Chapter 40.6- One Thousand Hands

He felt his wind armour come into being with a snap of displaced air and then he was off. He jumped and dropkicked Piandao back in the direction he’d come from, only noticing in the last second that the man had blocked the attack with the flat of his blade and was only sent skidding back a few feet. He landed on the ground with his hands, and transformed the area around them into mud. The man was fast enough to escape the mud and land on solid ground by jumping backwards but it didn’t matter.

A massive hand rose from the mud and tried to grab a hold of him. He dodged again, moving right in the direction of Shori’s rasengan holding left hand. He lifted his sword, blocking the million threads of grinding chakra with his chakra blade. Shorirama shifted his feet as they pushed against each other to father even more leverage and send the man flying backwards. He landed in a tent, collapsing it as he rolled back to his feet.

“You’re fighting quite differently from-“ He never got to finish the sentence as he was forced to cut through a flame dragon bullet that exploded right before his blade could hit it. Piandao was an old hand when it came to fighting and was not so easily caught out though. He sheathed his whole body in his unique chakra. The chakra that made it impossible for him to use traditional ninjutsu- a weakness that he had turned into his greatest strength.

Still, age was one hell of an equalizer. Shorirama Senju was moving into his adolescence, not even sniffing at his prime yet, while Piandao was past his. That was enough to hint at the outcome of the next few exchanges. Multiple hands of mud stretched from the mud pit, aiming to catch him in their grip. He had tried to cut through one only to find it had seperated of is own accord and had almost succeeded in entrapping his blade. After that, he had decided that discretion was the better part of valor and began dodging out of the way of each of the hands, but more came as the hands began to form an intricate cage to entrap him,

He scowled at having to use this trump card against this upstart but decided it as preferable to having to deal with seeing what that mud could do to him. He reached out for the first of those gates- the locks that controlled his access to his life power and unlocked it. “Kaimon: Kai” He whispered to himself as he unlocked the gate of opening and delighted in the way the upstart’s eyes widened at the change. He felt his cold bones creak at the power that now lay in his muscles but bore the pain with the ease of experience. He bent at the knees and then he was off again. He brought his blade to bear as he reached his target, slicing through the mud hands that had aimed to block his progress too quickly for the boy to react-