"Great! We all passed!" Kurenai said, sounding excited.
"Phew, Nao, you nearly gave me a heart attack!" Shiyu couldn't help saying to Kakashi Nao.
"Hehe, sorry." Nao could only apologize.
"Never mind. Do your best in the preliminaries!" Shiyu encouraged his teammates.
Shiyu and the others followed White Fang and soon arrived at the preliminary exam site, Konoha Forest. Rumor had it that Hashirama Senju had created Konoha's largest forest with Wood Release. It was vast, and the trees grew so densely that ordinary people could easily get lost inside.
At present, the entrance to Konoha Forest was clearly sealed off by a group of unusual-looking ninja.
Hatake Sakumo nodded to the ninja, then turned to the examinees and said, "They're members of Konoha's Barrier Team. Our preliminary exam will take place in the area of Konoha Forest covered by the barrier."
"If you leave the area covered by the barrier for too long, the character for 'ninja' on the back of this card will disappear, which means you'll lose your eligibility to take the exam." Hatake Sakumo held up the red cards with their freshly recorded results.
"Then how do we pass the exam?" Kakashi Hatake asked. It was what all the examinees wanted to know.
"There are nine towers positioned in different parts of the exam site. They're named after the nine characters: Rin, Pyo, To, Sha, Kai, Jin, Retsu, Zai, and Zen. Only one of them leads to the next stage." Hatake Sakumo explained.
"Then how do we know which tower is the right one? What happens if we enter the wrong one?" Rin Nohara asked.
"The exam lasts twelve hours. The Barrier Team will shrink the barrier every two hours. Only towers inside the barrier could be the correct one, so to identify the final correct