Chapter 4 [To be continued...]

After releasing the fireball, the Kumogakure's Jonin had already died in agony, but the remaining secret techniques had also been completed.

Moving at high speed, Logan struggled to maintain balance. Just as Chidori was about to cut into the center of the fireball, his relaxed mood suddenly tightened.

At this moment, the fireball began to distort, and the surging shockwaves and splattering flames seemed to indicate that this technique was about to explode!

Upon seeing this, Logan's heart sank, and he poured his remaining chakra into the Chidori. This method didn't only significantly improve the efficiency of the Jutsu, but it caused his body, which had shown signs of slowing down, to accelerate once again!

Then, the unstoppable lightning suppressed the core of the fireball, cutting through the body of the Kumogakure's Jonin and breaking through the wall like paper, allowing sunlight to shine through.

Everything in the path was cut open, and Logan rushed outside the apartment, flying in the sky tens of meters high.

The explosion rumbled for a long time, spreading dust and smoke. Except for the narrow room that was forcibly cut open, the bloated and huge apartment building remained intact.

"Phew, that should solve the problem." Logan, who is floating in mid-air, looked a bit disheveled but was uninjured.

After a burst of forward momentum, he began to fall, feeling slightly exhausted from overloading Chidori. However, he wasn't panicked. He had several ways to land safely. He even had time to glance back and look at the apartment building behind him. The corridor on that floor seemed to have been charged through by a monster. The broken bricks on both sides were all scorched, and as for the unlucky Kumogakure's Jonin, there's nothing of him left...

When Logan first arrived in the Naruto World, his body regressed to six years old. Including four years of basic training and two years of war, he had always been interacting with the people of Konoha. In the six years after the war, he had mostly spent his time in Konoha.

Logan gradually found a life worth living here and developed a sense of belonging to Konoha.

Therefore, he would try his best not to damage the village and the people here. That's why he had no hesitation in making the previous actions.

The acceleration of his body's descent was fast, and warm wind brushed against his face. Assessing the environment below, just as he was about to make landing preparations, Logan's pupils suddenly contracted.

A shuriken flew towards him.

The sense of crisis that he had experienced several times in life and death emerged strongly.

Logan, who was in mid-air, watched helplessly as the seemingly ordinary shuriken approached from an unexpected angle, and the whistling sound of its approach made his scalp tingle.

'Uncle Aida is still up there and can't save me.'

'Being in mid-air, I had nowhere to borrow force from.'

Realizing this was a dead end, Logan widened his eyes tightly and raised his hand with difficulty. He didn't give up, as he had experienced similar dangers before. His hand, struggling to move, raced against the deadly shuriken.

Time seemed to slow down, and he slowly formed a hand seal.

"Shadow…"

Just as he uttered the first syllable of the Jutsu's name, Logan realized something was wrong.

The slowing down of time is not just an illusion caused by his extreme concentration, but... it was actually slowing down for real!

The sound of the wind, the shuriken, the smoke, the sun high above, everything in the world seemed to slow down, like a slow-motion scene, until finally... it stopped.

[To be continued…]

A small line of text appeared clearly in Logan's field of vision.

Appearing out of nowhere, defying logic by floating in mid-air, out of place with everything around it, like a projection from another world.

'To be continued?'

Logan's train of thought ended here, and the scene began to blur. The previously suspended sound of the wind, the shuriken, the smoke, and the sun high above rapidly faded, turning black and white... In the blink of an eye, they transitioned from three-dimensional to two-dimensional, and then, with a 'thud', Logan felt himself land.

…

Southeast of Konoha, under the apartment building where the battle had taken place.

"Have you found him?" Aida, wearing his white cat mask again, stood in the shadows of the street and asked the colleague who had come to assist him. The wound on his left hand had been bandaged up after emergency treatment.

"No, apart from the two... one and a half corpses in the room, the whereabouts of Raiden Hattori have not been found." The speaker also wore a cat-themed mask, but it was gray.

The different animal masks and colors held different meanings, but that's a story for another time.

Pedestrians on the street occasionally glanced curiously at them. Although the ANBU members stood out, the villagers didn't fear them much. Instead, they held a kind of reverence for them, like urban legends come to life.

A worried expression crossed Aida's face behind his mask. He looked up and saw the charred gap halfway up the building. Lies to appease the villagers had been prepared, and the aftermath of the incident was being handled by others.

However, the protagonist of the previous incident... Raiden Hattori, had disappeared.

He disappeared so suddenly and strangely, and even the ANBU was unable to find any trace of him for a while.

"Aida, don't worry. The kid should be fine. Nowadays, the new generation rises, and the old one dies out. Hattori has experienced the Third Great Ninja War and the Nine-Tails Attack on the village." The man talking to Aida was also close to forty. At this moment, he tried to comfort Aida, "Maybe he just hurried off to relax after finishing his mission."

Regarding the latter half of the sentence, which was obviously nonsense, Aida gave his old colleague a speechless look, then said: "Your new generation rises, and the old one dies out, did you learn that from Logan?"

After chatting for a while, Aida still felt uneasy. He couldn't help but look towards the apartment building again, "Hattori used Chidori to deal with the aftermath, so it is unlikely that he will be seriously injured, but how could he disappear after rushing out of the room..."

"Aida, are you sure Logan disappeared into thin air?" The tone of the old colleague became slightly more serious.

After hesitating for a moment, Aida frowned and said, "I'm not entirely sure. There was a lot of smoke at the time."

The old colleague nodded and said nothing. The atmosphere became somewhat silent.

Something was definitely off about this situation. Joking aside, the members of the ANBU were not foolish.

A routine mission had led to a series of events. First, there was a mistake in the intelligence. The two Genin were actually big fish of two Jonin, followed by the Kumogakure's secret technique, and now, the disappearance of an ANBU member...

"We'll have to write a report afterwards." The gray cat ANBU patted Aida's shoulder, "Alright, there will be relevant personnel to handle the aftermath."

"Yeah." Hinata Aida could only nod.

The two of them briefly discussed the details of the incident before quickly disappearing from the street, as if they had never been there.