A Battle of Words

The sea surface rippled gently, with waves rising slightly.

The water surged towards Cherry's feet, the waves washing over her delicate ankles, splashing into her black sandals, and spraying white against her flawless white feet.

She took a step forward.

"Those punches were just a lesson for your nonsense," Sakura Haruno said calmly, looking at Orochimaru. "Get angry out of embarrassment? I don't need to get angry over something that didn't happen."

"As for you, you still dare to talk nonsense after being beaten like this," the girl said calmly, her expression unwavering. "It seems you really have a foul mouth!"

Sakura Haruno did not back down in the face of Orochimaru's aggressive words.

However, in Orochimaru's view, not answering his question directly represented a form of retreat.

Although...

She acted arrogantly, and her words remained cold and imposing.

"A baseless accusation? Heh heh... Do you really think I can't guess?"

"Of course, you're much more cautious than I imagined," Orochimaru said, spreading his hands as if he could see right through her. "Instead of conducting human experiments directly in Konoha, you went abroad and set up a base in a remote country that's only shown as a name on the map. It's very secretive, much more cautious than I was back then!"

"Back then, you kidnapped innocent people to do human experiments, causing so many deaths... Now, your biggest regret is that the experiments weren't conducted discreetly and cautiously enough?" Sakura Haruno frowned, looking at him with disgust. "Sorry, I don't consider myself on the same path as you. Your evil path is nothing but disgusting and contemptible!"

Orochimaru showed no remorse whatsoever; instead, he burst into laughter.

"You really are genuine! But you'll soon realize that this pointless sense of morality will only hinder your progress..."

His voice suddenly lowered.

"The only reason you can still hold onto these 'true' ideas is because you haven't witnessed the truly cruel world... You think you've already seen the darkness of the world? No, only when the whole world is engulfed in war, when a new round of the Shinobi World War begins, and when everything you cherish is destroyed in the flames of war, will you truly realize what darkness is, what true cruelty is! And only then will you understand how naive your 'true' ideas were!"

Sakura Haruno scoffed, letting out a disdainful snort.

"Having experienced war, pain, and darkness, are you the only one in Konoha? Blaming your mental illness on the world's mistakes, unable to face your own heart, no matter how strong you are, you are nothing but a weakling!"

The man in the kimono didn't speak, but instead gave a cold laugh.

He gazed at the girl before him, noting her striking figure, haughty aura, and confident eyes.

How much like I was when I was young!

At that time, he also thought that he would inherit the Will of Fire and proudly believed that he could become Hokage.

"Heh heh... When you also defect from Konoha, you'll understand how I feel," Orochimaru said calmly, not angered by Sakura's words.

"Wishful thinking!" Sakura said dismissively.

"Is it really wishful thinking?" Orochimaru chuckled knowingly. "Perhaps you think you've been discreet enough that the villagers don't know, but what if someone exposes you?"

"Back then, did you surrender without resistance, or did you flee the village in a sorry state? I've already said it before: we're the same kind of people. You'll one day follow in my footsteps!"

In that case, Orochimaru was already there when the two first met in the Forest of Death. (See Chapter 41)

The wind suddenly stopped.

Orochimaru's words seemed to conceal a deadly poison; Sakura Haruno knew that there must be Orochimaru's most deeply hidden spies in the village, silently gathering intelligence, perhaps waiting for the right opportunity to launch a surprise attack on her!

Then, force her down another path.

Sakura Haruno gazed at him quietly, her calm exterior masking a turbulent inner turmoil. Orochimaru was indeed capable of such self-destructive actions; to him, using one or two spies to uncover Sakura's defection seemed like a rather interesting endeavor!

However, Orochimaru had been away from the village for far too long.

He didn't know that Tsunade, as medical-nin, didn't outright oppose such experiments like the Third Hokage; if the experiments themselves wouldn't harm Konoha and Konoha people, but instead benefited Konoha, then she would support them.

For example, the heart of Yugao before.

She was seeking a new consensus: human experimentation was not inherently evil; at the very least, experiments for medical purposes should be permitted, such as recruiting volunteers to test new medical methods, drugs, and Ninjutsu. This was because, in both her previous life and the ninja world, the development of new drugs required extensive and rigorous human testing, using volunteers to test the drugs before they could be successfully developed. However, the practice of "recruiting volunteers" had been ruined by Orochimaru and his gang. Back then, they directly kidnapped innocent ordinary people and even ninjas for experiments, thoroughly stigmatizing human experimentation. To correct this, the village strictly prohibited human experimentation.

However, this overcorrection has now led to some new and more serious problems.

As Tsunade's prestige grew, she began to be able to address such sensitive topics; although people's thinking was still that human experimentation was evil, the Fifth Hokage was gradually changing their views.

Perhaps it won't be long before Sakura Haruno's experiments can be conducted openly in the village.

Orochimaru's spies probably wouldn't be able to get in touch with such subtle movements at the top.

"You still have spies hiding in the village, right? You want them to collect evidence of my human experimentation and then report me?" Sakura Haruno smiled smugly, a smile that Orochimaru interpreted as one of smug confidence.

He frowned slightly, realizing that the girl in front of him was more difficult to deal with than he had imagined.

"When you went out on a mission last year, you were actually secretly conducting human experiments on yourself in the Land of Snow, weren't you? A little investigation would expose you for that," Orochimaru said calmly. "Don't think you can get away with it!"

No, quite the opposite.

Sakura Haruno is far more meticulous than he imagined... With Sakura's arrangements, even a full-scale investigation wouldn't expose her base!

Besides, who would treat the current Hokage's personal disciple, a rising star of Konoha, like this?

Her whereabouts were the only flaw in that four-month mission; however, she had already reported this to her superiors.

With Tsunade's cooperation, she cleverly incorporated her previous encounter with the Masked Man claiming to be Madara Uchiha into that mission, thus transmitting information about him to Konoha in a plausible manner.

During a performance review report.

"An Uchiha is proficient in Space-Time Ninjutsu?" The Third and the two Hokage Advisor sitting to the side were all taken aback.

They sat with Tsunade in the conference room next to the Hokage's office, looking at Sakura Haruno, utterly astonished by her words.

"Yes, and he's from the Uchiha Clan who has awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan." Sakura said calmly, glossing over the entire mission, mentioning that they first went to a remote country and focused on the Masked Man.

She didn't lie at all. It's true that she went to a remote country, and it's also true that she met the Masked Man and fought with him; it's just that the timing was off. She used rhetoric to gloss over these events, and even if she used the Secret Technique of the Yamanaka Clan, it would only prove that what she said was true.

The lowest level of lying is a clumsy and flawed falsehood; the middle level is nine parts truth and one part falsehood, making it difficult to distinguish between the truth and the falsehood.

The highest level is to tell the whole truth, yet lead people to the wrong conclusion.

As expected, the Third Hokage and the others did not waste time on trivial details, but focused on the information about the Masked Man. After listening to the details of Sakura's battle with him, everyone was silent for a while, and the Third Hokage exhaled a long puff of smoke.

"It must be him. He's the one who orchestrated the Uchiha Clan Massacre!" the Lord Third said gravely. "Such a bizarre and powerful ability—no wonder the three Anbu I sent out to negotiate with Fugaku all died silently, without a single word coming back! At the time, I thought the Uchiha Clan was behind it... I should have gone to talk to the Uchiha myself!"

Before the Uchiha Clan intended to incite a rebellion, the Third Hokage had repeatedly dispatched capable Anbu as envoys to the Uchiha Clan in an attempt to communicate with them, but all his efforts were in vain! Each Anbu sent out died silently...

This situation can only be interpreted as the Uchiha Clan rejecting the Hokage's goodwill, refusing to communicate with the village, and even attempting to kill the messenger—they are determined to rebel!

Of course, the Third sensed something was amiss at the time, but the situation was too urgent to investigate, and he had no evidence whatsoever. Only now does the Third Hokage know that behind the massacre of the Uchiha clan, a mysterious and powerful figure had been stirring things up, pushing the village and the Uchiha step by step into the abyss of conflict!

"Perhaps Fugaku sent someone back then, wanting to communicate with us... but we've never met that person," the advisor Koharu Utatane, sighed helplessly.

"After the messenger was intercepted two or three times, the Uchiha Clan must have thought we were determined to eliminate them. No wonder they put up such fierce resistance..." Mitokado Homura took off his glasses and tapped the table.

"If he really is Madara Uchiha, it wouldn't be difficult for him to do something like this." The Third lowered his eyes, staring at the floor, his tone heavy with a hint of confusion. "But why would he do this? Is it to take revenge on the clansmen who abandoned him?"

Everyone shook their heads, expressing their confusion.

The conversation naturally turned to the history of that time.

After obtaining the information from the Masked Man, many of the strange aspects of the Uchiha Clan Massacre finally found a reasonable explanation. An enemy with the Mangekyō Sharingan and an unparalleled understanding of Konoha's intelligence had been operating in the shadows, eliminating all efforts by Konoha and the Uchiha to achieve peaceful coexistence. This was a major reason for the massacre.

It might even be the biggest reason!

In short, the information Sakura Haruno brought back was extremely valuable. The advisors considered that finding this information in just over four months was quite efficient.

Sakura and Tsunade, who had been struggling to figure out how to report the information to everyone, presented it to the village in this way.

(Third update delivered, guaranteed! Another update coming soon.)

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