As the black-clad ninja leader roared, filled with intense resentment and killing intent, his face, and even the muscles and skin of his entire body, seemed to age decades in an instant. Grooves of deep wrinkles appeared, and he became shriveled, looking as if only a sheet of human skin remained.
Orochimaru's wicked smile curled up, and he said scornfully, "How much fight can you still put up, you who are running on borrowed time!"
This sentence, like a high-explosive bomb, detonated in the black-clad leader's heart. A volcanic surge of endless rage flooded his mind, and the hand seals he was weaving suddenly froze.
Sand Release: Sand Dragon Emergence!
The hundred-meter-wide desert created by the Desert Great Funeral boiled like water. Hundreds of tons of yellow sand suddenly erupted.
Awoooo!—
A deafening, terrifying roar suddenly sounded on the flat ground. Centered beneath Orochimaru's feet, the yellow sand in a radius of several tens of meters was violently displaced, and a massive, hideous, yellow-sand dragon head suddenly burst out of the ground, like an orca leaping from the sea.
Boom!—
The gigantic, ferocious yellow-sand dragon head instantly swallowed Orochimaru. Inside the dragon head, the howling wind sounded like the sharp wails of vengeful spirits, and countless yellow-sand tornadoes instantly sliced and tore Orochimaru to shreds.
E-rank Jutsu: Substitution Jutsu!
Behind the black-clad leader, a ghostly black shadow suddenly appeared. An ice-cold, sharp kunai swiftly circled the leader's neck.
Crrk, crk, crk!—
As the kunai sliced through, the sound that emanated from the black-clad leader, whose body was reduced to little more than skin, was a horrifying crunching of bone.
The head hit the ground. A pitifully small amount of reddish-black blood, mixed with pale bone fragments, flowed out. The deep-blue chakra, which had been drawn out by expending his life force, rapidly dissipated into the air.
Without the supply of chakra, the imposing yellow-sand dragon head vanished, leaving behind only scattered yellow sand and shredded wood splinters.
Orochimaru's dark-golden pupils coldly swept over the corpse on the ground, his gaze as emotionless as ten thousand years of ice. However, his mind was racing. This ninja was clearly a Suna ninja from the Land of Wind. It seemed Sarutobi-sensei was right; the Land of Wind had indeed secretly intervened in the conflict in the Land of Rivers.
The clothes over his heart suddenly moved. The sleeping Yamata seemed to sense something. It swiftly slid out of Orochimaru's Curse Mark with a "Shluck!" The snow-white snake head, with its pair of scarlet eyes, constantly surveyed the surroundings, its purple-red, tens-of-centimeter-long tongue flickering out.
Seemingly detecting the chakra contained within the corpses on the ground, Yamata suddenly darted out with a flash of white light, landing on the black-clad leader's corpse. The exquisite snake head, originally the size of a baby's fist, suddenly opened, expanding to the size of a large fan. Two rows of fine, neat, and incredibly sharp snake fangs gleamed coldly, while the long, purple-red tongue flickered and tasted the air.
The slender snake tongue seemed to emit a mysterious force. The thick, dissipating chakra from the black-clad leader's corpse began to gather. It quickly surged and condensed in the air into a crystalline, deep-blue chakra mass. It rapidly grew from the size of an adult's fist to the size of a millstone, utterly brilliant, flickering with an emerald-blue light, and incomparably magnificent.
Looking at the breathtakingly beautiful chakra mass, Orochimaru's heart skipped a beat. His powerful spiritual sense clearly perceived that this seemingly magnificent chakra mass held enough powerful energy to turn an area of a hundred meters into ash. After all, this was the concentrated essence of a great nation's elite Chūnin who had expended his life force to generate massive amounts of chakra!
After the last wisp of chakra from the corpse also flowed into the airborne chakra mass, Yamata lunged forward and swallowed it whole.
Under Orochimaru's unwavering gaze, after Yamata swallowed the chakra mass, its entire half-meter-long body, which was white with a pale golden hue, suddenly emitted a fierce white light. The light wasn't blinding; instead, it had a gentle, white-and-gold softness, appearing incredibly noble and splendid.
In this splendid white light, the three-finger-thick snake body became translucent, like eggshell-colored glass. Its internal structure was completely visible.
Squinting his dark-golden snake eyes, Orochimaru clearly saw that as soon as the emerald-blue chakra mass entered Yamata's body, it instantly dissolved into thousands of smaller, lower-energy, and more easily absorbed chakra clusters, which rapidly infiltrated the entire snake body.
After the entirety of the emerald-blue chakra mass had fused into Yamata's body, the brilliant white-and-gold light it emitted slowly diminished.
Yamata closed its scarlet snake eyes and involuntarily coiled into a serene, perfect circle.
Subsequently, the gradually weakening white light suddenly solidified. It instantly condensed into hair-thin white threads, which circled and wrapped around Yamata's body. In a few breaths, it solidified into a snowy-white, oval cocoon the size of a large bowl.
A soft white glow flickered and shone continuously on the snowy-white energy cocoon. Orochimaru, upon leaning closer, could vaguely see some of the snowy-white cocoon threads on the surface slowly turning into a noble, bright pale gold.
After waiting for about a minute, Orochimaru saw that the cocoon had stopped changing. He carefully picked up the bowl-sized snowy-white cocoon and gently placed it into a hidden inner pocket over his heart.
Orochimaru lowered his head to confirm it couldn't be seen from the outside before moving. He vaguely suspected that the chakra from the Suna ninja, which had been generated by expending his life force, was likely at a Jōnin level, and Yamata, having suddenly absorbed this overly massive energy, automatically entered this state of hibernation to digest it.
His guess was correct. Yamata, hibernating inside the white cocoon, was undergoing mysterious and wondrous changes.
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh—
The ninja retreated one by one, covered in blood. Outside the inn, the ground was littered with corpses—all belonging to the black-clad ninja. As for the Leaf Village ninja, there were surprisingly none dead.
Swoosh—
Orochimaru was the last to return to the rooftop. Yet, not a single one of the elite Leaf Village Chūnin offered any criticism; instead, they cleared a path for him to reach Sarutobi. They had all witnessed the earth-shattering battle between Orochimaru and the black-clad leader. In this world of the jungle law, everyone grants sufficient respect to the strong. This was an unwritten rule, the privilege of the powerful.
Orochimaru walked to Sarutobi's side with a composed demeanor.
Sarutobi looked at the calm-faced Orochimaru and nodded with satisfaction. This child is not only immensely strong but also cool-headed—truly exceptional!
Hyūga Harano, who was scanning back and forth nearby, reported to Sarutobi. Even without activating the Byakugan, the Hyūga clan's perceptive abilities were far beyond the others: "Lord Sarutobi, five of the welve Chūnin have light injuries; there are no serious injuries, and no fatalities among our forces. The enemy ninja have been completely eliminated!"
Sarutobi nodded faintly. He was not surprised by the result. With a Kage-level figure, a Kage-candidate figure, and three Jōnin watching over them, the twelve Chūnin had no business struggling against a mixed army of rogue ninja and a few great nation ninja. If they had, Konoha's ninja would have failed completely!
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