Aoba’s figure completely disappeared from sight.
At first, Orochimaru didn’t think much of it.
How could a little trick like this possibly let him escape from me?
But after a while, an expression of disbelief appeared on his face.
“He’s gone.
I can’t sense his presence at all!” “How interesting.
Really interesting.
Natsume Aoba, huh?
I’ll remember you.” After standing there for a moment, Orochimaru couldn’t help licking his lips.
His figure slowly sank into the ground, disappearing in the blink of an eye.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Elsewhere in the Forest of Death, Aoba crouched down and breathed heavily.
Having overused his chakra, he was so exhausted that he couldn’t even be bothered to move.
The reason he had managed to escape just now was because he had used the Flying Thunder God Technique with the last of his remaining chakra.
Before entering the Forest of Death, he had secretly planted a Flying Thunder God seal as a precaution against encountering Orochimaru.
Now, it had happened to come in handy.
After destroying the seal, he took a bag of soldier pills from the system inventory.
He tore open the package.
There were five black pills inside.
Aoba grabbed one and bit down on it, slowly recovering his strength.
He had to admit, the soldier pills produced by the system were excellent.
They tasted considerably better than the ones from Konoha.
After resting for half an hour, he didn’t waste any more time and headed toward the Central Tower.
Along the way, he found Koki and Otsuki again.
The two brothers were quite crafty.
They had hidden themselves in a corner not far from the tower, constantly making sure to stay away from the other shinobi.
When they saw that Aoba was still alive, they were extremely excited.
“That’s great, Aoba!
You really are still alive!” “We almost thought you were dead.
After all, that was one of the Legendary Sannin…” After briefly explaining what had happened, Aoba lied and claimed that Orochimaru hadn’t pursued him.
There was no way he could tell them the truth, that he had escaped from Orochimaru completely unscathed.
Even if he did, they might not believe him.
That was one of the Legendary Sannin, an extremely formidable powerhouse!
Even an elite jonin wouldn’t be confident of escaping from Orochimaru unharmed.
Who would believe that a mere genin had the ability to do so?
Aoba indeed didn’t possess that kind of combat power, but he had the Flying Thunder God Technique.
There was no need to tell anyone about that.
After the second round of the exam ended, all the surviving candidates entered an indoor training arena.
The Third Hokage appeared and delivered a speech explaining the significance of this year’s Chunin Exams.
Then, under the supervision of the coughing, sickly Gekko Hayate, everyone began the preliminary elimination matches.
The official Third Stage of the exam would invite a large number of nobles to watch.
To avoid wasting time, they ultimately decided to eliminate candidates until only eight remained.
Of course, because of Aoba’s butterfly effect, a total of twenty-four candidates had passed through the Forest of Death this time.
As for Kabuto, he had no time to continue playing shinobi games.
He immediately found a half-hearted excuse and voluntarily withdrew.
Soon, it was Aoba’s turn to enter the arena.
His opponent was Kankuro of Sunagakure.
Putting down the puppet wrapped in white bandages from his back, Kankuro confidently said, “Let’s finish this quickly!” “That’s exactly what I had in mind.” Aoba nodded with a smile.
He reached into his ninja tool pouch, pretending to retrieve a weapon.
In reality, he took the Chakra Blade from his system inventory.
His opponent was a puppet master.
What luck.
Aoba remembered Kankuro’s information perfectly.
From the very beginning, there was practically no suspense in their battle.
Kankuro’s confident appearance was actually a disguise intended to lure his opponent into attacking.
Aoba immediately stepped forward and swung his blade several times through empty air.
That move left Kankuro completely dumbfounded.
“How is that possible?
He saw through my strategy!” The Kankuro standing in front of Aoba wasn’t actually the real Kankuro.
From the very beginning, his true body had switched places with the puppet.
He was hiding inside the bandages on the ground while secretly controlling the puppet with his Puppet Technique.
If Aoba attacked the puppet directly, Kankuro could cleverly use it to trade damage for damage.
But Kankuro never expected Aoba to refuse to play by the usual rules!
His several slashes severed all of Kankuro’s chakra threads.
In an instant, the puppet Crow’s true appearance was revealed as it collapsed to the ground.
Without a puppet master’s control, a puppet was nothing more than an empty shell.
Taking advantage of Kankuro’s stunned state, Aoba closed in and unleashed a series of taijutsu attacks, combining them with the Chakra Blade for a burst of damage.
When fighting a puppet master, you always had to target the real body.
Victory seemed within reach, but Aoba immediately noticed something was wrong.
Fine sand began leaking from Kankuro’s body.
In the end, his entire body turned into a pile of sand.
“So you prepared a Sand Clone beforehand.” Aoba immediately saw through his opponent’s technique.
He had to admit, this guy was really cautious.
First, his real body hid behind the scenes while using a puppet to deceive his opponent.
Then, after his weakness was exposed, he used a Sand Clone to escape in time.
Some distance away, Kankuro’s figure emerged.
Without hesitation, he took out a scroll.
After opening it, he summoned another one of his puppets, Kuroari.
Unlike Crow, which specialized in offense, Kuroari’s greatest function was trapping enemies.
The instant Aoba saw the puppet, he guessed Kankuro’s next move.
Kuroari’s offensive capabilities were too weak.
Kankuro couldn’t possibly defeat an enemy with it alone.
The only possibility was to use Kuroari to trap Aoba, then regain control of Crow.
Together with Crow, Kankuro would be able to use his Secret Black Move: Iron Maiden.
However, now that Aoba knew what he was planning, he wasn’t about to let him have his way.
He formed the hand seals and created a Shadow Clone, while his real body charged toward Kuroari.
His Shadow Clone, meanwhile, turned and headed toward Crow.
A paper bomb was attached to Crow’s chest.
Fortunately, Aoba had only used four paper bombs when fighting Orochimaru, leaving him with one.
Otherwise, destroying the puppet wouldn’t have been easy.
Paper bombs were expensive, single-use consumables.
Aoba normally couldn’t bring himself to buy them and could only make do with the ones he obtained through the gacha.
When Kankuro saw that his puppet was about to explode, he was completely stunned.
“Impossible!
He saw through my strategy again?!” His entire plan had been seen through.
There was no way to fight like this!
Almost all of Kankuro’s offensive methods revolved around Crow.
Without Crow, he was like a tiger without teeth, completely unable to show his fangs.
In battles between shinobi, intelligence was often extremely important.
Especially when the two sides were relatively close in strength.
Once someone used intelligence to discover their opponent’s weakness, they had a chance of determining the outcome of the battle.
Kakashi, watching from the stands, couldn’t help commenting.
“What incredible insight.
He’s completely on my level!” Kabuto narrowed his eyes as he watched the boy in the training arena.
“As expected of the mysterious shinobi who calmly escaped from Orochimaru-sama.
Even I couldn’t gather accurate information on him.” He had already heard from Orochimaru about Aoba’s fight with him.
When he first heard the news, he couldn’t believe it was true.
His previously flawless intelligence-gathering abilities had developed a flaw because of Aoba’s existence.
Hinata silently watched the battle along with everyone else.
She only thought that Aoba looked incredibly cool when he was serious.
“Go, Aoba-niisan!” The girl clenched her little fists and quietly cheered him on.
On the training ground, the battle between the two continued.
The difference between their strengths was already obvious.
Aoba was preparing to deliver the final blow and end the match.