"Hmph!" Sarutobi Kagejirō snorted coldly.
He had completely misinterpreted Ye's good intentions, believing that both he and the "evil Uchiha" were only there to steal his mission merit points.
Kagejirō complained inwardly but didn't show it. Instead, he said with a look of false righteousness, "Do you think I'm the kind of person who would abandon his comrades and leave alone? In my opinion, we should work together to annihilate the remaining enemies. They're poisoned; they won't be able to resist for long."
Hyūga Asuka almost fainted upon hearing Kagejirō's proposal. She felt the reckless man was even hinting at her. She was also poisoned, and she could feel the venom had already spread to her heart. Her Byakugan vision was flickering, on the verge of collapse. She was nearly at her limit, while the Sunagakure ninja could still activate their chakra to suppress the toxin.
'Kagejirō, you are a complete idiot,' Asuka thought bitterly. 'Before, you said the mission was paramount and were willing to let the captain sacrifice himself. But now that you smell a little profit, you neglect the safety of the intelligence. You are nothing like the man you swore to be.'
When the Suna-nin heard the Konoha ninja discussing transferring the intelligence, they became extremely anxious. However, their most urgent task was to withstand the deadly attack they believed was coming.
"Interrupt his hand seals, quickly! Don't let him release that S-rank Water Style, Hard Whirlpool Water Blade!" the spiky-haired jōnin yelled.
His eyes were bloodshot as he pointed his sword at Sasuke, who was still frantically forming hand seals. In his opinion, after such a long sequence, he must have accumulated a massive amount of chakra for a world-ending jutsu. The information the monkey-masked ninja had leaked must be true.
Upon receiving the order, the bald Iwago and the two puppeteers stopped hiding. Immediately, they used various means to try and interrupt the casting process.
"Wind Style: Suppressing Damage!"
The puppet master jōnin reacted the fastest, his ten fingers flying at four seals per second. He launched a B-rank Wind Style jutsu, intending to disrupt the secret technique Sasuke was about to unleash. A vortex of storm compressed to its limit suddenly took shape and condensed into a high-pressure wind ball that sucked in the surrounding air, creating a small vacuum around it before shooting forward.
The other Sand ninja waved their hands, throwing kunai and shuriken imbued with Wind chakra. The spiky-haired jōnin stabbed his longsword into the ground and launched a volley of weapons with his one good hand, two exploding tags hidden among them. Compared to this attack, the Suppressing Damage was obviously more powerful, but if not for his injured hand, he would have undoubtedly used an A-rank jutsu to shred this hateful Uchiha.
"Earth Style: Earth Crest Boulder!"
Facing such danger, Iwago squeezed the last vestiges of chakra from his body and finally completed a powerful Earth Style jutsu. With a rumble, a ten-meter radius of the ground in front of him collapsed, and from the roar of cracking earth and rock, a huge boulder, the size of a house, was unearthed and hurled towards Sasuke.
In the air, a lethal combination of kunai, exploding tags, and the high-pressure B-rank wind ball covered the sky and enveloped Sasuke.
"Kagejirō, is this really an S-rank Hard Whirlpool Water Blade?" Ye asked, his eyes filled with confusion. "The number of seals for this secret water technique is a bit much, isn't it? There must be hundreds by now, right?"
"This..." Kagejirō was speechless, his throat tight, not knowing how to respond. He wanted to explain, but Ye was no longer paying attention to him.
"Watch out for the attack!" Ye shouted to the "Uchiha" in the distance, genuinely worried. He believed in the Uchiha's strength, but the power of this wave of group attacks was no less than that of an A-rank ninjutsu, and the jōnin was still in the middle of his seals.
"It's over!" Asuka thought, already foreseeing a corpse. 'This fake Uchiha's chakra isn't even as good as mine. How could he possibly withstand a group attack comparable to an A-rank ninjutsu? Even in my prime, I'm not sure if I could use Absolute Defense to save the day, let alone this fake. And that fat genin next to him is just a burden, making it harder for the fake Uchiha to dodge.'
"Hmph! Evil Uchiha!" Kagejirō snorted to himself, his heart filled with glee. He felt no concern, only anticipation, hoping the Sand ninja would continue to increase their attack power and consume more of the Uchiha's chakra and supplies. To him, Sasuke was not a comrade-in-arms, but a political enemy and a competitor for mission merits. A perfect pawn to wear down the enemy. 'When they are both exhausted, I will reap all the rewards.'
"Tekudō, it's up to you!" Sasuke said calmly, still continuing his hand seals in the face of the impending onslaught.
"No problem, Captain!"
Tekudō, with a solemn expression no one had ever seen on him before, untied the last, largest scroll from his waist. He grabbed it by the opening and threw it into the air in front of him.
"Secret Technique: Double Rashōmon Iron Gates!"
With a deafening roar!
From the smoke and dust of the scroll's explosion, two imposing iron gates, engraved with the face of a Rashōmon demon, rose from the ground. The smaller, front gate was an estimated ten meters high, five wide, and a meter thick, looking more like a copper wall than an iron gate.
And the iron gate behind it was much, much larger.