realized a deeply disturbing, systemic problem.
How exactly was that clay doll bomb delivered directly into the airspace of their absolute most secure sovereign stronghold? There hadn't been a single warning flare, a single fluctuating sensory array, or a single sign of a conventional high-altitude delivery vehicle!
If such heavily rigged clay dolls were to start appearing frequently or even daily in the future... how could they possibly defend against it? They couldn't keep the Emperor hovering in the sky as a permanent shield.
Recognizing that defensive measures were fundamentally reactive and useless against an invisible spatial delivery system, Ryuichi Yuwa realized he had to cut the threat off at its root. He turned his eyes away from the twins and called upon East Island's most formidable, feared black-ops assassin.
"President Kato... that Li Dala from the Great Xia Kingdom must die. I will trouble you to personally oversee this matter."
Ryuichi Yuwa turned to look at a grim, white-haired man standing silently at the edge of the shadow cast by the palace roof. Although the Emperor was technically issuing a military directive, his spoken tone was exceptionally polite, almost deferential.
He had good reason to be cautious; even as the sovereign ruler wielding the Rinnegan, Ryuichi Yuwa had to be somewhat wary of the horrifying, soul-based Forbidden Technique that this particular man possessed.
"Rest assured, Your Majesty the Emperor. Leave this minor eradication to me," Kato Dankichi readily accepted the request, his voice flat and devoid of human emotion. He adjusted his formal robes, then calmly continued to probe: "What about that Super Kage-level rookie, Jiang Chen? Since I am already crossing the sea, should I systematically harvest his life as well?"
"Not for the time being."
Ryuichi Yuwa shook his head slightly, a cold, calculating gleam flashing deep within his purple concentric rings.
Kato Dankichi's legendary assassination methodology was a long-range, metaphysical sniper kill; once the target's soul was shredded, the physical corpse left behind would suffer complete cellular collapse, making it entirely impossible to recover or salvage. The Emperor had already meticulously laid out his grand strategy, and he didn't want the perfect, high-potential Six Paths of Pain vessels he had his eyes on to be permanently wasted because of a premature assassination.
"In that case, I will proceed to eliminate that Li Dala first to cut off their artillery supply. I ask Your Majesty the Emperor to personally protect my physical form while I am away."
Seeing that Ryuichi Yuwa had specific grand plans for Jiang Chen that required him alive, Kato Dankichi said nothing more.
After formally entrusting his vulnerable physical body to the absolute protection of Ryuichi Yuwa and the elite palace guard, he immediately sat cross-legged directly onto the cracked stone tiles of the courtyard and closed his eyes. His fingers blurred into a fast, complex sequence of hand seals.
—Spirit Transformation Technique!
The very next second, a brilliant, crystal-clear spiritual light illuminated the surface of Kato Dankichi's unmoving physical form.
With a soft, ethereal hum, a semi-transparent, glowing soul body instantly separated from his flesh and bone, flying upward out of his physical chest.
Having successfully undergone the Spirit Transformation, Kato Dankichi had entered a very strange, terrifyingly overpowered metaphysical state. Not only was he completely immune to all conventional physical and elemental attacks in the mortal realm, but he had also mastered the absolute laws of unhindered flight and long-distance spiritual teleportation.
The spectral assassin cast one brief, glowing glance back down at Ryuichi Yuwa, then turned around in the upper air and vanished into thin air, his untethered spirit shooting across the ocean at impossible speeds, heading directly in the vector of the Great Xia Kingdom.
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