Blackish-brown sludge churned at the breach in the tunnel.
Orochimaru slid his entire body into the giant python's mouth, hurtling down the sloping Sewage Tunnel.
He only needed to swim a quarter kilometer along this underground pipe to reach the moat outside the village.
Then he would be free as a bird, and no one could stop him.
Chikage stood beside the overturned barbecue grill, his expression dark.
The iron skewers that had been neatly arranged now lay in the muddy water, while the coals hissed and smoked under the sewage.
The plates of sliced premium pork belly on the ground had already been trampled into pulp.
Chikage brushed the dust from the hem of his clothes.
"You smashed my stall, and now you think you can crawl down a sewer and run?"
"Orochimaru, you haven't read a single page of the Special Economic Zone's street management regulations, have you?"
Chikage casually formed a hand seal with his left hand and stomped his right foot onto the shattered paving slab.
Wood Release chakra, fused with the power of his Sage Body, surged through his chakra pathways into the earth.
The ground shook with a thunderous rumble.
The once-hard, level stone pavement burst apart on the spot.
Dozens of dark green roots as thick as buckets erupted from the earth, spreading along the cracks in the ground.
The muddy-brown python, which had reached a bend in the tunnel, sensed the disturbance behind it and lashed its tail, picking up speed.
But the earth overhead suddenly collapsed.
Four or five tough roots pierced through a meter of solid rock and plunged straight into the tunnel.
SquELCH!
A root impaled the python's tail, spraying dark red blood across the rock wall.
The muddy-brown python writhed in agony and threw its jaws wide open.