Chapter 52 (C52)

Like a smoldering flame, the heat expands continuously within the small bony space of the eye socket, scorching every nerve in the surrounding area.

The aftereffects of using Kamui were already showing, and Kakashi instinctively closed his left eye.

He dodged the exploding clay birds with a few quick movements.

Damn it.

It seems like Deidara is deliberately separating him from Naruto.

"Naruto, wait a minute."

Desperate to save them, Naruto, whose eyes had turned bloodshot, wouldn't listen to anything else. "Kakashi-sensei, you're too slow. I need to catch up first."

The trees growing horizontally on the cliff were instantly covered with hundreds of grasshopper-shaped explosive clay, blocking Kakashi's path and widening the distance between him and Naruto. After a few moments, the two figures in front of him could no longer be seen.

A huge shadow swept past at high speed. Kakashi looked up and saw a white bird he had never seen before, with only its wings covered in blue feathers, stirring up the air in its path.

The next moment, an extremely domineering sword aura, carrying the power of thunder, cleaved down from above, cutting through the clear, white clouds in the sky and turning them into a sickle-shaped Milky Way, which flowed slowly in two.

This chakra...

Kakashi was jolted, and despite the pain, he forced his Sharingan back open.

The clay bird beneath his feet had a third of its body severed diagonally. Lightning Release counters Earth Release, and once the explosive clay is destroyed by Lightning Release chakra, it loses its explosive function. Losing his balance in mid-air, Deidara quickly discarded the useless remains of the bird, throwing it along with the bird's head that was holding Gaara's body as bait. Under the cover of the smoke and dust, he flew and rolled down to a tree.

But the huge cloud of dust that rose up did not seem to cause any visual disturbance to the newcomer. A flash of lightning streaked across the sky, and the air whistled as if it were being torn apart, stretched into a taut line. Almost instinctively, Deidara chose to exchange his clay Stand for his own and dive underground.

Through the thick soil several meters deep, he could vaguely hear the piercing, sharp thunderclap subside into silence.

But that doesn't mean it's over.

The soil's rich moisture and dissolved minerals act as natural conductors for lightning.

The feeling of weightlessness and the sound of wind tore at his robes as Deidara was blasted out of the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a figure in his swaying vision. He gritted his teeth and flipped in mid-air. His right hand, which had been severed to prevent Kakashi's Kamui from sucking him in, was now gone. He could only use his remaining left hand to catch a blow and use the force to return to the ground. His feet left two long marks on the ground as he coughed up blood.

Blood flowed into his trembling palm. The "mouth" that had been chewing clay in his palm had been deeply embedded in a kunai. He used his teeth to bite the handle of the kunai and pulled it out. He found that the kunai, which was covered in chakra, had pierced through the acupoints on his meridians, blocking the flow of chakra. In other words, his hand could no longer use Explosion Release.

The sound of light footsteps approached from afar.

The other party did not deliberately conceal their whereabouts. Influenced by Scorpion, Deidara also used to do this when they went on missions together—when the prey was struggling to its death, even the slightest movement could elicit an interesting but useless struggle.

The dust settled in the wind.

The first thing that caught my eye was those eyes.

No wonder they could accurately pinpoint his location amidst such a thick cloud of smoke; no wonder they could still discover him even after he slipped away and hid underground; no wonder they could precisely seal his acupoints with a single strike.

Deidara's eyes narrowed. Sure enough, he hated those who used eye techniques the most.

After Itachi Uchiha's Sharingan, he decided to rank this person's Byakugan as the second most hated.

"You are Yuki-Hotaru from Konoha?"

Each of the corners, which they privately call "head harvesters," has a booklet filled with the names of the top-ranked bounty hunters, and the person in front of them is among them.

"Gaara!!!"

A painful roar came from not far away.

It seems that the Nine-Tailed Fox has successfully destroyed the Clay Bird and dug out its corpse.

The earth trembled and hummed, and a beast-like chakra spread out, leaving a faint smell of burning in its wake.

"Shouldn't we go check on him? That nine-tailed brat looks like he's about to collapse..."

The cold blade reflected a thin beam of light under the clear sky. Deidara, who was skilled in long-range attacks rather than close combat, barely dodged the oncoming sword shadow. A sharp pain immediately shot through his cheek, and blood gushed from the gash.

hateful.

He didn't get distracted at all by what he said.

He was just a little short of completing the C4 Garuda technique he had mentioned.

Just like that idiot I encountered before, he always interrupted me when my Explosion Release clay was about to be completed—it was extremely unsportsmanlike.

All ninjutsu relies on chakra. Deidara doesn't have the Byakugan, so it's unclear what the world looks like through their eyes. But it's likely that they could observe the gathering and form of chakra, which is why they always timed it so perfectly.

Deidara paused, as if remembering something. He looked at her face again, trying to find similar features to confirm his guess. A wicked yet innocent smile crept onto his lips. "Oh~ you're that guy's acquaintance, aren't you? Here to avenge him..."

A flash of lightning.

That was a speed that was difficult for the human eye to perceive. The sword pierced straight through flesh and blood, penetrating the chest cavity. He met a pair of eyes that were calm to the point of being indifferent.

With a twist of the sword, the blood vessels of the heart were brutally severed. The roar of lightning was compressed into a sharp point, directly wedged into the bone marrow. The spell on the chest was destroyed by the explosive lightning. In that instant, time seemed to shatter into jagged pieces.

How could that be...

His clay spider should have already...

The scene before him was turned ninety degrees. Deidara lay on the ground, his injured cheek scraping against the rough earth, creating new wounds. He saw that each of the tiny white clay spiders was encased in a small water sphere. When they exploded, the thin membrane of the water droplets was stretched to its limit by the force of the implosion. The perfect sphere was stretched into an irregularly bulging ellipsoid, its outline trembling and fluctuating violently, before finally returning to calm—the energy of the explosion was forcibly absorbed within the perfectly round cage.

A strange smell filled the air, like mud churned up after a downpour, mixed with the almost metallic, sweet odor of flesh and blood being instantly roasted.

He tried to breathe, but the cables controlling his muscles had been burned, and he felt a heavy, suffocating tightness in his chest—the sword strike had destroyed the self-destruct spell he had set up in his chest.

What? This way of dying is anything but artistic.

The glaring sunlight was blocked by someone, and Deidara could barely keep his eyes half-open. Backlit, he couldn't see the expression on her face.

His body temperature was rapidly decreasing, so the blood-stained knife pressed against his neck even seemed somewhat warm.

"Hello……"

On those few occasions, when Kakuzu and the others mentioned her, they always called her Xueying, Xueying. Deidara suddenly realized that he didn't seem to know her real name.

The old man from three generations used to say that you must remember someone's name so that you can meet them again in the next life. If that's true, he'll have to collect this debt from her in his next life.

"…May I have your name?

With a flick of the sword, a thin, red streak sealed off all sound.

Kakashi used the sealing talisman given to him by Jiraiya to finally control Naruto, who had lost his mind due to Gaara's death and whose Nine-Tails chakra was beginning to leak out. When he arrived with Naruto, this was the scene he saw.

The blade returned to its sheath, and a string of blood beads fell from the edge, like broken red agate, shattering in the muddy earth.

Kana turned her head to the side, and a shard of shattered jade remained at the corner of her eye, like the last spark of life in a white snowfield.

"Kana-nee..." Naruto instinctively took a step forward.

But Kakashi reached out and blocked him from standing still, placing his hand across his chest.

He stared intently at her, his entire body like a fully drawn bow, the string stretched to its limit, yet he didn't know where to shoot the arrow.

He was both afraid that she would reveal Neji's death to Naruto and guilty of his excessive demands on her—she should be the one suffering more than Naruto, yet he was still asking her to take care of Naruto's feelings.

"...Kana."

Kana didn't look at Kakashi.

Her tone was calm, as if it were a routine, as she told Naruto, "Sasori of the Red Sand is dead."

Naruto, who was completely unaware of Neji's situation, did not notice anything amiss. Even if he had a slightly strange feeling, it was overshadowed by his intense grief over losing Gaara.

“Kana-nee,” Naruto’s voice trembled slightly, “Gaara…”

"Chiyo from Sunagakure ordered him to be taken back, saying that life or death was irrelevant. There must be some secret technique involved."

After his heart stopped beating, Gaara's hands and face began to feel cold and stiff. Naruto carefully lifted his upper body, supported him with his back, and carried the unconscious Gaara on his back.

Regardless of what kind of secret technique Granny Chiyo was talking about, since we're fighting against death, it's better to act sooner rather than later.

Naruto hurriedly took two steps forward, carrying Gaara on his back, but when he turned around, he found that Kana and Kakashi were still standing in the same spot.

"Lend me Parker."

Kakashi stared at the red dot at the corner of her eye, which, against her pale face, made him feel as if he were watching a piece of white porcelain shedding tears of blood.

She said Sasori was dead, which meant she came from there. She needed Puck because she wasn't planning to stop yet; she wouldn't stop until she had her revenge. "After I send them back and settle Gaara's matter, I'll go with you..."

"never mind."

Kana dodged Kakashi's outstretched hand, jumped up on the spot, and used the treetop as leverage to leap up. In mid-air, she bit her thumb, and the hand seals of Hai, Xu, You, Shen, and Wei were formed in an instant. Her five fingers were wide open, and the complex black incantations swallowed the bloodstains and revealed them.

The bluebird spread its enormous wings, and its clear, melodious song echoed far and wide.

"Wait Kana!"

Kana stood on the bird's head, looking down at him. "Aren't you going with Naruto?"

She seemed to twitch the corners of her mouth slightly, as if in mockery, but it didn't form a proper curve, so it was just a regular question: "Or would you abandon him for me?"

Even if he was slow to react, Naruto sensed something was wrong. His heart suddenly felt like it was being gripped by an invisible hand. It wasn't pain, but a weightless emptiness, as if a red line was extending from his chest, teetering on the edge of breaking in some unseen dimension—he had initially thought it was because of the pain of losing Gaara.

When people are most confused and helpless, they will call out "Mom", but in Naruto's more than ten years of life, the role of his mother was absent.

So, instinctively, without thinking, he blurted out the name of someone close to him, "Kana-nee..."

His eyes were looking at her, seeking answers.

Kana did not answer his question.

"You have things to do, and I have mine."

"Naruto."

She didn't smile often, so that first smile she showed only for him was etched deeply into Naruto's memory like a scar.

"goodbye."