Hearing her own remark be thrown back in her face, Ino’s expression darkened.

She decided that there was nothing to it. If she wanted to understand how the bitch was doing it, she had to observe the technique a few more times.

Springing forward, Ino brandished her wind-coated sword and slashed at Hinata again. Only for Hinata to deflect it with her bare, faintly blue-glowing hand. But Ino was not deterred. She swung again.

Ino’s sword and Hinata’s hands became a blur to the audience as a dull thumping noise resounded throughout the surroundings every time the sword met the hand. The sounds slowly merged into an unceasing symphony of thuds as the girls exchanged several dozen blows at a speed normal civilians had no hope of following, all seemingly blurring into one seamless motion.

Neither girl faltered nor retreated as the ground beneath them slowly started to crack more and more with each blow. But both girls were stubborn. Ino wanted to push through while Hinata would be damned before letting Ino push her back.

The more Ino slashed her sword, the more she observed Hinata’s new technique, and she realized that the bitch’s fingers never truly touched the shredding wind chakra wrapped around her blade. No. Hinata was pulsing her chakra and pushing her sword away before it could come into proper contact with her hand.

It reminded Ino of her Heavenly Wall technique… and a small smirk formed on the corner of her lips as she had gotten an idea.

Only ten seconds had passed since they started exchanging blows, yet, as she swung her sword for the sixty-fifth time, Ino suddenly pushed more chakra into her blade and subtly shifted her footing. Hinata’s hand, as usual, struck the sword like a snake, exerting a lot of force on it.

But this time, Ino didn’t let it be deflected. She put her weight behind it, both her hands gripping the handle as she stabilized the sword, pressing forward with a loud, ‘Haaaah!’

Hinata, however, had Byakugan. And she noticed instantly when Ino started feeding her chakra to her blade. If she were not prepared, this would have probably broken her guard. But she was prepared, and the faint blue glow around her hands intensified.

Chakra-coated hands pressed against the wind-coated sword, both vying for supremacy as they came to a halt, unable to push through.

“You’ve managed to minimize your Heavenly Wall and stabilize it around your hand.” Ino grunted out, a bead of sweat flowing down her temple from the effort she was exerting. Yet, her voice contained an undeniable trace of awe.

She knew how hard such a feat would have been. The Heavenly Wall needed all tenketsu of the body to be used. Minimizing that to only the tenketsu on the hand?

A good comparison would be a lightning user creating the Lightning Armor from scratch and with no instructions, just because they are both based on lightning release.

Ino wryly smiled in her head. Now with this technique, the bitch had perfect offense and perfect defense in her hands. And it was so unfair! She usually had to dodge her sword swings or use the Heavenly Wall!

“Neat, isn’t it?” Hinata calmly replied, looking Ino in the eyes. But that calm was forced, and her expression showed a hint of strain as the muscles of her arms shook. Only the fact that Ino’s arms were shaking just the same brought her the determination to hold on. “I call it Heavenly Shield. It takes around a hundredth of the energy necessary for the Heavenly Wall.”

Ino’s eye twitched at that. If she wasn’t lying, that meant she could use it for hours with no problem. Feeling her own slowly dwindling chakra reserves, Ino’s expression became grave.

She realized she wasn’t going to win in the battle of endurance.

Knowing each other rather well, both girls realized that something had changed. And as if rehearsed, they reacted at the same time.

Hinata flooded her body and mainly her arms with unbelievably refined, layered, and very precise chakra enhancements, gaining a monumental increase in her physical prowess.

Ino created torrents of wind chakra with a thought, infusing it into her body, causing it to become incredibly light and gain a sharp increase in agility and speed, while her other physical attributes were also enhanced to a lesser degree.

Hinata’s chakra burst from her hands as she used her newfound strength to boldly press against the sword. Ino’s chakra intensified around the blade and burst forth, impacting the hands.

Both girls were forced to take over a dozen steps back as the momentum of their attacks clashed. Their feet slid on the ground, eventually coming to a stop.

But the calm didn’t last even for a moment as Hinata quickly threw several needles at Ino. Ino swung her sword, sending a wind blade at the needles before vanishing from her place in a burst of speed.

Hinata substituted with one needle, casually using Heavenly Shield to disperse the incoming wind blade as she kicked to the left.

Ino blurred into existence as she was caught by the kick in the abdomen. She involuntarily spat out a bit of saliva and folded around Hinata’s foot before her body was flung into the wall, where it created a small crater. Then, it dispersed into a puff of smoke, showing it was only a shadow clone.

It served its purpose and bought some time for Ino, however.

Two more shadow clones of Ino appeared out of nowhere, directly behind Hinata, in the imitation of the Dance of the Crescent Moon that Gekko Hayate taught her.

Because of the distraction, Hinata was a bit late noticing them and was forced to use Heavenly Wall, pushing her chakra out of all her tenketsu, creating a pressure wave of chakra that stopped the blades short and smashed into the clones, instantly dispersing them.

Yet, the Hyuga girl couldn’t help but feel irritated at the unnecessary chakra expenditure. If she had noticed earlier, she could have just dodged.

Unlike Hinata, Ino’s attack did not cost too much chakra. She might have created three shadow clones, but they barely did anything other than swing their swords, so upon their dispersal, Ino got back ninety percent of her energy investment.

For a double-layered distraction against Hinata, who had Byakugan? It was dirt cheap.

Hinata’s eyes suddenly widened as her head snapped to the right.

The air several meters away shimmered, revealing grinning Ino, holding her sword above her head. The chakra around it no longer looked like a simple wind-coating. Now, the energy was so green, thick, and seemed so solid…

The hair on Hinata’s neck stood.

“Getsuga Tensho!” Ino giddily screamed as she swung her blade down.

Hinata’s pupils dilated. Realizing that she could not block this with her Heavenly Shield, nor did she have the time to use Heavenly Wall or Kaiten, she could only undignifiedly throw herself to the side as an unbelievably sharp, dark green energy wave barely missed her, only catching some of her hair and shredding it into microscopic pieces.

The energy wave continued undisturbed throughout the whole arena, creating a deep trench in the ground on its way until it slammed and burrowed into the wall.

The whole arena shook, and the audience, especially the people above where the energy wave struck the wall, started to panic in fear. The protective seals lit up on the wall and lasted only a second before they instantly turned bright red under the strain, cracks slowly appearing on the symbols.

The Chunin, Jonin, and the Hokage paled. Even Orochimaru’s breath briefly hitched as he realized what had just happened. If not for the protective seals, Ino’s attack would most likely have continued straight through the wall, cleaving through several houses and streets with the energy it contained.

These seals could easily contain anything A-ranked and below. That meant Ino’s attack had the potency of an S-rank technique. And not an ordinary S-rank one either.

Orochimaru gulped in intense interest while Hiruzen’s hand slightly shook in worry. He almost instinctively barked an order to stop the match, only managing to bite his tongue at the last second, throwing a worried glance at the deep gash in the arena wall now that the energy had finally dispersed.

The seals held. Barely. Very, very barely.

Cold sweat poured down his back as he imagined what a disaster this could have turned into if they hadn’t. How many people would have been butchered by that one attack? He took a shaky breath, deciding to have a good talk with the young Yamanaka after this was over.

Rasa, however, didn’t show any reaction. He only blankly stared into the arena, his expression thoughtful. Inwardly, though? This whole invasion started to look like a supremely bad idea.

But he could no longer put a stop to it. His expression turned serious as he glanced at Orochimaru for a moment. But then he controlled himself and turned his attention back to the match, his hands tightly gripping the handrests.

Back in the arena, Ino felt amazing!

If possible, she would have thrown several more Getsuga Tenshos at the bitch! Seeing her eat grass after throwing herself onto the ground was just so satisfying!

Alas, the attack needed a few seconds of charging up, and Ino doubted Hinata was going to give her another opportunity to use it now that she knew about it.

Tsk. She really hoped to bisect her and end the match.

This was Ino’s trump card. With Hinata unable to use her lightning release, she had no way of stopping it other than dodging. Even her Hyuga techniques were not strong enough to fully no-sell it.

And it was not like being bisected would kill her either. While she could not stop the attack fully, she could always protect her vital areas with her Heavenly Wall. That much was easily doable. Plus, as long as Hinata didn’t die, she could heal herself back up to be combat-ready within a few minutes. Even if she were sliced into several pieces.

It might appear as if Ino tried to kill Hinata, but that wasn’t really the case. Ino knew exactly how hard Hinata was to put down. There was a reason why she hadn’t won even one spar against her so far. The girl was like a cockroach!

Of course, she had to pull out her nuclear option!

She might have given it a cool name like Getsuga Tensho, imitating that one carrot-headed dude from Ren’s stories. But this self-developed technique was one of Ino’s strongest. And she made it with the single purpose to counter Hinata’s unreal cockroachness.

But… Ino threw a small, worried glance at the gash in the arena. She knew there were protective seals. Ren told her. It’s why she felt it was okay to throw her Getsuga Tensho around. But she had clearly overestimated them.

‘Ops. Hehe. I think I am going to get scolded at home.’ Ino sheepishly thought as she realized she had almost caused a catastrophe.

But it was not her fault! Ren created a training dome with similar protective seals back in their training area. And his seals were capable of fully absorbing all energy from her Getsuga Tensho! It left barely a scratch on the training dome after clashing with Ren’s seals.

So, how was she supposed to know that Konoha’s Barrier Corps seals were so inferior?

Feeling exasperated, Ino threw an apologetic smile at the frightened proctor before quickly turning back to Hinata as the Hyuga girl hoped back on her feet.

“Alright, Ino-chan.” Hinata took a deep breath, looking very irritated, but her voice remained soft.

A massive surge of chakra burst out of her as her chakra pool directly decreased by a quarter, but only those with sensory abilities noticed, as to the naked eye, nothing changed.

The chakra seeped back into Hinata’s body, coating individual muscles, bones, tendons, and organs alike with such precision that even every single of her blood cells had their own chakra coating.

Her chakra control and Byakugan allowed her unbelievable precision in layering her chakra to enhance her body. And Hinata had taken it to an unreasonable degree, only satisfied with perfection.

Lightly flexing her ankle, the ground beneath her foot directly cracked in a radius of several meters as she narrowed her eyes at Ino.

“You want to play?” A small smile appeared on Hinata’s face. “Okay. Let’s play.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep