Chapter 86: Kabuto VS Sakura
Sakura's ninjutsu was but a fleeting glimpse, gone in an instant.
Then, broken wood and severed branches crashed to the ground, and foul blood and remains were scattered everywhere.
A single, short slash from the silver blade had left a long-lasting scar on this already ravaged patch of forest.
The ninjutsu vanished as quickly as it appeared. In a moment, the water stream, having lost its chakra support, its remaining force yet unspent, carved a deep gash in the ground, and then disappeared from the fingertips of a slender arm that had suddenly extended from the woods.
The young girl, Haruno Sakura, dressed in a black ninja bodysuit, supported herself with her right hand on a tree trunk as she emerged from the forest.
Her slowly lowered left hand wore a white elbow guard. The water vapor splashed up by the Wind Blade Raging Stream had seeped into it, leaving small marks. In her palm, a ball of clear water, having suddenly lost the support of that violent chakra, under the guidance of the most basic rules of gravity, turned into a stream of water that dripped down along Sakura's index and middle fingers.
The transmigrator's Water Style: Wind Blade Raging Stream was already the third version of the Water Gun Jutsu.
The original Water Gun Jutsu could be said to be a complete replica of the industrial water cutters from Earth. It was simple, sharp, and powerful, but it had many shortcomings. The most important one was that the water jet would quickly disperse without special control, losing its power, which meant the water cutter could only be effective at close range, like a sharp longsword.
However, in a world with chakra, these shortcomings were not a problem. After developing the first version of the Water Style: Water Cutter, Sakura quickly realized these problems and set about developing the second version of the Water Gun Jutsu—one that integrated the nature transformation and shape transformation of Water Style: the Super Water Gun.
The shape transformation of Water Style allowed the water stream to forcefully maintain its ultra-fine jet form even after being shot out for several hundred meters, ensuring that the sharpness of the water cutter would not dissipate, completely solving the problem of the first version's short range.
On the other hand, from a principled point of view, the power of the water cutter was directly proportional to the square of its diameter (i.e., its cross-sectional area) and the water pressure.
Haruno Sakura, who had been immersed in Water Style for many years, had a masterful control over its shape transformation. Now, when she used the Water Style: Super Water Gun, she could even control the diameter to be below 0.1 millimeters, thinner than a strand of hair! Compared to the several-millimeter thickness of the Second Hokage's Water Style: Water Severing Wave, Sakura had reduced the diameter by several dozen, almost a hundred times. This meant that if Sakura and the Second Hokage used the same amount of chakra to cast this ninjutsu, the power of Sakura's would be several thousand times that of the Second's! Things that the Second's Water Severing Wave couldn't cut—like steel—were as fragile as foam under Sakura's Super Water Gun. Conversely, for a ninja with poor control over water shape transformation, even if they learned this ninjutsu, they might not be able to bring out the terrifying, invincible power of the water cutter, unless they could forcefully increase the ninjutsu's power by squandering a large amount of chakra like the Second Hokage.
And after adding the nature transformation of Water Style, the water pressure also increased significantly. A ninjutsu-type ninja skilled in Water Style could often increase the water pressure several times over, thereby increasing the sharpness of the water cutter several times over.
Thus, after incorporating the shape and nature transformations of Water Style, this ninjutsu, whose casting difficulty was already comparable to the Wind Style: Rasenshuriken—the Water Style: Super Water Gun—became the trump card in Sakura's hands, her most powerful offensive ninjutsu.
To date, the girl had not yet encountered anything it couldn't cut.
However, Sakura was still not satisfied.
Not long ago, in the battle against Orochimaru, when facing the endless swarm of snakes, she had already felt it. In that battle, although Sakura's Super Water Gun was still invincible, destroying everything with the force of smashing dried weeds, when cutting through the pseudo-Kusanagi sword in the snake swarm, the girl had rarely felt a sense of resistance. For this, she had to use all her chakra to push out the full power of the Super Water Gun, and she soon fell into a predicament of insufficient stamina.
Chakra can change the properties of objects. Infusing chakra into a ninja tool, especially chakra of a nature transformation, could often greatly increase the weapon's strength and sharpness. Although an ordinary iron kunai, even with chakra enhancement, would still be fragile under the violent cutting of the Super Water Gun, what about those special chakra weapons? Just the chakra-mimicked pseudo-Kusanagi sword had already given the Super Water Gun a hard time. What if she encountered the real thing? Or against Zabuza's Decapitating Carving Knife, or Kisame's "Samehada"? Or some special chakra shields—like the Susanoo that would appear later on, though of course, Sakura at this time did not yet know of this ninjutsu.
Against things with extremely high physical hardness, the Super Water Gun was unparalleled. But once the matter involved the mysterious chakra and ninjutsu, it was a different story.
Since then, the development of the third stage of the Water Gun Jutsu had been put on the agenda.
Water Style: Wind Blade Raging Stream was the so-called third version of the Water Gun Jutsu. It was developed by Sakura to break through special ninja tools or chakra-type shields. On top of the pure Water Style ninjutsu, it further added the wind nature transformation, making it a Super S-rank ninjutsu. By adding the nature transformation of Wind Style to the water jet, the sharpness of the water cutter was enhanced, and the power of the Water Gun Jutsu was further increased. Although the chakra consumed to maintain the jutsu had increased, it cut faster, and the duration was shortened. Therefore, the total chakra consumed by the Wind Blade Raging Stream was not much more than the Super Water Gun. Apart from the increased casting difficulty, it did not add to the burden on the caster.
Although it was a high-level ninjutsu that incorporated shape transformation and two nature transformations at the same time, with Sakura's chakra control, she could still handle it.
But let's get back to the topic.
No matter how many times she had seen it, Hinata was still secretly amazed by the field-clearing effect of Sakura's Super Water Gun Jutsu, or rather, the Water Style: Wind Blade Raging Stream.
Seeing the expected appearance of her best friend, although she had already realized that Sakura had arrived from the style of the ninjutsu, she still subconsciously breathed a sigh of relief.
The feeling of escaping death... was really good.
Even if she had already prepared herself for sacrifice, escaping a disaster was still much better than dying heroically to become a hero.
The black-haired girl took a deep breath, calmed her agitated mood, and after recovering her composure, she immediately realized another thing.
"Sakura-chan, you were here long ago?!"
Hinata frowned, her blank white eyes glaring hard at Sakura.
The timing of Sakura-chan's ultrapure water shield was just too coincidental. If she had rushed to the battlefield at the last possible moment to cast the jutsu, then the commotion of her travel and casting at the critical moment would certainly not have been small. However, before the shield was formed, the surroundings were calm and quiet. That can only mean that she had been lurking on the scene long ago! And the time she arrived should have been the time when I had deactivated my Byakugan and was talking to Kabuto. So she heard my whole conversation with Kabuto. Hmph, so she wouldn't come out to help me earlier, and instead deliberately hid on the side to watch me make a fool of myself!
Hinata thought with a tsundere-like huff.
Sakura, having had her mischievous little thought exposed, subconsciously touched her cheek and smiled awkwardly. Then she coughed lightly, put on a straight face, and quickly glanced aside to change the subject.
"Kabuto, how long are you going to hide? Do you really think you can get away with using a corpse that isn't even your real body?" Sakura said coldly, her arms crossed.
"He's not dead?" Hinata was shocked and immediately put away her relaxed mood, tensing her spirit.
"Byakugan, open!"
Gathering the last of her remaining chakra, the white-eyed girl reopened her all-seeing black and white vision.
"Wait, Sakura-chan, Kabuto is right—"
However, Kabuto's movement was even faster than Hinata's words!
"—under your feet!"
Before Hinata could shout out the words, the ground under Sakura's feet had already suddenly burst open. A pair of hands, shining with a dangerous chakra light, shot towards her exposed ankles with the speed of a thunderclap!
Relying on Earth Style to travel underground and launching a sneak attack with the Mystical Palm Technique—even a simple routine could be played out with great power by Kabuto. In the original story, he had even dared to use this move to ambush Tsunade!
It was just that, against both the master and the apprentice, this move was ineffective.
The water surface... was trembling.
After the Water Style: Wind Blade Raging Stream ended, the remaining water mass had dripped to the ground, forming a puddle. The residual chakra allowed Sakura to sense the state of the puddle. The vibration caused by Kabuto breaking through the soil before launching his attack immediately made the sharp girl aware of the enemy's presence.
Kabuto's movement was fast, but Sakura's was faster.
She stomped hard on the ground and leaped high. A new ball of clear water quietly gathered in the palm of her left hand.
While she was in mid-air, the ninjutsu was already prepared, ready to be unleashed!
However, Kabuto's offensive was not so simple.
At the same time as Sakura leaped up, a wave of corpse puppets appeared from the shadows and rushed towards her back.
Sensing the sound of the wind behind her head, the girl, still in mid-air, remained calm and composed. She suddenly twisted her waist, drawing strength from somewhere unknown. Her figure suddenly rose a few inches, and at the same time, she turned her vertically leaping body horizontally, stepped on a tree trunk, and dodged the attacker's attack!
"Water Style: Wind Blade Raging Stream..."
The girl's red lips parted slightly as she murmured as if in a whisper.
No one heard what she said. All they saw was Sakura's left hand circle around behind her. Her sword-fingers pointed at the corpse puppets, and a silver line shot out from her fingertips!
SWISH—!
The water cutter slashed past. After a short, sharp explosion, the corpse puppets, relying on inertia, rushed past under Sakura, then shattered into several pieces of meat that could no longer move.
Sakura did not take the time to confirm the corpse puppets' second "death," because the third wave of Kabuto's offensive was already imminent!
And this imminence was even in the literal sense.
At the same time as Sakura twisted her body to dodge the second wave of attacks, a corpse puppet that had unknowingly lurked to the top of the tree seized the opportunity to suddenly attack, launching a surprise assault from top to bottom, holding a kunai and stabbing towards the girl's smooth forehead!
(It must be because her forehead is big and easy to aim for—mysterious voice-over.)
Kabuto's timing was very good, just at the moment when Sakura's old strength had faded and her new strength had not yet been born.
The girl's gaze, in this instant, finally turned from indifferent to grim.
Retreat, retreat again.
She stomped on the tree trunk to stop her upward momentum. The girl's flexible body leaned back sharply, but she still couldn't match the speed of the enemy's top-down surprise attack.
She could even feel that her brow had already touched the cold aura on the tip of the kunai.
Retreat, retreat explosively, but the attacker's speed was even faster!
In an instant, it was about to touch the girl's forehead, as if it were about to cut open her smooth skin and draw fresh blood.
At that moment, the corpse puppet, as if sensing the emotions of its manipulator, Kabuto, suddenly accelerated again from its already extreme speed!
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