"Tch, I still wasn't quite used to it..."
After Sakura and Hinata rescued Gaara, Orochimaru clicked his tongue in irritation. He could have forcibly used Chibaku Tensei just now, but the drawbacks of the Mangekyō Sharingan had surfaced at this moment.
Although he had successfully awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan through his own techniques, he still could not avoid its flaws. After using Chibaku Tensei only a few times, Orochimaru felt a sour ache in his eyes, and his vision gradually blurred, as though the entire world had become hazy.
"Looks like I need to find Itachi's eyes quickly, Hoshikage..."
Dodging the Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm that brushed past him and leaving several long strands of hair on the ground, Orochimaru used the snakes in his hand as grappling hooks. One snake arm latched onto the rock wall, and he nimbly evaded Sakura's attack.
"It's time to go."
Orochimaru was an extremely meticulous man, highly skilled at borrowing strength from multiple parties. His enemies now might be a mysterious organization lurking in the shadows, and he happened to know that Moriyue seemed to have some entanglements with that organization as well. With that connection, he believed he could use the man to probe the organization known as Hoshikage.
Nagato nodded. Compared to Moriyue and Orochimaru, both full of schemes, he was instead the simplest one. Unlike those two, whose words and actions sometimes completely differed, Nagato had only ever had one goal: world peace.
Konan flung out dozens of paper Shuriken. Hinata and Sakura, who had only just regained their footing, hurriedly dodged. Gaara, immobilized within a Genjutsu, also regained some clarity. The sand scattered across the ground surged upward at his call like boiling water, knocking down quite a few paper Shuriken.
At the same time, Naruto's expression became increasingly