With a flash of golden light, Naruto used Flying Thunder God to leave his position and escape Rasa's attack range.
I might die here.
The thought coiled around Rasa's mind in an instant, like an icy venomous snake.
Neither the blazing sunlight nor the scorching sand could dispel the chill rising from the depths of his heart.
Orochimaru stood opposite him. Though older now and past his prime, his cold, sinister, unfathomable aura-and the undisguised look in his golden, serpentine eyes, as though he were appraising a "precious specimen"-put Rasa under immense pressure.
But the blond young man frightened him even more.
That elusive Flying Thunder God Technique, that blindingly fast flurry of surprise sword strikes linked together with suffocating fluidity, kept replaying in his mind.
For a moment, the dazzling desert sunlight seemed to warp space and time. The striking figure with blond hair and blue eyes, wielding a specially made kunai and flashing across the battlefield like a streak of gold, overlapped with a figure he had glimpsed twenty years ago-one brief glimpse that had been enough to stay with him for life!
The same blond hair, the same blue eyes, the same Flying Thunder God!
Twenty years ago, that legend had swept through the Shinobi World with his masterful Space-Time Ninjutsu, Flying Thunder God, ascending to the seat of "Fourth Martial Arts Alliance Leader" at a young age and striking terror into countless enemies at the mere mention of his name.
Minato Namikaze!
It's him... it has to be him!
Rasa's heart pounded. In a brief lull in the life-and-death struggle, a deeper terror seized him.
Didn't Minato Namikaze die back then?
Could he... have secretly left behind a son born after his death?
The conjecture exploded in his mind like a thunderclap.
*No wonder Konoha was