The arena after Huo Wu's defeat still hummed with heat when the next match began.
For a moment the entire stadium felt like it inhaled together—then exhaled in a wave that carried both expectation and dread.
From the Douluo side, faces were taut; from the Ninja World, a raw relief animated the front rows.
Tsunade's shout had already become a contagion. The Ninja stands rose, palms slapping the air in rhythm, and that small victory widened into a confidence that spread like wildfire.
At the center of that confidence stood Yagura. He moved with the calm certainty of someone who had carried a village on his shoulders and learned, through doing, where mercy could break and where force must hold.
Across from him, Gao Feng adjusted his grip on the Divine Fire Sword as if settling an argument with the air itself.
The sword's presence was a promise of heat and sharp intent; his smile when he stepped forward was all cool calculation.
They exchanged a few courteous words—formalities that meant nothing and everything. When the first blow fell, any pretense of ceremony evaporated.
Gao Feng took the initiative. His blade carved the air, not in broad theatrical arcs but in compressed, puncturing lines. The first wave of fiery sword qi cut forward like a rain of molten needles; each strand traveled with a velocity that blurred vision and bent attention.
Yagura's hand seals came without hesitation.
Water surged up, a living wall that rallied at his command. The sword qi met the water with explosive steam; white mist swelled between them like a curtain of breath. For a heartbeat the two stood opposed across that vapor, measurement made of sound rather than sight.
Even so, some of Gao Feng's streams found purchase. A few slashes punched through and grazed Yagura. The gap was not so much in technique as in timing—the weight behind Gao Feng's strikes pushed past the edge of the initial defense.
Yagura's jaw tightened; he had not misread the danger. He altered his formation, and the defending wall twisted outward, becoming a coiling torrent.
The torrent reformed and lunged—then, with a single pivot, it became a water dragon. Yagura sent it as a spear and a warning both. The creature's roar filled the space above the stage, and it bore down on Gao Feng with concentrated violence.
Gao Feng's response was a step forward. Flames gathered beneath his feet and fed his movement. The Divine Fire Sword flashed in a white-hot arc.
Blaze Flash cleaved into the dragon's flank and split it mid-flight, dispersing some of its mass into steam. The impact did not slow his advance; if anything, it accelerated it.
When Yagura prepared the mirror—an elegant, dangerous inversion of the field—he condensed an image of Gao Feng himself and let that reflected figure move toward the Mizukage.
The mirror was meant to confuse and to replicate force, a trap that would reveal the opponent's rhythm and fracture intention.
The water mirror shattered with a roar, and from its surface stepped an echo of Gao Feng—perfectly matching technique and intent.
The mirror was an imitation that carried weight, and Yagura found himself forced back on the simple arithmetic of reaction and response.
Gao Feng did not remain a single figure. The flames around his body thickened and swelled, the layers of heat folding outward until his shape ballooned, monstrous and blinding. The water mirror trembled and cracked under the sheer immensity of the heat—too much for a reflection to perfectly emulate. Gao Feng moved through the rupture and struck again, a slash that did not intend to be elegant but to break the necessary time of defense.
Yagura was driven to retreat. He drew strength from the very arena water he commanded, rising it in a curtain that bought him space. Space mattered, and for a moment he used it to breathe. He measured the distance, gauged the strain in his limbs, and let his Chakra swell until it felt like a tide.
Then he unleashed it.
The Great Exploding Water Colliding Wave rose like a small ocean tearing through the stadium. The volume of water, the speed, the press of mass—these were not graceful moves but the sort that refused to allow the other side rest. Gao Feng kept his footing by unexpected grace, spirit haloing beneath his boots, but the surge had its effect: movement tightened; options thinned.
Yagura seized on that compression. A series of seals, executed with an urgency that erased leftover technique, produced the Heavenly Waterfall Prison. Four curtains collapsed inward, and within their closed geometry, the space constricted into a field of stinging water arrows. The intent was brutal and precise: corral, shred, end.
Gao Feng's eyes sharpened. He did not flinch but did something arguable only because conviction deprived him of fear. The Divine Fire Sword bloomed. With a single motion he split the closest curtain; with another he carved a hole where none should have been. The sword qi screamed, tearing the water's shape and opening a corridor of escape.
He forced himself through the seam. For a second the arena's rules felt elastic in his hands; the mirror, the dragon, the tide—all bent to the momentary will of flame. He knew this could not be prolonged: he had already burned through far of his reserves. But the gamble was necessary. To submit to attrition was to tell the other side that steam and endurance would win the day.
Gao Feng pulled everything together and let loose Godfire: Piercing Sun. The blade collapsed on itself into a taj-like point of flame—compressed, pure, almost nonvisual as it carved forward. It was a strike intended to end the debate of reach and mass.
Yagura's reaction was the last instinct of a commander who had been tempered by siege. He inverted the control principle and wrapped himself in a Water Prison—an inverted sphere that turned protection from imprisonment into armor. Inside that sphere, he poured the remainder of the tide into a single, monstrous Great Waterfall Technique that rose like an upthrust from the clouds.
Collision.
Fire shrieked through the water and the water answered with a roar. The two forces did not yield; they exacerbated one another into steam that rose and obscured the arena. For several heartbeats nothing could be seen: only the sound of impact, the smell of vapor, the sense that two wills were grinding against each other until both felt raw.
When the mist thinned and the audience's breaths returned to them, neither man stood untouched. Gao Feng sank to one knee; the Divine Fire Sword was planted into the scorching earth as if bracing his body against descent. Yagura bore a wound along his shoulder—blood dark against wet skin. Both of them breathed hard, every movement a small victory. The muteness between them lengthened into a choked, brief clarity.
They smiled at each other—a quick, tired curl at the corner of the mouth, not triumph but the recognition of combat properly met. "A draw?" Gao Feng rasped, throat scorched from too much heat and too much steam.
Yagura tried to raise his hand and found his fingers trembling; then he chuckled and let the sound be enough. "It seems so," he said.
From above, Ink Dragon declared the official tally: the first round belonged to the Ninja World. The stadium broke into reaction with the immediacy of a single organism. Tsunade erupted onto her feet and waved, cheers re-echoing like bellows. The Ninja banners rose higher in that instant; what had been a small victory in a young match had moved into symbolic territory. The Douluo side, chastened but still proud, could not help but join the applause for the quality of the fight. It had been, by any measure, a spectacle of two masters testing limits.
In the stands, the human calculus rearranged itself. Kushina slapped Minato's shoulder and laughed with the harsh relief of gamblers who had finally seen a table turn in their favor. "We didn't need you after all," she crowed, and then, with a gambler's grin, confessed to her audacity. "I bet 370,000 sacrificial coins. It more than tripled."
Minato's reaction was mild amusement. He let the victory be both a private pride and a public jest. To him such bets were currency not only of coin but of confidence.
On the Douluo side, ripples of dismay made a path through pockets of the audience as the initial bet settlements processed.
Men and women who had pledged enormous sums felt the tangible slide of loss; their chests thudded with that animal response of money spent and hope foiled. Calls rose from the terraces—some in anger, some in laughter, some in a rueful acceptance that these contests would always cut both ways.
Ink Dragon used the pause to announce the schedule: the second round would begin tomorrow, but betting opened now.
The light screens changed, numbers rolling up in real time. Douluo talents, knowing their strength lay in legion battles where majority and endurance mattered, began to pour more sacrificial coins into the pot. The total climbed quickly—over fifty-six million in a short pulse.
The Ninja World was slower to reload; the Five Kage exchanged guarded looks and added to their pool with an economy of movement. The Douluo crowd mocked the restraint; taunts fluttered across the air like thrown flags.
That only stoked the Ninja side's edge: the bets rose, but not to match the volume poured from the other continent. In the end the human side's pot only crept to roughly fourteen million.
Ning Fengzhi watched the numbers roll by with a quiet face. The arithmetic was blunt and unforgiving: the second round favored Douluo's strengths. The third—God-level individual—would be the pivot.
For now, the field's mood had shifted. The draw had given the Ninja world something they could hang their pride on—and the Douluo world reasons to double down.
In the twilight that followed, strategy councils convened in hushed corners. Ning Fengzhi marked faces, names and tendencies on a mental map: who would be brittle under prolonged pressure, who would hold and bait, and who had the temper to gamble for a sudden, decisive strike.
The Douluo side leaned toward mass and coordination; the Ninja World, toward concentrated sparks and single-decision moments. That divergence shaped every whispered recommendation.
Merchants and watchers calculated odds in real time; some old hands counted not only sacrificial coins but the intangible yield of prestige and future contracts. A well-played duel here could translate into alliances, recruitments and influence—currencies as real in their world as gold.
Youths on both sides, exhilarated or chastened, watched their elders and savored the lessons. None of them believed the contest decided anything permanent—only that the next move would hurt more if they misstepped.
The continent held its breath anew.
_____________________
https://[email protected]/mrSOMEONE01234? [replace @ with a]
>>>>>I'm a student, and I'll try my best to keep uploading chapters regularly <<<<<
thanks for your support
[[READER TIER 1: translates stories {15$} ]] { RECOMENDED }
[Merchant Shop : Start From Douluo Dalu{6$}]