Draw the Chariot, General!

"Hmm...?"

Orochimaru was stunned for a moment.

His face, soaked in blood and filth, froze for half a second. The snake heads coiled around Lin Zi tightened instinctively, the friction of their scales producing a teeth-grating screech.

But Lin Zi did not struggle. As if he could not feel the pain, he merely tilted his head back, his golden vertical pupils half-closed, looking as though he were basking in the sun.

"What... are you doing?"

Orochimaru's voice was hoarse, a hissing, guttural sound rolling from his throat.

Lin Zi suddenly smiled. It was a gentle smile—so gentle it did not look like Orochimaru, but rather like a mother coaxing a child.

He tilted his face upward, his neck fully exposed to the pale moonlight, his entire body hanging limp and soft within the snake's coils.

"Aren't you after my body?" He tilted his head, his voice light and airy. "Come, take it. Save yourself the trouble."

Orochimaru's pupils shrank to pinpricks.

Instinct told him this was a trap.

It was all too wrong; who would ever offer up their life on a silver platter?

Yet the temptation was too great. A perfect vessel, knowledge from another world, the gateway to countless realms, the ultimate answer to eternal life... these things clawed at his heart like a thousand tentacles, driving his sanity to the brink of madness.

"If you are courting death."

The hesitation on Orochimaru's face lasted only an instant before being swallowed by mania.

"Or if you are volunteering to become my nourishment, then I shall not be polite!!"

The sickly green light of his soul surged violently, and the torrent of light—composed entirely of that pale green hue—at the point of connection between Orochimaru and Lin Zi grew even more blinding.

Orochimaru had gone completely insane.

He drained the very last shred of chakra from the body of the Yamata no Orochi and poured it all into that soul torrent.

The massive white snake body collapsed like meat stripped of its bones, crashing down with a thud as head after head slammed into the ground, kicking up a sky full of dust.

The monster that had been posturing so arrogantly just moments ago was now nothing more than a heap of limp, white, fleshy sludge, barely maintaining a serpentine shape as it twitched in the ruins, its scales having lost all their luster.

Tsunade erupted once more, leaping into mid-air like a crimson-stained cannonball!

The remaining serpentine mass of the Yamata no Orochi was still lashing out by instinct. A blood-mangled tail swept across, but Tsunade twisted her waist in mid-air, her uninjured left fist imbued with Superhuman Strength, smashing that fleshy tail into a pulp!

"Has our Orochimaru... completely possessed him already?!"

Hiruzen Sarutobi's Adamantine Staff clattered to the ground, rolling twice among the rubble.

His eyes were wide enough to split, bloodshot veins crawling across the whites like spiderwebs. He swayed, nearly collapsing to his knees.

Two Hokage, plus the Sannin... and they couldn't stop it? They were forced to watch as that venomous snake devoured another "Orochimaru" alive right before their eyes?

"What kind of joke is this..."

Hiruzen's voice trembled uncontrollably, like an old lion whose spine had been snapped.

Jiraiya saw the Yamata no Orochi completely disintegrate and abruptly halted the sealing jutsu he had been weaving. Fukasaku and Shima, the two Great Toad Sages, tightened their grip on his robes as he accelerated, but he didn't even notice.

"Orochimaru..." A low growl rolled from Jiraiya's throat before it erupted completely, "You beast!"

He had no words left. His eyes were blood-red, his white hair dancing wildly in the night wind, and a blinding blue sphere of light suddenly condensed in his palms.

Sage Art: Big Ball Rasengan!

The violent chakra distorted the surrounding air. He transformed into a blur, slamming directly into that heap of limp, white, fleshy tissue!

BOOM!!!

Flesh and blood flew everywhere. The white sludge was blasted into a sky-full of gore, and foul-smelling fluids splattered against the broken walls like a disgusting rainstorm.

But what did it matter? The flesh was merely a shell; the truly lethal thing—that sickly green soul—had already completely surged into the center of Lin Zi's brow. It was unstoppable!

Minato Namikaze stood at the edge of the ruins, killing intent leaking from his azure pupils, yet he maintained the clarity befitting a Hokage.

The hand gripping his Flying Thunder God kunai had been squeezed so hard that cracks had formed, blood trickling down from his palm and dripping onto the kunai's seal, staining the black markings a dark crimson.

The Flying Thunder God coordinates had long been set, right on the path that the soul torrent had to take.

He was waiting—waiting for the moment when Orochimaru's soul-devouring weakened, waiting for that split second when a wave of resistance appeared within Lin Zi's body, so he could whisk him away.

Minato stared fixedly at Lin Zi, who was engulfed in green light in mid-air, his lips pressed into a pale, thin line.

Hold on...

But that sickly green light had already completely swallowed Lin Zi's entire face.

Orochimaru's manic laughter made the very air tremble.

"Jiraiya, Tsunade, Teacher Hiruzen, oh, and the Minato boy!"

Within the cracked head at the center of the Yamata no Orochi, his face was covered in blood, while Lin Zi—clutched tightly by the snake head—hung his head low. His black ponytail obscured his face, his eyes were shut tight, and he looked as pale as a paper doll whose soul had been drained away.

"Hahahahahaha!"

Orochimaru's shoulders shook violently with laughter.

"Thank you all! If not for you, this 'I' would never have appeared here! Hahaha! Eternal life shall be born by my hand!"

He completely ignored the gazes of everyone around him.

Tsunade was screaming, Jiraiya was weaving hand seals, Minato's kunai was dripping blood, and Hiruzen Sarutobi was kneeling on the ground, trembling; none of this mattered anymore.

The sickly green soul surged completely into the center of Lin Zi's brow.

Orochimaru's consciousness poured in along that torrent, and his vision turned white.

"Is this... my body?"

He tentatively moved his fingers, wanting to feel the beating of a heart, wanting to hear the rushing of blood, but the next second, his expression changed drastically.

Nothing.

There was nothing at all.

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

There was only a vast, white void, and a slowly rotating phantom of chakra woven by something of a higher order. Golden light particles and emerald threads intertwined like a precision projection instrument, trapping his soul firmly in the center.

Lin Zi stood opposite that void, arms crossed, his golden slit pupils reflecting Orochimaru's terrified face.

He smiled, his voice echoing through the space.

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

Orochimaru's voice went out of tune, sounding like a rooster being strangled by the neck.

"Why... why is it just chakra?! This is impossible!"

"Because you are a monster."

Lin Zi spread his hands, his expression as relaxed as if he were chatting.

"How could a monster possibly understand true immortality? How could you understand the wishes of a companion? In this life, you are only fit to count your own rotting flesh in the gutter; you don't even have the qualifications to touch these things."

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

Meanwhile, in the real world.

Lin Zi, who had been suspended in mid-air by the snake heads, suddenly opened his eyes!

It was not the coldness of Orochimaru, nor the emptiness of someone who had been possessed.

Those golden slit pupils shone terrifyingly bright, like two demon lanterns suddenly lit. Sage Mode restarted with a roar; horns erupted from his head, and beneath his pale skin, emerald chakra surged like magma.

"Sage Art: Serpent Lightning!"

He slammed his hands together. The lightning around him did not strike outward, but instead condensed into countless azure lightning snakes, pouring madly back along the snake bodies that had coiled around him!

The lightning was like a flood that had found a vent, tearing along the gaps in the snake scales and slamming directly into the physical body of Orochimaru inside the central head of the Yamata no Orochi!

Crackle, BOOM!!!

Orochimaru's physical body shuddered violently as it was torn by the lightning snakes, black smoke spewing from all seven orifices simultaneously.

Even more terrifying was that the lightning was entwined with the natural energy of Ryūchi Cave, acting like a red-hot iron hook that caught his soul—still struggling inside Lin Zi—and yanked it outward!

Lin Zi tilted his head back, a ferocious grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. His voice, transmitted through chakra vibrations, echoed into that void, into Orochimaru's eardrums, and into the ears of everyone present.

"Checkmate!"

"Orochimaru, it's time for you to taste the suffering of the soul!"