"Heh heh heh heh!"
"Beautiful move!"
"I'm getting more and more interested in you, Uchiha Itachi!"
The smoke from the Explosive Tags slowly cleared. As the voice came from within it, Orochimaru's figure gradually emerged. He was no longer in the shape he'd been before. His clothes were in tatters, and his chest was covered in severe burns and blood. The Explosive Tags had done considerable damage to his body.
Strangely, though, Orochimaru's voice was still strong and hearty, with none of the weakness one would expect from someone so badly wounded. Seeing him like this, Kakashi and the others tensed up at once. There was something deeply unsettling about him!
"Ugh!"
Orochimaru opened his mouth, his body covered in wounds. A few seconds later, a pale hand reached out from his mouth, bringing with it a large amount of mucus that dripped onto the ground.
"What the hell are you?!" Obito and the others stared in shock. They had never seen anything like this.
After the pale hand emerged from Orochimaru's mouth, the forearm followed, then the rest of the arm. Before long, a person who looked exactly like Orochimaru slowly crawled out of his mouth.
This was one of Orochimaru's signature techniques: Human Molting.
"It's just like a snake shedding its skin?!"
Kakashi's eyes widened. The sight before him had completely shattered his understanding of what was possible. He had never imagined a person could do something like this. The new Orochimaru who'd crawled out of the old one's mouth was completely unharmed. It seemed all the damage he'd taken had vanished.
Kakashi's heart sank. Uchiha Itachi's expression changed as well, a trace of worry appearing between his brows.
It was difficult to land the same technique twice against an opponent of Orochimaru's caliber. The genjutsu had only