Examining His Conscience

"Why... didn't I make a move?"

Jiraiya's life and death were in Lin Qing's hands.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to fight back in the slightest.

It wasn't because he couldn't win, or because he was afraid to fight.

It was the guilt in his heart that kept him from acting.

Jiraiya knew all too well what a foolish thing he had just done.

This was a trap Orochimaru had laid for Lin Qing—a truly desperate predicament.

Lin Qing had used his own strength to break through that predicament and save Jiraiya.

From the beginning of the battle, there wasn't a single flaw in anything Lin Qing had done.

But what about Jiraiya?

What had he done—

At the most crucial moment of the battle, Lin Qing, his teammate, had done 99 percent of the work. All Jiraiya needed to do was take one step and hold Orochimaru back for a moment, and they would have won.

But he had done nothing.

He had betrayed his teammate.

If Jiraiya had been a green young ninja who let his emotions cloud his judgment, Lin Qing wouldn't have been angry.

Panicked and at a loss in the heat of the moment, or unable to bring himself to attack an old friend—that would have been understandable.

But Jiraiya wasn't naive. The older generation of ninja—himself, Orochimaru, Tsunade, and the Third Hokage and Danzo before them...

These people had lived through the darkness of the Ninja World.

When it was truly necessary to kill, they would never let emotions make them hesitate.

"So why didn't I make a move?"

Jiraiya asked himself.

It wasn't until he saw Lin Qing and Sasuke, their foreheads bare of Forehead Protectors, that he understood why:

Because Orochimaru had never truly done anything that harmed the Will of Fire.

Orochimaru hadn't crossed Jiraiya's line, so all these years, Jiraiya had merely tracked down his old classmate's whereabouts instead of hunting him down.

Jiraiya wanted Orochimaru to turn over a new leaf. He didn't want him dead.

"Because Orochimaru hadn't crossed my line, I hesitated—and as a result, Sasuke, whom Lin Qing had protected all this way, got hurt."

That was why Lin Qing was angry.

Letting Orochimaru go?

It didn't matter.

It was only a few hundred Soul Shards. He could do without them. Jiraiya could lay out a feast and treat him to good food and wine, and that would settle the matter.

Everyone had old ties with someone.

Lin Qing could understand that.

But Sasuke's condition was terrible. He...

Might die!

That was an entirely different matter.

Jiraiya wasn't the sort of petty man who made excuses. After examining his conscience, he lowered his eyes.

"I... have nothing to say."

"Lin Qing, I wronged you this time."

He looked at Sasuke.

Black tomoe were oozing from the bite on Sasuke's neck—the spot Orochimaru had bitten earlier.

The Heaven Cursed Seal.

Jiraiya said, "Lin Qing, if you really intend to kill me, I hope you'll wait until after Sasuke has been healed."

Lin Qing still had his back to him. Star Platinum suddenly vanished, and Jiraiya slumped to the ground.

He got up and went to Sasuke's side, reaching out to take his wrist.

A moment later, Jiraiya opened his eyes, his expression tense.

"Three different forces are clashing inside him: chakra, Natural Energy, and Ripple."

If it were only chakra and the Natural Energy brought on by the Cursed Seal, Jiraiya's more than ten years of training in Senjutsu would surely let him find a way to bring them into balance.

But with Ripple in the mix, things had become complicated.

Lin Qing and Jiraiya fell silent, and the atmosphere grew more oppressive by the moment.

Just then, a gloating voice sounded nearby:

"He's doomed. Rather than let him go to waste, why not feed him to me? Then I'll forgive you for showing me such disrespect."

As expected of a Snake Sage. In no time at all, Tagorihime's injuries had mostly healed. She had taken on the form of a woman with a snake's body, holding the Dragon Snake Treasure Orb in her hands.

Lin Qing slowly turned his head.

"What did you say?"

"I said, if you feed me this child—"

Before she could finish, Lin Qing kicked Tagorihime. The giant snake, dozens of meters long, tumbled away, and the farmhouse collapsed, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Hermit Purple reached out again and dragged her back like a dead dog.

Lin Qing looked down at Tagorihime, raised a hand, and summoned the still-scalding Blade of Ruin. It hovered beneath the snake demon's neck.

Feeling the blade against her throat, Tagorihime's scalp prickled.

Lin Qing asked seriously, "Can you save him?"

"N-no. Like that ugly man said, there's a third kind of energy in him besides the Cursed Seal. I can't do it. We have to find Orochimaru and make him remove the Cursed Seal."

"Can you find Orochimaru?"

"Yes!" Tagorihime seemed to have found a lifeline. "As long as he comes to Ryūchi Cave, I can contact him. Then—"

"Too slow."

Sasuke couldn't wait that long.

Lin Qing said, "Can you find him right now?"

"N-no."

Orochimaru was elusive. There was no way to summon him with reverse Summoning Technique. As long as he didn't reveal his location himself, no one knew where he was hiding.

Lin Qing's gaze grew colder.

"You can't do this, and you can't do that. What makes you think you'll get to go back alive?"

"You wouldn't dare kill me!"

Tagorihime was truly panicking now. She struggled to get up, but Star Platinum suddenly appeared, grabbed her head, and slammed it hard into the ground. She was horrified.

A few hundred years of life hadn't taught Tagorihime to accept death. Instead, the more she pursued immortality, the more terrified she had become of dying.

"You can't kill me! I'm a Snake Princess of Ryūchi Cave, an elder personally chosen by the White Snake Sage!"

"If you kill me, Ryūchi Cave will take revenge on you without end, until you die!"

She turned to look at Jiraiya.

"I want to see the Toad Sage! Even if I really have done something wrong, it isn't for a human to judge me! For the sake of the ties between Ryūchi Cave and Mount Myoboku, Jiraiya, you can't let him kill me!"

Jiraiya licked his dry lips.

Tagorihime was right. If a lower- or middle-ranking snake or toad died, then so be it.

But if an elder of Tagorihime, Fukasaku, or Shijian's standing died outside their home, it would inevitably bring retribution from their sacred grounds.

Jiraiya was just about to speak up and reassure her when a flash of blade-light suddenly appeared before his eyes.

Tagorihime's head rolled to the ground, and in an instant, it transformed into a giant blue snake's head.

He'd killed her!

He'd really killed her!

The blue snake head hit the ground, still clinging to a little life. Not yet dead, it glared at Lin Qing with venomous eyes and snarled:

"Lin Qing, you'll be devoured by ten thousand snakes! You'll die without a place to be buried! Ryūchi Cave will never let you go—"

Before she could finish, the Blade of Ruin fell again. The snake's head split down the middle, and its brains spilled across the ground.

"You... You..."

Jiraiya's eyes were filled with shock and worry. "That was Ryūchi Cave!"

Lin Qing flicked the blood and brains off his blade. "What about it? They're just a bunch of beasts."

Did they really think of themselves as "sages"?

If they were so powerful, why did the world belong to humans instead of these so-called "sages"?

Lin Qing looked at Sasuke again. His expression was pained.

His body temperature was gradually rising. If this continued, it wouldn't be long before Sasuke burned himself to death from the inside out.

Jiraiya couldn't help him. Tagorihime couldn't help him. Orochimaru, the one responsible, had fled...

There was only one way left to save Little Sasuke—

Draw a new Stand.

He would have to bet that it had healing abilities, like Crazy Diamond, Gold Experience, or Pearl Jam.

Lin Qing opened the system interface. Only now did he have time to check his rewards.

"Defeated Kimimaro. Obtained 320 Soul Shards."

"Defeated Jugo. Obtained 290 Soul Shards."

"Defeated Orochimaru. Obtained 890 Soul Shards."

"Defeated Tagorihime. Obtained 400 Soul Shards."

Adding the 900 or so he had left over, along with the Shards he'd gained from defeating the handful of Root ninja, Lin Qing now had a total of—

2,990 Soul Shards.

Lin Qing took a deep breath and opened the system interface.

Draw!