"Hmph, suit yourself."
Although Sasuke said Naruto could do as he pleased, his eyes blazed with fighting spirit. Clearly, he was thinking the same thing as Naruto.
Following behind them, Sakura watched Naruto and Sasuke's backs and felt a pang of bitterness. She kept feeling that those two had left her far behind.
Just after Sasuke answered Naruto, a fierce gale struck them from the side.
"Wind Release? Is it a ninja from Sunagakure?"
Facing the gale, Sasuke immediately threw two shuriken, driving them deep into the trees. Using the wind's momentum, he scooped Sakura up. Meanwhile, Naruto used the Shadow Clone Technique. Although the gale blew him away, one of his clones caught hold of a tree, and several more linked together to keep his real body safe.
In the end, Sasuke and the others foiled the enemy's attempt to separate them with the gale. Several trees had snapped in the wind, but the three of them remained together.
"You certainly reacted quickly."
Once Sasuke and the others had steadied themselves, a woman wearing a conical hat and a Kusagakure forehead protector, with long, straight black hair, stuck out her tongue and licked her lower lip.
This was none other than Orochimaru, whom Mitaraishi Anko had been desperately searching for. He had stolen a female Kusagakure ninja's face to disguise himself. His real reason for entering the second round of the Chunin Ninja Exams was to test Sasuke's potential. If Sasuke showed enough promise, Orochimaru would consider making him the next vessel for his Living Corpse Reincarnation.
Living Corpse Reincarnation was a forbidden technique Orochimaru had developed. Its core principle was to achieve immortality by taking over other people's bodies. The greater the potential of the body, the higher the ceiling of Orochimaru's strength would become.
Back when Orochimaru