Chapter 428: Another Year of Chunin Exams
"Quite a retro exam format."
Hatake Kakashi leaned on the railing, watching the ninja below furiously writing or scratching their heads, and commented leisurely.
The Chunin Exams were reformed every year, but usually only the format of the first stage changed. After all, some tricks were useless once played. As for the second stage's forest scroll battle and the third stage's individual battle, because they were quite classic and didn't play tricks on the candidates, they generally didn't change much.
However, this year's Chunin Exams were slightly different—
"Hn? Were the Chunin Exams like this in the past too, Kakashi-sensei?"
The slender girl standing beside Kakashi leaned over and asked curiously.
She was a girl with quite exquisite and charming features. Although her forehead was a bit broad, paired with those agile and spirited eyes, her soft features appeared full of heroism and extraordinary temperament. Standing beside Kakashi, her aura was not weaker than this elite ninja known as Konoha's Technician, and even faintly superior, making people unable to help but cast their gaze on her.
It was Haruno Sakura.
Having been leisurely for a whole week, she was finally summoned by Tsunade today and received a new mission: patrol the exam venue with Kakashi, eliminate unsafe factors, ensure the smooth progress of the Chunin Exams, and protect the safety of the various VIPs.
"Yeah, the exams when I took the Chunin Exams were pretty much like this." Kakashi took out an exam schedule from his pocket and said to the girl beside him while reading it, "The first stage is a written exam, the second stage is a team battle in squads, and the third stage is an individual battle."
He rubbed the paper in his hand, his expression seemingly lost in remembrance.
Who is he thinking about?
Haruno Sakura stole a glance at him. His mask covered his expression, and with only one eye exposed on his entire face, it was hard to figure out Kakashi's thoughts.
After a long time, Kakashi said: "No one will be eliminated in each stage, only scores will be calculated. After candidates complete the three exams, the total score will be calculated to assess whether they can be promoted to Chunin. This was the exam format back then."
Maybe he's thinking about those two people on the Memorial Stone. Sakura didn't speak, just silently buried her guess in her heart.
Turning attention back to the exam venue.
This year's Chunin Exams were quite interesting.
Except for the third stage which remained an individual battle, the first and second stages both changed their tricks.
The first stage required candidates to answer questions in squads.
On the surface, it was just a written exam, but the rules were very interesting. Besides conventional questions, there were several questions on the paper that were clearly meant to make things difficult, which Genin absolutely couldn't answer with their level of knowledge.
Then, the Genin of each squad were assigned to a seemingly closed cubicle to answer the questions. The invigilators were very lax, only patrolling once in a while, practically encouraging cheating. So the candidates were all using their magical powers to cheat and counter-cheat—the focus of this exam was actually testing the Genin's ability to gather and protect intelligence.
Team Haruno Sakura's three children didn't have any particularly hidden peeping abilities because they weren't like the candidates in Haruno Sakura's batch, where everyone knew a few mysterious and strange family secret techniques—even Konohamaru didn't have such things. They could only use ordinary ninjutsu and stealthy skills to peek and cheat, which wasn't efficient; in fact, this was the dilemma faced by most candidates.
"Those few are deliberately arranged plants, right?" Haruno Sakura pointed at the ninja who suddenly withdrew from the exam below, pursing her lips and laughing secretly.
Those guys started answering as soon as they entered the cubicle. After each person finished writing the answers on a paper, they directly withdrew from the competition. Their acting was truly touching.
Kakashi smiled along without speaking.
From their perspective, they could see that after the few plants left, the restless candidates began their self-perceived covert actions. The papers full of answers were left on the tables in the cubicles. To fight for those few sheets of paper, candidates from different groups fought fiercely. The seemingly calm exam venue quickly became turbulent with undercurrents surging.
Konohamaru and his team performed very well. Relying on their excellent combat power, they forcibly snatched part of the exam papers from other groups and repelled the prying eyes of several groups of Genin. Plus, the three's written test skills had always been passable, so they should be able to get a high score in this stage.
Haruno Sakura looked around.
There were a few groups of candidates who fought too excessively and made too much noise, getting caught. They would probably get a zero in this stage. These people were basically ninja from small countries and small villages, didn't understand the rules well, weren't very strong, and acted crudely. Ordinary people generally didn't like to entrust missions to them.
The exam time was just halfway through, and the situation was already clear.
Strong teams had snatched the answers, got the points they deserved, stopped taking risks to cheat, and focused only on defense; only weak teams were still peeking around, striking out in all directions, looking for opportunities.
"The second stage team battle is a round-robin tag team battle, right?" Haruno Sakura began to care about the next exam, "The upcoming exams are all actual combat!"
The second stage had the biggest changes.
However, no matter how the Chunin Exams changed, the essence remained the same. For Genin to be promoted to Chunin, what was tested was nothing more than personal comprehensive quality, combat power, and team cooperation ability. It was just that the difficulty of each exam increased or decreased, and the focus was slightly different.
"So this year's assessment..." Haruno Sakura pondered for a moment, blinked, and said meaningfully, "The focus seems to be on combat power?"
Kakashi nodded.
"Still so sharp, Sakura." He turned to look at the girl beside him and said lightly, "You should know why."
The two looked at each other.
"War."
Haruno Sakura spat out the word expressionlessly.
"Yeah," Kakashi adjusted his forehead protector, his tone a bit heavy, "This is a precursor to the coming war."
This year's Chunin Exams were very similar in format to the Chunin Exams during the war era.
And the Chunin Exams in the war era paid more attention to the combat power of Genin than their comprehensive quality to deal with complex situations.
Interestingly, the Chunin Exams adopting the total score system in the war era actually had a higher pass rate compared to the elimination system exams in the peaceful era. If the hot-headed Naruto from the original story had participated in this exam, he would probably have easily been promoted to Chunin—because a high score in the actual combat exam was enough to make up for everything.
The reason behind this was quite cruel: in the peaceful era, the best were selected from the best, only elites were selected, and resources were concentrated on cultivation; in the war era, more people were selected because the village needed...
More cannon fodder.
And Chunin, many times, were just high-level cannon fodder.
Of course, Konoha was not intending to wage war against any country, nor was it a time of war now.
All this was just preparation to deal with the impending threat of the Akatsuki.
But how other countries would view this was unknown. Haruno Sakura turned her gaze to the viewing platform. Tsunade was whispering and exchanging smiles with Gaara and Terumi Mei, commenting on the candidates below; not far away stood several observers sent by Cloud and Stone. Looking at their gloomy faces, Haruno Sakura seriously doubted whether they could feel the goodwill released by Konoha.
Especially since this Chunin Exam pulled in Sand and Mist as well, making the scale unprecedentedly large.
And three years after Orochimaru's Konoha Crush plan, Konoha held a large-scale Chunin Exam again, with a scale far exceeding previous ones. This indicated that Konoha had not only completely walked out of the disaster three years ago but was also stronger than before!
Probably in their view, the threat Konoha posed to them was far more serious than that Akatsuki organization with an unclear background...
In fact, Haruno Sakura missed a major reason.
What the Cloud and Stone ninja feared most was not that Konoha's strength had become stronger—in the past, Konoha had the Third Hokage in his prime, the Sannin gathered, as well as White Fang, Yellow Flash, etc. Even further back, Konoha simultaneously possessed Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha. When Konoha was so strong back then, the Cloud and Stone villages were not destroyed, let alone this Konoha that had just begun to revive?
Rather, the current situation where Tsunade suddenly pulled the Kazekage and Mizukage together for a happy chat made the Cloud and Stone ninja feel very nervous.
Konoha has been trying to bring the Five Great Ninja Villages together to jointly fight against the Akatsuki; but so far, what they have gained from some ninja villages seems to be all side effects.
"Let's go." Haruno Sakura suddenly felt a bit bored, tugged at Kakashi's sleeve, and said lightly, "Let's go patrol somewhere else."
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