Neji's eyes had grown dark, different from before.
No one noticed the change—no one but Kaede.
This Neji wasn't himself at all; it was as if he were being controlled. Sure enough, while the groups faced off in deadlock, Neji suddenly activated the White Eye, blurred forward to Shino, and drove an Eight Trigrams Palms strike toward Shino's chest.
Shino froze for a heartbeat, then a mass of insects surged across his chest and blunted Neji's blow. Neji didn't relent, sweeping forward with more palm strikes.
Shino slipped left and right, insects forming shields as they clashed and tumbled out of the ring, trading blows along the edge of the arena.
"Neji! What are you doing?" Ino stared, shocked. They had been squaring off with the two Ghost Lantern brothers—how had it turned into infighting?
This exam had thrown everything into chaos. Ino moved to intervene—then caught the look in Neji's eyes and froze. "Neji… he's being controlled!"
Of everyone here, no one understood entering and manipulating a target's mind better than Ino. That was why she sensed the oddity so fast.
"Hurry! Find whoever's controlling him! If we attack the controller, we can break it!" Ino shouted.
Lee reacted first. "I'll find them!"
A green figure vanished in a blink as Lee sprinted into the stands, searching for the one pulling Neji's strings.
Only then did Shikamaru connect the dots. "Did Haku's sudden suicide happen because someone was controlling him, too?"
"If that's true, we're in serious trouble," Gaara said. His face, however, remained impassive.
He didn't care about any of that. All that mattered was protecting the pass token in his hand and helping members of the Land of Gods secure more.
Since most of the tokens were with the two water-bodies, he'd just beat those two and take them.
The battlefield shifted with every passing moment.
A minute ago they'd been layered into interlocking encirclements; now the field had split into several clusters.
Gaara now stood before Mangetsu. Ino–Shika–Cho fanned out with Lee, quickly combing for Neji's controller.
Neji and Shino were already trading blows.
Kiba now faced Suigetsu.
By Kaede's old memories of power tiers, Kiba shouldn't be Suigetsu's match. But the Twelve had the Divine Tree's protection and boon; every one of them had learned techniques far beyond their age.
They already fought at a true combat level—the only thing missing was a jōnin title.
Konoha's standards for a jōnin were what Kaede used for a chūnin.
So while spectators gasped at how the Land of Gods' "genin" were far above normal chūnin, Kaede saw only standard performance.
The field plunged back into chaos.
The fight drawing the most eyes was Neji versus Shino.
In the shinobi world, if any clan could be called the most all-round, the most quietly terrifying—one that could make the body crawl—it was the Aburame.
(End of Chapter)
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