The coin began to fall, and it soon landed on the ground with a soft sound.

Thud~

As soon as the sound of the coin hitting the ground was heard, Haneda, Yuto, Touma, Keiko, and Shikamo sprang into action.

They all grabbed smoke bombs in their hands and smashed them to the ground.

Puff~ Puff~ Puff~ Puff~ Puff~

The smoke bombs exploded with puffs of smoke, releasing a substantial amount of chalk powder-like smoke that completely blocked Seimei and Reina's vision.

Seimei just raised his right hand toward the dense smoke before unleashing a forceful gust of wind that cleared the smoke within a couple of seconds.

However, his five friends were no longer there.

Obviously, they had taken advantage of the smoke to retreat silently and hide in the forest surrounding the training ground.

So, they know that a head-on confrontation with me or Reina will be useless.

That's why they decided to hide and use traps and ambush tactics to impede our movement and hit us when we are least expecting them.

A good strategy, indeed. If you can't beat them, kite them. And then wait for the enemy to make a mistake before launching fierce counterattacks.

It's a good idea, Shikamo.

But can you hide from my eyes?

Seimei quickly scanned the forest. It didn't even take him a couple of seconds to find their locations and understand exactly what kind of traps they were trying to set up.

Seimei's lips curled up as he watched his friends setting up traps with mild amusement.

Reina, who was now standing beside Seimei, knew that Seimei had already pinpointed their exact locations. After all, very few things could hide from the surveillance of Tenseigan.

But she wasn't idle either.

Thanks to the mixture of Senju and Uzumaki bloodlines she had inherited from her mother, Uchiha Reina could easily identify the chakra signatures and the specific locations of her friends hiding in the jungle.

She just didn't know exactly what they were up to.

Reina looked at Seimei and asked, "You have sensed them already, right? Let's go."

Seimei nodded and replied, "I will go to the left. I can sense Haneda's and Yuto's chakra. I am not about to miss the chance to beat them up legally."

Then, Seimei looked at the right side of the jungle and mentioned, "Touma, Keiko, and Shikamo had gone in that direction."

"You can handle them, right? You won't fall into the traps set by our dear friend Shikamo, will you, Reina?"

Reina looked at Seimei and smirked. She added, "Hehe! Worry about eliminating Haneda and Yuto from the battle royale quickly. Otherwise, I may just have to take a nap out of boredom."

With that, Reina activated the Body Flicker Jutsu to vanish from the spot. She headed right toward Shikamo, Keiko, and Touma with astonishing speed.

Seimei murmured, "Well, there she goes."

Seimei looked toward his left and focused his gaze on Haneda and Yuto, who were lurking in the jungle.

He smiled and said, "Let's make short work of them. And then, I will focus on the real battle."

Soon, Seimei's figure also flickered toward the forest, ready to confront Haneda and Yuto.

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Seimei flashed through the forest like the wind. He used the Body Flicker Technique with utmost mastery. The interval between two body flickers of his was less than one-tenth of a second, making him look like a blurry ghost.

As a result, he arrived within a 100-meter radius of Yuto's and Haneda's hiding spot in less than a minute.

And then, he stopped.

Seimei's Tenseigan locked onto Haneda and Yuto, who were just a hundred meters away from him. It would take just one more activation of the Body Flicker Technique to arrive right in front of their hiding spots.

But Seimei didn't do that.

Why?

Because the entire space between Seimei and them was riddled with multiple traps.

But traps were something that was supposed to be hidden.

And now, Seimei could see all the trap formations with his Tenseigan.

Could you still call them traps?

Except for the traps that Yuto and Haneda could manually trigger, the other self-activating traps were practically harmless to him.

So, Seimei simply walked forward leisurely, avoiding all the self-activating trap formations.

Traps containing deep pits? Childish.

Wire and rope traps to hang him upside down on a tree? Heh, did they think he was a reckless Genin who would fall for something so obvious?

A net trap to restrict his movements? Come on! The way they scattered the leaves to hide the traps was way too obvious, especially to the ninjas with Dojutsu and sharp vision.

A trap that shocked you with electricity? Oh, please, he was a sensor ninja. Did they think he couldn't sense lightning chakra coursing through the trap formation?

Oh! A Fuinjutsu barrier trap? Now, that was innovative. Too bad, he was also a Fuinjutsu Seal Master. Spotting and understanding the mechanics of the common Fuinjutsu barrier tags was as easy as drinking water to him.

Seimei slipped past all of those traps.

Meanwhile, Yuto and Haneda, who were seeing the scene from their hiding spots, were genuinely dumbfounded.

They knew that the self-triggering trap formations couldn't possibly harm him. But they expected those traps to stall him for a bit at the very least.

But what were they witnessing?

Seimei breezed past them all with an ease that looked like he was taking a stroll in the wilderness.

Yuto scratched the back of his head and said, "This is troublesome. He avoided all the traps."

Haneda shook his head and responded, "I told you. Setting self-activating trap formations was useless."

"That guy is a Senju. Plus, he was ridiculously good at identifying and disarming traps in the practical trials in the academy."

Yuto nodded solemnly and said, "Doesn't matter. Just because those traps are useless, it doesn't mean the traps we can manually trigger are useless, too."

"He is now less than fifty meters away. It's time to activate the manual traps."

Haneda nodded, "Agreed."

With that, they began to prepare to activate the manual traps.

On the other hand, Seimei, who was watching Handea's and Yuto's every action with Tenseigan, easily understood what they were discussing by reading their gestures and lip movements.

These guys finally can't wait anymore, huh?

Nice.

Let's see your trapping skills.

Just as Seimei was about to step forward, his Tenseigan's 360-degree view suddenly noticed a barrage of hundreds of shurikens rocketing toward him from above.

These shurikens were fast, and they covered a large area, making them exceptionally hard to dodge.

But Seimei didn't dodge. He didn't need to.

Instead, he simply stretched his right arm toward the sky and gathered a large amount of Wind Release chakra on it.

Wind Release: Gale Palm

Whooosh~

A powerful gust of wind erupted from Seimei's palm, strong enough to knock several people backward with tremendous force.

The gale covered a large area, swiftly blowing the incoming shurikens away.

"This was a good one, too. Most Chunins and Elite Chunins would be toast because of the element of surprise." Seimei murmured approvingly.

However, not long after Seimei had blown the shurikens away, he saw three giant fuma shurikens coming toward him from his front, left, and right.

And each of them was charged with Lightning Release chakra.

Seeing this, Seimei chucked. "Using Fuinjutsu sealing tags to charge the giant fuma shurikens with Lightning Release chakra as soon as they are launched, huh? Interesting."

Still, Seimei dodged them with ease, causing three giant fuma shurikens to crash into each other.

Clang~ Clang~

"Oh!" Seimei let out a low hum as he saw something interesting happen.

When the three giant fuma shurikens crashed into each other, instead of losing momentum, they shot forward in three different directions even faster than before.

And the directions they shot toward were oddly the three most probable directions in which a skilled Shinobi would move to dodge the incoming giant fuma shurikens a few moments ago.

Haneda and Yuto clearly took a ninja's most probable movement patterns when setting the fuma shuriken trap.

Interesting. Very interesting.

However, Seimei once again easily dodged the rebounded fuma shuriken that was coming toward his location.

And so, for the next 20 seconds, Seimei kept dodging or nullifying every single trap Yuto and Haneda manually activated.

When Seimei was less than ten meters away from their hiding spot, a large wooden log swung at him from his left. The wooden log was tied to the thick tree branches with some kind of very thin and strong wire, making it swing toward Seimei like a pendulum.

Most ninjas would dodge it. After all, the momentum of the wooden log could easily shatter a few bones of an unguarded ninja.

But Seimei didn't even bat an eye.

He simply reinforced his body with chakra, gathered a little more chakra in his left hand, and stretched it toward the incoming wooden log.

Bang!! Crack!!

With a reinforced body and smart application of Chakra Enhanced Strength, Seimei caught the incoming wooden log with his left hand, stopping it dead in its tracks.

And because of the mild burst of chakra released from his left palm, thanks to the Chakra Enhanced Strength, multiple cracks were formed on the surface of the wooden log.

At this moment, three blazing flame bullets, each one as wide as one meter, charged toward Seimei from a nearby tree.

Seeing this, Seimei instantly used the Body Flicker Technique to dodge, causing the flaming bullets to hit the empty ground.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The fire bullets exploded, leaving behind charred ground with one to two-meter-wide craters.

Meanwhile, Seimei, who had reappeared twenty meters away, looked toward the location from where the flaming bullets were launched.

Seimei smiled and said, "So, you have finally decided to show up?"

Above the tree, Haneda and Yuto were silently watching Seimei without answering his question.

After a while, Haneda replied, "Did we have a choice?"

If they didn't come out now, who knew what Seimei would throw at them?

Seimei chuckled. "Alright. We have wasted enough time."

"Indeed," said Haneda as he and Yuto prepared for the inevitable clash.

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