socalfunplaces Chapter 372 Even More Sober Than Before
Chapter 372 Even More Sober Than Before
Chapter 372 Even More Sober Than Before
It wasn't that he wanted to close his eyes, but that the fog had gotten into them and was stinging them. He listened intently to Helian's footsteps; they were faint in the fog, but not absent. Chi Quan heard them; they were about five steps to his left and slightly ahead.
He drew his knife.
The knife pierced the fog, but missed.
Helian's footsteps suddenly appeared to his right rear. Chi Quan turned around, his blade slashing upwards. This time, it didn't hit Helian's body, but the gray-white blade. The two blades clashed with a dull thud. Chi Quan pressed forward in the direction of the impact, pushing the blade upwards along the gray-white blade, his target Helian's fingers.
Helian drew his sword and retreated.
The fog receded slightly as he stepped back, and visibility in front of Chi Quan returned to about two meters. He saw Helian standing two meters away, a gray-white blade held horizontally in front of him, with a few drops of blood on the blade—not Chi Quan's, but his own. Just now, Chi Quan's blade had grazed the web of his right hand.
Helian looked down at the wound on his tiger's mouth and licked it with his tongue.
"Your swordsmanship shows the influence of several styles: Konoha-ryu, Kirigakure-ryu, and even your own Ikezumi clan's techniques. Who taught you?"
"Many people," Chi Quan said, "those who are dead, those who are alive, those who owe me favors, and those I owe favors to."
"You owe too many people," Helian said.
Chi Quan didn't deny it. He owed Asuma a life, Kakashi a life, Shikamaru countless nights cleaning up his messes, and Shizune countless nights he'd driven mad by him. He also owed Kiba a meal, Akamaru a bone, and Himon a tutorial on how to use his Byakugan.
He owes these people, so he can't die here.
Chi Quan voluntarily entered the fog.
He sheathed the knife.
Helian frowned slightly as he watched him sheath his sword. Sheathing the sword meant changing weapons or fighting styles. Chi Quan had no other weapons; he only had this sword.
The knife is in its sheath.
Izumi placed his hand on the hilt of the sword, his thumb against the guard, and his index and middle fingers gripping the scabbard opening. This wasn't the stance for drawing the sword; it was the starting position for iaido. But he didn't draw it. He remained in that half-drawn, half-drawn position, the blade protruding two inches from the scabbard opening, the chakra membrane on the blade gleaming faintly in the shadow of the scabbard opening.
Helian's brows furrowed even more.
"Where did you learn iaido from?"
"I learned it myself."
"It doesn't look like it."
Chi Quan didn't explain. That wasn't iaido; it was a fighting style he created—a half-draw. The sword wasn't drawn from its sheath, only two inches of the blade protruded. It could be used as a short sword or drawn fully at any time. The advantage of this style was its speed, because the sword was already at the opening of the sheath, and the distance drawn was less than two inches. The disadvantage was its short attack range; one had to be very close to the opponent to hit them.
He had to stay close to Helian.
The spring water rushed towards Helian.
His speed was even faster than before. It wasn't an explosion of chakra, but the limit of his body—the wound on his abdomen, the old injury on his left shoulder, the lingering poison in his lungs—all of these ached, but he suppressed the pain to a deep, distant place, as if it were unrelated to him. He placed many things there—his mother's death, Hamura Sakuya's sword, Helian's letter. All of it was suppressed there.
Helian saw through his intention. He held his gray-white sword horizontally in front of him, not attacking, but defending. He was waiting for Chi Quan to close in, because once Chi Quan closed in, his half-drawn sword would have to hit a vital point within an inch, while Helian's gray-white sword could pierce through his body within the same distance.
Who gets stabbed first?
Chi Quan pasted it on.
His right thumb pushed the knife, and it sprang out two inches from its sheath, the tip just touching Helian's left chest. At the same time, Helian's gray-white knife stabbed towards Chiquan's abdomen.
The two knives struck the target almost simultaneously.
Chi Quan's blade pierced Helian's left chest. Not deep—Helian shifted back half an inch at the last moment, and the blade only went in an inch deep, not touching his heart.
Helian's gray-white blade pierced Chi Quan's abdomen. Not far in, Chi Quan grabbed the blade with his left hand at the last moment. The gray-white blade pierced his palm and got stuck between his metacarpal bones, unable to go any further.
Blood gushed from both of their wounds at the same time.
Chi Quan's left palm was pierced by the gray-white blade, the blade stuck in the bone, unable to be pulled out. His right hand gripped the hilt of the sword, the tip still embedded in Helian's left chest.
Helian looked down at the knife in his chest, then at Chi Quan's left hand that was pinned down.
"You're insane." Helian's voice changed, not with surprise, but with a whisper tinged with a strange admiration. "You want to trade one of my hands for one of my knives."
Chi Quan didn't reply. His right thumb pushed the knife again, and it sprang out an inch from its sheath. The tip of the blade went a little deeper into Helian's left chest.
Helian grunted and grabbed Chi Quan's right wrist with his left hand, stopping him from pushing the knife further.
The two of them remained frozen in place.
Chi Quan's left hand was pinned to the ground by a gray-white knife, while his right hand was held by Helian. The tip of Chi Quan's knife was embedded in Helian's left chest. The three wounds were connected, and blood flowed from both of their bodies, pooling on the muddy ground, making it impossible to tell whose wound it was.
The dust and mist flowed slowly around them.
In the distance, sporadic shouts could be heard from outside the basin. Allied soldiers were trying to dig through the rubble to rescue their buried comrades. The sounds were distant and muffled, as if they came through several layers of walls.
Helian suddenly laughed. Blood gushed from the wound on his left chest, flowing down his gray robe, and his lips turned white from blood loss, but he was laughing.
"Do you know why I talked to you so much?" he asked.
Chi Quan looked at him.
"Because I'm waiting."
"What are you waiting for?"
"Wait for my people to arrive."
Chi Quan felt a sudden chill run down his spine. It wasn't Helian who had triggered it, but rather the branding he had received. There were people nearby, many of them, bearing the mark of Yan Shui.
Helian's smile widened.
"You think I only brought those useless Allied troops? I have a squad of twelve men, the remnants of the Hamura family, each of them skilled in water manipulation. They're currently setting up a formation around the basin."
"What formation?"
"ebb."
Chi Quan's expression changed.
"The ebb tide is not a skill that can be mastered by one person alone."
"Yes," Helian said. "The Ebb Tide is a technique activated simultaneously by twelve people, covering an area of ten miles, causing all living things to begin dehydrating from their bodies. The water in your body will be drawn out and flow to me through the channels of the Derivative Water. Your blood, your sweat..."
Every drop of water in your cells will become mine.
Chi Quan pushed the knife forward with his right hand, the tip going in a little further. Helian grunted, his grip loosening for a moment, and Chi Quan seized the opportunity to pull his left hand away from the gray-white knife.
The sound of a hand being sliced open by the blade was soft, like tearing a soaking wet cloth. Chi Quan's left hand slipped off the blade, a gash split open in the middle, revealing the white bone beneath. He didn't have time to look; his right hand drew the sword—the blade was pulled from Helian's left chest, leaving a trail of blood.
Helian staggered half a step, clutching his chest with his left hand, his gray-white sword hanging at his side.
Chi Quan took three steps back, his left hand hanging down, blood dripping from his fingertips, while his right hand gripped the knife, the blood on the blade slowly drying in the dust.
The two people looked at each other from three steps apart.
Helian's lips were already bloodless, but his eyes were still gray. There was a light in his gray eyes, not the light of chakra, but something more ancient and closer to instinct.
"Chiquan," he said, panting, "you thought your plan had failed? No. Your plan succeeded. More than 20,000 allied troops were buried in this basin. The war is over. The three kingdoms of Lei, Feng, and Tu no longer have the strength to invade. You did what you wanted to do."
Chi Quan did not loosen his grip on the knife.
"Now it's my turn," Helian said. "My plan has succeeded. The Allied Forces helped me corner you. You're injured, you're bleeding, and you've awakened the liquefaction of Water Moon. The twelve members of the Hamura family have already set up the Tidefall Formation. Every drop of your water will become mine. Once I've drained your blood and extracted the two bloodlines from your body, I will become the first person in the world to possess both Water Manipulation and Liquefaction."
Chi Quan's voice was very low.
"And what about you? Can your body withstand two bloodline limits?"
Helian's smile froze for a moment.
Chi Quan continued, "Hisai said that 'Yan Shui' and 'Liquefaction' are two different fluids. One controls water, the other transforms it. You grew up in the Hamura family, and you only have Yan Shui in your body. You've never been exposed to 'Liquefaction.' You think that by taking my blood and injecting it into your body, you'll simultaneously possess two bloodlines? You won't. You'll die. The two bloodlines will fight inside you, and your meridians will explode from within. You won't become some new kind of human; you'll become a pile of mud."
Helian's smile vanished completely.
Chi Quan's knife tip was pointed at him.
"You know that. You know you're going to die. You're still doing these things not to gain power. You're doing it for something else."
Helian looked at him.
"For what reason?"
"To prove you're stronger than my mother before you die," Chi Quan said. "My mother married into the Shuiyue family and gave birth to me. The two bloodlines within her fused, and she didn't die. You want to try it too? You're not convinced."
Helian's face twitched.
Chi Quan didn't know which word or phrase had struck a chord with him, but Helian's eyes changed. It wasn't anger, nor sadness, but a hollow, empty feeling, like something that had been exposed after all the shells had shattered.
"You know nothing." Helian's voice was so low it sounded like he was talking to himself.
"I don't need to know," Chi Quan said. "Your affairs are none of my business."
He gripped the knife tightly.
Helian looked at the hand holding the knife—his right hand was still bleeding, a gash between his thumb and forefinger, from when he drew the sword. The gash was small, but the bleeding hadn't stopped. Chi Quan's blood flowed from between his thumb and forefinger, down the hilt to the guard, and dripped into the mud.
Helian looked at the drops of blood.
"Your blood is on the ground," Helian said. "The Tidefall Formation has been activated."
The pool bowed its head.
The blood on the ground—the pool where his blood and Helian's blood were mixed together—was moving. Not by the wind, but on its own. The pool of blood was spreading outwards, not quickly, but evenly, as if someone were pushing it from the center outwards.
Chi Quan felt something being drawn out of his body. It wasn't chakra, it was water. Water from his cells was seeping into his skin's surface along his meridians, and sweat was pouring out from his forehead, back, and palms at the same time, ten times faster than normal. His lips went from moist to dry in seconds, and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth like sandpaper.
"The tide is receding," Helian said. "Twelve people are simultaneously draining the water from your body. Your blood will become thicker and thicker, your heart will beat slower and slower, and your brain will shrink due to dehydration. You won't die quickly. You'll first lose your sight, then your hearing, then your skin will crack, and then your internal organs will stop functioning one by one. Finally, the little water left in your body will flow to me through the channels of the Yanshui River."
Chi Quan tried to mobilize his chakra. It didn't work. Chakra needs water as a medium within the body; with the water drained away, the chakra was like a flood without a channel, rushing wildly through the meridians, out of control.
He knelt down on one knee.
It wasn't that he wanted to kneel; his legs were going weak. His knees hit the muddy ground, splashing up a small patch of muddy water. He still held the knife in his hand, the tip of which was planted on the ground, supporting his body.
Helian walked over and stood in front of him.
The gray-white knife was raised, its tip pressed against Chi Quan's chin, lifting his face.
The two people are facing each other.
Chi Quan's eyes were starting to blur, and he was seeing double. But he still managed to make out Helian's face—a pale, thin face with his own blood on his lips, and a strange expression on it. It wasn't the joy of victory, nor the thrill of revenge; it was an expression of exhaustion, weariness, as if he had finally reached the finish line.
"Your knife," Helian said, "was it left to you by your mother?"
Chi Quan's voice was so hoarse that it was almost inaudible.
"Um.
""
"She left you with many things," Helian said: "A knife, a surname, and a life."
Chi Quan's eyes slowly closed.
Helian's grey-white knife moved from his chin to the back of his neck.
Do you know why I'm doing these things today?
Chi Quan did not answer.
"Because today is the day your mother died," Helian said. "October 31st. She died on this day when you were six years old. Twenty-four years have passed."
Chi Quan's eyes remained closed.
But he moved his knife.
It wasn't a draw, a slash, or a thrust. He pulled the knife from the ground, tip up, hilt down, and then released it. The knife fell vertically, the tip digging into his own thigh.
Blood gushed from his thigh.
Helian was stunned.
Chi Quan opened his eyes, his pupils were bloodshot, and his lips were cracked like soil on dry land, but his eyes were clear—even clearer than before.
"You're trying to drain my water," Chi Quan's voice was like sandpaper scraping glass. "I'll make a hole in myself. The water will flow out through the hole, and then you won't be able to drain it."
"9
Helian's expression changed.
You will bleed dry—
"
"It's better to be drained than to be sucked dry by you." Chi Quan pulled the knife out of his thigh, and blood gushed out like a tap turned on, instantly soaking a large area of his dark pants. He stood up, leaning on the knife, swaying like a tree about to be blown down by the wind, but he didn't fall.
Helian took a step back.