Gaara's challenge! You're not worthy!

Zuo Hao stood at the mouth of the alley, looking at the three of them, his gaze settling on Gaara.

Gaara spoke. "Sahiro Uchiha, I challenge you."

"A challenge?" As though he had heard something amusing, Zuo Hao's lips curved slightly. "Why should I accept?"

Gaara's brow furrowed. He had not expected such a blunt refusal.

Zuo Hao raised an eyebrow. "You're not worthy of fighting me."

As those words fell, the air in the alley seemed to vanish for an instant.

The look in Gaara's eyes changed.

What had been a cold, faintly bloodthirsty gaze became a lit fuse, swiftly erupting into a violent frenzy.

Chakra began spilling uncontrollably from his body. Pebbles at his feet slowly floated into the air despite the lack of wind, and a harsh, bloody scent of sand spread through the alley.

"What did you say?" Gaara's voice sank so low it seemed to be forced up from deep underground. "Say that again. I dare you."

Temari and Kankuro stepped back almost simultaneously.

They knew their younger brother all too well. Every time he wore that expression, someone was about to bleed.

"Gaara, calm down! We're in Konoha!" Temari cried urgently.

But Gaara did not listen at all. His body had already begun to change.

Sand spilled from the mouth of his gourd, slowly winding around his arms and neck like a shifting suit of armor taking shape.

The chakra inside him swelled abruptly, carrying a powerful, beastlike presence.

"I'm going to kill you..." Gaara said each word slowly, his voice taking on an inhuman rasp. "I'll make you realize... what you just said was the stupidest thing you've ever said in your life."

Temari and Kankuro's expressions had changed completely.

They knew that once Gaara entered that state, even Lord Kazekage's orders were useless.

Yet Zuo Hao did not move.

He did not even take a step back.

He merely tilted his head slightly and fixed Gaara with a single glare from his Three-Tomoe Sharingan.

An invisible surge of mental power poured from those eyes, piercing Gaara's mind as gently as a fingertip.

"What?!!!"

Gaara's body violently stiffened.

The strand of tailed beast chakra surging out of him stopped abruptly, as though something had forcibly cut it off at the source.

And deep within him, Shukaku the One-Tail, who had been about to awaken with a roar, suddenly... fell silent.

It was as though a far more powerful being had pinned his head down.

Gaara's pupils contracted sharply, and every muscle in his body tightened in a spasm.

Shukaku inside him, that eternally savage, uncontrollable sand monster, was being forcibly hypnotized.

After struggling briefly, Shukaku's consciousness sank completely into slumber.

"You... what did you do...?"

"No... impossible... that's the monster..." Kankuro's voice barely squeezed past his throat. His pupils shrank to pinpoints, and his face turned white as paper.

Temari said nothing. Her lips trembled slightly.

The two stood as though rooted to the spot, forgetting even how to breathe.

What had they just witnessed?

A Konoha Genin had sent the enormous monster inside Gaara to sleep with a single glance.

This was the Tailed Beast's jinchūriki whom no one in Sunagakure had been able to subdue for years, a monster even their father, the Kazekage, could only deal with through sealing.

Yet this boy who had walked out of a barbecue restaurant had suppressed him with just one look.

That was the power of the Sharingan, the bloodline power passed down through generations of the Uchiha Clan, the forbidden power Konoha called the strongest genjutsu.

Kankuro swallowed and finally found his voice. "He... that look... subdued the monster..."

Zuo Hao regarded Gaara coldly.

"I already told you. You're not worthy of fighting me. Your power comes from that monster. And in my eyes, that monster is nothing more than a grain of sand before the Sharingan."

So powerful! Far too powerful!

How was this a Genin?!

He was clearly a Kage Level fighter!

Temari and Kankuro were utterly stunned!

Temari's hand trembled incessantly around her Three-Star Fan. As she looked at the calm-faced boy before her, a chill suddenly shot from the soles of her feet up her spine.

At some point, Kankuro's puppet strings had fallen to the ground. His palms were slick with sweat, and his legs felt as heavy as lead.

He swallowed hard, his voice as dry as though his throat were filled with sand. "Is he really a Genin?"

"What do you think?" Temari's voice was even drier than his.

She practically had to force her eyes to turn toward the boy named Zuo Hao.

Zuo Hao stood where he was without the slightest trace of chakra leaking from his body, as though everything that had just happened had been an illusion.

His Three-Tomoe Sharingan slowly completed a rotation, then returned to normal, revealing his deep, pitch-black eyes.

Yet in those seemingly ordinary black eyes, Temari felt she could see something more terrifying than a Tailed Beast: the ease and composure of someone in absolute control.

"Gaara... hasn't woken up yet?" Kankuro asked shakily.

Temari lowered her head. At the sight of Gaara's condition, her pupils contracted sharply again.

Zuo Hao lightly brushed nonexistent dust from his cuff. From beginning to end, his gaze had barely lingered on Gaara.

He spoke again. "You three, go back where you came from. The Chunin Ninja Exams aren't over yet. If you want to fight, wait until you're in the arena."

"But..." He suddenly paused, leaving them with one offhand remark. "The next time you want to challenge me, at least learn how to stop relying on that monster first."

His footsteps grew steadily more distant.

The alley remained silent for a long time.

Only after those footsteps had completely disappeared around the corner did Gaara suddenly sway, his knee buckling as he dropped to one knee.

"Gaara!" Temari and Kankuro rushed to him together.

"Are you all right? What happened to you?!" Clear anxiety had crept into Kankuro's voice.

Gaara kept his head lowered, the red hair hanging over his forehead hiding his expression.

After a long while, he finally forced a few words through clenched teeth. His voice was low and hoarse, filled with a profound awe he had never felt before. "Just now... I felt it."

"What?" Temari asked urgently.

"Death." Gaara raised his eyes. For the first time, something bordering on fear appeared in them. "That person's eyes... made the monster inside me fear him."

After those two sentences, he said nothing more.

Temari and Kankuro both parted their lips slightly, but no words came out.

From that day onward, there was one more name they never wanted to face in the Chunin Ninja Exams.

Zuo Hao returned home and continued immersing himself in his training in silence.

Night deepened, and all was still. Suddenly, a soft call roused him from his meditation.

"Zuo Hao... Zuo Hao..."

It was Ino's voice.

Zuo Hao frowned slightly and murmured to himself, "It's so late. What could Ino want with me...? Never mind. I'd better go out and see."