After the Third Hokage finished explaining the true purpose of the Chunin Ninja Exams, Gekko Hayate took over as the examiner for the third stage.
With too many participants remaining, preliminaries had to be held before the official matches. Contestants would enter as individuals, and just as Might Guy had said, there would be no room for shortcuts.
Before the individual matches began, everyone had one chance to withdraw. A silver-haired young man wearing glasses raised his hand and dropped out.
Madara looked at the young man and smiled to himself.
Kabuto Yakushi was a spy Danzo had trained and later discarded, but he had ultimately come to serve Orochimaru. The young man had left an impression on Madara in his previous life, too. He was the one who had resurrected Madara through Impure World Reincarnation. Without his help, someone of Obito's caliber might not have been able to cause such an uproar.
All things considered, he was certainly talented. He was also on Madara's list of people to recruit, so Madara was naturally pleased to see him here.
Even if Kabuto had yet to reach the strength he possessed in Madara's previous life, winning an exam like this would surely have been child's play for him.
He must have withdrawn to conceal his strength. Still, Orochimaru himself was here, which was probably another reason Kabuto had left.
Otogakure's supervising jōnin was a pale-skinned, black-haired man. With Orochimaru's skills, as long as he did not use chakra, even his former teacher, Hiruzen Sarutobi, could not see through his disguise. Madara Uchiha's eyes, however, could see through everything.
The prey Madara had set his sights on had come right to him. If it had not been inconvenient to act now, he would have loved to bundle those two up, imprison them,