Chapter 386: Tsukuyomi
Itachi's Tsukuyomi world was the same as in the manga.
The world was stripped of color, and all scenes were left with only inverted black and white, as if the whole world was printed on the negatives of an old camera.
In the moment Tsukuyomi was activated, Haruno Sakura only felt a trance, her vision darkened, and when she came back to her senses, she was already deep in the Tsukuyomi genjutsu: she was tied to a cross, subconsciously wanting to move her hands and feet, but found herself completely unable to move.
Itachi and his clones stood in front of her, densely packed in a large area, holding unsheathed long swords. The vast crowd and gloomy, silent atmosphere exerted enormous psychological pressure.
However, Haruno Sakura showed no sign of panic at being the fish on the chopping block.
"Is this... the Tsukuyomi world?" She asked with interest.
Uchiha Itachi found himself understanding the girl in front of him less and less. Deep in such a desperate situation, she could still smile... as if she wasn't tied to a cross in the Tsukuyomi world, but sitting on her own sofa.
This was not the reaction a battle-hardened ninja should have when facing a predicament. Even if the expression on her face wasn't panicked, it should be solemn and serious; not calm, looking around with probing eyes.
Itachi looked at the girl, his brows furrowing slightly.
Either she was the kind of ninja with a one-track mind and nerves thicker than thighs; or she had something to rely on, so she had nothing to fear.
However, the former seemed more like the style of Sasuke's other teammate, Naruto Uzumaki...
"That's right, this is my Tsukuyomi world..." Uchiha Itachi explained faintly.
"In this world, time, space, and everything are under my control."
While speaking, he raised the sharp long sword in his hand and slowly stabbed it towards the girl's heart.
Itachi's movement was extremely slow, filled with a depressing rhythm.
The blade was very sharp. The tip pressed against her chest, and with a slight force, it cut through the clothes, revealing the pure black skin with inverted colors. Itachi's eyes were fixed tightly on Haruno Sakura's face. Watching oneself being hurt without the ability to resist would cause greater psychological pressure and more pain, but Sakura's expression remained unchanged throughout. From the long sword cutting open the skin, slicing through fat and piercing into the heart, to the tip coming out from her back, she calmly looked back at him the whole time.
The Tsukuyomi world is not the real world. Everything happening here is essentially a mental attack, so Haruno Sakura wouldn't die just because her heart was pierced; it was just that her reaction was too plain.
No screaming, no exclamation, just calmly looking back at him.
Strange.
Uchiha Itachi's frown deepened.
Itachi had performed the Tsukuyomi technique more than once. The pain of sharp blades cutting the body, perhaps some determined ninja could endure it, but at least they would be sweating profusely, clenching their teeth and groaning, or even screaming out. Someone like Haruno Sakura who didn't care at all, and didn't even frown much, was the first he had encountered!
"Are you thinking..." Haruno Sakura seemed to see the confusion in his heart and said, "Why do I have no reaction?"
Itachi acted as if he didn't hear, silently pulled the sword out, and stabbed it into her abdomen.
White blood gushed out of the wound, flowing on the pure black skin, rendering a strange and grotesque atmosphere.
Accompanying the wound was the pain of severe injury. Although the physical body would not be truly injured in this spiritual world, the pain was truly reflected on the spiritual level. Every stab was heart-wrenching.
However, Haruno Sakura's expression still didn't change. No shrill screams, no distorted face. Instead, it seemed as if she was already used to this feeling, and there was even a hint of nostalgia on her face.
Several stabs in a row.
In the Tsukuyomi world controlled by Itachi, every time the sword was pulled out, the wound on the enemy's body would disappear and restore to its original state, but the pain endured mentally would be retained, superimposed time and time again, until the enemy's spirit completely collapsed.
However, it was the first time Itachi encountered a ninja as unmoved as Haruno Sakura.
Haruno Sakura was proficient in medical ninjutsu. If it were in the real world, she could shield the pain by cutting off the connection between pain nerves and the brain, which was not surprising; but in his Tsukuyomi world, Haruno Sakura's body was essentially a projection of her spirit. Pain sensation did not need to be transmitted through nerves. Even people born without pain sensation would truly feel the pain!
"You want to ask, why it doesn't hurt, right?" As the tenth sword stabbed into her thigh, the girl's voice remained calm, speaking faintly.
The sword in Itachi's hand stopped.
After a moment of silence, he looked up and asked, "Why?"
"Hehehe..." The girl chuckled a few times, with a hint of disdain in her laughter. "Pain, being stabbed like this by a sword, of course it hurts."
"It's just that, compared to the pain I have felt before, this pain is just child's play!"
This pain was not even comparable to the pain she felt when she dissected her ice clone back then! (Chapter 95) The pain of swords and blades on the body, she had long been accustomed to it when developing ninjutsu back then...
Even the pain like Guan Yu scraping bone to cure poison was nothing more than this in her opinion!
Has anyone ever felt the pain of meridians shattering and all muscle fibers in the body breaking? That was truly a feeling worse than death. When she developed the Big Dipper Divine Fist back then, every failure meant tasting such pain once!
Has anyone ever tried the pain of being burned by electric current from the inside out, with all nerves in the body burned through? That feeling was like every part of the body being crushed. The hellish pain could even torture a person to death alive; last year when she was at the Land of Snow base, she had felt it many times on the clones!
People are forced out. The young man from her previous life who would scream in pain if he accidentally cut himself a little deep with a knife was now resolute enough to ignore such pain!
After repeatedly feeling that kind of super-standard pain, what is the pain of being stabbed?
—Stab all you want, if this old lady frowns, I'm not a hero!
Itachi's Tsukuyomi could compress three days into one second, and then use these seventy-two hours to cut Haruno Sakura into pieces; Haruno Sakura could also endure all the pain without changing her expression, tough it out until the Tsukuyomi time ended, and be more spirited than Itachi after returning to the real world!
Because of the transmigration and the characteristics of Sakura's body, her spiritual power was already far beyond ordinary people. After experiencing a lot of unimaginable pain training, it was refined to be incomparably pure and tough, shining like a diamond.
It could even be said that in Haruno Sakura's training in the Land of Snow last year, the biggest gain was not any breakthrough progress in ninjutsu development, nor how much energy the Yin Seal stored, but the leap in spiritual progress after enduring one tempering beyond the limit after another!
This is also why Haruno Sakura has been able to gradually integrate the power of Yin Release into Ice Style recently; it's not how proficiently she cultivated Yin-Yang Release—with that little vague information, she really couldn't make any progress in cultivation within one or two years—but because her capital was abundant enough, her spiritual power was extremely strong, relying on brute force to pile up results!
In this regard, Sakura learned a bit of Naruto's style.
In short, her spiritual power, whether in quality or quantity, far exceeded the boundaries of ordinary people!
And the so-called Tsukuyomi, in the final analysis, is nothing more than a confrontation on the spiritual level.
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