As one of the Sannin, the pinnacle of Konoha’s fighting power, Tsunade’s strength went without saying.
On the offensive, she could unleash explosive damage with her Chakra Enhanced Strength; on the defensive, she could heal the dying and mend the wounded with Medical Ninjutsu.
She could even gain high-speed self-regeneration by releasing her Yin Seal.
Faced with an opponent who couldn’t be killed—yet who could one-shot you in return—most ninja would find themselves with a splitting headache.
Tsunade folded her arms across her chest, which only made the swell there stand out all the prouder.
Her golden ponytail was teased lightly by the thin breeze, and though a trace of nostalgia colored her expression, the aura around her was slowly climbing.
Yet at this moment her opponent was merely a red-haired pretty boy of six, with strikingly handsome features.
Off to the side, Jiraiya held Naruto’s hand as the two had long since retreated to the edge of the clearing, settling in obediently as spectators enjoying the show.
Genshin drew a deep breath, his mindset now completely steady.
The chasm-like gulf between himself and Tsunade was something he understood all too clearly.
In Basic Taijutsu and combat experience he was utterly outclassed across the board—go toe-to-toe and a single punch would leave him scattered in pieces.
If he wanted to pull off anything worth noticing in this sparring match, his only way out lay in the unique properties of his Hamon Chakra.
No more idle chatter—Genshin instantly circulated his Hamon Chakra.
Hummmm—a faint golden current of fine Chakra instantly enveloped his entire body.
Ring-shaped ripples spread slowly outward with him at their center, and the lingering snow beneath his feet trembled faintly as fine flecks of it rose up and floated.
Abundant, stable Hamon Chakra flowed through every inch of his Chakra Pathway System, through every muscle; his strength, speed, and nerve reflexes were maxed out in that very instant.
Genshin’s right foot suddenly stamped down hard onto the ground!
Boom!
A dull, thunderous crash exploded outward, the ground trembling slightly.
The gravel, dead branches, and piled snow left on the surface were shaken into the air, swarming thick and dense as they hung suspended.
Genshin twisted his body and spun his leg, a fierce gust of wind wrapping golden Hamon around it.
In that instant the Hamon Chakra poured into every piece of gravel, every broken twig, and he swept the floating wood and stone shards outward!
The once-ordinary fragments of wood and stone were instantly granted tremendous penetrating power and explosive force.
Hamon itself possessed a strengthening effect on matter, and once upgraded into Hamon Chakra the effect was even greater—powerful enough to easily punch through a thick wall.
Dense, sharp, ear-piercing sonic cracks filled the air as dozens of stone shards, carrying lethal force, blasted toward Tsunade in a fan-shaped spread.
Faced with the barrage filling the sky, Tsunade—arms still folded across her chest—revealed a smile of approval.
“Not a bad attack.”
She neither dodged nor evaded, gathering Chakra and tensing the muscles of her leg.
Boom!
An earthquake.
The ground was cracked open over a span of a dozen-plus meters by that single stomp, the overwhelming force forcibly heaving up the bedrock below and raising a massive slab of rock like a shield to block Genshin’s attack.
Dense impacts rang out one after another as the gravel and twigs slammed into the giant rock before Tsunade, each and every one shattering into powder—not even the hem of her clothes was so much as grazed.
Dust billowed and stone chips scattered.
Jiraiya used the Wild Lion’s Mane Technique to shield little Naruto beside him, while the startled Naruto shouted and hollered.
The offensive was instantly dismantled, and the smoke and dust slowly dispersed.
Tsunade lowered her arms, the playful interest in her eyes fading away.
“A very fine method of attack, and your Chakra control precision far surpasses others your age.
But now—it’s my turn to make a move.”
Before the words had even finished, Tsunade’s figure abruptly vanished from where she stood.
No Hand Seals, no build-up whatsoever—pure physical speed erupting into the ultimate Body Flicker effect, the very air torn apart by her form.
In the original story Tsunade’s speed was rarely given any ink; people’s attention mostly fixated on her devastatingly destructive Chakra Enhanced Strength.
But in truth, Tsunade’s speed was equally astonishing.
In the Book of Shinobi, Tsunade’s Taijutsu was rated a perfect ten out of ten—meaning that in the field of Taijutsu, she had not a single weakness.
In the next instant she had already appeared half a meter before Genshin, right hand clenched into a fist, blasting out a simple straight punch.
No flashy techniques—only the purest, most terrifying monstrous strength.
It was as if he could see a great big character for ‘death’ written upon Tsunade’s fist.
The gale slammed into his face, the pressure suffocating, the wind flattening Genshin’s handsome features into a comically absurd expression.
If this punch landed square and true, wouldn’t his life just be over?
At the critical moment, Genshin’s pupils suddenly contracted.
Thanks to the nerve reflexes enhanced by his Hamon Chakra, Tsunade’s blindingly fast assault was slowed just slightly in his eyes, and he barely managed to capture the trajectory of the punch.
He couldn’t dodge—there was simply not enough time.
Then he’d redirect the force!
Genshin made the call in an instant, abandoning evasion.
He compressed all the Hamon Chakra in his body to the extreme, gathering every bit of it into his palms to form a thin yet utterly condensed layer of Hamon Chakra.
When used, Hamon Chakra could greatly boost defense, similar to the effect of Armament Haki.
And the smaller the area the Hamon was concentrated over, the greater the defensive boost—in the original work, the second-generation JoJo (Joseph Joestar) could lay down a wall of Hamon by tugging a single strand of hair, enough to block a bullet’s shot; concentrated onto the arms, it could defend against Kars’s iron-shredding chainsaw blade.
But…
Neither bullet nor chainsaw was in any way comparable to this punch.
So the choice Genshin made this moment was to use the Hamon Chakra to redirect the force sideways as much as possible, deflecting this punch off its track.
He didn’t try to meet the head-on impact of the fist, but instead turned his body and raised his hand, pressing his palm precisely against the side of Tsunade’s fist.
Hummmm—
Two utterly different Chakras collided in an instant.
The savage, domineering Monstrous Strength Chakra crashed into the finely vibrating, ultimately condensed Hamon Chakra.
Genshin’s arm shuddered violently, his palm going numb in an instant, his whole arm nearly losing all sensation as the enormous force pushed his body flying backward.
But this punch—in the end, he had forcibly wrenched it off its trajectory.
In mid-air Genshin steadied himself and landed on both feet, plowing shallow furrows into the ground.
By the time he touched down, the self-healing property of his Hamon Chakra had already repaired the injuries to his hands.
At last, a flicker of genuine astonishment flashed through Tsunade’s eyes.
Though that punch hadn’t used her full strength, its speed and force still exceeded that of an ordinary Jōnin’s attack.
Never mind a six-year-old child—even a veteran Chūnin would have had no time to react, let alone redirect the blow.
“Interesting.” Tsunade raised an eyebrow, her offensive resuming.
“Again!”
Over the next few dozen seconds, fist-wind howled across the clearing, afterimages crisscrossing.
Though it sounded like an exchange of blows, in truth Genshin was only dodging in the most wretched fashion.
Amid the extreme back-and-forth, on the rare occasion he found an opening to sneak in a jab with a Hamon-Chakra-enhanced projectile, it would be flicked aside by a single one of Tsunade’s fingers, unable to land at all.
Tsunade’s offensive, meanwhile, was ceaseless, every punch fast and fierce, carrying the force to crumble mountains and split stone.
She used no killing techniques, holding back her power throughout, purely suppressing him with basic monstrous-strength Taijutsu, all to probe the limits of Genshin.
In the process of continuously dodging and deflecting attacks, gradually… Genshin felt his command over the Hamon Chakra growing ever more practiced.
The speed of extracting and circulating his Hamon Chakra, along with the precision of its use, were improving step by step!
Combat really was the best rush, after all!
Keeping his Hamon Breathing steady all the while, he continuously condensed Hamon Chakra at his palm, elbow, and forearm, time and again pressing precisely against the sides of Tsunade’s punches, deflecting her offensive and dissolving the brute force.
At the same time, Genshin had also been constantly trying out new tactics.
When dealing with the Kumogakure ninja leader, he had relied on faking unconsciousness to get in close, driving Hamon Chakra into the enemy’s body to paralyze the nerves and throw the Chakra into disarray, directly stripping the opponent of his mobility.
Now he wanted to replicate that tactic as well—using the instant of close-range force redirection to seep Hamon Chakra into Tsunade’s body and disrupt her Chakra flow and nerve reflexes.
The effect, well… could only be described as the height of comedy.
A top-tier powerhouse like Tsunade had, one could say, perfected the art of Chakra control—the Chakra within her body circulated at extreme speed, and the instant any incoming attack was about to land, high-density Chakra would instantly wrap around the struck area.
An attack of insufficient magnitude couldn’t even break through her defense.
On top of that, her combat experience was immensely rich and the transitions between offense and defense flawless, giving Genshin no chance whatsoever to establish stable close-range output.
It was much like the Hyūga’s Gentle Fist—seemingly very strong, yet in reality only good for playing the low-tier bracket.
The moment it entered the high-tier bracket against a top-tier powerhouse, it would fall into the awkward predicament of being unable to land, and even when it did land, being unable to break through the defense.
Attempt after attempt, miss after miss.
The occasional successful infiltration amounted to only slight interference, unable to replicate the crushing effect he’d had when subduing the ninja leader.
Yet even so, at the edge of the field Jiraiya had long since watched with his mouth half agape, his face full of astonishment.
Even though Tsunade wasn’t using her full strength, a six-year-old child—under the relentless assault of Tsunade, one of the Sannin—not only failed to crumble or panic, but could steadily redirect the force and hold his own in the exchange, even attempting to counter his opponent!
This was already beyond what the word ‘genius’ could describe.
Have I picked up a monster here?
Looking back to the battlefield.
The tangled fight had lasted nearly a minute, and Genshin’s stamina and Chakra were being consumed at an ever-increasing rate.
His breathing grew ragged, his forearms sore and numb, and the openings in his defense grew more and more numerous.
He knew all too well—his limit was almost here…