Chapter 261: Sasori's Combat Intellect
The nin-taijutsu was fully activated.
A blue light suddenly appeared on Haruno Sakura's body, and an incredible power surged in her hands.
She actually grabbed the giant scorpion, which was hundreds of thousands of times her size!
"Hah—!" She gritted her teeth, her willow-like brows standing on end, and shouted angrily, "Here's one back at you!"
Veins faintly popped on her face. Her hands suddenly released an unstoppable, immense force. She rushed forward a few steps and threw the giant scorpion far away in the direction of the black shadows!
Then, Sakura slowly exhaled and quickly formed hand seals.
"Water Style: Wind Blade Raging Stream!"
Swish—! The water line cut across, the first slash, the second slash,...
Before the giant scorpion could land and burrow into the ground, it was mercilessly sliced into a thousand pieces by Sakura!
Giving it no chance at all.
The water blade also took the opportunity to reap a dozen or so human puppets. The remaining puppets, like scattered flies, dispersed and landed on the ground, hiding indistinctly among the rubble.
Sakura stopped the ninjutsu and retracted her hand.
She looked far into the distance. A black figure drilled out from the broken opening of the giant pincer.
Revealing Sasori's delicate and cute little face.
Haruno Sakura suppressed the urge to shoot a water blade directly at that pretty face.
Sasori's "main body" was nowhere to be found. If she destroyed this puppet, he still had over a hundred more to replace it. Sakura couldn't use the Wind Blade Raging Stream over a hundred times in a row.
The only thing that was certain was that Sasori had been hiding inside the giant pincer, close to the position of the puppet that had been pretending to be his main body, misleading Sakura's senses.
"How did you see through the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals?" Sakura asked, glancing at him faintly.
Just now, she had learned her lesson from the last battle. Before, she had directly used the huge shuriken of the Swallow Snowstorm as a coordinate to flicker over. The characteristic was too obvious, and Kakuzu had seen through its reliance on ice at a glance.
But in the battle with Sasori, she had only used the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals' Body Flicker twice. The first time she had used it, Sasori clearly hadn't seen it. The second time, she had used the entire ice layer as a medium and had appeared behind the Kazekage puppet. It was disguised to be not much different from a normal space-time Body Flicker.
Sasori shouldn't have been able to see the key.
"So that's what it's called?" Sasori said with a light laugh. His puppet skills were extremely exquisite. Although this was just a substitute, his eyes were bright, and the expression on his face was lifelike.
"Your Body Flicker speed is very fast, and it's also hidden well enough. It's indeed very difficult to discover the secret that this jutsu needs ice as a medium..." he explained. "At the beginning, I also thought it was just an ordinary Body Flicker."
"In that case, how did you guess?"
"Because you have a few flaws," Sasori said, looking at the girl. "First, if your Body Flicker is really that convenient and easy to use, why didn't you use that kind of Body Flicker when you shattered Hiruko at the beginning? You rushed over directly. Although your speed wasn't slow, it was, in the end, both dangerous and inefficient... And in the subsequent battle, I didn't see you use the Body Flicker at will."
"So, I had a guess. Your Body Flicker must meet some conditions before it can be used..."
"Then, I found that you spent a lot of chakra to lay a layer of ice on the ground and attack with ice spikes. The power of this move was far worse than your monstrous strength and those few water jutsu. It was also very consuming and completely unlike the style you had shown before... unless this move had another purpose!"
Sasori said slowly.
Sakura's eyelids lowered, and she said with an expressionless face, "So you guessed that my Body Flicker needs ice as a medium?"
"That's right. The key is, when you used the Body Flicker to dodge my fire jutsu and the giant scorpion's attack, the two positions where you appeared were the same. This cannot be explained by coincidence. Although the riverbed blocked my line of sight, I was sure that your Body Flicker must need some kind of medium. And the most likely possibility was these ice blocks on the battlefield that were filled with your chakra..."
The girl was silent for a while.
"So when you were controlling the giant scorpion to burrow into the ground, you deliberately destroyed the ice layer on the ground, leaving only two positions, and then set up a chain of traps, using a puppet to disguise as your main body to lure me to attack, while you hid in the gap of the giant pincer," she said calmly.
His grasp of the details was truly perfect. He had even been able to make use of the hole that Haruno Sakura had broken in the giant pincer.
"Impressive."
Sakura praised him sincerely.
"No, even so, I wasn't able to harm you. A ninja like you is what's truly impressive," Sasori said. "Your Water Style and Body Flicker are indeed fast, but the fastest thing is your reaction speed."
Sasori's chain of moves could be described as interlocking, but in the end, it was defeated by Sakura's strange ninjutsu and her Sakura Rush secret technique.
Sakura did not respond to his words, but instead raised an eyebrow. "Are all your weapons dipped in deadly poison? From your tone, it seems as if you would have won if you had just injured me?"
Sasori smiled but said nothing.
He turned his head and said, "A few months ago, you were no match for Kakuzu, and now you can already push me to this extent. To tell you the truth, I have four scrolls on me that have powerful secret techniques sealed in them. Kakuzu is only worthy of me using two scrolls! But to deal with you, I've already used my third scroll..."
Of course. When I was fighting Kakuzu, how could my Yin Seal have been as full as it is now? In today's battle, I've used my savings from the past few months!
Her biggest shortcoming was her chakra amount. Once this shortcoming was compensated for by the Yin Seal, it was not strange for her to display super-strong strength. What's more, Sasori's puppets were particularly countered by her monstrous strength and water blade, especially that giant scorpion.
"Strong and weak are only relative. It's not a reliable measure," Sakura said faintly. "The thing sealed in your third scroll, is it these puppets?"
"That's right," Sasori said, controlling the puppet. "They are all human puppets I have carefully selected, over two hundred of them. Each one of them has retained most of the strength they had in life! But don't worry, Haruno Sakura. I won't put you in this scroll... with your strength, you should be the one to replace the Third Kazekage puppet's position!"
He was becoming more and more satisfied with this girl.
An exquisite appearance, high-level strength... if made into a puppet, it would definitely be a more perfect masterpiece than the Kazekage puppet.
Of course, perhaps it would be more perfect if she were a few years older, but by that time, he really might not be able to win against Haruno Sakura!
"Disgusting..." Sakura's face instantly darkened. "The me now has been completely reborn compared to when I fought Kakuzu. You'd better take back your big talk."
"Completely reborn" was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was true that her strength had improved by another level.
In the previous battle with Kakuzu, her Ice Style combat system had only just been developed and was not yet proficient. More importantly, it had not been well-coordinated with her Water Style.
But after experiencing that super-high-intensity confrontation, powerhouses like Kakuzu and Kimimaro were like whetstones, grinding away the unnatural edges of her tactical system. Sakura's ninjutsu had become more rounded, flexible, and easy to use in this tempering!
During this period, Sakura had hardly learned any new jutsu. Apart from the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, her old ninjutsu had not been further developed.
She had just followed Tsunade's advice, calmed her heart, and reviewed her progress during this period.
After mastering Ice Style and developing the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals and Sakura Rush, her combat power had indeed advanced by leaps and bounds, and her strength had faintly touched the edge of the Kage-level.
But Tsunade had seen her hidden danger: her progress was too fast, her foundation was not solid enough, and she still had a tendency to rely too much on powerful ninjutsu. Her mentality was also a bit impetuous. So she had taken Sakura to Shikkotsu Forest. The huge presence of the Slug Sage had made Sakura properly rein in her arrogance. Then she had suppressed her research progress on cloning technology. When she was in the Land of Snow, Sakura had spent more of her time practicing her Ice and Water Style ninjutsu with her ice clones or with Sasuke.
After returning to the village, the leisurely and peaceful daily life and the not-so-difficult missions had given Haruno Sakura more time to polish her own combat system.
So by now, her strength had taken another solid step forward.
She had already completely stepped from the level of an elite Jonin to the threshold of the "Kage" level—if calling it "Kage" level was too much of an exaggeration, the title of "quasi-Kage" level was probably more suitable.
Of course, in the world of ninja, the so-called strength levels were not too strictly distinguished. Everyone had their own strengths and weaknesses. When facing an opponent they happened to counter, or when they had a particularly powerful or bizarre secret technique or ninjutsu, they could often display a higher level of combat power and defeat their opponent.
To use an inappropriate term, it was the ability to "skip levels."
However, in the bloody and cruel battles of ninja, to decide a winner and loser often meant to decide life and death... To describe such a process with a term like "level-skipping" was too frivolous, too shallow!
Sakura's side of the battle was not over yet, so let's get back to the topic.
When Haruno Sakura heard Sasori's words of praise, she did not feel the slightest bit of complacency in her heart.
Nor was she enraged because Sasori had declared that he would turn her into a human puppet.
Instead, she appeared extremely calm.
And she had taken advantage of the time they were talking to calm the sharp pain in her meridians.
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