Draw Out the Car, Checkmate!

"Hmm...?"

Orochimaru froze for a moment.

His blood-smeared face stiffened for half a second. The serpent heads coiled around Lin Zi tightened instinctively, their scales scraping together with a teeth-grating rasp.

But Lin Zi didn't struggle. As if he couldn't feel pain, he simply tilted his head back, golden slit pupils half-lidded, like he was basking in the sun.

"What... are you doing?"

Orochimaru's voice was hoarse, a hissing rasp rumbling in his throat.

Lin Zi suddenly smiled. It was a gentle smile, so unlike Orochimaru's—more like a mother soothing her child.

He tilted his face up, his neck completely exposed beneath the pale moonlight, his body limp in the coils of the snake.

"Didn't you want my body?" He tilted his head, his voice light and airy. "Here. Take it. Save yourself the trouble."

Orochimaru's pupils shrank to pinpricks.

Instinct told him it was a trap.

This was all wrong. Who would willingly offer up their life?

But the temptation was too great. A perfect vessel, knowledge from another world, a gateway to countless worlds, the ultimate answer to eternal life... It was as if a thousand tentacles were constantly clawing at his heart, driving him mad.

"If you're looking to die..."

The hesitation on Orochimaru's face lasted only an instant before madness swallowed it whole.

"Or if you're volunteering to become my nourishment, then I won't hold back!!"

The sickly green light of his soul flared brighter. The stream of pure green light connecting Orochimaru to Lin Zi blazed even more fiercely.

Orochimaru had gone completely mad.

He drained the last trace of chakra from Yamata no Orochi and poured it all into that torrent of souls.

The enormous white serpent's body collapsed like a heap of boneless meat. Its heads slammed into the ground one after another, sending dust billowing into the air.

The monster that had just been swaggering around was now little more than a limp mass of white flesh, barely holding its serpentine shape as it twitched among the ruins. Even its scales had lost their luster.

Tsunade sprang into action again, leaping into the air like a blood-red cannonball!

The remaining mass of Yamata no Orochi's serpentine body continued thrashing on instinct. A mangled tail swept toward her, but Tsunade twisted in midair and smashed it to pieces with her intact left fist, her monstrous strength behind the blow!

"Has our Orochimaru... completely taken him over?!"

Hiruzen Sarutobi's Adamantine Staff slipped from his hand with a clatter and hit the ground, rolling twice among the rubble.

His eyes were so wide his sockets looked ready to split. Blood vessels spread across the whites like a spiderweb, and he staggered twice, nearly collapsing to his knees.

Two Hokage and the Sannin... and they couldn't stop him? They could only watch as that poisonous snake devoured another "Orochimaru" alive right before their eyes?

"You've got to be kidding me..."

Hiruzen's voice shook uncontrollably, like that of an old lion whose backbone had been torn out.

When Jiraiya saw Yamata no Orochi completely collapse, he abruptly stopped tracing the Sealing Jutsu. The two sages, Fukasaku and Shima, were jolted by his sudden halt and grabbed his clothes, but he didn't even notice.

"Orochimaru..." A low growl rumbled in Jiraiya's throat before erupting into a furious roar. "You monster!"

He had no words left. His eyes bloodshot, his white hair whipping in the night wind, he suddenly formed a dazzling blue sphere of light in his palms.

Sage Art: Big Ball Rasengan!

The raging chakra warped the air around him. He became a blur and hurtled straight toward the limp mass of white flesh!

Boom!!!

Flesh flew everywhere. The white muck burst through the air, its foul juices splattering across the broken walls like a disgusting downpour.

But what did that matter? The flesh was only a shell. The truly lethal thing—the sickly green soul—had already surged into Lin Zi's forehead. There was no stopping it!

Minato Namikaze stood at the edge of the ruins, killing intent pouring from his azure eyes, yet he still kept his composure as Hokage.

At some point, he had gripped the Flying Thunder God Kunai so tightly that he'd split his hand in several places. Blood ran from the cuts in his palm and dripped onto the kunai's markings, staining the black lines dark red.

He had already placed a Flying Thunder God marker along the soul torrent's inevitable path.

He was waiting for Orochimaru's soul to weaken as it devoured Lin Zi, waiting for that fraction of a second when a wave of resistance rose within Lin Zi—then he would take him away.

Minato stared fixedly at Lin Zi, swallowed by the green light in midair, his lips pressed into a pale line.

"Hang on..."

But the sickly green light had already engulfed Lin Zi's entire face.

Orochimaru's mad laughter shook the air.

"Jiraiya, Tsunade, Teacher Sarutobi—and, oh, the young Minato, too!"

Inside the split central head of Yamata no Orochi, Orochimaru was covered in blood. Lin Zi hung limp in front of him, held tight in the serpent's jaws, head drooping, black ponytail hiding his face, eyes closed. He looked as pale as a soulless paper doll.

"Hahahahahaha!"

Orochimaru's shoulders shook with laughter.

"Thank you all! Without you, I wouldn't have ended up here! Hahaha! Eternal life will be born in my hands!"

He paid no attention to the people around him.

Tsunade was roaring, Jiraiya was forming Hand Seals, blood dripped from Minato's kunai, and Hiruzen knelt on the ground, trembling. None of it mattered anymore.

The sickly green soul surged completely into Lin Zi's forehead.

Orochimaru's consciousness followed the torrent in, and everything turned white.

"Is this... my body?"

He tentatively tried to move his fingers, wanting to feel his heart beat, to hear the rush of blood. But the next moment, his expression changed drastically.

Nothing.

There was nothing.

No heart, no lungs, no brain—not even bones or muscle fibers.

There was only a vast white void and a slowly spinning chakra phantom, woven according to some higher order. Golden points of light and emerald threads intertwined, like a sophisticated projection device, trapping his soul firmly at the center.

Lin Zi stood on the other side of the void, arms folded, golden slit pupils reflecting Orochimaru's horrified face.

He smiled. His voice echoed through the space.

"Hello. How does it feel to be inside me?"

Orochimaru's voice pitched up, like a rooster being strangled.

"Why... why is it only chakra?! This can't be!"

"Because you're a monster."

Lin Zi spread his hands, looking as relaxed as if they were chatting.

"How could a monster understand true immortality? How could you understand the hopes of your comrades? All your life, you've been fit only to count your own rotting flesh in the gutter. You don't even deserve to touch these things."

Lin Zi laughed heartily, his laughter rolling through the void like thunder.

Meanwhile, in the real world.

Lin Zi, suspended in midair and wrapped in the serpent's coils, suddenly opened his eyes!

Those weren't Orochimaru's cold eyes, nor were they hollow with possession.

His golden slit pupils shone with a terrifying brilliance, like two demonic lamps abruptly springing to life. Sage Mode roared back to life, horns burst from his head, and emerald chakra surged beneath his pale skin like magma.

"Sage Art: Serpent Lightning!"

He brought his hands together sharply. Rather than striking outward, the lightning around him gathered into countless bright blue serpents that poured back through the snake's body coiled around him!

The lightning surged like floodwater through a breached dam, biting its way through the gaps between the scales and blasting straight into Orochimaru's body inside Yamata no Orochi's central head!

Crackle—boom!!!

Orochimaru's body convulsed violently as the lightning serpents tore into it, black smoke pouring from all seven of his openings.

Worse still, the lightning was threaded with Natural Energy from Ryūchi Cave. Like a red-hot iron hook, it caught hold of Orochimaru's soul, still struggling inside Lin Zi, and yanked hard to drag it out!

Lin Zi tilted his head back, a ferocious grin tugging at his lips. His voice, carried through chakra vibrations, rang across that void and into Orochimaru's ears—as well as the ears of everyone around them.

"Draw out the car, checkmate!"

"Orochimaru, time to find out what it feels like to suffer in your soul!"