"Fight to the end"

One of the anbus, a Hyuga, broke free from the mud spore, he jumped out of the jutsu's range and stood before the other root anbus.

He started to release a huge amount of chakra from many of his tenketsu points, which Kazuya earlier sensed.

While simultaneously releasing chakra from his tenketsu points he stretched out both of his hands and took a taijutsu stance. Both of his palms were open and his legs were bent in a defensive position.

He began to rotate his body while releasing the chakra.

[Eight Trigrams Palms Half Revolving Heaven]

Karna took an incredulous gasp when he saw this technique.

'Wasn't this technique supposed to be only known by Hiashi and Hinata? Why is everyone acting like Neji? Wait, it's not the actual technique. It's an imitation, but a half one.'

Karna noted as he saw the Hyuga anbu only forming a half shield in front of him. But it was still enough to deflect many of the weapons thrown by Kazuya's jutsu.

After being deflected the weapons exploded because of the paper bombs. Even though the Hyuga anbu was successful in deflecting most of the attacks, some escaped his impenetrable shield; after all, it was only a "half" imitated shield.

And an unlucky anbu far from him was barraged with many weapons and as the weapons exploded it took along the ill-fated one.

After the explosions ended and the mud spore started to lose its effectiveness, all the anbus freed themselves from the jutsu.

Shikuro looked at the place where the cold corpse or what was left of the corpse of the exploding shinobi was.

"Another died. I'm tired of the tricks of you annoying Yagamis. My lord won't allow any more losses."

His voice came out extremely loud, and frustration was evident. When he came to hunt down the Yagami family there were eight elite jonin with him but now, the number went down to four.

It was a huge loss, and he knew his lord has never been happy when it came to losses.

"Kill the mother and get me the child."

Shikuro pointed toward Kazuya and the rest of the four remaining shinobi charged toward her.

Upon hearing Shiruko, Kazuya took Karna's hand and descended from the branch they were at.

They were outnumbered, so if they fought at the tree it would be detrimental to Kazuya and Karna.

Kazuya stood in front of Karna to shield him and looked at the approaching anbus.

Cold sweats trickled from her forehead and her grip on the kunai stiffened.

With each breath she took, she felt her body becoming cold with anxiety. The chilly wind sent a shiver through her each time it passed, which reminded her of the current predicament.

When a similar blow of the wind brushed past her, she suddenly felt movement from behind her. Karna, whom she was shielding suddenly rushed out from behind her.

"Karna kun, what are you—"

She couldn't finish as she noticed that it wasn't only Karna who moved, there were as many as twenty identical copies of Karna that moved from behind her.

They all rushed towards the four incoming anbus.

But the anbus was already clear with their order, and as so, only one of the anbu separated from the group and increased his speed to stop Karna and his clones. The other three rushed to Kazuya.

This particular anbu was the Hyuga from before and he neither faltered nor was he afraid of facing twenty or more clones of Karna.

Karna reined in his adrenaline rush and moved forward with his clones while playing out innumerable future outcomes within his mind.

Among the twenty or so Karna, one of them, separated from the group, rushed ahead and collided with Hyuga anbu in mid-air.

The sun sword shined under the blissful moonlight and in all its glory, it mercilessly went for the head of the Hyuga anbu.

The anbu defended himself by putting his kunai in front of him but that wasn't all. After the path of the sword was obstructed by the kunai, the anbu used more force and removed the sword from his assailant.

He then gashed both of Karna's calves to cripple him.

POOF!

Just when the kunai touched Karna, he exploded in a puff of smoke. While the smoke obscured the anbu's vision and he was unable to focus.

All the other copies Karna rushed at him at an incredible speed.

'My speculation was correct! He can't fatally wound me. He wants to take me in alive and I'll use that against him.'

As the many clones of Hisui's kept fighting the anbu. Karna, hidden among them, began to formulate a reliable tactic to bring down his foe.

'I have one chance and I need to make sure that I succeed. Cause if I fail, in no way will we survive this war.'

The anbu speculating his situation went back to his previous taijutsu stance and with his palms, he started a barrage of fiery jabs that were as beautiful as the flow of a raging canal yet as deadly as a rampaging viper.

All of his attacks were aimed to temporarily render the clones immovable because the real Karna was concealing himself within the clones. As great as the byakugan of the Hyugas was known for, it was still impossible for it to see through shadow clones.

Most of the clones were quickly dealt by the anbu as he simply dodged the sword and grazed them. After almost all the clones were eradicated, the anbu saw another Karna coming toward him with his sword.

The anbu took out his kunai and defended against the upcoming slash but when he did, he noticed that the sword almost went through his kunai.

He countered, deflected and upheld against many of Karna's attacks but none of it could as much so as leave a scratch on his kunai.

The anbu's eyes got enlarged as he understood that the Karna in front of him was the real one since chakra constructs aren't as powerful as the real deal.

He tried to use this chance and focused solely on Karna, in front of him. The veins around his ethereal white eye bulged up as he kept hitting at the tenketsu points of Karna at a speed that he had never exhibited before.

[Eight trigrams: Thirty-two palms]

The anbu kept hitting Hisui until most of his tenketsu were locked, he stopped and Karna fell to the floor lifelessly.

But when the body was about to drop it exploded; only this time it wasn't smoke that was the outcome, combustion and the shockwave followed right through.

The anbu shielded himself by using his technique; and when the explosion calmed down and his movements halted and his lungs—short of air—thrived, a cold voice echoed from behind him.

"Got you! creepy bastard."

A tanto was driven through his chest from behind his back and suddenly, the realization came to him like a short-lived epiphany that put a smile on his dying yet relieved face, covered by a mask forced upon him by destiny.

the limp body fell and the tanto was removed by the figure of Karna.

'It was a pure gamble with my luck, even though I don't believe in it. But as they say, luck is the best of all allies one can have. I guess it doesn't hurt to keep this Schrodinger's cat beside me.

'I thought he'll figure it out that I only switched the sword with my clone but I guess he was in too much of a hurry to finish his job.'

Karna hurried and picked up his sword from the ground. He looked towards his mother but the sight in front of him was scarier to imagine than many of his late-night endeavours of phobias, haunted memories, and incidents defined as worst nightmares.