Chapter 197: Let's Have Him Leave the Stage First
The thick and hard earth wall rose high, blocking Sakura's ninjutsu.
Even the shuriken, infused with Haruno Sakura's Ice Style nature transformation, were unable to pierce the astonishingly thick earth wall that Kakuzu had created.
Judging from the fleeting glimpse of chakra he revealed when he cast the ninjutsu, this ninja named Kakuzu was very strong, even among the Kage-level.
A ninjutsu-type ninja who is good at Earth Style?
An opponent with an Ice Style Kekkei Genkai?
The probing clash of their two ninjutsu made both of them thoughtful.
"An Ice Style ninja from Konoha... I've seen it in the intelligence I bought from the black market. There are only two," Kakuzu said, his eyelids drooping coldly as he spoke to the cat-faced ninja. "With pink hair, you must be Haruno Sakura, right?"
As he spoke, a presence like a deep abyss began to emanate from his body, enveloping the entire battlefield.
The killing intent that filled the air was so thick it seemed as if it could condense into a physical substance.
So I've been recognized.
In the extremely oppressive atmosphere, Haruno Sakura still had the mood to make a joke.
"Tch... Captain, will we have to wear wigs for missions from now on?" she said with a sneer, tacitly confirming her identity.
Spurred on by Sakura's dark humor, the atmosphere, which had seemed to be frozen, immediately relaxed a lot.
Shino, however, couldn't laugh. He just said faintly, "Sooner or later, you'll become a ninja who is recognized as soon as you use a ninjutsu... if we don't die this time!"
He could already feel the enemy's strength. It was a suffocating feeling...
These two enemies were extremely dangerous opponents. With Squad 14's strength, it would be quite strenuous to fight against such opponents. The other party seemed to be no weaker than Orochimaru!
Shino unhesitatingly took out the distress signal flare from his bag and shot it into the sky.
"They've sent a distress signal. It seems they still have people nearby," Kakuzu said calmly. "We need to end this quickly!"
"Hmph, you're the one who says to end it quickly, and you're the one who's dawdling..." Hidan muttered with dissatisfaction. He shook his hand, which was aching from the cold. When he had used his scythe to knock away the ice shuriken just now, the moment of contact, a chilling cold had invaded him. In just an instant, a layer of white frost had formed on the long handle of his scythe!
What a powerful Ice Style.
Kakuzu ignored Hidan's complaint and continued, "You deal with that Sakura. Your jutsu doesn't easily destroy her corpse. A complete Ice Style corpse has a bounty of a full 8 million ryō... Pay attention, she's proficient in Ice Style and Wind Style!"
"It's only the Ice Style that's a little tricky," Hidan sneered. "The intel Danzo gave us deliberately only mentioned Wind Style. That guy really has bad intentions!"
"Sooner or later, we'll have to settle the score with that guy..." Kakuzu said with a gloomy face, his killing intent overflowing. "In any case, leave the remaining two to me."
Haruno Sakura looked at the enemies in front of her coldly, her hands quietly casting a ninjutsu.
"To think they'd assign opponents right in front of us," she said with a cold little face to Shino and Yūgao. "Since that Hidan has chosen me as his opponent, then let's have him leave the stage first..."
"Tobi, are you confident?" Shino asked in a deep voice. Haruno Sakura's ninjutsu was also bizarre and powerful, not conforming to common sense. Their side was not without a chance of winning!
Sakura was, of course, confident.
That carefree Hidan looked much weaker than Kakuzu, like a greenhorn.
If the opponent didn't have any life-saving secret techniques and was very careless and took a Monstrous Strength Technique head-on, then just based on the silver-haired youth who was standing and talking so carelessly... she had an eighty percent confidence of killing him in one blow!
"Shino, Xi, watch carefully..." she said softly.
"Ice Style: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals!"
Haruno Sakura's figure instantly disappeared from Shino and Yūgao's sight.
The next moment, the girl's figure emerged from an ice shuriken behind Hidan, and she rushed at the silver-haired youth who was still talking to Kakuzu.
"Monstrous Strength Technique: Star Cannon Hammer!"
"What a fast Body Flicker!" Hidan was startled and subconsciously turned to meet the girl's fist.
The wrong way to respond.
The surface of her fist touched Hidan's blocking arm. The feeling of flesh and blood colliding was transmitted through her knuckles, telling Haruno Sakura that this was Hidan's real body.
He had not chosen a clone jutsu, had not chosen a substitution jutsu, nor had he chosen to dodge with taijutsu.
Instead, he had chosen to use his real body to face the Monstrous Strength Technique head-on.
Therefore... a wrong choice!
"Die!" the girl roared.
Haruno Sakura's icy gaze seemed to be pronouncing Hidan's fate—
An irresistible, immense force was transmitted up Hidan's arm. His body, which had been enhanced with chakra to be several times tougher than steel, was as fragile as foam in front of this force!
Under the high-speed reaction ability brought by Sakura Rush, Haruno Sakura even had the ability to continuously fine-tune the angle of her fist while throwing this punch, so that the full power of the Monstrous Strength Technique was solidly slammed into Hidan's body.
BANG—!!
His bones shattered section by section.
His flesh was mangled into a mush.
This one punch from the Star Cannon Hammer had directly turned the right half of Hidan's body into a bloody pulp mixed with bone fragments and organ pieces!
BOOM—!!
The expression on Hidan's face instantly froze into astonishment, and then he was sent flying over a hundred meters away by the punch...
After a loud thud upon landing, there was no more sound.
The battlefield fell into a dead silence.
Even Shino and Yūgao were a little surprised that this one blow had so smoothly taken down an enemy.
The small eyes of Kakuzu, which had been narrowed, widened in surprise for an instant.
He stared deadly at the ninja with the cat-face mask, who slowly retracted her fist.
She stood on the ground a few meters away, her icy killing intent compelling.
The girl's sharp presence was like a straight column of smoke, shooting straight into the sky!
"Now," Haruno Sakura sneered, staring at Kakuzu, "you can choose a different person to fight me."
"It seems the intelligence is severely lacking," Kakuzu said coldly. He bent his waist, lowered his body, and slowly took a guarded posture. "Your Body Flicker and taijutsu, there was no mention of them being this strong in the data..."
That was a matter of course. The data of the ninja from the five great villages was not so easy to collect. Especially since Sakura was just a mere Chunin, her intelligence wouldn't sell for much, so naturally, no one would spend a great deal of effort to collect it.
And in the data that Danzo had given, the unredacted parts had clearly hinted that Haruno Sakura was a ninjutsu-type ninja, which had also served to mislead them to some extent...
However, Kakuzu was, after all, a ninja who had been through a hundred battles and had seen a lot. What kind of secret technique hadn't he seen? The hero of a generation, Hashirama Senju, Kakuzu had talked... fought with him!
Although Haruno Sakura's Body Flicker and taijutsu had surprised him for a little while, he had immediately reacted. That kind of taijutsu was not his main threat. What he really needed to pay attention to was that Body Flicker of hers.
If she were a Body Flicker genius like the Fourth Hokage, then there would be no need to fight this battle. Haruno Sakura would already be in an invincible position, and Kakuzu could just directly admit defeat and turn around and leave. But obviously, she was not yet.
Kakuzu's experience told him that even a Body Flicker genius like the Golden Flash needed a Flying Raijin formula as a coordinate to use that kind of impossibly fast Body Flicker... so how did this Haruno Sakura flicker over? That stunning Body Flicker couldn't possibly be cast out of thin air. Even Namikaze Minato couldn't do that!
He narrowed his eyes, sizing up the ground where Haruno Sakura stood.
His eyes swept over her feet, the ground that had been cracked by the force of that one punch, and the ice shuriken behind her.
The corner of his eye glanced at an ice shuriken next to him.
Kakuzu, who had fought in the ninja world for countless years and was widely experienced, was thoughtful.
The two sides faced each other for a few seconds. Kakuzu's chakra suddenly surged, and his hands quickly formed hand seals.
"Earth Style—!"
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