Forest of Death! Orochimaru's Bizarre Molting

Forest of Death. Hidden Leaf 44th Training Ground.

Towering trees blotted out the sunlight completely, and the damp, cold, rotten air was thick with a nauseating stench of blood. Thick vines coiled over the muddy ground like dead snakes. The second round of the Chunin Exams had now drawn its bloody curtain here.

Yuan wore a set of gray-black combat gear stripped off some unlucky Anbu, without even a forehead protector. He did not need any official proctor status at all. That perimeter wire-mesh barrier, supposedly so tight not even a fly could get in, had been kicked open by him with one foot, leaving a man-sized hole.

He moved quickly between the rough trunks, making no deliberate effort to suppress his aura. The Mangekyō Sharingan gave off a terrifying red glow in the gloomy forest, locking firmly onto that cold, slimy, snake-like S-rank chakra more than ten kilometers away.

"Found you." Chakra burst beneath Yuan's feet, and he turned into a streak of black lightning, charging straight toward the depths of the forest.

At that moment, in a clearing at the center of the forest.

The brutal battle was already nearing its end. Several surrounding trees had been chopped to pieces by wind release, and the ground was covered with scorched marks and deep craters.

Sasuke knelt on the ground with his face covered in blood, gasping heavily. His Two-Tomoe Sharingan trembled slightly from chakra exhaustion. Not far away, Sakura's clothes had been pinned to a tree trunk by several kunai, leaving her unable to move and shaking in fear; Naruto, meanwhile, had been coiled up by a thick giant snake like a dead dog and flung into the distant grass.

Directly in front of Sasuke, a Kusagakure kunoichi wearing a bamboo hat, her face deathly pale, was sizing him up with a gaze that made one's skin crawl. Her tongue, long enough to defy human anatomy, licked the blood from her lips.

"What beautiful Sharingan." Orochimaru tore the disguised skin from his face, revealing his true features marked with purple eye shadow. "Sasuke, I can feel your thirst for power. Come, let me bestow upon you the most wonderful curse in this world!"

Orochimaru's neck suddenly stretched like rubber. He opened his huge, fang-filled maw and turned into an afterimage, lunging straight for Sasuke's neck. His speed had reached an extreme. Sasuke did not even have the strength to raise his hands and form a seal. He could only watch helplessly as those two venomous fangs grew larger and larger in his pupils.

Just as the fangs were less than three inches from Sasuke's neck.

Boom!

A deafening sonic boom exploded from above.

A section of tree trunk as thick as a water barrel was smashed to pieces by a tremendous force, sending wood chips flying everywhere. A black figure wrapped in violent red chakra crashed down like a meteor striking the earth, landing perfectly in front of Sasuke.

The man did not even look at the snake head biting toward him. He raised his right fist, wrapped in red chakra, and delivered a heavy uppercut straight into that pale face.

Bang—crack!

The sound of bones breaking made one's teeth ache. Orochimaru's neck, stretched more than three meters long, was instantly smashed into a "U" shape. Several bloodstained fangs flew through the air mixed with saliva. His body shot backward like a kite with its string cut, plowing a trench more than ten meters long into the ground.

"Interrupting someone else's kid during an exam—do you even know the rules, you dead snake?"

As the smoke and dust dispersed, Yuan slowly straightened up, stepping over the wood chips scattered across the ground. His tattered windbreaker snapped loudly in the air currents.

"Brother Yuan!" Light instantly flared in Sasuke's despairing eyes.

Orochimaru twisted his body and crawled up from the deep pit in the distance. His jaw had been knocked out of place, but he simply pushed it with his hand and set it back with a click, completely unconcerned. Those snake eyes fixed hard on the Three-Tomoe Sharingan in Yuan's eye sockets.

"Uchiha Yuan, who should have died six years ago. I didn't expect the rumors to be true." Orochimaru extended his long tongue and licked the blood from his chin. His voice was hoarse and carried a strange excitement. "Your chakra is even more violent than the intelligence said. Well? Do you want to come with me? That rotten Hidden Leaf will only exploit you. Follow me, and I can give you power surpassing Madara Uchiha!"

"Give my ass!"

Yuan spat out the crude curse and did not take his bait at all. Kage-level chakra poured out of his body like floodgates opening. The mud beneath his feet was directly shaken into a ring of spiderweb-like cracks.

Without forming a single seal, Yuan launched the purest taijutsu charge.

In less than a tenth of a second, Yuan was already upon him. His right knee lifted high, carrying violent wind pressure as it slammed hard toward Orochimaru's abdomen.

Orochimaru reacted extremely quickly and rapidly formed seals with both hands. "Substitution Technique!"

With a bang, what was crushed apart was only half of a snake corpse. Orochimaru's true body had already appeared on a large tree above Yuan's left side, his hand seals complete. "Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"

A hurricane-like gale mixed with wind blades poured down.

Yuan did not even look. The embryonic form of red Susanoo ribs instantly appeared over his body. The wind blades slashed against the ribs with an ear-piercing metallic screech, yet did not leave so much as a white mark. Borrowing the force of the wind, Yuan kicked off from where he stood, his body shooting upward in the opposite direction. The short blade in his hand turned into a blinding streak of lightning and slashed toward Orochimaru's shoulder.

Orochimaru was shocked. How was this monster even faster than before! He barely raised both hands to block.

Crack!

There was no suspense. Yuan's slash not only cut through the bones at Orochimaru's wrists, the high heat of the Flame-Lightning Chidori attached to the blade directly burned both of Orochimaru's forearms into black charcoal.

Yuan did not stop. He kicked off the tree trunk for leverage, turned in midair, and drove his left fist, carrying enough force to shatter a city wall, straight into Orochimaru's chest.

If this punch landed solidly, Orochimaru's heart would absolutely be shaken to pieces.

Just as the fist was about to touch his clothes, an extremely bizarre scene occurred.

Orochimaru's body suddenly twisted a full 180 degrees from the waist down in an unbelievable way, like a boneless puddle of rotten mud, and his entire chest forcibly shifted sideways by half a foot. Yuan's lethal punch grazed past Orochimaru's ribs and blasted into the air behind him, directly exploding a huge tree dozens of meters away that would have taken two people to wrap their arms around.

Using that bizarre distortion, Orochimaru slid like a snake onto the fork of another tree. His two scorched arms hung limply, yet a sick smile appeared on his face. "It's useless. My body was modified into a soft form long ago. No matter how strong your taijutsu is, it means nothing if you can't hit me."

Yuan snorted coldly, his Three-Tomoe Sharingan spinning rapidly. Orochimaru's twisting angles and muscle contractions had nowhere to hide under the Sharingan. "As long as my eyes can keep up, let's see if I can peel off that snakeskin of yours today!"

Yuan erupted again, turning into a storm of black and red as he unleashed a tempest of consecutive blows at Orochimaru.

Elbows, whip kicks, heavy punches. Five lethal attacks, and each one was neutralized by Orochimaru's nauseating and bizarre snake taijutsu. Orochimaru was like a piece of taffy that could not be smashed or caught, darting all over the forest.

"Lord Orochimaru!"

Just as Yuan prepared to use a wide-area ninjutsu to clear the field directly, several loud shouts came from the distance.

The Sound Ninja Trio responsible for assisting Orochimaru rushed out of the shrubs.

Zaku raised both hands, aiming the air holes in his palms at Yuan. "Extreme Decapitating Airwaves!"

High-pressure airflow mixed with ultrasonic waves blasted over.

"Annoying trash." Yuan did not even turn his head. He took a deep breath, chakra surging into his throat, then spat it out fiercely.

"Fire Release: Great Fire Annihilation!"

A terrifying sea of fire instantly lit up the entire Forest of Death. It was not only fire; violent lightning-nature chakra was mixed inside it as well. The sonic attack the Sound Ninja Trio took such pride in was crushed instantly before absolute power. The three of them did not even get out a scream before they were burned to ash by the sea of flames.

But in the less than one second they had blocked him, Orochimaru had already been forced to his limit.

He knew he could no longer stay entangled with this madman. That violent chakra could swallow him alive at any moment.

"Orochimaru-Style Body Replacement Technique!"

Orochimaru suddenly opened his mouth wide, his jaw dislocating and splitting at a terrifying angle. Immediately after, a pair of mucus-covered hands stretched out from his own throat and forcibly tore open the old skin shell. A new Orochimaru, slick all over and completely unharmed, crawled out from within. Like a slippery loach, he plunged headfirst straight into the mud below.

As for the old skin shell left in place, it exploded with a bang, turning into a huge cloud of purple poisonous mist.

Yuan cut through the flames and reached him, scattering the poison mist with one punch. But only a pitch-black hole remained in the ground. In the Sharingan's sight, Orochimaru's chakra had already sunk into the earth like a clay ox into the sea, burrowing dozens of meters underground and fleeing madly. He was so fast there was no catching up.

"That molting trick is disgusting, but you sure run fast." Yuan stopped where he was and spat. He did not force himself to dig into the ground, instead turning and walking toward Sasuke.

At some point, Sasuke's neck had still been touched by a trace of Orochimaru's chakra. A curse mark shaped like three tomoe was faintly burning, making him clutch his neck in pain.

Yuan walked over, and the three tomoe in his eyes suddenly erupted with powerful mental pressure. The "genjutsu resistance specialization and mental strength" rewarded by the system transformed into a materialized ocular technique named "Annihilation."

Yuan pressed his hand against Sasuke's neck, and his vast mental power surged straight in, firmly suppressing the curse-mark chakra that had only just begun to show signs of trying to corrode Sasuke's nerves into one corner. The color of the curse mark instantly dimmed. Sasuke's pain immediately lessened, and he collapsed weakly to the ground, gasping for breath.

Yuan stood up and looked at the crack in the earth through which Orochimaru had fled, his gaze ice-cold.

At that moment. A hundred meters underground.

Orochimaru, who had reformed his body, gasped desperately in a pitch-black underground cavern. There was a burn on his chest so deep the bone could be seen, left by the aftermath of Yuan's grazing blow just now.

Orochimaru raised his head, and those snake eyes flickered in the darkness with an extremely greedy, crazed light.

"Too wonderful... that unreasonable, violent chakra, and those Three-Tomoe Sharingan surpassing even Itachi's..." Orochimaru extended his tongue and licked the mud from the back of his hand. "I must have it. Next time, what I want won't be Sasuke—I want Yuan's body!"