Chapter 82: Remaining Enemies
Haruno Sakura's killing moves were sharp, like a shooting star or a flash of lightning. In the blink of an eye, she had finished off four enemies.
The fifth Sound ninja finally responded. Although he was almost stunned witless seeing four of his teammates taken down in an instant, his experience from numerous life-or-death battles still allowed him to react in time.
Facing the girl's lightning-fast offensive, his face turned pale. He twisted his body with all his might, trying to get past Sakura's fist. His right hand was not idle either, brandishing a kunai to block the path of her left-handed jab.
The Sound ninja's hasty response was full of openings. For this weak counter-attack, the girl could instantly think of ten ways to deal with it.
She chose the most skillful and also the most effective method.
The girl's fair wrist flipped, changing her fist into a palm. Her wrist moved swiftly, tracing afterimages in the air as it bypassed the Sound ninja's kunai. With a hook and a touch, she had entangled the Sound ninja's extended right hand.
The taijutsu in the Naruto world mostly consisted of wide, open movements. Fists and feet sought simplicity and clarity, power and weight, supplemented by bizarre and unpredictable ninjutsu. This kind of small, flexible weaving and dodging actually originated from that world without chakra. In her previous life, Sakura had attended various martial arts and Wing Chun classes as a child and understood some of the basics of these dragon-slaying techniques. They were useless in that world, but unexpectedly, after transmigrating to this world, they had become a beneficial supplement to Sakura's taijutsu.
This move originated from the "sticking hands" of Wing Chun. As the name suggests, it is about sticking to the enemy's hands, but in reality, it is a means of using the hands as a bridge to listen for and release force.
At the same time, her left foot silently and suddenly kicked out, aiming for the back of the Sound ninja's knee!
Anyone who has been in a fight knows that if you are kicked in the back of the knee, due to the structure of the knee joint, your leg will uncontrollably go weak and you will kneel down.
A Sound ninja was certainly not an ordinary person and would not be so easily taken down. However, Sakura's fierce kick was not something an ordinary person could withstand.
With the enhancement of chakra, this kick was full of power. The Sound ninja instantly felt an explosive pain in his right leg, as if he could hear the sound of his bone cracking under the unbearable load!
At the same time as she kicked out, the girl's left hand released its force, sticking to the Sound ninja's right hand and pulling. The Sound ninja's footing went weak, and his upper body swayed. He instantly lost his balance completely.
In a dangerous close-quarters battle, to lose one's balance also meant to lose the ability to defend, to be at the mercy of others!
For a fish on the chopping block, the girl would certainly not be polite.
Her left foot didn't even touch the ground. She just pushed off the Sound ninja's calf, bent her knee, retracted her foot, then turned her hips and twisted her waist, sending out a ferocious middle-level side kick!
"Monstrous Strength Technique: Wing Chun Hidden Kick!"
Crack.
This time, even the girl could clearly hear the sound of bone breaking. This kick used the full body's integrated strength. The leg techniques of Wing Chun, combined with the enhancement of the Monstrous Strength Technique, had raised the power of her taijutsu to an incredible degree. With one kick, the most fragile ribs in the human body were forcefully broken. The force penetrated the chest cavity and went deep into the heart and lungs. The Sound ninja's heart was actually squeezed and burst by the immense force that had penetrated within!
The Sound ninja's eyes almost bulged out of their sockets, and he couldn't help but spray out a mist of blood. This one kick, let alone the Substitution Jutsu that was just beginning to form, had completely shattered his heart and lungs. He was deader than dead.
Sakura instantly felt that the Sound ninja, who had been desperately resisting her just a moment ago, after taking this kick, had suddenly lost all his strength. His whole body instantly went limp like a pile of soft, rotten meat.
She let go of his hand, and that pile of rotten meat immediately collapsed softly to the ground.
The fifth one...!
Her killing intent boiling, Haruno Sakura's pair of emerald eyes didn't even glance at the Sound ninja on the ground, but instead cast her gaze, as bone-chillingly cold as the snow of a harsh winter, on the remaining three.
The remaining Sound ninja looked at each other. The girl's astonishing combat power had greatly exceeded their imagination. They had thought she was a soft persimmon that could be easily squeezed, but after taking a bite, they found it was a diamond persimmon!
Fight, or flee?
"Swish, swish, swish!" Dozens of kunai and shuriken shooting towards Sakura announced the Sound ninja's answer. Fight, of course it was to fight! The remaining three were very clear that with the girl's speed, they could not escape. The result of showing their backs to the enemy would only be a faster death! They knew very well that, judging from the strength the girl had displayed, even if the three of them attacked together, they were probably no match for her! However, after witnessing her speed, the three of them understood even more that escaping was absolutely a pipe dream! Not to mention whether they could get away, even if they successfully created distance, they would only be picked off one by one by the girl's water jutsu. After all, compared to her taijutsu, her ninjutsu was even more despair-inducing.
Although they were shocked by the girl's prowess in hand-to-hand combat, they were already in a situation where they couldn't back down and could only charge forward! Perhaps from the moment they decided to deal with Sakura with taijutsu and surround her, the fate of being wiped out had already been sealed. If the Sound ninja captain had been a little more cautious when choosing his tactics, and had probed a little at the beginning, perhaps he would have discovered his misjudgment earlier. Would he have been able to salvage the defeat a little, at least not to the point of total annihilation? Until the moment of his death, the Sound ninja captain could not understand why, among the Konoha ninja who were immersed in a beautiful dream of peace, such a brilliant and stunningly talented young girl would appear!
But the remaining three Sound ninja no longer had the spare mind to complain about the captain who had sent their squad to its doom.
Following the barrage of ninja tools, the three Sound ninja, with ferocious expressions, tightly gripped the kunai in their hands and charged towards Sakura! A desperate battle, only by fighting to the death, only by putting their lives on the line, could they possibly fight for a sliver of a chance to live!
But, choosing to fight... would there really be a sliver of a chance to live?
The answer... of course not!
Facing the Sound ninja's desperate charge, Haruno Sakura was expressionless, looking at them coldly. She suddenly pushed off with her feet and unhesitatingly met the Sound ninja head-on!
While charging forward, the girl's hand movements did not stop. Her slender fingers flew up and down like butterflies, forming hand seals at a speed that was difficult for the naked eye to discern. Then, a stream of clear water was unsealed from the sealing formula drawn on the girl's fair wrist. With the girl's chakra control, it surged in the air and became a transparent water shield.
This wasn't the end—because this water was not the famous ultrapure water.
In fact, the recent consecutive battles had left her stock of ultrapure water a bit low. The extremely demanding purity of ultrapure water itself had already greatly limited its usage time. Once ultrapure water was taken out of the sealing space and exposed to the external environment, especially in a fierce battle environment, even with various protective measures, it could only last for one or two hours before its purity would decrease due to the absorption of external impurities such as air molecules, causing it to lose its various wonderful properties. At that time, it could only be put back into the seal, to be taken out and re-purified later when there was free time, before it could be used again.
The previous battles had greatly reduced her stock of ultrapure water. A large part of it was still in the scrolls waiting for her to re-purify. But she had been busy with training for the past month and had neglected this work. Now she was still using her old stock and had to be frugal with it.
To use ultrapure water against such small fry would be too luxurious, too wasteful.
Therefore, what Sakura used was just ordinary purified distilled water—a byproduct of preparing ultrapure water.
Such water, of course, did not have the strength of ultrapure water. But the transformation of this water shield was not over yet. The seals Sakura was forming were for Ice Style. With the drive of her chakra, a chilled cold air suddenly surged from the air, and the water shield protecting Sakura's front quickly condensed into a crystal-clear, gleaming ice shield!
The general impression is that ice is hard. However, in nature, ice is a molecular crystal. According to the general rule, among the four types of solid crystals, atomic crystals are the materials with the highest hardness and strength, while molecular crystals have the lowest hardness. It's just that the case of ice is rather special; its hardness and compressive strength will increase as the temperature drops. At zero degrees, the Mohs hardness of ice is only 1-2. At minus fifty degrees, the Mohs hardness of ice rises to 6, close to the 6.5 of fiberglass. And the ice condensed from high-purity water, because its internal structure is flawless and very pure, will have a hardness higher than ordinary ice—even much harder than steel!
And the ice shield the girl had condensed was far more than just a very cold block of ice. This was hard ice created by an Ice Style ninjutsu!
Ting, ting, tang, tang—
After a series of crisp and chaotic clashing sounds, the crystal-clear ice shield in front of the girl, although only a thin layer, possessed extremely high hardness and resilience, steadily blocking the ninja tools shot out by the Sound ninja. The sharp and heavy kunai crashed against the ice shield, leaving only a series of white scratches, before falling powerlessly to the ground.
Sakura didn't even glance at the collision between the ninja tools and the ice shield. She had full confidence in her Ice Style ninjutsu.
Her pair of calm and indifferent, clear-as-water eyes just passed through the transparent ice and met the fierce and ferocious gazes of the Sound ninja who were charging right behind, like those of a cornered wolf.
Full of the killing intent of a desperate, life-or-death struggle. Full of the violent desire to take a bite out of the girl's flesh even if they died!
Facing this extremely dense killing intent, facing the Sound ninja's desperate, death-defying charge, the girl not only did not shrink back in fear, but instead pressed her lips together tightly and quickened her pace towards them!
When two brave foes meet on a narrow path, the braver one wins.
What's more, Sakura could not only be considered brave, but she was also the stronger one.
In an interval shorter than the blink of an eye, the Sound ninja crashed into the girl's ice shield. The kunai, filled with chakra, its blade as sharp as autumn frost, capable of cutting through iron like mud, pierced the ice shield with the first blow.
It's so fragile! The Sound ninja were overjoyed, as if they saw the hope of defeating Sakura.
The Sound ninja did not find a panicked expression on Sakura's face, but instead saw a cold glint in the corner of her eye. At that moment, the girl stomped her foot on the ground, her figure abruptly stopping. The seals on her hands changed continuously, and she had already completed the next ninjutsu—
"Ice Style: Bursting Ice Funeral!"
Pale blue chakra surged, pouring into the sharp-angled, broken pieces of ice, stirring restlessly in the air.
The next moment, the broken ice shield exploded with a roar, shattering into pieces, turning into countless sharp-angled, extremely hard ice spikes, ice blades, and ice sabers, which shot out in a dense barrage towards the fan-shaped area in front, completely enveloping the three Sound ninja!
Swish, swish, swish—!
The sound of the air being torn was deafening!
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