Chapter 168: Got Played?
"Someone's coming."
Sasuke said, a little nervously.
The timing was really unfortunate. He couldn't even stand up right now, and the amount of chakra left in Sakura's body looked to be even less than his.
The black-haired youth quietly reached his intact left hand into his ninja tool pouch.
It wasn't that he was preparing for battle... he didn't have the strength to fight anymore either.
Rather, the cruelest thought had risen in his mind.
I just said it would be my turn to protect her, and now I'm going to become a burden to Sakura again?
No, he still had another choice.
Therefore...
"So don't be nervous," Sakura turned her head back and said with a smile. "It's one of us!"
Pat.
Two Anbu ninja appeared in front of the two of them with a Body Flicker, one after the other.
It was Shino and Yūgao.
Sakura had originally planned to rush back to support them after finishing treating Sasuke's injuries. She hadn't expected that they would be the ones to quickly finish off the enemy and come to support her instead.
Sure enough, these veterans of the Anbu and Jonin were no pushovers. They all had a few trump cards up their sleeves!
"You guys made quite a commotion. I was shaken even from over there!" The female ninja with the white mask glanced at Sasuke and then said to Sakura.
"Hn... that was the final blow I gave him," the girl said, her face not red, her heart not pounding. The first half of the final blow, at least.
Her hands didn't stop her medical ninjutsu. She jutted her chin towards the place where Kimimaro had died in battle.
"A Kekkei Genkai that uses bones?" Yūgao looked at the traces left by the battle and secretly clicked her tongue. "I never thought Orochimaru would have such a talent under his command."
"You fought hard too, Tobi," Shino said, casually glancing at Sakura a few times. It was the first time he had seen his young female subordinate in such a pathetic state. Her entire body was covered in nearly a dozen large and small wounds and blood scabs, looking quite gruesome.
He couldn't remember a single mission where this pretty little girl had been injured.
Probably never, right?
Elegant, calm, or sharp, decisive—that had always been his impression of Tobi.
As the cannon-type output position at the back of the team, the thing she did most often was to mercilessly wave that beautiful silver-white thin line from a distance and cleanly and swiftly slay the enemy. And even in close combat, her powerful Sakura Rush and nin-taijutsu could put her in an invincible position.
He simply couldn't imagine that this ninja, covered in wounds, was the same majestic teammate from before.
Haruno Sakura herself is a medical ninja. Does she not even have the chakra to heal herself?
From a distance, he had also sensed that terrifying chakra from Kimimaro. He really was a fearsome opponent.
"There's not much time," Shino said, watching Sakura finish treating the most critical wound on Sasuke's leg and urging them on. "Although the enemies in this vicinity have been cleared by us, new enemies, or even Orochimaru himself, could appear at any time..."
"Can you still walk?" Sakura asked, helping Sasuke up. The latter tried to put his supporting leg onto his injured one and immediately sucked in a cold breath, cold sweat pouring from his forehead from the pain.
Shino shook his head. "It seems you can't. I'll carry you!"
He walked over and put the arrogant-looking young boy on his back. Just as he was about to set off, the three Anbu of Squad 14 almost simultaneously paused.
Yūgao reflexively placed her hand on the long sword on her back. After carefully identifying for a good while, she finally relaxed her tense face. "Don't worry, it's a familiar person."
Hearing Yūgao say this, Sakura also felt that this vast chakra that was rapidly approaching did have a certain sense of familiarity.
Who could it be?
Her question did not last for very long.
The person who was coming had obviously also sensed their chakra and had quickened their pace.
In a cloud of rolling smoke, a tragic green figure came rushing over, and then, with two long skid marks, it stopped in front of them.
"The Noble Blue Beast of Konoha has arrived!"
That person shouted loudly.
So it's him.
Haruno Sakura's right hand directly slapped her own forehead.
Facepalming, at a loss for words.
Here, on Kimimaro's battlefield, the battle had already ended.
And on the other side, extremely far from here, another battle concerning the Sound ninja was also nearing its end.
An end that started with a dragon's head but finished with a snake's tail.
"Fire Style: Searing Migraine!"
A surging chakra erupted from the mouth of one of Kakuzu's bodies, turning into an orange flame that transformed the valley at his feet into a sea of fire.
BOOM—!
The firelight lit up the sky, and a heatwave assailed them.
The poisonous blaze quickly turned everything below the valley, including the endless sea of snakes that had just been wreaking havoc, and Orochimaru's body, into fuel for the soaring flames.
The raging fire reflected on Kakuzu's face, making it look gloomy and uncertain.
Orochimaru didn't make a single move...
Although this fire jutsu, Searing Migraine, was terrifyingly powerful, Kakuzu did not believe that this move could burn a powerhouse like Orochimaru to ashes!
So... where did he go?
He couldn't sense Orochimaru's chakra, couldn't sense this person's existence.
After the flames died down, he used his Earth Grudge Fear to search again, carefully, turning over every corner.
He found nothing.
"Where's that guy Orochimaru?" Kakuzu's turbid pupils shrank to a point, his face growing more and more grim.
As a Kage-level powerhouse who had been through a hundred battles, Kakuzu was confident enough that Orochimaru could not have escaped his perception and observation, unless—
"Orochimaru ran away...! That slippery bastard!" Kakuzu said with a gloomy face, his voice filled with hatred.
He was confident that in a head-on confrontation, Orochimaru was no match for him. But against such a slippery opponent, he was really at a loss.
At the beginning of the battle, Orochimaru had acted as if he were going to fight him to the death, fully displaying his Kage-level strength, creating a clash of Mars against the Earth.
Various S-rank ninjutsu and bizarre secret techniques had continuously emerged from the hands of the two, one after another.
The terrifying power of the high-level ninjutsu had quickly plowed through the land within a one-kilometer radius, and then reshaped the terrain. The corpses of the snakes that had died on the battlefield had raised the ground by several meters.
However, Kakuzu could never have imagined that Orochimaru's imposing, life-risking posture was just a feint. While he was enthusiastically casting his various five-element ninjutsu one after another, Kakuzu was stunned to find that Orochimaru was already gone.
"Hmph, that guy must have put all his skills into running away!" Kakuzu snorted coldly. The bounty on Orochimaru was extremely high. For him to have escaped this time, Kakuzu was really pained to the core.
However, this time they had at least found Orochimaru's tracks, unlike the past few years when the Akatsuki had been chasing him, when they hadn't found a single trace of him.
His base should be nearby. I can look for it again. Maybe there will be some clues...
Thinking of this, Kakuzu's gloomy mood also recovered somewhat, and he turned to look at Hidan's side.
"Hey! Hidan, are you done with your ritual yet!" The moment he saw Hidan was once again performing that extremely time-wasting Jashin ritual, Kakuzu felt his anger flare up.
"Tsk, what's the rush!" Hidan grumbled as he climbed up from the ground, muttering things like "it hurts so much." Seeing Kakuzu pick up Kabuto's corpse, he immediately shouted, "Hey, I say, Kakuzu, you're not going to let even this person's bounty go?"
Kakuzu patted the corpse on his shoulder, glanced at Hidan coldly, and then said in a deep voice, "This person called Kabuto, the bounty on him in the black market is not low either... Even Konoha has a warrant out for him. Since we let Orochimaru get away this time, at least we can take his bounty to make up for the loss. Only then will my heart feel a little better!"
"You love money that much?" Hidan said with disdain. "It's always like this, you won't let a single cent go! This mission, if I hadn't been rushing you, we would have definitely missed Orochimaru!"
He complained a few sentences and then found that Kakuzu's gaze had become extremely cold and gloomy.
"...Hey, what I said is the truth, right? Why are you looking at me like that? Am I wrong?"
"No... there's something wrong with the corpse! To be this stiff, how could it be the corpse of someone who just died!" Kakuzu suddenly threw the corpse to the ground. A feeling of being fooled welled up in him, and his face instantly became so gloomy it was as if water could drip from it.
He observed it carefully and soon found a flaw. "There are fine suture lines on the neck... this person isn't Kabuto!"
"What? We got played?" Hidan said angrily. The scythe in his hand flew out in anger and heavily chopped a giant rock beside him, shattering it to pieces.
Kakuzu's heart was also filled with extreme anger at this moment. It was one thing to be let go by Orochimaru, but even a small character like Kabuto had played Hidan for a fool?
However, at this point, Kakuzu had, on the contrary, calmed down.
He thought for a moment.
"That guy called Danzo, he lured us over with the Konoha ninja's intelligence. Could it be that he was also playing us?"
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