Sound Village, third underground level.
No windows, no light, no day or night. Only purple chakra light floated across the walls like snake scales, layer by layer, crawling from the floor to the ceiling. Sasuke stood in the center of the training ground, Chidori condensed in his right hand. It was not blue, but purple. The Curse Mark's chakra seeped into Chidori's form. Chidori was no longer a bird. It was a snake. The snake's shriek echoed through the sealed underground chamber. It was not noise—it was a signal. A signal telling Orochimaru that his vessel was growing stronger.
Orochimaru sat in the darkness, his hands hanging at his sides, black like two charred branches. His eyes were gold, vertical pupils glowing in the dark. He was not looking—he was scanning. Scanning Sasuke's chakra, scanning the Curse Mark's rate of erosion, scanning whether the vessel could hold his soul three years from now.
"Chidori is no longer Chidori. Your hatred is changing it. It is not growing stronger—it is growing more poisonous. Poisonous enough to kill Itachi Uchiha, poisonous enough to kill anyone who stands in your way. But it is still not enough. Not poisonous enough to kill yourself. Your hatred still has a flaw—Naruto. Naruto does not make you weaker. Naruto makes you slower. If you are slower by one-tenth of a second, Itachi Uchiha can kill you. And when he kills you, your hatred will rot beneath the Sound Village, never seeing the light."
Sasuke's Chidori went out. The purple light vanished from the underground chamber, leaving only Orochimaru's vertical pupils glowing. He stared at Orochimaru, not in anger, but in thought. He considered every word Orochimaru had said, considered why Naruto made him slower, considered why that dead last who had hesitated for one-tenth of a