Chapter 376: Mutual Destruction (Part 1)
Kisame stared intently in the direction of the cold female voice, watching Haruno Sakura walk slowly out of the ice mist while clutching her right shoulder.
In the fierce confrontation just now, Kisame was undoubtedly the loser in the end, seriously injured to the point of hanging by a thread, but the girl couldn't smile at the moment either—her situation was also terrible.
The dust and mist gradually dispersed, and Haruno Sakura's figure became clear: her whole arm was a mess of flesh and blood, with not half an inch of intact skin found. It was bent at an angle impossible for a normal arm, hanging limply by her side.
The arm that was as straight and slender as a jade lotus root just a few seconds ago had now become a prop fit for a top-notch horror movie from her previous life: bloody wounds, exposed white bones, a pool of dark red blood dripping down, and that abnormal shape, simply making one shudder just by looking at it.
"Hmph." A cold laugh burst from Kisame's mouth. He was indeed badly injured, but his opponent didn't get off easy either.
The reason why the Monstrous Strength Technique requires extremely high chakra control is that besides needing to control chakra extremely precisely to enhance muscles so that they burst out with extremely high strength, another point is to use advanced medical ninjutsu means to protect the arm and repair the negative effects of the Monstrous Strength Technique on the arm. The latter is especially important because the monstrous strength puts a huge load on the body, not to mention bearing the huge reaction force after blasting out with such great strength. If one doesn't know how to protect oneself, Haruno Sakura's arm would probably be useless after using the Star Cannon Hammer a few times.
However, in the battle just now, the moment Samehada came into contact with Haruno Sakura's fist, it absorbed too much chakra, almost causing the Monstrous Strength Technique to collapse and disappear. Although Haruno Sakura replenished her chakra in time and barely maintained the last few percent of her strength, she really didn't have the time and energy to distract herself to complete the protection of her arm.
This caused Kisame to win first and then lose: obviously, he successfully set a trap, but was overcome by Haruno Sakura's brute force. Relying on her superb chakra control, she forcibly maintained the Star Cannon Hammer against Samehada's chakra suction, and solidly exchanged a blow with Kisame.
At the same time, Haruno Sakura's unreasonable brute force approach also made her pay a high price: one arm was directly scrapped.
The girl walked out of the dust and mist, her slow steps still light and steady, her face indifferent and calm. She lowered her head, tore off the right sleeve of her uniform which was shredded into strips with her left hand, and performed medical ninjutsu while setting the bone of her right hand.
Ninja seem to be made of special materials: Kisame was hurt like this but could still barely stand up; Haruno Sakura was obviously enduring unspeakable pain, but her cold face showed no sign of feeling pain at all, and even her voice didn't tremble.
Compared to the pain she felt when developing ninjutsu with clones and shadow clones, this pain was just child's play, not even enough to make this six-foot girl frown.
On the contrary, realizing how careless she was to rush in brainlessly, stupid enough to crash headlong into someone else's trap, the feeling of being crushed by someone else's IQ touched her more.
Haruno Sakura was a very proud person.
This sentence was not intentionally slandering her. In fact, the closer people were to her, the more they could feel this. In this regard, Tsunade, Kakashi, and Sasuke all had the same evaluation—Naruto was an exception, his nerves were so thick that he couldn't feel that arrogance.
In terms of dealing with people, she was fine, could be called gentle and humble. Villagers and ninja colleagues all praised Sakura for this:
—I heard that guy met Orochimaru recently and beat him back. This strength can be ranked among the top in the village, right? Impressive battle record... She looks like a very easy-going little girl. Truly, a real person doesn't show off!
This was a certain elite Anbu colleague.
—Hn, she greeted me. What a polite child! Although she is highly skilled and has repeatedly repelled strong enemies for the village, she hasn't picked up the arrogant habits of those Jonin and Anbu. This child reminds me of the Fourth Hokage back then...
This was a certain ninja who had been a Chunin all his life.
—Wow, the goddess smiled at me! Is she hinting at something? Would the goddess also favor a loser Genin like me? Is it because I'm too handsome? Hehe, speaking of which, that beautiful female ninja I saw in the hospital last time also kept smiling at me. She was gentle too. What if she also... which one should I choose? Their looks are comparable, but in terms of figure... hehe!
This was... sigh, let's not mention it.
But in the eyes of others, it was a different style:
—Stubborn ideas one after another in her heart, always thinking she is right, simply as proud as a swan! Harder and harder to teach!
This was a certain Konoha executive with a deep career line (cleavage).
—To be honest, this is the worst batch of students I have ever led.
This was a certain masked young man.
—Don't be fooled by her liking to smile with squinted eyes. Actually, she has a super bad temper! When discussing ninjutsu, she throws scornful glances at every turn, as if any knowledge should be basic common sense, and people who don't understand are retarded! And in private, she likes to find faults in textbooks and other people's notes everywhere, and then criticize them as worthless, incredibly arrogant! It's still more relaxing to be with Naruto...
This was a certain poker-faced boy.
By the way, young man, your tendency is dangerous.
Two completely different evaluations are just different sides of Haruno Sakura. In fact, both are correct—even that harsh evaluation from the masked young man is an irrefutable fact.
In many places, such as certain humanities and social sciences and scientific knowledge, and certain issues of the three views (worldview, values, outlook on life), Haruno Sakura retained her views from her previous life. Often in the eyes of other ninja, this was an inexplicable persistence, so she appeared very arrogant.
—However, conversely, it might be closer to the truth: it's precisely because she herself is a quite proud person, always insisting that her own ideas are right, that she could maintain her original personality and character after traveling to this cruel ninja world, instead of drifting with the tide, being changed by this world, and becoming a thorough ninja. Perhaps in the eyes of some other transmigrators, changing one's three views to be the same as others in this world is called integrating into this world; but with that little pride in Sakura's heart, she hoped more that the world would be changed by her, not the other way around.
Admittedly, for survival, to deal with the current and future heinous enemies whose strength was beyond imagination, Haruno Sakura had compromised a lot with this world. She suppressed the thoughts deep in her heart and then transformed herself more and more like a real ninja: skilled in combat, ruthless in attack, merciless in killing. But she could never become that kind of ninja in the true sense, that kind of emotionless war machine who would use any means to complete the mission—in the Naruto world, the mainstream view indeed required ninja to be like this, and the Ninja Academy also educated students like this.
Call it stubbornness, or call it staying true to the original intention.
It was precisely this little bit of pride in her heart that supported the transmigrator to hold her bottom line, preventing her from losing her original heart—after experiencing so many events and so many life-and-death battles, it was not easy to do this.
❃❃❃
⤑ Show your support with Power Stones!
⤑ Unlock a Bonus Chapter every time we hit 400 Power Stones!
❃❃❃
♕ Get early access to 30+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
🔗 https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to open the link!)
💬 Enjoying the story? Drop a review!
Your support really helps the series grow—thank you!