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The woman in the bamboo hat stared at the pool of blood on the ground.
Something moved through her cold eyes: a flicker of admiration.
“So you chose to hurt yourself, used the pain to snap back to consciousness?”
She narrowed her eyes, ran her thick tongue slowly across her face, and murmured: “Sasuke Uchiha…
you really are fine prey.”
In a nearby thicket, Sasuke’s legs were shaking.
Not trembling: shaking, beyond his control.
His face had gone corpse-white.
Every trace of his usual cold composure and arrogance had been stripped away.
He was genuinely, completely terrified.
Too rattled to notice the massive brown serpent materializing silently beside him.
It flicked a crimson forked tongue.
Its slit pupils gleamed with cruel light.
Its enormous body drifted closer and closer without making a sound.
“Sasuke, BEHIND YOU!” Sakura had just snapped back to herself when she saw it.
Her face went pale.
She screamed.
“What—” Sasuke’s pupils shrank to pinpoints.
He spun.
The gaping maw was already there, inches from his face.
A wall of hot, foul stench hit him like a fist.
Instinct took over.
He shoved Sakura clear and launched himself sideways, barely clearing the bite.
He landed on a branch, chest heaving.
“Damn it…
what is wrong with me?
I can’t even manage basic sensory awareness!?”
HISSS.
The serpent, furious at missing, whipped its head around and lunged again.
Looking at that flickering tongue, Sasuke caught a flash of that woman’s face in his memory.
“I’ll kill you!”
His expression hardened.
He whipped five shuriken in a single motion.
They punched straight into the serpent’s open mouth.
The snake let out a piercing shriek and crashed to the ground.
Blood soaked into the grass around it.
“Ha…
ha…” Sasuke knelt there, catching his breath, a thread of confidence working its way back.
[It wasn’t that I was too weak.
She’s just on a completely different level.]
“Sasuke, we did it!” Sakura sprinted toward him, her face streaked with dirt and tears, weeping with relief.
“Yeah.
Let’s get out of here first…” Sasuke stopped mid-sentence.
His eyes locked onto the snake’s corpse and wouldn’t move.
SQUELCH.
SQUELCH.
Under his stare, unable to look away, unable to blink, the woman slowly worked herself free from inside the still-twitching carcass, emerging inch by inch, her body coated in thick, dark blood.
“Sweet child… Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
why do you run from me?
Why…”
“AAAAHHH!
STAY BACK!” Sasuke couldn’t hold it together anymore.
He scrambled backward, staggering, every nerve in his body screaming.
He broke.
“Heh heh heh…
die.”
The woman’s body coiled around the tree trunk seven or eight times like a serpent, then she roared and launched herself straight at him.
SWISH SWISH SWISH.
Several shuriken streaked in and spiked into the ground directly in front of Sasuke, stopping her cold.
“Hey.
Sasuke.” A familiar voice came from above.
Naruto stood on a branch overhead, looking down at all of them with his signature confident grin.
“You really did get the guts scared right out of you, huh.”
“Oh?” The serpent-woman looked up at him, briefly surprised, then let out a low, sinister laugh.
“You escaped from the snake’s belly?”
“Naruto, run!” Sasuke’s voice cracked.
“This isn’t the time to show off.
We’re nowhere near her level!”
After their brief exchange, he understood it better than anyone.
That killing intent, that wrongness about her: she was simply not something they could fight.
“Shut up, Mister Coward!
If you can’t pull yourself together, step aside and watch this great lord show what he’s made of!”
Naruto completely ignored him, let out a yell, and charged forward like an absolute idiot.
The bamboo-hat woman sneered.
She bit her finger and smeared the blood across the talisman markings on her forearm.
“Summoning Jutsu.”
The white smoke cleared.
A colossal python appeared from nothing.
Its thick tail swept like a battering ram, and Naruto had zero time to react.
It sent him spinning through the air like an orange top and hurled him into the distance.
He hit the ground and didn’t move.
Eyes rolled back.
Out cold.
One-shotted.
What more is there to say?
“NARUTO!” Sasuke’s voice broke.
Sakura’s eyes filled instantly.
She tried to rush toward him.
Sasuke caught her arm and yanked her back.
“Don’t.
Calm down!”
“Heh heh…
not much behind that mouth, is there?” The bamboo-hat woman guided the python slowly toward Naruto’s prone body.
Its massive jaws stretched open, ready to swallow him whole.
“ROAR!”
Naruto’s eyes snapped open.
Those clear blue pupils: gone.
What looked back at her now were crimson, vertical slits.
“Heh heh heh heh…
so it’s that thing.
How utterly fascinating.”
Outside the Forest of Death, Anko Mitarashi had barely returned when a cluster of pale-faced exam proctors closed in around her.
“Mitarashi-san, something’s wrong!
Three bodies: the manner of death is completely bizarre!”
“Completely bizarre?” She frowned.
Something cold settled in her gut.
“Take me there.”
“Right here.” The group halted before a stone marker stained dark with blood.
“Based on their belongings and identification, these were shinobi from Kusagakure.
But as you can see, they…” The proctor beside her trailed off.
“Yeah.” Anko slowly closed her fists.
Her expression went grave.
“None of them have faces.”
Her hand moved without thinking to her neck.
The mark there had begun to burn, faint but unmistakable.
“No question about it.
That technique.
That disgusting technique.
He’s back.
He actually came back to Konoha.
Why?
Why would he come here!?”
Anko’s teeth ground together.
Rage burned through her chest, hot and close to the surface.
Her most respected teacher had thrown her away like something with no value, like garbage, and that memory had gnawed at her through countless days and nights.
For just a moment, A’s broad, powerful figure surfaced in her mind.
Right now, she wanted nothing more than to find a shoulder to lean against.
To say out loud how frightened she really was.
She shook her head hard and pushed it away.
“This is serious.
Get to Hokage-sama now!” she ordered the proctors around her.
“Request at least two Anbu squads dispatched into the Forest of Death.
I’m going in first.”
“Yes!” They answered in unison and vanished.
“Whatever you’re planning, I won’t let you have it.” She drew a slow breath, and moved to go.
“Where are you running off to?
I just got back with the food and you’re already bolting?”
Thunder rolled.
A stepped into view behind her, dango in one hand, red bean soup in the other.
*(Immense thanks to [Flying Lightning Great Venerable Master] for the ×3 Power of Love donation — it truly encouraged me!
I searched everywhere for the thanks post but couldn’t find it, so I’m putting it here.
Dear reader friends, please forgive me (crying face)
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