The whole of Konoha was engulfed in the flames of war, but as the village began to mobilize its forces, the tide of the battle slowly started to turn.
Especially on the outskirts of Konoha, a burly man with long white hair suddenly appeared, descending from the sky with a giant toad and dealing with the giant snakes from Ryuchi Cave in a few swift moves.
That's right, it was Jiraiya. He had secretly returned to Konoha, and seeing someone invading the village, he certainly wasn't going to stand by and watch, especially when the horde of giant snakes clearly belonged to his old friend, Orochimaru.
With Jiraiya handling the giant snakes, the Konoha shinobi had a much easier time.
Meanwhile, Kakashi saw the distress signal from the Hokage Building. The Chunin Exam arena wasn't far from there, so he and Might Guy were the first to arrive on the scene. And there, they saw the one person they least wanted to encounter.
"Guy, are you going to open the Eight Gates or not? To have trained your taijutsu to this level is truly remarkable. But a pity, the Eight Gates has always been an explosive technique. If you can't defeat your enemy in a short amount of time, it's useless," Nagi said with a smile. "If you don't open them soon, I'm leaving."
Guy looked pained. Open the gates? That took time. From the first to the eighth gate, if his opponent saw him opening too many, he would just run away. Then, once Guy closed them, his opponent would come back. What was he supposed to do?
For the first time, Guy felt a massive headache when faced with space-time ninjutsu. The technique was just plain disgusting. No wonder that back in the day, anyone who encountered Minato Namikaze was allowed to abandon their mission. It was impossible. You couldn't hit your opponent, and the moment you could, they would just run away. What was the point of even fighting?
And once he opened the Eight Gates, even if he didn't fight, he would be left in a weakened state after closing them again. The difference was just a matter of being out of commission for a day versus half a month. If his opponent came back for a surprise attack then, he'd be done for.
"I don't need to open the gates to still be Konoha's Blue Beast! Leaf Hurricane!" Might Guy launched a flying kick at Uchiha Nagi's head.
Even without opening the gates, his taijutsu was still at a jonin level. It was just that with the gates open, not even the Hokage could beat him.
"That might not be the case," Nagi said with a blink. It was a good time to try out a technique he had just learned. He assumed a stance with one hand forward and one back, the posture of the Eight Trigrams Palms.
"That's—" Kakashi's eye widened as he immediately realized something. "Guy, be careful! He might know the Eight Trigrams Palms!"
"Nani??" Guy was stunned. Wasn't that a secret technique of the Hyuga clan? This guy was an Uchiha. Did the Sharingan also have the function of the Byakugan?
"Eight Trigrams, One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms, Second Form!"
Second Form? What the hell is that?
Guy soon found out. After Uchiha Nagi executed the Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms, he instantly layered another one on top of it. Two sets of Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms. This was his first attempt at applying the principles of his Sun Breathing, Thirteenth Form.
Guy's taijutsu was not weak, but he had never fought against the Hyuga clan's Eight Trigrams Palms before. There had been no need. No one would just stand there and let an enemy hit them over a hundred times.
But Guy quickly noticed something was wrong. An eight-trigram pattern formed of chakra had appeared beneath Nagi's feet. Of course, the pattern wasn't visible, just a strange fluctuation of chakra.
Once the chakra trigram formed, it firmly held Guy in place, preventing him from leaving. Then Nagi's attack came, a torrential storm of palm strikes raining down on him. But Guy didn't panic.
One of his students, Neji Hyuga, was from the Hyuga clan. He had occasionally witnessed the uniqueness of the Eight Trigrams Palms. As long as your hands could keep up with your opponent's, you would be fine.
"First Gate, open!"
And so Kakashi witnessed an incredible scene. Under the relentless bombardment of the Eight Trigrams Palms, Guy fought back, punch for punch. The two men's hands and feet moved like a hurricane.
"It's really not the same... If my Sharingan were still here, I could see it clearly," Kakashi muttered, straining his single eye. But the two were moving too fast; he couldn't quite keep up.
"Second Gate, open!" After opening two gates, Guy directly withstood Nagi's double-layered Eight Trigrams Palms. After the final palm strike, a gap appeared in the trigram pattern, and Guy took the opportunity to leap out.
"Your eyes aren't Byakugan. How do you know the Eight Trigrams Palms?" Guy asked, still shaken, his voice filled with shock.
"How shallow. Do you think only the Byakugan can use the Hyuga clan's Eight Trigrams Palms?" Nagi sneered. "Does that mean the Uchiha clan can't use the Shadow Imitation Technique? Or the Multi-Size Technique?"
Just then, a slight chakra fluctuation appeared at Nagi's feet. Nagi glanced at Kakashi in the distance. That old fox was at it again.
Kakashi had secretly created a clone, which had burrowed underground to use the Headhunter Jutsu.
But things were different now. Nagi had mastered the Transparent World. In his perception, everything was transparent, just like with the Hyuga clan's Byakugan. He had long since detected Kakashi's clone sneaking over.
Monstrous Strength Fist!
Nagi stomped his foot hard. The earth rumbled and split apart. Kakashi's clone, which had just cast the earth-style jutsu, immediately dissipated into a puff of smoke.
It was about time. Nagi glanced toward the Chunin Exam arena. Although he couldn't see what was happening there, he could already feel a presence that was different from the world of the living. Hiruzen Sarutobi must have summoned the Reaper...
"Fourth Gate, open!"
"Chidori!"
In the split second that Nagi was distracted, Guy opened his fourth gate. This gate was just within the limits of his body's tolerance. He could close it after a fight and still be able to move, and he could continue fighting after closing it, maintaining his combat strength for a long time.
And Kakashi used his Chidori to coordinate with Guy's attack, attempting to lock him down. In the past, if they had launched such a clever coordinated attack, Nagi might have had to use the Flying Thunder God to escape. But things were different now.
Not only had Nagi's swordsmanship reached the Thirteenth Form of Sun Breathing, but his overall strength had more than doubled in the past four years.
"Rotation!"
BOOM!
To Guy and Kakashi's astonishment, Nagi used the Hyuga clan's Rotation, a technique that was practically an absolute defense in close combat. A blue sphere of chakra spun at high speed, repelling everything.
"He even knows Rotation..." Kakashi was stunned. How were they supposed to fight this? Long-range attacks didn't work, and they couldn't beat him in close combat. What were they supposed to do?
"I have other business to attend to, so I must be going. Kakashi, if you improve, I welcome you to come and take back your eye." Nagi smiled, then teleported away.
When he arrived at the Chunin Exam arena, Orochimaru's battle was already coming to an end. His arms were being held tightly by Hiruzen Sarutobi. And behind him stood the Shinigami, visible only to the caster and Orochimaru, who was being held.
Nagi couldn't see it, but with the perception of the Transparent World, he could feel it.
A ball of indescribable, cold, negative energy was behind Hiruzen Sarutobi. The energy gave him a feeling of coldness, despair, fear, and immense power.
"Is that the Shinigami of this world?" Nagi muttered to himself, looking into the void. The Shinigami had no sentience, more like a system, similar to the Heavenly Dao.
And the Sage of Six Paths, after his death, had entered the Pure Land. It was unknown whether he had become the master of the world of the dead or had merged with that world, making his power even greater than when he was alive.
The Power of Six Paths... he could just give it away to people. You'd believe that? The Sage couldn't do it when he was alive, but he could after he died. Wasn't that proof enough that his power was greater than when he was living? But he seemed to be bound by some rule, unable to directly interfere in the world of the living, only able to use proxies, exploiting loopholes to grant the Power of Six Paths to Naruto and Sasuke.
Just as Nagi was carefully observing the first god to appear in this world, something happened that made his blood run cold.
The Shinigami behind the Third Hokage suddenly glanced sideways at him. The look nearly scared the soul out of his body. Just as he was about to use the Flying Thunder God to flee, the Shinigami turned its head back.
It had only glanced at him, and then it turned back?
Nagi was a little shaken. Wasn't this Shinigami supposed to be a lifeless thing, like the Heavenly Dao? Why would it turn its head to look at him? It was as if it knew he could perceive it. If it had sentience, why was it played like a monkey by Orochimaru in the end? Not only did Orochimaru summon it without offering his own soul as payment, but he also managed to get the four souls and a pair of arms from its belly for free.
With a smile on his face, the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, allowed the Shinigami to swing its blade, severing Orochimaru's arms. It then took back Hiruzen's soul, and along with it, Orochimaru's arms.
"Ahhh! No! No! My hands!" Orochimaru's eyes were filled with horror. Sealing his hands was worse than killing him. He had ways to come back from death, but being sealed was a problem.
Orochimaru watched in terror as the mysterious, tadpole-like sealing formulas crawled up his arms, powerless to stop them. In a few seconds, his entire arms were covered in the black runes, looking as if he had been sunbathing for days on end.
But the sealing formulas stopped at his elbows. Even so, with his inability to form hand seals, Orochimaru's strength had dropped by seventy percent. Even for seal-less ninjutsu, he still needed to use his hands.
"Lord Orochimaru!" the Sound Four cried out in worry.
Orochimaru's eyes were filled with a cold light as he stared at the Third Hokage's dead body. He spat out a single word. "Go."
"Yes, Lord Orochimaru!"
The Sound Four immediately dispelled the barrier. Two of them supported Orochimaru and quickly fled. But the Anbu who had been waiting outside the barrier weren't about to let them go. They swarmed forward.
The spider-like member of the Sound Four immediately spat out a large web, trapping some of them, but there were still many left.
"I'll hold them off!" The fat one of the four was the first to step forward. He took out a vial and plunged it into his neck.
But it was too late. An Anbu had already used the Mind Body Switch Technique, trapping him. A Shadow Imitation Technique immediately followed, holding him in place.
Two Anbu beside him immediately plunged their blades into the fat ninja's body. The moment they struck, the ninja who had used the Mind Body Switch Technique immediately released it. The Anbu had cooperated flawlessly, taking out a jonin-level Sound ninja in less than five seconds.
"One down! Let's go after them!"
The fat ninja, who should have been dead with a pierced heart, suddenly grinned eerily.
Squelch!
The two Anbu who had stabbed him couldn't dodge in time and were killed instantly. After killing them, the fat ninja pulled the swords from his body, and his body began to slowly transform.
"How... how is that possible?! He should have been killed by a fatal blow! How is his body completely fine, and even regenerating? Is he immortal? Or an Edo Tensei?"
The Anbu stared in shock at the fat ninja. No, there was blood on the ground.
"There's blood! He's not an Edo Tensei body! Everyone, be careful! He just has a powerful healing factor!"
The fat ninja didn't answer. Instead, he opened his mouth wide with a ferocious grin and took a bite out of the two Anbu he had just killed.
"Demon Slayer blood? Orochimaru actually turned it into a weapon."
Nagi glanced at the sky. It was cloudy and overcast. Orochimaru had chosen a very advantageous weather for his plans. But he hadn't expected Orochimaru to have weaponized the blood he had given him from the Demon Slayer world. The fat Sound ninja had clearly just injected himself with it.
And it seemed Orochimaru had enhanced it. The effect was immediate. It normally took a person several hours or even a whole night to assimilate the blood of the Demon King Muzan, but the fat ninja had gained an immortal body the moment he injected it.
Watching the curse mark level two begin to crawl up the fat Sound ninja's neck, Nagi could only marvel at Orochimaru's genius.
Curse Mark Level 2, plus an immortal body. The fat ninja, who originally had the strength of a chunin, had instantly soared to above jonin level. And he had injected an enhanced version of the Demon Slayer blood, giving him a healing factor comparable to an Upper Rank demon. Even if his hand was cut off, it would regenerate in a second.
And this world had no Nichirin Blades or sun ore.
Nagi watched for a while. It was truly spectacular. The fat ninja alone was holding off a dozen Anbu, and the Anbu's casualties were rising because the fat ninja didn't bother to defend himself, and his abilities were also highly defensive. Konoha was in trouble.
But soon, the fat ninja faced three heavyweight opponents: the current generation of the Ino-Shika-Cho clan heads, Choza Akimichi and his comrades.
Choza transformed into a giant and brought his fist down. The fat ninja couldn't dodge in time, and half his body was turned into a paste. But as Choza lifted his hand, the fat ninja's hands clapped together, and he leaped into the air. In mid-air, his lower body had already regenerated.
"Choza, be careful! He's immortal, like an Edo Tensei! Inform the Sealing Squad!" Inoichi Yamanaka shouted.
Beside him, Shikaku Nara cursed, "Damn it, Orochimaru! How many forbidden jutsu has he come up with? One can't die, the other can't be killed..."
At this point, Nagi was no longer focused on them. A burly man with long white hair and a red coat had appeared before him, his face serious.
"Hand over the Scroll of Seals."