Orochimaru now understood that although his strength had grown considerably, his close-range defenses were still somewhat lacking. But he could not back down now. He retorted:
"My Summoning Beast is part of my strength, too. If you can't even defeat a Summoning Beast, someone else should take your seat as Kazekage."
With that, Orochimaru directed Manda to charge at the Third Kazekage. Despite his enormous size, Manda was extremely fast, reaching the Third Kazekage in an instant and sweeping his massive tail at him in midair.
Although the Third Kazekage could fly, his body was not particularly agile in flight. Faced with the rapidly approaching tail, he could only gather iron sand beneath his feet as a foothold, then use his own strength to spring away and dodge the strike. The tail scattered the iron sand he had stood on.
The Third Kazekage had barely landed and had no time to check his surroundings before the tail appeared again. This time, he had no time to dodge and could only hastily form an iron sand shield in front of himself.
The next second, the Third Kazekage was sent flying like a cannonball, smashing through countless trees and kicking up clouds of dust.
Seeing their Kazekage sent flying, the Sunagakure Ninja looked worried and hurried to check on him. But just as they started moving, someone faster blocked their path.
It was Ye Feng. He spoke casually:
"You'd better stay here. Fighting one-on-one was your Kazekage's idea. Doing this will only make him a man who breaks his word. If you insist on going over there, then sorry, but we'll have to fight first."
As soon as Ye Feng finished speaking, Minato Namikaze and Tsunade appeared beside him, clearly supporting his decision.
After hearing Ye Feng's words, the Sunagakure Ninja exchanged