"Earth Release — Super Weightened Rock Technique!"
The enormous summoned snake's body was slammed flat against the ground, unable to move.
A burly shinobi in a red cap and red tactical suit stood before the giant serpent, blocking its path with his exposed muscular arm.
Huangtu!
He was the son of the Third Tsuchikage Ōhnoki — a quasi-Kage-level powerhouse.
Too bad he didn't possess Iwagakure's supreme kekkei, Dust Release, or he could've one-shot the Massive Serpent instead of merely pinning it. Still, this was good enough.
With the summon pinned down, Konoha's retreat would not be easy — enemies in front to press, attackers behind to cut off the withdrawal.
"This is bad!"
Sarutobi Shinnosuke ground his teeth until they almost cracked.
First time as commander, first time in battle — both should be joyous milestones, so why did it turn into this mess?
"You brat!"
Granny Chiyo seized the moment and suddenly closed to close-quarters combat. Puppeteers were notoriously weak in melee, so Chiyo's short-range assault was suspicious.
Shinnosuke wasn't a novice — he saw through it and used ninjutsu and thrown tools to create space. His basics were solid; in fact he was the textbook definition of a well-rounded fighter.
Boom! Boom!
Shinnosuke felt his heart slam and slam again.
Poisoned?
Something was definitely wrong. Antidotes had no effect. He barely had any chance to counterattack — he'd just opened distance, and against a Kage-level opposition he was repeatedly pressed into the dirt.
In Konoha no one had properly schooled him in facing true Kage-level menace — he'd been sheltered by his "Hokage's son" status. Now he was getting a brutal lesson, and the price was steep…
Thud!
Shinnosuke fell unconscious from circulatory collapse, and the centipede puppet — the size of a table leg — immediately swallowed him whole.
"Shinnosuke!"
"Commander!"
…voices cracked with panic across the Konoha lines.
No one expected the Hokage's son to be captured. After all, though Chiyo was Kage-level, her Chūmatsu Ten puppet corps had been damaged—she'd lost much of her fighting edge and was regarded more like a high-tier jonin this time. That was precisely why Shinnosuke had dared to go mano-a-mano: a big win would boost his credentials.
Who could've foreseen the ship sinking?
In fact, the sinking had been set in motion the moment the Sand took the Shell org's intel. They'd designed a countermeasure — including a special plan aimed at Shinnosuke.
When the centipede puppet first burst from the earth it released an odorless, colorless compound. It was imperceptible. After the compound seeped into the bloodstream, a second agent was used as a trigger to force the heart into violent palpitations.
It wasn't a poison in the usual sense.
It simply forced the heart into frantic overwork until blood supply failed and the target passed out.
Brilliant. In one fell swoop the Sand's design became nearly unsolvable when it struck unawares.
Of course, it wouldn't work on everyone — not on Orochimaru, Tsunade, Jiraiya, Tangping, etc. — but against an elite jonin like Shinnosuke, given prior knowledge and Chiyo's toxin mastery, it was perfectly lethal.
"Shadow Binding Jutsu!"
Nara Shikaku reacted instantly and pinned the puppet so it couldn't burrow back into the earth.
"Partial Multiplication Technique!"
Akimichi Chōza, perfectly synced, suddenly ballooned into a towering giant and charged at the puppet (no medicine used), while Yamanaka Haiichi and Shikaku pushed in.
Yekura tried to intercept, but Haiichi used Mind-Body Transfer to restrain her. The Ino–Shika–Chō trio's coordination and power were ruthless — a showcase of why that title still mattered.
Quick explainer: Not every trio is worthy of the "Ino–Shika–Chō" name — only the best contemporary three deserve it. And they acted like it.
Other Konoha elites threw themselves at the puppet too — everything and everyone redirected to recover Shinnosuke at all costs. Officially the "Will of Fire" holds every shinobi equal, but people know how lines get drawn in practice.
"Hidden Shadow — Multi-Serpent Hands!"
Orochimaru pressed the offense despite chakra drains. He'd been dominating, slowly forcing Rousa into Orochimaru's tempo, but now the priority was ending the engagement immediately.
"Orochimaru, you don't think this will work on me, do you?"
Rousa waved and condensed sand-gold into a shield to block the incoming snakes. The serpents were dangerous — venom, binding and sealing effects — but lacked raw breach power, so sand-gold blocked them cleanly.
"Is that so?"
Orochimaru smiled coldly. From his right-hand snake head, a shining blade flashed out and pierced the sand-gold shield.
Kusanagi — the gleaming blade. Not a divine relic, but impossibly sharp. It nicked Rousa's right arm.
"Toxin?"
Rousa saw the color of his blood and immediately staggered back to take antidote. Ordinary poisons wouldn't faze a Kage-level much, but Orochimaru's toxins were a different beast.
While Rousa took antidote, Orochimaru used Instantaneous Movement to close and grapple Chiyo, buying time for others to rescue Shinnosuke. Orochimaru was the true hexagonal warrior — no glaring weakness in ninjutsu, genjutsu or taijutsu, practically a hypercharged version of Shinnosuke.
Chiyo's loss of many Chūmatsu Ten puppets had reduced her battlefield power significantly — which is exactly how she lured prey into this trap.
Crunch!
Akimichi Chōza snapped the large centipede puppet in half and flung the section that contained the swallowed "person" toward Konoha lines.
"Cover me!"
Sarutobi Yukiko used explosive tags to push enemies back and chased after the half-corpse puppet. Shimura Setsuna and the other three provided rear support so she could reach the puppet and—
"It's a decoy!!"
Yukiko's face went white. The "person" inside that half puppet wearing Konoha uniform was itself a puppet. The real Sarutobi Shinnosuke was not inside.
So Chiyo had played them all.
The swallowed puppet had been a diversion to pull attention away; by the time Konoha retrieved the body, the Sand had shifted the real target elsewhere.
"Retreat!"
Orochimaru ordered without a half-second's hesitation. As the Cold Lord, he never lacked decisiveness.
Staying risked wasting them all; better to withdraw and think of rescue plans later than be wiped out entirely. Everyone agreed and began to pull back.
"Sh Sarutobi Yukiko — take one hundred and hold rear!"
Orochimaru fixed the order on her. The implication was harsh and obvious: pick a hundred clan shinobi to act as rearguard cannon fodder.
Yukiko, though she bristled at the cruelty, nodded. The weight of the Sannin's authority silenced protest. It showed how heavy the Sannin's prestige still sat in Konoha hearts.
"Yes."
Even knowing the nod meant sending a hundred to likely die, she complied.
A hundred were chosen. Those who understood their orders turned and struck back with fatal resolve. When people fight with lives thrown away, even lower-rank shinobi can become monsters that split formations — the rear pursuit was held off for the time being.
With the pursuit stalled, Orochimaru and the heavy hitters punched through Huangtu's block. They made the breakout, but the cost was high.
From about 1,200 Konoha shinobi present, only around 800 remained — roughly one third casualties. Heavy losses.
But that was later. The immediate point: when the battlefield finally quieted, Tangping rose from his observation spot with a satisfied grin.
"Let's go."
This show was delicious.
He wondered what the expressions on Konoha's F4 were like now — were they sweating nervously?
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