Chapter 217: The First Candidate
Sakura suddenly thought of something.
She looked intently. The new Anbu's brand-new uniform had a long gash on the chest. She smiled faintly, knowing that Katsura-U had been playing his surprise attack trick in the corridor again. Back then, the girl had been quite scared by this, and for a moment, she had even thought that Katsura-U had defected...
—Yes, she was already using the words "back then." Haruno Sakura already considered herself a veteran.
I hope the rookie wasn't too scared.
This new Anbu recruit, after taking a sneak attack from Katsura-U, was obviously much more vigilant. Seeing the four people standing in the courtyard, he looked over nervously, not knowing what kind of strange test the Anbu would come up with this time.
Among the four, only one was wearing a full uniform and a mask. Of the remaining three, one was clearly dressed as a civilian ninja; the other two, one was wearing a hospital gown and seemed a bit weak, and the other was wearing the light clothing of an ordinary girl, a youthful and pretty girl's attire. Neither of them looked like combatants.
So, according to common sense, the proctor should be the Anbu ninja in the formal uniform. It was just that he was a little puzzled as to why a civilian, a patient, and an ordinary girl would appear here. Could this also be part of the Anbu's test?
This routine was too deep. He couldn't quite take it!
The rookie braced himself and analyzed the situation. The civilian ninja was probably for recording the test results, and his aura was not very strong, so he was negligible. The man in the hospital gown, although he looked a bit weak, his movements and presence were actually quite extraordinary upon closer observation. Upon deeper investigation, the faint chakra texture that was leaking out was heavy and profound, like a deep abyss or a great mountain. He was an elite Jonin disguised as a patient? This routine was indeed unfathomable...
As for the other beautiful girl in the bloom of her youth, just by looking at her slender figure and delicate features, on the surface, she looked like a harmless ordinary person. But to be able to dress so lightly in this cold winter season, and without any sign of using ninjutsu to maintain her body temperature, her presence was hidden and not revealed, and her chakra was so well-restrained that he couldn't feel her chakra texture at all. It seemed she was not to be underestimated...
Haruno Sakura saw the rookie looking at her and Shino a few more times and knew that the rookie personally brought over by Katsura-U was indeed something special. At the very least, his observation and thinking skills were not bad.
The unfamiliar Anbu, Ken'ichi, beside her also noticed the rookie's actions at this time, nodded secretly, and then turned his head and said to Sakura in a low voice, "Tsk, forget it. No need to change clothes. Let's just start... This place is yours now, Proctor!"
After speaking, the three of them, along with Katsura-U, jumped onto a small balcony—or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it a small viewing platform—on a nearby building and began to watch the battle.
Haruno Sakura nodded and turned to face the new Anbu member.
"Then I will be your proctor for this entrance test..." she said faintly, carefully sizing up the rookie standing in front of her. "My codename is Tobi."
"My codename is White Fox," the rookie said, a little flustered.
The mask on White Fox's face blocked Sakura's probing gaze.
From the outside, she could only tell that the other party was a young man, not too tall, not too short, not too fat, not too thin, with a short, flat, black haircut. A ninja like this would have no distinguishing features once he put on a mask. This was precisely the type that Katsura-U liked the most.
His chakra signature was also not obvious. It was clear that he had deliberately suppressed his chakra fluctuations, so there was no way to tell if he was a ninjutsu-type or a taijutsu-type.
But it didn't matter. She wasn't afraid of any type...
Haruno Sakura, who had just finished fighting with Kakuzu, was now very confident. As long as the opponent wasn't Kage-level, in her eyes, they were nothing. She was not at all afraid of a situation like Shino's, where the proctor was dominated by the candidate.
This pink-haired girl, while feeling smug in her heart, was also thinking about how much she should hold back in a moment so that she wouldn't accidentally kill the candidate... Although this was the first time she had been a proctor, even if she hadn't eaten pork, she had seen a pig run. What a proctor usually had to do was not to suppress the candidate's strength, but to guide the candidate to bring out all of their strength. This not only required the proctor's own strength to be more than a cut above the candidate's, but generally also required the proctor to have rich experience, and the latter was precisely Haruno Sakura's weak point, so she had to think it through clearly.
The two of them formed the Seal of Confrontation, and the battle officially began.
The rookie's opening move was a cliché rapid-fire shuriken.
Swish, swish, swish—!
The moment he released the Seal of Confrontation, his left hand, which had already been quietly holding the shuriken, struck out like lightning. With a sharp flick of his wrist, a series of afterimages were created, and the ninja tools in his hand turned into several points of cold stars, shooting towards Haruno Sakura like a storm.
The rookie's movements were already very fast. However, the girl, in her Sakura Rush state, was even faster.
"Ice Style: Legion Ice Clone Jutsu!"
She quickly formed the hand seals, and her ninjutsu was cast after his had been launched but arrived first, instantly creating more than twenty clones in front of her. Clang, clang, clang—amidst a continuous series of clashing sounds, the clones, holding ice blades, easily blocked the shuriken that the rookie had shot out.
The Legion Clone was originally developed to deal with low-intensity battles. Its power was relatively controllable, and in a spar, it was not easy to accidentally seriously injure a comrade.
Of course, with the further improvement of her Ice Style combat system, and with the combination of the Ice Clone Explosion and the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, this move could now display considerable power even in high-intensity confrontations.
"The ninjutsu was cast very quickly," the civilian ninja from the personnel department couldn't help but praise. To be able to complete a ninjutsu in the instant the shuriken was shot out was already quite impressive.
This one-handed ice clone had left him a little stunned.
"Of course," Katsura-U smiled, recalling the time he had tested Haruno Sakura, and that one mysterious ice clone. He had also become a fan of hers since that ninjutsu.
Thinking that he was still Sakura's guide in the Anbu, Katsura-U felt a little proud in his heart.
Shino, however, just shook his head dismissively.
You guys are already praising her for this little skill? Haruno Sakura hasn't even used ten percent of her strength yet.
He had seen what Sakura looked like when she fought with all her might!
"Hn, the rookie is not bad either," the dog-faced Ken'ichi said, his attention mainly on the new Anbu, White Fox. After all, assessing the new Anbu was his main task. He watched as the two on the field continuously used various ninjutsu to probe and clash, and praised them.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"
This Fire Style, which had originally been exclusive to the Uchiha, now, with the decline of the Uchiha, had gradually become the signature fire jutsu of the Konoha ninja.
The fireball spat out from White Fox's mouth grew upon meeting the wind and instantly swelled into a large fireball several meters high. It rushed towards Haruno Sakura and her ice clones with an imposing and scorching presence.
The fierce fireball directly plowed a trench in the ground. The power, activation speed, and timing of the ninjutsu were all grasped quite well. Even if it had been cast by a ninja from the Uchiha clan, it would have been no better than this. Therefore, Ken'ichi also couldn't help but comment.
BOOM— The fireball exploded, and as expected, it did not hit the proctor.
However, Sakura did not use her extremely fast Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals.
Instead, she had used a slower Substitution Jutsu to dodge this move.
Amidst the roaring explosion, the fireball swallowed the ice clone left behind by the substitution. A surging heatwave suddenly spread out, and for a moment, smoke and dust filled the air. After a moment, after the ninjutsu had ended, the ice clone had already been evaporated without a trace. Haruno Sakura's unharmed figure landed not far away.
"What an extreme-limit Substitution Jutsu!" The new Anbu, White Fox's eyes tightened. He looked at the girl's figure appearing leisurely from the air, a little surprised in his heart. His proud Fire Style had been so easily dodged!
However, he didn't know that in Haruno Sakura's eyes, this fire jutsu, which had been praised by Ken'ichi, was too slow and lacked power compared to Kakuzu's ninjutsu.
If it had been Kakuzu's Searing Migraine, half the sky would have been burned red by the sea of fire, and even with a Substitution Jutsu, she couldn't have escaped its range. Or, he would have used the faster-activating Flame Bullet or Small Flame Bullet, making it so that she wouldn't even have time to cast the Substitution Jutsu.
So this move was at most at the Jonin level...
So much so that she still had the leisure to appreciate and compare it with Kakuzu's ninjutsu, until the fireball was almost right in front of her, before she unhurriedly cast the Substitution Jutsu.
Without realizing it, Sakura's standards had already become very high.
❃❃❃
⤑ Show your support with Power Stones!
⤑ Unlock a Bonus Chapter every time we hit 400 Power Stones!
❃❃❃
♕ Get early access to 30+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
🔗 https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to open the link!)
💬 Enjoying the story? Drop a review!
Your support really helps the series grow—thank you!