Chapter 557: The Battle Begins
An oppressive atmosphere of an approaching storm began to permeate the air.
The sky, which had just brightened, suddenly dimmed again.
Clouds in the distance tumbled, converging towards the center of the battlefield, pressing lower and lower, gradually turning into an ink-black color as if dyed.
Light dragons roamed among the clouds, and muffled thunder echoed between heaven and earth.
Beneath the clouds, the sea breeze howled.
Like some beast growling low, or like a deep battle song.
The seawater grew increasingly restless, surging uneasily, stirring up towering waves one after another.
Only at the center of the battlefield, the sea area where the two stood, was eerily calm, as if the sea breeze and waves dared not make a clamor, deeply afraid of disturbing the two.
Haruno Sakura stood silently, looking like a steadfast stone statue in the dimness.
Only those emerald eyes remained bright, shining with compelling light.
A hundred meters away, Pain also stood silently. The eerie Rinnegan and the girl's clear eyes looked at each other from afar, their lines of sight crossing in the air.
Silence, and then chakra began to overflow.
It leaked from the bodies of the two ninja, seeping into the air, flowing into the sea, permeating around every particle between heaven and earth.
At the same time, two majestic and grand momentums, even more astonishing than the aura of this chakra, slowly rose from the sea.
It wasn't killing intent; it was a might far denser than killing intent, as if it could condense into substance, cutting across between the sea and sky, enveloping both the sky and the sea within it!
One side was like a ten-thousand-year glacier, bitingly cold to the bone;
The other side was like the blazing summer sun, brilliantly hot.
The clash of auras seemed to divide this world into two!
In the distance.
Rondo's face was deathly pale.
His Adam's apple bobbed, involuntarily swallowing.
His exquisite sensory ability made him feel as if he had crossed dozens of miles to be right in the center of the battlefield, pressed down by two vast momentums simultaneously!
Sensing those astonishing momentums constantly climbing as if having no upper limit, the man sweated like rain, his heart beating like a drum. His whole body actually went soft and weak, freezing in place.
Perceiving the power of those two immersively was absolutely not a wonderful feeling.
The keen perception he once took pride in had now actually become his burden!
Choujuurou standing beside him had much duller perception, and at this moment actually didn't have as big a reaction.
He only faintly sensed two terrifying chakras confronting each other tit for tat in the distance. Feeling uneasy in his heart, he still managed to force himself to stay calm.
"Senior, are you alright?!"
Discovering Rondo's awkward state, Choujuurou hurriedly asked.
He abruptly patted his senior's shoulder. As a result, the latter's legs gave way, almost sinking into the bottom of the sea. Choujuurou pulled him up, and Rondo finally woke up from his shock. Touching his forehead and back, he was actually completely soaked in sweat.
"...I'm fine."
He cut off his sensing, steadied his mind, his voice a bit hoarse.
Choujuurou felt Rondo looked completely unlike he was fine, but it wasn't good to ask more, so he only said: "How is the situation over there?"
"Pain has arrived." Rondo took a deep breath, his stiff body gradually recovering, "The battle is about to start."
He looked deeply into the distance, his focus landing on the other side of the sea beyond the blackened horizon.
"We guessed right just now... Haruno Sakura didn't fall into a trap, but was intentionally waiting for Pain's appearance."
Rondo said slowly.
"But there is one point we seriously miscalculated..." He paused and looked back at Choujuurou, his voice terribly hoarse, "Haruno Sakura and Pain's strength far exceeds our estimates!"
"This will be a battle that even I, as a sensory ninja, cannot see through..."
As if there was an unseen connection, the instant Rondo finished saying this sentence, on the other side of the sea, the battle began.
Swish—!
Without seeing her raise her hand, without seeing abnormal fluctuations of chakra.
As if Haruno Sakura was still standing silently the previous moment.
The next moment, the Wind Blade Torrent was launched without warning.
A silvery-white water line, its surface carrying a faint cyan light caused by the Wind Release nature transformation, shot out from the girl's front!
The extremely high speed made the Water Blade seem to ignore spatial distance, landing in front of the Six Paths of Pain in an instant.
...What a fast jutsu!
Pain's pupils shrank violently. The instant the thought arose, the Water Blade had already landed on the Six Paths.
The six individuals of the Six Paths of Pain were originally lined up; the Deva Path stood in the middle, taking a step forward, with the Human Path on the far left.
Only hearing a faint crack, the Human Path's sturdy body was cut into two segments from the middle like tofu by the silver line, his corpse breaking into several pieces and falling into the water.
A thought arises, a person dies.
In the time it takes for a thought to arise, a Pain died under the Water Blade!
Asura Path... dodge quickly!
The second thought arose in the Pains.
The Asura Path stood second from the left. His reaction was not slow; the instant the Water Blade slashed the Human Path, the Asura Path had already begun to squat down, wanting to dodge this strike.
But he underestimated the sharpness of the Water Blade. The Human Path's body didn't hinder the Wind Blade Torrent for half a second before the latter had already slashed him down. The silver line passed right through the body, exactly meeting the still-squatting Asura Path—he was too slow.
The Asura Path's head flew high up.
A thought arises, another person dies!
Preta Path... absorb it!
This was the Pains' third thought.
In an instant, he had already squatted steadily in front of the Animal Path, wearing a confident smile on his face, his palms aimed at that silver line slashing horizontally over.
Absorb!
The Preta Path's ability is to absorb the chakra contained in the enemy's ninjutsu, rendering it ineffective. This bizarre and powerful ability should completely counter ordinary ranged ninjutsu, yet the Water Blade jutsu cast by the girl was exactly an exception.
Applying high pressure to a body of water and making it spray out from a special nozzle, thereby forming a high-speed, high-pressure, high-cutting-power water line, is a Water Jet. A Water Jet is a physical phenomenon.
The Water Blade series ninjutsu used by the transmigrator—including the Wind Blade Torrent—was essentially just a ninjutsu finally obtained by using chakra as a tool to increase the range of the Water Jet and enhance its power.
The Preta Path effortlessly absorbed the chakra contained in the Wind Blade Torrent clean, but could not absorb the Water Jet, which belongs to physical phenomena.
Instantly, the Wind Blade Torrent regressed into the most primitive Water Jet.
A high-speed, high-pressure, high-cutting-power Water Jet.
The water line capable of easily cutting through steel plates unceremoniously penetrated the Preta Path's extended palms and landed on the Preta Path's chest.
Then... penetrated, cut, killed.
The fat man's upper body separated from his torso and flew out, bloody internal organs spilling all over the floor. The smug look on his face hadn't even had time to disappear before it became stiff.
A thought arises, a person dies.
The Preta Path, dead!
The disappeared chakra reappeared on the Water Jet, and the high-pressure water line turned back into the Wind Blade Torrent.
Carrying the menacing aura of killing three people in a row, it came slashing horizontally through the air menacingly!
The Six Paths of Pain were reduced to only three paths in the blink of an eye. Facing this unreasonable attack method, the Human Path and the others had no room to resist!
And the next one... was the Deva Path.
Deva Path... block it!
A new thought arose in the minds of the remaining Pains.
The Deva Path's gaze was calm. Witnessing the first three Six Paths being instantly killed by Haruno Sakura's jutsu, his eyes still carried incomparable confidence. He was seen abruptly stretching out his hand—
"Rinnegan Secret Technique..."
"Shinra Tensei (Almighty Push)!"