"The Cursed Seal? So this is the power of Sage Mode!" Sasuke gently touched the Cursed Seal Orochimaru had placed on his neck.
He could not help becoming increasingly obsessed with this power.
And that played right into Orochimaru's plan.
Before this, Sasuke might still have been wary of the Cursed Seal's power, but after witnessing the might of Uchiha Sora's Sage Mode, he would likely find it easier to accept.
As long as Sasuke accepted this power, everything that followed would be much easier.
That was what Orochimaru thought to himself.
Meanwhile, on the battlefield, Uchiha Sora sensed everything around him.
Suddenly, he spotted a mass of puppet fragments piled together amid some rubble.
The instant he looked over, a dark figure shot out of the pile.
It was the Third Kazekage Puppet!
Sasori of the Red Sands, meanwhile, had hidden far away inside the belly of another salamander puppet and remained unharmed.
Since Sasori of the Red Sands had kept his distance, it was hardly surprising that the Rasenshuriken had not overwhelmed him.
What he had not expected was that the Third Kazekage Puppet had survived as well.
Looking at the piled-up fragments, Uchiha Sora more or less understood why.
Apparently, when the Rasenshuriken erupted, Sasori had placed a large number of puppets in front of the Third Kazekage Puppet, shielding it from the massive burst of energy.
After all, the Third Kazekage Puppet was Sasori's proudest creation among all his puppets. He could not let it be destroyed so easily.
Compared to the Third Kazekage Puppet, the puppets summoned through Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets were far less important.
Almost all of those puppets had been destroyed in the blast.
Now, as Sasori of the Red Sands looked at the hundred-odd puppets destroyed in