Chapter 22: Zabuza's Retreat

Chapter 22: Zabuza's Retreat

BOOM!

The power of Naruto and Sasuke's combination jutsu was in no way inferior to the clash of ninjutsu between the two Jonin just now!

Amidst the roar of the explosion, the fireball enveloped the Demon Brothers with unstoppable momentum. In an instant, a fierce wind kicked up, sending sand and stones flying! The scorching heatwave tore through the thin mist. After the dust settled, all that was left was a shallow, black crater on the ground, with the lifeless bodies of the Demon Brothers lying in it.

The Demon Brothers have been eliminated!

The ninja still hidden on the battlefield should be Haku, Sakura mused. She had used the Substitution Jutsu earlier to hide in the shadows, avoiding Haku's line of sight, to take the opportunity to defeat Zabuza with her Water Gun Jutsu! Leaving the Demon Brothers to Naruto and Sasuke was both to give them a chance at real combat and to have them attract the attention of Zabuza and Haku.

Seeing the Demon Brothers killed, Sakura, hidden in the woods, seized the chance to cast her ninjutsu!

"Water Style: Super Water Gun Jutsu!"

A mass of water containing ultra-high pressure appeared in Sakura's hand. She only needed to open a small gap, and the high-pressure water cutter would shoot out!

At the same time, Sakura also sensed the formation of another ninjutsu beside her!

"Secret Jutsu: A Thousand Flying Water Needles of Death!" a gentle, feminine voice shouted from deep within the woods. Following the fluctuation of chakra, the thick mist rapidly condensed into countless sharp water senbon, appearing in a hemispherical shape around Sakura, the sharp needle tips glinting with a grim light!

Haku hadn't fallen for the trick at all. She didn't care in the slightest whether the Demon Brothers lived or died! Because Haku despised the blood-soaked Demon Brothers and didn't give them a second thought. Instead, it was Sakura, who used the strange water jutsu, that Haku intuitively felt was the most dangerous person! Therefore, upon discovering that Sakura was about to ambush Zabuza, Haku also reacted at the first possible moment!

Haku's interference was half successful.

After several months of uninterrupted practice, Sakura's mastery of the Water Gun Jutsu had improved, and her casting speed was a notch faster than before! Just as Haku's Thousand Flying Needles had barely condensed the mist into a water mass, Sakura had already completed her ninjutsu. A whitish line of water shot out from her hand, killing Zabuza at a speed five times faster than sound!

Using water as a blade, it was invincible! The Water Gun Jutsu should have cleanly killed Zabuza, but Sakura was forced to stop it the moment the Thousand Flying Needles took shape. The dense needles blocked her line of sight, and Kakashi was right next to Zabuza. Unable to see their positions clearly, if she continued to maintain the Water Gun Jutsu, the slightest deviation could have accidentally injured Kakashi!

Damn it! Sakura thought in annoyance, tightly clenching her teeth. If only Haku's ninjutsu had been a little slower, if only Kakashi wasn't right next to Zabuza...!

However, even though the Water Gun Jutsu was only maintained for less than a fraction of a second, it still caused immense damage to Zabuza. The water jet, shot out under ultra-high pressure, sliced a smooth cut from left to right across Zabuza's left arm like cutting tofu. If it had extended just a few more centimeters, it would have cut off Zabuza's entire left arm! In an instant, blood gushed out from the wound!

Intense pain, fear, and shock!

Zabuza had no doubt that if that bizarre and powerful ninjutsu had been maintained for even one more second, he would have become a corpse in two pieces! What was more terrifying was that for such a powerful ninjutsu, its chakra fluctuation was not nearly as strong as a high-level one. When he first sensed the faint fluctuation of a water jutsu, Zabuza had thought it was just a low-level technique and never imagined its killing power would be so strong!

The operation had failed!

Zabuza, with his rich mission experience, realized this immediately. Kakashi alone was enough to put him in a tough fight, not to mention there was an enemy who had mastered a powerful ninjutsu watching from the side like a tiger stalking its prey. Meanwhile, he had used all his trump cards but had gained nothing. Instead, the Demon Brothers were dead, and he himself was seriously injured!

When the Demon Brothers reported the situation last night, Zabuza had immediately deduced that it was Kakashi protecting Tazuna with a few fledgling ninja who had graduated a year at most. He only needed to pay attention to Kakashi; the other three were not even worth mentioning. Zabuza had always looked down on those Konoha ninja who "grew up in a greenhouse." As someone who had emerged from Kirigakure's brutal graduation ceremony, he believed these fledgling birds who had never seen blood were cowards and weaklings. But today, the bloody fact told him the consequences of ignoring these fledglings. The pain in his left arm had shattered his inexplicable sense of superiority!

Savagery and bloodlust do not equal strength!

"Haku, we're retreating!" Zabuza shouted, then dispelled the Water Prison. He tightly clutched his left arm with his right hand, shouldered his decapitating carving knife, and quickly moved away from the battlefield! His pale face, blood-soaked body, and hurried steps made Zabuza's retreating figure look so pathetic!

Before leaving, Zabuza paused for a moment on a tree and took one last deep look in the direction the water jet had come from. The young girl, surrounded by Haku's Thousand Flying Needles, was calmly deploying her own water jutsu, easily blocking Haku's attack. Zabuza immediately recalled the scene where his great sword was stopped by the seemingly weak girl. The pale blue water shield and the girl's confident emerald eyes were deeply imprinted in his mind.

"It seems I'll have to register a new name in my handbook...!"

Zabuza let out a cold laugh, clutched his wound, and pushed off the tree trunk to leap away—the innocent tree was shattered by a water line that came from a distance the moment he leaped away. Then, with a few flashes and leaps through the woods, he left the maximum range of the Water Gun Jutsu and disappeared into the sea of trees.

Sakura watched Zabuza disappear from her sight with a bit of helplessness and also stopped her water cutter, returning to Tazuna's side. I was so close to leaving Zabuza here forever. If this were a game, it would probably count as beating a boss above my level. I would have leveled up several times!

Kakashi leaped from the river onto the clearing. He looked around warily before letting out a long sigh of relief. "Alright, you can relax! They're gone!"

"Let's rest for a bit!" Saying that, Kakashi pulled down his forehead protector to cover his right eye and sat down on the ground with a plop. Continuously using the Sharingan to fight Zabuza had been a huge burden on Kakashi as well. Seeing Zabuza retreat, he also felt a wave of physical and mental fatigue.

Naruto immediately breathed a sigh of relief, but Sasuke looked at Kakashi hesitantly before finally asking, "Kakashi-sensei, why do you have a Sharingan?"

"Eh? Sharingan? What's that?" Naruto asked, completely confused.

"Sharingan!" Sasuke exclaimed, then rarely took the time to explain to Naruto. "It's the eye Kakashi-sensei had just now... People with this eye can use doujutsu, instantly see through taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu with their visual prowess, and copy them to use in a counterattack!"

But... the Sharingan is a bloodline unique to the Uchiha. Even within the clan, only a few have this special constitution! This was a sentence Sasuke didn't say out loud, because Kakashi definitely knew this! He just quietly looked at Kakashi, waiting for an answer.

Kakashi glanced back at Sasuke faintly, then turned his head to look at the distant sky, as if reminiscing about something.

"About this eye, that's a very long story... I'll tell you when I have time! But, I certainly do not have the blood of the Uchiha clan."

Sakura actually knew about this. She had carefully read the Kakashi Gaiden before she transmigrated and knew that Kakashi's eye was Obito's. She had also heard that Obito didn't die later on and even became a villain.

The eyes of the Uchiha rarely spread outside their clan. Kakashi had only managed to keep this Sharingan because of his strong backing. There was also a rumor that this Sharingan had actually held back Kakashi's strength; otherwise, he could have very well become the next White Fang of Konoha. Of course, this was all just gossip Sakura had heard over the years in Konoha. The former was somewhat reliable, while the latter was just baseless speculation.

After hearing Kakashi's answer, Sasuke was clearly not satisfied, but he had nothing more to say. He just frowned and fell silent.

"You guys did great today!" Kakashi said with a smile, seeing Sasuke's low spirits. "The jutsu combination from Naruto and Sasuke just now was brilliant. I never would have thought your combination ninjutsu could have such power!"

"Of course! Look who came up with the idea!" Sakura immediately jumped out, shamelessly taking the credit, a smug look on her face.

"Hmph! You have the nerve to say that...!" Sasuke pursed his lips and said with a look of disdain. "Why don't you tell us which of your ideas, besides this one, has ever been reliable!?"

"Yeah, yeah!" Naruto also kicked him while he was down. "And you always want us to cooperate with your experiments, but they never succeed once!"

Having been exposed, Sakura playfully stuck out her tongue. But this level of embarrassment couldn't penetrate her thick skin! Thanks to coming from an era with a developed internet in her past life, Sakura's mind was full of all kinds of wild ideas. She had some impression of all the unrealistic fantasies and daydreams online, so after transmigrating to the Naruto world, she of course actively tried out these ideas!

The combination ninjutsu that Sasuke and Naruto used today was a concept Sakura had seen online, which said that such a combination could achieve a 1+1 > 2 effect. In the original story, Naruto almost never used elemental ninjutsu, but that didn't mean he couldn't, just that he wasn't good at it. For Naruto, the Rasengan, Shadow Clones, and taijutsu were enough to handle most battles.

It was just that Sakura, as a ninjutsu genius, couldn't stand Naruto's monotonous fighting style and was always trying to find ways to get him to learn a few more ninjutsu. Unfortunately, it wasn't until much later that Sakura understood that it wasn't that no one taught Naruto ninjutsu, but that Naruto disliked ninjutsu that required more than five hand seals! For Naruto's brain, memorizing such complex ninjutsu was quite tiring!

Of course, if the excuse was "teamwork," Naruto was more than happy to contribute his strength.