The winter of Ren’s twenty-first year was the coldest the Mist-Veil Valleys had seen in a decade.
Heavy snow blanketed the rocky ridges, turning the narrow mountain trails into deadly ice traps.
A desperate vanguard unit of fifteen Hagoromo and mercenary survivors—driven north by the brutal Uchiha-Senju meatgrinder—had stumbled upon the outer perimeter barrier of the Kazeshira sanctuary.
Starving, freezing, and armed to the teeth, they were trying to force their way through the narrow mountain pass to pillage the valley below.
Ren stood alone at the narrowest point of the pass, where the cliff walls squeezed the trail down to a width of just eight feet.
Behind him lay the hidden path to his clan; in front of him stood fifteen desperate, battle-hardened men.
“Get out of the way, kid!” the mercenary captain snarled, his breath fogging in the freezing air.
“Move or we’ll chop you into kindling!”
Ren didn’t move.
He stood in the center of the icy trail, his grey cloak wrapped tightly around his shoulders.
His Kazeshira skin was buzzing.
In the freezing air, the atmospheric pressure was denser, giving him an even sharper, crystal-clear mental map of every muscle twitch, every heartbeat, and every blade draw from the fifteen men before him.
Fifteen targets.
Narrow corridor.
Perfect bottleneck, Ren thought.
“Kill him!”
The vanguard rushed forward in a chaotic, desperate pack. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
In the narrow space, their numbers meant nothing—they could only attack two at a time.
The first two mercenaries lunged with heavy broadswords.
Ren didn’t move until the blades were inches from his face.
He ducked under the heavy steel, guided by his skin, and drove his wind-coated trench knife through the first man’s leather chest plate.
Before the second man could recover his swing, Ren grabbed the first man’s collapsing body, using it as a human shield as three crossbow bolts thudded harmlessly into the dead man’s back.
Ren shoved the corpse into the second attacker, throwing him off balance, and followed up with a lightning-fast thrust through the chin.
Two down.
“Push forward!
Overwhelm him!” the captain roared from the back.
Ren moved with mechanical, terrifying precision.
He became a stone wall in the narrow pass.
He didn’t use massive Fireballs or massive Earth walls.
He used subtle, brutal efficiency: a wind-boosted dodge to avoid an axe, a quick kunai to a kneecap, a palm strike to crush a windpipe, a low sweep on the icy ground to send three men tumbling into the abyss below.
Four down.
Seven down.
Ten down.
The floor of the narrow pass became slick with red blood and melting ice. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
Ren’s breath came in steady, measured clouds.
His moderate chakra pool was holding strong—he was burning tiny, surgical wisps of energy while his enemies exhausted themselves swinging heavy steel in the deep snow.
By the time the remaining three mercenaries stopped running forward, they were stepping over a pile of their own dead comrades.
The captain looked at Ren in absolute horror.
The young Kazeshira commander was covered in frost and blood, his blue eyes staring back with zero emotion, his posture as steady as the granite cliffs around them.
“You’re…
you’re not human,” the captain gasped, dropping his bloodied sword into the snow and stumbling backward.
Ren took one step forward on the icy path, his trench knife dripping red onto the white snow.
“This valley is closed,” Ren said, his voice echoing quietly through the freezing mountain pass.
The remaining three men turned and fled down the mountain in pure terror, leaving their dead behind in the snow.
Ren stood alone in the quiet mountain pass, his body humming with the quiet satisfaction of a fully refined, lethal martial art.
He wiped his blade, turned his back to the bloody trail, and walked slowly back toward the sanctuary.
The outer borders were secure.
Now, the final storm of the Warring States Era was waiting for him at the Nakano River.