Chapter 36: Sunagakure’s Pakura

Chapter 36: Chapter 36: Sunagakure’s Pakura

On a high cliff.

The four members of ANBU Team 11 stood or crouched along the edge of the cliff, all of them gazing toward the towering palace in the distance.

At the moment, the priestess’s palace was protected by a barrier as thin as a cicada’s wing. The terracotta soldier puppets surrounding it seemed unable to enter the barrier and could only pack themselves around the palace in layer after layer.

Seeing this, Kakashi let out a long breath of relief.

"Looks like the shrine maiden’s palace hasn’t fallen yet. We still have a chance!"

Guy hurriedly asked, "But with so many terracotta soldier puppets outside, how are we supposed to get in?"

Kakashi turned toward Hyuga Kagami.

"Kagami, can you find a route into the palace?"

Hyuga Kagami shook his head.

He had already examined the area thoroughly. The priestess’s palace was completely surrounded on all sides by the terracotta soldier puppets, without a single gap or blind spot left open.

Shisui said gravely, "Looks like our only choice is to force our way through!"

Forcing their way through was obviously not going to be easy.

Team 11 had already fought these terracotta soldier puppets several times before. Although they were incredibly clumsy, every single one possessed tremendous strength. Once they formed up into a proper formation, fighting them head-on in a positional battle would be extremely troublesome.

Hyuga Kagami, who had been surveying the surroundings, suddenly pointed toward a high cliff opposite them.

"Quick, look over there!"

Everyone followed his finger and saw several figures appear atop the opposite cliff. Judging by their clothing and equipment, they seemed to be shinobi from Sunagakure.

As the team captain, Kakashi pondered for a moment before saying, "They should be reinforcements sent by Sunagakure. Maybe we can work together with them, break through the terracotta soldier puppets’ encirclement, and enter the priestess’s palace."

Their common enemy right now was a demon from another realm, so under these circumstances, no one had any objections to cooperating with Sunagakure. They all nodded in agreement with Kakashi’s proposal.

Before long, the two groups met up.

Sunagakure had also sent a four-man squad to reinforce the priestess. Their leader was named Pakura, a Scorch Release kekkei genkai shinobi whose fame in Sunagakure was second only to the Fourth Kazekage. She was exceptionally powerful.

Kakashi stepped forward and exchanged a few words with Pakura, and the two quickly reached an agreement.

The vanguard would be led by the two captains, Kakashi and Pakura.

The middle would consist of the three Sunagakure shinobi and Guy.

Hyuga Kagami and Shisui would bring up the rear.

Once the formation was settled, the breakthrough operation began immediately.

Chiiii—!

A sharp, piercing screech rang out, sounding almost like the cry of a thousand birds!

Despite his relatively small stature, Kakashi took the lead, charging straight into the formation of terracotta soldier puppets like a spear wreathed in flashing lightning.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Amid a rapid succession of explosions, terracotta soldier puppets toppled one after another.

At that moment, Kakashi displayed the Chidori’s penetrating power to its fullest. In practically the blink of an eye, his lightning-clad figure had already torn through five or six layers of the terracotta soldiers’ formation.

Pakura, following close behind, immediately formed hand seals when Kakashi began to lose momentum and shouted,

"Scorch Style: Five Wheels of Fire!"

Five fireballs circled around Pakura as though they possessed minds of their own, scorching the surrounding terracotta soldier puppets until they cracked and shattered, further tearing open their formation.

At the center of the group, the three Sunagakure shinobi simultaneously unleashed a ninjutsu.

"Earth Style: Earth-Style Wall!"

In an instant, two earthen walls surged up from beneath the ground, shielding the corridor Kakashi and Pakura had forcibly carved through the enemy ranks and creating a temporary safe passage through the terracotta soldiers’ formation.

At the very rear of the group, Hyuga Kagami said to Shisui, "Move to the middle. I can handle the rear by myself."

Knowing Hyuga Kagami’s strength, Shisui didn’t waste time arguing. He knew that he wasn’t particularly suited to clashing head-on with these terracotta soldier puppets, so he quickened his pace and left the rear of the formation.

Now alone at the very back, Hyuga Kagami activated his Tenseigan to its fullest.

In his eyes, every attack launched by the terracotta soldier puppets became like individual frames from a movie suffering from severe frame drops.

Aside from occasionally using Rotation once or twice when an attack was truly unavoidable, the terracotta soldier puppets posed virtually no threat to him at all.

Through fighting the terracotta soldier puppets at close range, Hyuga Kagami keenly noticed that the chakra within every single one of them was exactly the same. It was obvious that all of it originated from the same source—and that source gave off an overwhelmingly evil and violent feeling.

"If the source of this chakra is that otherworldly demon, Mōryō, then..."

At that thought, Hyuga Kagami inwardly shook his head.

Chakra with such an evil and violent nature was obviously unsuitable as the chakra source for an artificial tailed beast.

And so, he crossed Mōryō off his list of candidates.

Although the two shinobi squads numbered only eight people altogether, nearly every one of them was an elite from their respective hidden villages. Pakura, in particular, was already a member of Sunagakure’s upper leadership.

As a result, it didn’t take the combined squad much effort to completely break through the terracotta soldier puppets’ encirclement and safely enter the palace protected by the barrier.

The moment the combined squad entered, the guards defending the palace erupted into cheers.

With the demon’s descent, the priestess of the Land of Demons had naturally become its foremost target. Because of this, the palace guards hadn’t dared relax for even a moment over the past several days.

Now, seeing yet another group of powerful reinforcements arrive, the guards who had been shrouded in anxiety and fear naturally burst into joyous celebration.

Inside the palace.

The priestess sat upon a cushion, her face filled with worry.

Beside her was a little girl just over a year old. The child looked remarkably similar to the priestess sitting on the cushion and appeared to be her daughter.

Off to one side stood a squad of Iwagakure shinobi.

Clearly, the Iwagakure shinobi had arrived here before Team 11. Moreover, every member of the squad carried themselves with their noses in the air, looking exceedingly arrogant and unruly.

The instant Hyuga Kagami laid eyes on those Iwagakure shinobi, his temper flared.

They were none other than the group of Iwagakure shinobi who had ambushed Hyuga Kagami outside Konoha when he was escorting wounded shinobi back to the village.

That incident had been one of the closest brushes with death Hyuga Kagami had experienced throughout the entire war.

Had the jōnin reinforcements from the village arrived even a moment later, Hyuga Kagami would have ended up like the vast majority of the people in his squad—dying an utterly frustrating death only a few miles from the village.

Afterward, Hyuga Kagami had deliberately looked into this extraordinarily powerful and audacious squad of Iwagakure shinobi. He learned that they were one of the units belonging to Iwagakure’s infamous Beheading Unit.

At the same time, the Iwagakure shinobi were sizing up the newly arrived reinforcements as well.

Pakura of Sunagakure needed no introduction. During the war, she had been one of Sunagakure’s representative figures and belonged among the most famous shinobi in the entire shinobi world.

Thus, the captain of Iwagakure’s Beheading Unit simply passed over Pakura and the other Sunagakure shinobi. Instead, he turned his attention toward the four members of ANBU Team 11 and sneered sarcastically,

"Hmph. Konoha only sent a few brats like you here to die? Looks like Konoha really has fallen that far."

Among the members of Team 11, even the oldest were only around fourteen or fifteen years old, while the younger Shisui was merely eleven or twelve.

So in terms of stature, they really were noticeably smaller than the shinobi from Iwagakure and Sunagakure.

Hyuga Kagami coldly shot back,

"You’d better watch yourself. Wouldn’t want you to accidentally die at the hands of one of these brats."

Had the provocation come from anyone else, Hyuga Kagami might not even have bothered responding.

But faced with the Iwagakure Beheading Unit that had once come within a hair’s breadth of killing him, he simply couldn’t keep his temper in check.

The Iwagakure captain, standing with his arms folded across his chest, immediately darkened.

"Brat, are you looking to die?!"