Regardless of what Sasuke thought, Zi Xu and the others soon left. He generally didn't care about a loser's wailing. It was already generous of him not to let Rock Lee beat Sasuke up. Zi Xu had no idea how Sasuke had the nerve to challenge them again.
The Chunin Ninja Exams had long been a stage where villages tested one another's strength, so every village took them very seriously. After all, the results would determine how much of the pie they got in the future, and that concerned their own interests.
Zi Xu had also sensed the slight changes in the village as the Chunin Ninja Exams drew near.
"There are more seals around, and the Barriers are layered like nesting dolls. They're being this cautious?" Zi Xu knew there was good reason for all the caution. Many Ninja had arrived in the village, and their clothes and appearance were clearly different from those of Konoha's residents.
They were Ninja who had come to take part in the Chunin Ninja Exams, arriving early to "get familiar with the place." But anyone could tell that this bunch was up to no good. They were surely plotting something behind the scenes.
Zi Xu couldn't understand why the Third Hokage had actually allowed these Ninja from other villages to roam around Konoha. He couldn't figure out what the old man was thinking.
With nothing better to do, Zi Xu wandered the streets, both to relax and to see if he could glean any information from the foreign Ninja.
But who would've thought that the Ninja from other villages would all have Konoha Ninja accompanying them? They called it protection, but it was really just surveillance. Generally, only the weak got that treatment. The truly powerful foreign Ninja could sit right in the middle of the road without a single Konoha Ninja stopping them. In the end, it all came down to strength.
"Hm? Where's that snake smell coming from? What a nuisance..." As Zi Xu passed a dango shop, his nose twitched. He seemed to have caught a familiar scent.
Zi Xu walked into the dango shop, only to find a single silver-haired young man with glasses eating dango. The familiar snake smell seemed to be coming from around him.
Zi Xu casually sat beside the young man and ordered a serving of dango. He didn't say a word to him, looking like nothing more than an ordinary customer.
After eating a few pounds of dango to fill his stomach, Zi Xu was sure he knew who the scent belonged to.
It wasn't the white-haired young man in front of him. He'd simply picked up the snake smell from spending a long time around its owner. Of all the people he knew who smelled of snakes, there were only a few. He hoped it wasn't the worst possibility.
This guy must be one of that man's closest aides. Otherwise, he wouldn't have picked up so much of his scent... Though, I suppose that's not certain... Zi Xu didn't want the scent to belong to Orochimaru, but he knew in his heart that it almost certainly did.
Zi Xu slipped away without alerting the snake, then continued looking for other Ninja. But as soon as he started investigating, he smelled that familiar scent on a great many foreign Ninja. It was especially strong on the Otogakure team. He almost wondered if something was wrong with his Energy Scent.
"Orochimaru? What are you planning...?" Zi Xu's sense of foreboding grew stronger and stronger. Orochimaru was definitely up to no good, but... what did that have to do with him? As long as Orochimaru didn't carry out some large-scale indiscriminate massacre, Zi Xu didn't care.
At the same time, a figure shrouded in shadow appeared on the outskirts of Konoha. He held a small snake in his hand and ran his calloused fingers along its body a few times. The snake then transformed into a tiny scroll.
The man opened the scroll and carefully read its contents before destroying it. He muttered something under his breath.
"The time has come. You'll pay for this..."
Konoha's nights were always pleasant. Moonlight falling on the body gave people a lazy, peaceful feeling, and made anyone want to yawn. It was the perfect sort of moonlight to fall asleep beneath.
But one person was unmoved by it. He was a boy in his early teens, with deep dark circles under his eyes that looked almost like permanent eyeshadow. He also had red hair and a red character on his forehead that looked like "love."
It looked as if the character had just been stained red with blood. Like Zabuza, he had no eyebrows, and he carried a gourd almost as tall as he was on his back. He looked like a real-life Gourd Baby.
But at that moment, he was anything but friendly. His eyes were bloodshot, and the sand around him swirled wildly, slicing apart any living thing that tried to approach. His gaze was full of coldness and murderous intent.
"Gaara..." A blond girl with a giant fan strapped to her back watched from a distance. Beside her stood a boy with strange markings all over his face, carrying a human-shaped prop on his back.
"Leave him alone." The boy shook his head and stopped the blond girl from doing anything.
"The Chunin Ninja Exams... Lord Orochimaru, the opportunity you've been waiting for is coming..." In a gloomy cave beneath Konoha, the white-haired man put down the report in his hand and stretched wearily. He was the same man Zi Xu had met earlier at the dango shop.
"Uzumaki Zi Xu? He doesn't look as strong as Lord Orochimaru said... In the end, he's only a Genin..." The man pushed up his glasses. Before long, he would personally prove himself wrong.
"Damn it..." Sasuke Uchiha fell to the ground again and again in his family's courtyard. Those two had dealt a severe blow to his pride earlier that day. He, the genius of the Uchiha Clan, had lost to two unknown nobodies. He felt he'd brought shame upon the Uchiha Clan.
Sasuke Uchiha kept practicing his dodges, using his Sharingan to recall Rock Lee and Zi Xu's movements as he tried to copy their Taijutsu.
Rock Lee's techniques were manageable. They involved principles of Taijutsu that Sasuke could observe, even if he couldn't learn them for now. Once his body was strong enough, he'd be able to perform them directly. But Zi Xu's moves left him completely baffled.
Because when you broke them down, Zi Xu's movements only had two steps: first, get between the two of them; second, block both their attacks. That was it. Nothing else.
The head of the Main House of the Hyuga Clan, another great clan, sat ramrod straight. Hyuga Hiashi stared solemnly at a small snake in his hand. After a long hesitation, he finally seemed to make up his mind and let out a deep sigh.
"The Uchiha Clan massacre is right before us. We can't afford to let our guard down..." He released the small snake and watched it disappear into the distance before letting out a breath.
Far away in Sunagakure, a figure wearing a conical hat, a white cloak, and a veil seemed to sense something. The figure lifted the corners of their mouth toward a certain direction, then let a long tongue that seemed inhuman slip out in a horrifying smile.
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