Chapter 254: The Battle Gradually Heats Up
Sasori's eyes narrowed slightly, his long, thick eyelashes touching.
His gaze fell to Sakura's right. The Kazekage puppet, under his control, had already rushed to the girl's side like a shooting star and had raised its right hand, revealing the pipe in its palm.
At the same time as Sakura was blocking the iron spikes and poison needles, the third wave of attacks had already closed in on the girl's side.
Poison gas.
Hiss— A thick, poisonous mist sprayed out at high speed from the puppet's palm, rapidly spreading across the clearing, and soon it had enveloped Sakura!
Its deathly green color hinted at its danger. With just one look, Sakura knew that its toxicity was extremely strong and that she absolutely could not come into contact with it. Otherwise, the consequences would be unimaginable!
More importantly, it was spreading through the air, surging over from all directions. The Water Formation Wall was too late to protect her!
In a flash, Sakura's fingers swayed slightly. Her chakra smoothly turned into Ice Style chakra. Her Frost Armor, which had originally only covered the vital points of her chest and abdomen, grew crazily under the spur of her chakra and soon spread over her entire body, covering her exposed skin and head.
Because she had been to Shikkotsu Forest several times, she cast this move extremely quickly. The full-coverage armor wrapped her tightly, blocking the poison gas outside.
The girl, clad in full armor, had a different kind of valiant and heroic charm, like a warrior. However, this handsome scene was clearly not something Sakura or Sasori was in the mood to slowly admire.
Sasori just sneered.
These three consecutive moves, if it hadn't been for Sakura's extremely fast casting speed and power, any other ordinary Jonin would probably have been turned into a hornet's nest by now. Even an elite Jonin would probably not have come out of it well.
This was the combat rhythm of a Kage-level, so fast it was suffocating. The wave after wave of attacks simply wouldn't give the opponent a chance to rest. The puppet master's endless mechanisms, the insidious tricks hidden at the edge of one's vision, the diverse attack methods, and the super-powerful ninjutsu were just the tip of the iceberg of Sasori's strength. The moment he got a little serious, he was suffocatingly strong.
However, this was just a warm-up.
The move Sasori used next was his final trump card!
While controlling the Kazekage puppet to spray the poison mist, he had leaped high into the air, standing on the iron sand floating in the air.
Click.
Sasori activated the first scroll on his back. He looked down on Haruno Sakura at his feet, his hands raised straight up—
"Secret Technique: Flame Prison Strike Formation!"
Haruno Sakura, who was still in the poison mist, suddenly raised her head. She keenly sensed a vast amount of chakra gathering in the air.
Sakura subconsciously formed hand seals, "Ice Style—"
Then, a scorching heatwave came from the front.
The girl looked intently and saw a huge, surging fireball, as tall as a building of several floors, spraying out from both of Sasori's hands and descending from the sky!
The raging fireball, its momentum fierce to the extreme, its super-high temperature instantly evaporated the several-meter-thick Water Formation Wall. Even covered in the ice armor, Sakura could still feel that scorching heat.
From a distance of over a hundred meters, the moment the fireball fell, Sakura and Sasori exchanged a look, their gazes meeting in mid-air.
The pair of light green eyes that Sasori saw were as cold and calm as a pool of water, without a trace of panic.
"—Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals!"
And in the next moment, the spot where the girl had been standing was enveloped by the fireball.
BOOM—!
The crimson fireball exploded with a roar, sending out a wave of fire, which spread out on the ground into a ring of fire several hundred meters in diameter!
"Did I hit her?"
Sasori watched as the ring of fire spread out at his feet, scorching the earth and rocks to a charred black, burning everything in its path to ashes, but there was no sign of Sakura. He raised his willow-leaf-like, slender eyebrows.
He didn't believe that Sakura would be finished off by his ninjutsu so silently... When their eyes had met just now, that pair of clear, bright eyes had not shown the slightest fear of his secret technique.
However, she had not cast a defensive ninjutsu, nor had she shown any sign of using a Substitution Jutsu—and the range of a Substitution Jutsu was too short to be of any use in dodging such a large-scale attack.
Sasori's gaze quickly swept over the ground. Paired with his chakra perception, his gaze soon stopped in the distance, discovering the girl who was standing on a block of ice in the river.
How did she dodge that?
Sasori shifted his gaze to what was under Sakura's feet. This Body Flicker of hers is quite good... so why didn't she use this move at the beginning?
This question only flashed through the mind of this youth—or rather, this handsome uncle—whose appearance was even more delicate than a girl's. He quickly returned his attention to Sakura's body.
The girl stood gracefully. Her light clothes fluttered slightly in the spring breeze, the corners of her clothes flipping up chaotically, revealing a touch of moving white skin. It was just that the chakra condensed on her body was not at all as soft and harmless as her appearance suggested.
She was forming hand seals.
While Sasori was attacking, he had also exposed a lot of his intelligence. His puppet techniques, the human puppet's Kekkei Genkai, and his powerful Fire Style. With the opening that the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals had brought her, Sasori had not discovered her at the first moment. Sakura took a breath and began to counterattack.
Sasori's pupils suddenly shrank. The amount of chakra gathering on Sakura's body quickly surged to a level that made even his scalp tingle!
"Water Style: Leviathan's Wrath!"
"Hah!" the girl shouted. The expression on her face tensed. Her pink, long hair flew up with the astonishing chakra circulation. Her hands were raised high into the air!
Behind her, an endless stream of water gushed out from the river, shooting straight into the sky with her hand gestures. A huge amount of river water gathered in the air, condensing into a peerlessly large beast!
This was a modified version of that Ice Style jutsu. If Sakura could use Ice Style to create such a shape transformation, then with Water Style, she was naturally even more proficient.
"Yaa—!" "ROAR—!"
The girl's high-pitched cry and the monster's low, heart-pounding roar sounded one after another. The sound was so loud that even Shino and the other, who were hiding in the distance, couldn't help but be shaken!
"This is that move from last time..." Shino's eyes widened.
No... compared to that move from last time, its presence was even more terrifying.
Ice Style, as a Kekkei Genkai, was more solid than Water Style, and its impact power was also more terrifying. But its consumption was greater.
And the Water Style cast this time, with the advantage of the terrain, was naturally even more majestic!
"Sakura has drained the entire river..." Terumi said in a daze, looking at the behemoth that was hundreds of meters long in the sky.
Below Sakura's feet, the gurgling, clear river water had already completely dried up, revealing the silt-filled riverbed. The black river mud extended for a kilometer up and down, before the cut-off river water could be seen!
"Amazing..." Sasori said, looking at the giant monster above his head, somewhat lost in thought. His gaze swept over the plate armor, bone spikes, and fangs that Sakura had exquisitely carved with her shape transformation, and he finally let out a sincere sigh of admiration.
The Leviathan twisted its ferocious body and looked down at the ground.
Its thick gaze locked onto the tiny figure below it.
"Heh, have a taste of my ninjutsu too..." Haruno Sakura said, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
Then, her hands suddenly swung down, as if she were throwing the ninjutsu out. She controlled the Leviathan to charge down with the force of Mount Tai!
What kind of feeling is it, to have a 300-400 meter long, dark-brown giant beast, its bloody maw wide open, diving down at you?
There's no escape...
Sasori's expression was grave, and the look on his face truly became serious.
The remaining Fire Style energy in his first scroll was extracted by him in one go, turning into an equally huge fireball!
It met the Leviathan.
BOOM—
A heaven-and-earth-shattering blow, like Mars crashing into the Earth, produced a deafening collision sound.
The loud sound, as if the heavens and the earth were about to crack, echoed through the sky and the ground, stirring up a ring of translucent sound waves!
BZZZ—
The sound wave came. Sakura subconsciously covered her ears, but still felt the world spin. She almost couldn't stand, and her ears were ringing.
SPLASH—
The giant beast was blasted into countless splashes and clumps of water, which fell from the sky, turning into a torrential downpour, sometimes mixed with water droplets the size of a washbasin or a carriage.
Sasori landed on the ground. The iron sand had formed an umbrella to protect his head, blocking the raindrops. He just let the Kazekage puppet beside him get drenched by the heavy rain.
He gazed into the distance, at Haruno Sakura, who was standing in the rain without any cover, yet her hair was not wet in the slightest.
The torrential rain gradually weakened and turned into a lingering drizzle.
"You've already drained the nearby river to the point where it's cut off..." he said slowly. "The new water flow is still a kilometer away. Before it arrives, you won't be able to use a ninjutsu of this level again."
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