Mask Man's Infiltration into the Simulated World and the Lurking Outside the Delivery Room
The cold leather glove clamped tightly around Baishi's throat, and its five fingers suddenly tightened.
"Crack."
The muffled sound of his neck breaking echoed through the treetops. Yet the Scarlet Sharingan beneath Obito's mask suddenly shrank. No warm blood sprayed out. Instead, the surface of the ANBU whose neck he had crushed suddenly erupted with incredibly violent blue arcs of electricity.
"A Lightning Clone?" Obito's hoarse voice held a trace of surprise.
Boom!
Blinding lightning exploded through the treetops, and high-voltage currents raced wildly along Obito's materialized right arm. Obito was forced to activate Kamui, and his body instantly turned into a transparent phantom. The violent lightning passed through him without resistance, splitting the thick tree trunk behind him into a pile of charred wood.
The smell of scorched wood mixed with splinters and quickly spread through the night wind.
Thirty meters from the explosion, inside a crack in a cliff face, the real Baishi lay in the mud like a lifeless stone. He had compressed his Max-Level Lightning Release Chakra deep within his cells with exquisite precision, forcibly lowering his body temperature to freezing point and suppressing his heartbeat to an extremely faint twenty beats per minute.
Cold sweat dripped from the tip of Baishi's nose, striking the muddy water without making the slightest sound.
He knew all too well how abnormal Kamui's mechanics were. Half a second before Obito appeared, he had used a blind spot in his vision to form the hand seals for a Lightning Clone, while his true body had slipped underground under the cover of wind-blown leaves. This had been an absolute information advantage. If the one whose neck had been crushed just now had been his real body, his neck would already have been twisted off.
Obito condensed his body out of the void again and shook his slightly numb right hand. He swept a cold glance across the surrounding darkness.
"Boring trick."
Obito did not continue searching. The Nine-Tails Chakra fluctuations inside the delivery room had already reached a critical point, and Namikaze Minato's Sealing Formula was weakening. His target was the Nine-Tails. He had no time to play hide-and-seek with a rat that knew a little Lightning Release. He turned around, and his body transformed into a distorted vortex ripple before passing straight through the thick barrier of the Four Red Yang Formation.
Baishi lay in the mud and slowly exhaled the stale air from his lungs.
The first hurdle is cleared.
Like a gecko, he clung to the cliff face and climbed upward without a sound. Through a gap in the barrier, he watched the slaughter outside the delivery room with cold eyes.
Obito's movements contained not a trace of excess. They were assassination techniques straight out of a textbook. The three elite ANBU guarding the entrance had not even had time to draw their Ninja Blades before Black Receivers suddenly stabbed out of the void and pierced their hearts. Blood dripped from the Black Receivers onto the stone floor with a steady patter.
Just as Sarutobi Biwako turned around, Obito's palm had already struck her back. The strangling force of the warped space instantly pulverized her internal organs. The wife of the Third Hokage did not even manage to scream before collapsing limply into the pool of blood.
The thick stench of blood drifted out through the entrance, completely overpowering the original fishy smell of amniotic fluid.
Baishi's hand gripping the short blade was as steady as a rock, and there was not the slightest trace of pity in his eyes. In the Shinobi World, weakness was the original sin. His gaze passed over the corpses covering the ground and locked firmly onto the golden figure deep within the delivery room.
He needed Obito to enter. He needed Obito to draw Minato away. Only in the gap between two godlike fighters could this cannon fodder tear off the biggest piece of flesh.
"Wah—"
A clear infant's cry pierced the oppressive night sky.
On the delivery bed, Kushina panted weakly, her red hair completely soaked with sweat. Her face was pale as paper, and her chest heaved violently. Namikaze Minato was filled with wild joy. His hands moved rapidly through a series of seals as he prepared to use the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style to suppress the violent Nine-Tails Chakra pouring from Kushina's abdomen once more.
At that very instant, Obito appeared behind Minato like a ghost and scooped up the newborn Naruto with one arm.
"Leave the Jinchuriki's side, Fourth Hokage." Obito's voice was devoid of warmth as he pressed a Kunai precisely against the baby's tender neck. "Otherwise, this brat has only one minute left to live."
Minato's pupils contracted sharply, and his golden hair trembled faintly from extreme tension. His hands, which had been forming seals, froze in midair, veins bulging across the backs of them.
"Wait... wait! Calm down!" A trace of barely concealed panic seeped into Minato's voice.
Baishi narrowed his eyes in the darkness. Here it is. This is the original protagonist's greatest weakness—too many bonds, too many scruples.
Obito let out an extremely mocking snort and directly threw Naruto, covered in Explosive Tags, into the air. At the same time, his right hand rapidly formed seals, preparing to use Kamui to suck Kushina into the alternate dimension.
Minato did not hesitate in the slightest. It was a father's instinct. With a flash of golden light, he vanished from his original position, transferring himself and the baby in midair to a distant safe house.
Boom!
The violent sound of an explosion faintly echoed from the distance. It was the sound of the Explosive Tags detonating.
The delivery room was completely empty.
Only Kushina remained, locked in place by the sealing chains with her Chakra nearly depleted, while Obito looked down at her from above.
"Minato..." Kushina called her husband's name in despair, warm tears sliding from the corners of her eyes. The weakening seal allowed the Nine-Tails Chakra inside her to spill out of control. The red Demon Fox Cloak began boiling across the surface of her skin, scorching her meridians.
Obito slowly walked to the bed, his leather boots striking the stone floor with a dull sound. The Scarlet Sharingan turned slowly in the darkness, radiating a suffocating chill.
"Namikaze Minato is an excellent Hokage, but he can't save you." Obito extended his gloved right hand and pointed his fingertips at Kushina's lower abdomen. "Nine-Tails, I'll be taking you."
Space began to ripple in a spiral, and Kamui's suction had already locked onto Kushina's body.
Just as Obito's fingers were about to touch the Sealing Formula, just a tenth of a second before Kushina closed her eyes and fell into utter despair—
In a blind spot of shadow less than five meters from the delivery bed, a pair of cold eyes that had been suppressed for a long time suddenly opened.
The lurking ghost bared its fangs.
Baishi's left hand instantly crushed the fuses of three High-Explosive Tags, while his right hand reversed its grip on a short blade coated in deadly poison. The Max-Level Lightning Release Chakra compressed to its absolute limit within his body exploded like a breached floodgate! The sensation of his muscles tearing apart from the Lightning Release stimulating his cells spread through his entire body in an instant, trading pain for extreme speed that broke through the sound barrier.
The blade tore through the air and shot straight toward Obito's throat!