Chapter 42: Numerical Advantage
The night grew deeper.
Under the beautiful silver moonlight, ugly and bloody battles were taking place in the Forest of Death...
While Sakura was leading the unconscious Sasuke and Naruto in search of a hiding place, in another location, a pair of master and apprentice, long separated, met once again in the Forest of Death.
However, regarding this reunion, neither the master nor the apprentice felt any joy. On the contrary, the moment they met, they began a life-or-death struggle!
Or rather, it was a one-sided, desperate struggle on the part of the apprentice...
"I've got you!"
The young kunoichi's fingers were interlocked with the enemy's as she shouted angrily! However, this was not the gentle hand-holding of lovers, but the merciless capture of mortal enemies!
She brandished a sharp kunai and, without hesitation, stabbed it through her own and her master's interlocked hands, pinning them both to a tree! The kunoichi's indifferent self-harm was as if what was pierced was not her own hand, but a tool of revenge; what was pinned to the tree was not an enemy, but the nightmare of half her life!
"Ninja Art: Twin Snakes Mutual Annihilation!"
"My, my, Anko... you're still as impulsive as ever!" a hoarse male voice came from behind Anko, forcefully interrupting her half-completed suicide ninjutsu. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"
Anko was shocked. The figure that Anko had pinned to the tree showed a strange, mocking smile, then turned into a pile of mud!
"That was a clone..." the man said faintly!
"Damn it!" Anko's eyes were red as she tried to charge forward again, but her body refused to obey and she collapsed softly to the ground. The curse mark on her neck erupted in intense pain, instantly draining all her strength!
"Orochimaru..." she said, raising her head to look at the man, her voice filled with hatred. "Why... did you have to come back to the village!"
Orochimaru leaned casually against a tree and said eerily, "Because there is a child here that I want very much... He is that lone survivor of the Uchiha, a very outstanding young man! So I gave him a gift, the same kind of gift as the thing on your neck!"
Waves of weakness washed over her. Anko clutched her neck, kneeling on the ground in pain, her eyes wide with fury!
"You actually gave that to him, that child will be killed by you!" Veins bulged on her forehead, and sweat poured down like rain. Anko said through gritted teeth, "You won't succeed!"
"Hehe... It seems you still resent me for abandoning you back then!" Orochimaru laughed wickedly. "It's all because you were too mediocre! Even after receiving the power of the curse mark, you are still so weak... After so many years, you've made almost no progress!"
"Ugh...!" Anko was speechless. Orochimaru's words had once again triggered her most painful memories! Betrayed and abandoned by the person she respected most—she could never forget that feeling! Recalling that scene, the pain in her heart was even more unbearable than the pain the curse mark brought her!
"I think even that cute young lady on Sasuke's team is stronger than you! What a pity..."
Waves of intense dizziness rushed to Anko's head. She bit her lip hard to stay conscious. "Did you kill that child?"
"Hehe... she's a genius. She struggled fiercely even against me! I'm also very interested in her. Although she rejected me, I still left her alive..." Orochimaru stretched out his long tongue and licked his lips. "Because sooner or later, Konoha won't be able to hold her, just like me back then. Sooner or later, she will be mine, hahahaha!"
"By the way, you'd better not interrupt this exam..." Orochimaru's body gradually merged into the tree trunk. "If you dare to obstruct my plan, I will turn Konoha village to ash!"
As Orochimaru departed, the curse mark on Anko's body finally stopped its rampage. She struggled to her feet, leaning on a tree trunk, her entire body as if it had been soaked in water.
"Damn it... I have to report this to Lord Third immediately!" Anko moved her feet with difficulty, struggling to move through the forest. Not long after, she suddenly noticed traces of a battle before her!
"Wait... what is this! The corpse of a snake... this is Orochimaru's ninjutsu! But, this number is just too exaggerated!"
As her stamina gradually recovered, Anko jumped to a high tree to overlook the battlefield. The battle traces of Orochimaru and Team 7, stretching for several hundred meters, all came into her view at once.
Anko saw the traces of fire, wind-cutting, and explosions, but what was more eye-catching were the snake corpses piled up like a small mountain, the severed tree trunks stretching across the entire battlefield, and the neat cuts on the tree trunks and snake bodies!
Years of experience as a ninja immediately allowed Anko to determine that Orochimaru had been fighting multiple enemies. One of them possessed an overpowered cutting-type ninjutsu, single-handedly finishing off millions of snake summons and the large trees on the battlefield, leaving a huge scar on the Forest of Death!
Who on earth could have pushed Orochimaru to such an extent!
"She struggled fiercely!"
"Even that cute young lady is stronger than you!"
Orochimaru's words from just now suddenly popped into Anko's mind!
"Hmph..." A difficult smile formed on Anko's lips. "Just a mere Genin, to be able to do this, this is just too much! You call this 'struggling fiercely'?!"
"It's possible... that girl is actually stronger than me!"
Anko let out a cold laugh, withdrew her gaze, and continued to walk forward alone!
Several hours later, in the darkest hour before dawn.
Sakura was awakened by an unfamiliar chakra source.
She was already extremely fatigued, but in order to take care of the other two, she dared not sleep too deeply. Without entering a deep sleep, a few hours of rest had only restored a small amount of her stamina. Forcing herself awake made her head throb with a splitting headache.
Condensing a ball of cool water in her hand, the girl buried her face directly into it to wash her face. The icy sensation jolted her awake.
Then she stood quietly in the darkness, silently observing.
Three not-so-strong chakra sources were advancing towards Team 7's hiding place in a search formation. The unfamiliar texture indicated that it was a three-man squad from another village. Sakura secretly breathed a sigh of relief. They're ninja I don't recognize. They must be a squad that was eliminated in the original story.
In that case... I can fight them! Dealing with the enemy sooner was more conducive to her stamina recovery later than constantly hiding and monitoring them!
The three-man squad advanced in a straight line towards Sakura's direction, probably having discovered the traces Sakura had left behind earlier. Bloodstains, drag marks, and footprints of varying depths—all these traces indicated to the three-man squad that the enemy was weak. They had already determined that Sakura's group was a squad that had just been defeated in a battle, fleeing here in a sorry state, with not much combat power left.
But to their surprise, the enemy was not hiding in their hiding place as they had expected.
Instead, she was standing openly on the path they had to take, looking at them with her arms crossed.
Under the moonlight, the girl's short pink hair was draped in a layer of silver light, swaying gently with the wind. Her face was against the moonlight, her expression unclear in the darkness. Only a pair of emerald eyes, as bright as the moon, shone in the night shadows.
"I've been waiting for you for a long time... Judging by your attire, are you Rain ninja again? I'm already sick of killing you...!" the girl said faintly, a hint of killing intent quietly emanating from her body!
Under the girl's stern gaze and cold killing intent, the three Rain ninja were actually frightened into stopping. Then, the leader, a boy with an earring and carrying one more umbrella on his back than the other two, said with shame and anger:
"Stop bluffing! Do you think leaving those traces deliberately would make us mistake this for a trap? Hmph, I'm telling you, your empty fort strategy is going to fail! We've already confirmed that your squad has encountered a strong enemy, and you're the only one with any combat power left! Don't think you can scare us away. There are no teammates or traps here. Right now, it's 1 vs 3. We have the absolute numerical advantage!"
The long-earringed Rain ninja leader rambled on, trying to persuade the girl in front of him to see the situation clearly and hand over her scroll.
However, the girl just curved her lips into a mocking arc. "You're so good at analyzing. Why don't you try to guess why I can still stand here completely unharmed after encountering a strong enemy? If you really have the advantage like you say, why don't you just attack, instead of wasting time here talking a bunch of nonsense?"
"Besides, are you sure... that you really have the numerical advantage?"
The girl sneered, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. The chakra throughout her body began to fluctuate violently!
"Quick, charge in for close combat! She's a ninjutsu-type ninja!" the earringed Rain ninja shouted, charging towards the girl without hesitation!
However, it was already too late.
Crystalline water clones, holding ice blades, appeared one after another behind Sakura. One, two... until there were a hundred of them, dense and numerous!
The strange water clones crowded the clearing. At a glance, these clones looked like crudely made, semi-finished products, with only a translucent human form and clear facial features, but without the texture of clothes or skin, as if the creator of the jutsu found it too troublesome and simply didn't display them! A clone that could be seen through at a glance was undoubtedly useless for deception. But right now, the creator of the jutsu had no intention of using it for deception, but rather to use the countless clones for a frontal assault, to overwhelm the enemy with numbers!
Being near a river, the chakra consumption for Water Style was undoubtedly reduced to a minimum. The crudely made clones also made the stamina and mental consumption of the jutsu much lower than normal clones, allowing the girl, who was extremely low on chakra and stamina, to cast such a ninjutsu with ease!
Without a doubt, in the previous battle, Orochimaru's endless sea of snakes had taught the girl a good lesson, making her realize that a numerical advantage could sometimes be an absolute advantage! Of course, against an opponent of comparable strength, no matter how many clones there were, it would just be a waste of chakra. However, for the three Rain ninja, whose strength was worlds apart from Sakura's, the endless clones were their nightmare. And to make matters worse, they had cleverly decided to engage in close combat, resulting in them plunging headfirst into the sea of clones, allowing it to exert its power even more!