"Gentle Fist Art: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms!"
"Hidden Weapon Barrage!"
"Leaf Whirlwind!"
Thud! Thud! Thud!
After three heavy impacts, the three candidates from the Village Hidden in the Waterfall collapsed weakly to the ground.
"Yes! First victory!"
After taking down their opponents, Rock Lee gave a thumbs-up to his teammates, Neji and Tenten.
"Awesome! It's a Heaven Scroll! I can't believe we got the scroll we needed so quickly!"
Tenten, having searched the opponents and found the Heaven Scroll, was jumping for joy.
The first team they had encountered after entering the forest happened to have the exact scroll they needed.
"Really? Are we that lucky? Does this mean we can head straight for the tower at full speed now?" Rock Lee asked, his face full of surprise upon hearing Tenten's words.
He hadn't expected to complete their mission so soon after entering the forest.
Now, all they had to do was bring the Heaven and Earth Scrolls to the tower together, and they would pass the exam.
The distance from the entrance to the tower was about ten kilometres, and they had covered about one kilometre so far.
That meant they only had nine kilometres left to go. Unless something unexpected happened along the way, they would arrive before sunset, sparing them from having to sleep rough in the wild. The thought alone put him in a wonderful mood.
"Yes, we can head for the tower quickly, but we still need to stay vigilant to avoid enemy ambushes," Neji, the temporary team captain, said with a nod.
"Alright! Let's go!"
Rock Lee raised his fist, full of energy. At the same time, he thought to himself, 'Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura... how are you guys doing? Have you gotten your scroll yet?'
On the other side of the forest, Naruto and his team had no idea that Lee's squad had already collected their scrolls and was heading for the tower.
Even if they had known, they wouldn't have had the time to care, because right now, they were fully engaged in a battle with the enemy before them.
Crack!
Sasuke kicked apart Orochimaru's substitution log and looked to the side. "Tch, I missed?"
In the direction he was looking, Orochimaru's figure eerily emerged from a tree trunk. He looked at Sasuke with a sinister expression.
"Hehe, although your teamwork isn't bad, and your taijutsu is decent... if you can't hit your target, it's all meaningless."
His words were dripping with mockery.
But just as he finished his taunt, a fierce whip kick suddenly appeared in his vision, growing larger as it lashed viciously towards his face!
WHACK!!
As he was sent flying, the attacker smirked. "Who says we can't hit you?"
Looking closely, the attacker was none other than the late-arriving Naruto!
"Naruto! You're here!" Sakura cried out in delight.
After her and Sasuke's initial attacks had failed to land, they had tried to coordinate to deal a heavy blow.
The plan was for her to fire a ki blast at Orochimaru first, and then, when he dodged, Sasuke would deliver a powerful strike.
But to their surprise, Orochimaru had dodged their perfect combo.
However, what was even more unexpected was that Naruto had arrived just in time to follow up with a strike of his own, ensuring their effort wasn't wasted!
"Hehe, Sasuke, you're slipping. You couldn't take this guy down after all that time? Looks like the great Naruto had to step in and finish the job," Naruto teased Sasuke after kicking Orochimaru away.
Under the relentless bombardment of dozens of ki blasts, he had made short work of the snakes surrounding him.
He had then rushed over, just in time to hear Orochimaru's taunt.
Without a second thought, he had powered up, accelerated, and kicked Orochimaru away in an instant, throwing his own taunt back in his face.
"Tch! This guy is tricky. Don't let your guard down. Your kick didn't seem to do much damage," Sasuke said, staring grimly in the direction Orochimaru had flown.
In his perception, Orochimaru's ki hadn't changed much after taking Naruto's hit!
At that moment, on a crooked tree, Orochimaru, whose neck had been snapped by the kick, stood up in a twisted, unnatural manner.
Then, a pair of hands suddenly reached out from his mouth, violently tearing it open.
Drip, drip!
A person identical to the original body, covered in dripping, yellow slime, eerily emerged from the mouth.
"Hehe, Sasuke is right," Orochimaru said, shaking the slime from his hands and looking up at them with a wicked smile.
Naruto's attack had been too sudden, and he truly hadn't noticed it in advance.
But just as the attack was about to land, he had managed to use his unique Orochimaru-Style Body Replacement Technique.
This technique involved shedding his outer body like a snake's skin to absorb the damage, and for him, it consumed almost no chakra.
It was the ultimate escape technique. In the original story, he had used this very move to escape Itachi Uchiha's Amaterasu, a method said to be inescapable once it hits!
"So... so gross! How does this guy have so many disgusting moves?!"
Seeing this, the three of them broke out in goosebumps again, feeling a wave of nausea rising in their stomachs.
They felt like they had seen all the most disgusting things in their lives today.
"Is he... is he even human?" Naruto suddenly blurted out.
"You idiot, Naruto! Don't scare us like that! If he's not human, what is he?" Sakura, startled by Naruto's words, snapped back after recovering.
The situation was already terrifying enough without Naruto trying to make it worse! If it weren't the wrong time, she would have really liked to punch him in the head!
'Powerful taijutsu wrapped in an unknown energy, and energy blasts made of that same unknown energy... Did that man named Son Goku teach them this?' Orochimaru ignored them, narrowing his eyes in thought.
Although the exchange had been brief, he had still been able to gauge the general strength of these three brats.
Their enhanced taijutsu and the powerful energy blasts put them far above the average level of the candidates in this exam.
To be precise, while Sakura was still within the realm of a Chunin, both Naruto and Sasuke were already touching the edge of the Jonin level! Naruto's kick, in particular, had clearly reached the level of a Jonin!
'Son Goku... just what kind of person is he to be able to teach them such formidable skills in just two months?' Orochimaru continued to ponder.
Due to time constraints, he hadn't had a chance to get the full file from Danzo, so his knowledge of Goku was still limited to the few words Kabuto had told him.
But even so, his intuition told him that Goku taught these two skills; Kakashi didn't have the ability.
'No matter. After this, I must get the full details from Danzo. A character like this might interfere with our plans.'
He had come to Konoha not only to take Sasuke as his vessel but also to launch an attack on the village.
This attack was known as the "Konoha Crush"! The plan had three instigators: the Sand Village, who thought they were the players but were actually pawns; himself; and the leader of the Root organization hidden within Konoha—Danzo Shimura!
"Hey! Are we going to fight or what?"
Just as Orochimaru was about to finish his thoughts, Naruto pointed at him and shouted.
At the same time, Sasuke, seizing the moment Orochimaru looked at Naruto, focused his gaze.
A large ki blast he had just finished forming in his hand was suddenly thrown, aimed straight at Orochimaru!
Since physical attacks weren't effective, he would resort to energy attacks.
He refused to believe that Orochimaru could remain unscathed after taking a large-scale ki blast head-on!