Orochimaru Was Completely Bluffed

Qian Ye's legs had gone completely numb.

He was moving forward purely on the will to survive.

His lungs burned painfully, and every breath carried a heavy taste of blood.

Fortunately, the rocket's blast had been so loud that it intimidated the pursuers behind him.

Not a single Sunagakure ninja caught up to him along the way.

Just as Qian Ye felt he was about to drop dead in the woods,

the trees ahead finally began to thin out.

A massive wooden fortress came into view.

Several Hidden Leaf ninjas in green flak jackets patrolled back and forth atop the towering watchtowers.

He had reached the Third Outpost!

Qian Ye was nearly brought to tears.

This was the fucking hope of survival.

Using the last of his strength, he staggered out of the forest and sprinted toward the outpost gates.

"Who goes there! Stop!"

The guards on the watchtower immediately spotted the blood-covered intruder.

Two Hidden Leaf Chunin leaped down from above, their kunai pointed directly at Qian Ye's throat.

"Don't attack! I'm one of you!"

Qian Ye dropped to his knees with a thud and raised both hands high.

"I'm from the Third Logistics Supply Battalion! Something happened at the front!"

Qian Ye shouted desperately through his ragged voice, terrified that the two guards might slit his throat with a twitch of their hands.

The two guards exchanged a glance. One stepped forward to inspect Qian Ye's forehead protector and identification.

"Qian Ye? A civilian Genin?"

The guard stared at Qian Ye's deathly pale face and questioned him loudly.

"Shouldn't the supply battalion be on its way to Kikyo Pass? How did you end up like this?!"

Qian Ye panted heavily and pointed toward the forest behind him.

"It's all over! The supply line was cut off by Sunagakure's elite forces!"

"Rasa led them! Captain Jiro and the others all died covering me so I could deliver the intelligence!"

The moment Rasa's name was mentioned, both guards' expressions changed instantly.

Although Hidden Leaf and Sunagakure had been clashing constantly along the border, a full-scale war had yet to truly erupt.

Both sides were still locked in a tense standoff.

Now, Sunagakure's rising star, Rasa, had personally led a force to cut off the supply line.

This was absolutely a signal that all-out war was about to begin!

"Quick! Take him to the command post!"

One guard grabbed the exhausted Qian Ye and ran frantically toward the interior of the outpost.

The atmosphere inside the Third Outpost was suffocatingly grim.

Ninjas hurried everywhere, while crates of Explosive Tags and medical supplies were carried up onto the walls.

The air was thick with the pungent scent of gunpowder.

Supported by the guards, Qian Ye passed through layer after layer of checkpoints before arriving at the largest tent in the center of the outpost.

The guards loudly reported the situation from outside the tent.

"Bring him in."

A hoarse yet piercing voice came from within the tent.

Qian Ye was pushed inside.

The tent was spacious, with a huge sand table set in the middle.

A tall, slender man stood before it.

He wore a Hidden Leaf jonin vest, and his skin was pale to the point of looking unhealthy.

Long black hair draped over his shoulders.

Most striking of all were his golden, vertically slit pupils, coldly assessing Qian Ye.

Orochimaru!

Qian Ye sucked in a breath internally.

This was an utterly ruthless monster who performed human experiments without batting an eye, though he probably had not yet begun his twisted pursuit of immortality.

Orochimaru walked around the sand table and slowly approached Qian Ye.

"You said Rasa attacked your supply convoy?"

Orochimaru's voice was soft, yet it carried a pressure that made Qian Ye's scalp tingle.

Qian Ye quickly nodded and gave a rapid account of the encounter.

Naturally, he concealed the part about killing the Sunagakure Chunin and blasting apart the pursuers with a rocket launcher.

"Captain Jiro used the Great Fireball Technique to burn open a path and told me to run back with the warning."

"I was the farthest away. I didn't even dare look back—I just ran straight to the outpost."

Qian Ye made the story as heartfelt as possible and even squeezed out two tears.

Orochimaru listened in silence, his golden pupils sweeping back and forth over Qian Ye.

"A squad of more than a dozen people, and even the Chunin died."

Orochimaru suddenly chuckled.

"And Rasa's elite subordinates let a civilian Genin who had just graduated escape?"

Cold sweat instantly broke out across Qian Ye's back.

He knew such a clumsy lie would never fool Orochimaru.

This was one of Hidden Leaf's sharpest minds.

"I... I don't know either."

Qian Ye simply pretended to be confused.

"One Sunagakure ninja was chasing me, but halfway through, he stepped on an Explosive Tag trap that someone had buried."

"He was blown straight into the air, and that was how I barely managed to survive."

Qian Ye forcefully pinned the rocket's explosion on a nonexistent trap.

There were no witnesses left alive, so he could make up whatever he wanted.

Orochimaru stared at Qian Ye for a full ten seconds.

The silence inside the tent was suffocating.

Just as Qian Ye thought he was about to be dragged off for dissection, Orochimaru looked away.

"Luck is also part of one's strength."

Orochimaru turned and gave a loud order to the adjutant outside the tent.

"Pass down the order. The entire Third Outpost is to enter maximum alert!"

"Notify the Kikyo Pass front line that the supplies have been cut off. Tell them to prepare for Sunagakure's main force!"

The adjutant immediately left to carry out the orders.

Orochimaru waved a hand, signaling for the guards to take Qian Ye away.

"Take him to the medical unit and treat his wounds."

Meanwhile, in the dense forest outside Kikyo Pass,

night had fully fallen, and the forest was deathly silent.

Rasa stood with his arms crossed atop the Gold Dust Disc hovering in midair.

His expression was extremely grim.

A full two hours had passed since the supply convoy had been wiped out.

The elite subordinate assigned to pursue that Hidden Leaf Genin had still not returned to report.

A Sunagakure jonin in a khaki flak jacket leaped several times before landing on a branch below Rasa.

"Lord Rasa, we searched every area within ten miles, but found no trace of him."

The jonin dropped to one knee, his voice carrying a trace of unease.

Rasa snorted coldly, and the temperature around them seemed to plunge to freezing.

"An hour?"

The nearby Sunagakure ninjas all lowered their heads, not daring to make a sound.

This was indeed too strange.

No matter how fast that Hidden Leaf Genin had run, he could not possibly have completely shaken off an elite tracker.

Unless the one tracking him was already dead.

Rasa controlled the Gold Dust Disc as it slowly descended.

"Lead the way. Let's check the direction he pursued."

The group moved swiftly through the forest and soon arrived at the spot where Qian Ye had fired the rocket.

The sight before them made every Sunagakure ninja suck in a breath.

A massive charred crater over ten meters wide lay across the middle of the forest.

More than a dozen towering trees around it had been snapped in half, their broken surfaces covered in scorch marks.

The earth had been turned over in several layers, and an extremely pungent smell of smoke filled the air.

Rasa walked to the edge of the crater, crouched down, and grabbed a handful of blackened soil.

Mixed within it were scraps of flesh and shattered fragments of a forehead protector's metal plate.

These were the only traces left behind by the elite pursuer.

"Lord Rasa, is... is this an Explosive Tag trap?"

The jonin beside him was trembling as he spoke.

Rasa stood up, brushed the dirt from his hands, and his gaze turned razor-sharp.

"This wasn't an Explosive Tag. Explosive Tags don't leave behind this smell, nor can they cause such concentrated destruction."

"Hidden Leaf either had a large force lying in ambush here, or used some new type of ninja tool we know nothing about."

Rasa rapidly replayed the entire incident in his mind.

That Hidden Leaf Genin had deliberately exposed his tracks and lured Rasa's subordinate into pursuit.

Then he had launched a fatal strike here.

Not even a complete corpse remained, which meant the attack's power had been absurdly great.

Most importantly, that Genin had definitely already delivered the intelligence to Hidden Leaf's Third Outpost.

"Orochimaru surely knows by now that the supply line has been cut off."

Rasa turned and looked in the direction of Kikyo Pass.

The original plan had been to cut off the supplies tonight, then launch a surprise attack on the Kikyo Pass defense line at dawn tomorrow.

They would catch Hidden Leaf off guard and tear open the defensive line in one stroke.

But now that the intelligence had leaked and Hidden Leaf was prepared, the surprise attack had lost its meaning.

If they continued waiting, Orochimaru would surely mobilize even more troops to reinforce the front line.

By then, Sunagakure's army would be dragged into a hard battle and might even be surrounded in return.

"We can't wait any longer."

Rasa's voice carried through the night, filled with resolute killing intent.

"Pass down the order to the entire army! Abandon the concealed formation!"

"All combat units are to assemble immediately and launch a full-scale assault on Hidden Leaf's defense line at Kikyo Pass!"

Several Sunagakure jonin immediately accepted the order and vanished into the forest like dark shadows.

Rasa stepped back onto the Gold Dust Disc and rose into the air.

Massive amounts of gold dust poured from the gourd on his back, spiraling through the night sky.

"Orochimaru, so what if you're prepared?"

"Before absolute power, Hidden Leaf's defense line is destined to be buried beneath the yellow sands."

A violent wind suddenly rose, and endless yellow sand, carrying a chilling aura of slaughter, swept toward Kikyo Pass.