Plan to Defeat Minato Namikaze

Minato Namikaze finished speaking, tipped his feet, and soared into the air, landing on the thick trunk of a large tree a hundred steps away.

He pulled down a branch behind him and tied three bells to it in succession, leaving a gap of one meter between each bell.

A forest breeze blew, and like wind chimes, the sound carried very far.

"The bells are on the tree behind me. It depends on what methods you use to defeat me and snatch these three bells. As long as you are ready, you can make a move at any time."

The four of them exchanged a glance, and each could see the eager anticipation in the others.

"Watch this!!"

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!!"

Obito created a clone, held a kunai in a reverse grip, and took the lead in charging toward Minato in the tree.

Seeing him suddenly make a move, Long Ye and the other two had no other choice and immediately swarmed forward.

Minato sat down in the tree, took out a kunai from his waist, but instead of using it for an attack, he slashed it toward his own feet.

There was a rope the same color as the tree trunk there.

The rope was cut, and with a series of piercing whooshes, hundreds and thousands of kunai shot out from a hidden location.

The four charging up crashed head-on into the curtain of rain formed by the kunai.

"There's a trap!!"

Obito charged at the very front and was the first to encounter the kunai rain.

Long Ye and the others didn't notice, but facing the danger, Obito's left eye suddenly turned red, and a tomoe appeared in his pupil.

The One-Tomoe Sharingan possessed the ability to see through movements and trajectories.

No one knew when he had awakened it.

Obito and his clone used kunai to block while relying on the Sharingan to make clever dodges.

However, the attack of this kunai rain was too dense, and the clone was stabbed and vanished with a puff of smoke in the span of a single breath.

The momentum of the four was blocked.

Yet the flying kunai did not decrease; instead, they showed a trend of becoming more and more numerous.

Busy dodging, they did not notice that Minato had cut a second rope with a kunai, which was why the attack was endless and unceasing.

"Without organization, without coordination, relying only on brute force to try and snatch the bells, the four of you are too naive. Could it really be that easy?"

Seeing the four struggling to hold on and even being forced into repeated retreats, Minato revealed a smug smile, as if his scheme had succeeded.

"Fall back first!"

Long Ye shouted.

Sensing the opportunity early and seeing that brute force was impossible, Kakashi batted away a few flying kunai, turned, leaped onto a large tree, and bolted into the distance.

Long Ye and Rin followed closely behind.

Because Obito had charged the fiercest, he ended up lagging at the back when fleeing.

The four escaped the attack range of the kunai, and Minato's leisurely voice drifted over from behind:

"Remember, you are going to participate in the Chunin Ninja Exams. If you can't even pass this test of mine, the first round of preliminaries will inevitably end in defeat because of a lack of cooperation..."

Somewhere in the woods.

Except for Kakashi, the other three looked somewhat disheveled.

Even though Minato had made the blades of the kunai in the trap blunt to prevent the group from getting injured, the few of them were still poked all over with pinpricks of blood from the indiscriminate attack, which was like hornets leaving their nest.

"How perilous! Fortunately, it's Teacher Minato's trial. If we ran into enemies and accidentally got caught in a death trap like the one just now, getting away wouldn't be this easy."

Obito said with lingering fear.

"Isn't that because you're too useless, foolishly throwing your body forward? If you don't die, who will? Because of this mess you made, I didn't even get a chance to use ninjutsu."

Kakashi made no attempt to hide his sarcasm.

"Kakashi, it's bad enough that you're incompetent, but you still want to shift the blame onto me. How shameless..."

"Ah, alright, alright, stop arguing you two. Our primary task now is to figure out a way to beat back Teacher Minato and snatch the three bells."

Long Ye nodded. "Rin is right. If we don't have any confidence in defeating Lord Minato through single combat, we can only cooperate with each other."

"Teacher Minato is too strong. In our Shinobi World, he's known as the Yellow Flash. Enemies often die without even knowing how they died. There's no way the four of us are his opponents."

Obito took the lead in voicing his opinion.

Long Ye nodded. "That's true. We know it, and Lord Minato naturally knows it too. After all, this is just a trial, and I believe he will definitely control his power within a certain range. At the end of the day, his goal is just to test our cooperation as much as possible..."

Listening to this, the others secretly felt it made sense and all nodded, their confidence instantly picking up.

Kakashi said, "Conventional methods are hard to pull off. We can only disrupt his footing, so we must destroy the tree he's on, and it's best to separate the three bells so that our chances of success are greater."

Long Ye nodded in agreement.

"This requires a detailed arrangement, detailed from start to finish, including the ninjutsu each person performs and the effect of each ninjutsu. If it doesn't achieve the expected effect, how the people behind can make up for it so the plan can continue to be pushed forward until we succeed..."

The four huddled together and began a lengthy discussion.

Two hours later.

"Hahahaha, great! As long as we all follow the plan, in my view, it's foolproof. What are we waiting for? Let's make a move?"

Obito could not quite suppress his excitement.

Long Ye looked at the sky.

It was just turning noon.

"Waiting for people is the most aggravating thing. Lord Minato must be waiting bitterly for us to go over. Since that's the case, we might as well let him wait a little longer and not act until dusk falls and the sky grows slightly dim."

Hearing this, Obito showed a puzzled expression.

Kakashi nodded. "When people are irritated, they are most likely to throw out conventional rules. The arrangements he made targeting us won't necessarily all be used then."

Long Ye said, "Anyway, in a situation where the enemy is strong and we are weak, acting under the cover of dusk is always the right choice."

"What you guys are saying sounds pretty profound. Although it doesn't look like there's much difference to me, since you've said so, let's do it this way. I might as well sleep."

Obito jumped up onto a tree, found a comfortable spot, and narrowed his eyes.

In stark contrast to him was Kakashi. He was a bona fide genius, yet he worked harder than the average person.

Over and over again, he painstakingly practiced a set of hand seals in order to perform the required ninjutsu in the shortest time and most effective manner during the upcoming operation.

"Long Ye, I saw your arm get scratched by a kunai just now. Let me treat it for you."

Rin came to Long Ye's side and said in a soft voice.

"It's fine, it's nothing."

Among the four, Long Ye's body had been poked and injured by kunai the most.

The original owner of this body came from a very small, nameless village and hadn't even managed to cultivate chakra before; his physical fitness was quite average.

And ever since he took over, cultivation had only just begun for less than a year, so his body's agility, reaction speed, and other qualities naturally couldn't compare to people like Kakashi and Obito, who came from prominent clans and had been training since childhood.