Chapter 316: Cilantro, Planted Across the Entire Shinobi World
Kumo's chakra cannon — technology Orochimaru had originally acquired while aiding Kumo during the Fourth Great Ninja War, then independently developed further on his own.
Orochimaru truly was Orochimaru. A weapon that shouldn't have existed for another three years, and he'd already produced a working version of it now.
On the battlefield, the blue-white beam of annihilation tore through heaven and earth, engulfing the Hokage almost instantaneously.
"SAKURA!!!"
Still locked in combat with Obito, Sasuke's heart lurched violently at the sight — he broke off immediately, not looking back, and charged straight toward her.
The chakra cannon's beam had torn clean through the entire battlefield, striking dead-on the Sakura still tangled in Hashirama's Bodhisattva technique.
Sasuke caught only a faint flicker of gold light within that white blaze before it vanished, swallowed entirely by the annihilating radiance.
Everyone present stood stunned by the sudden turn of events. Even Hashirama looked genuinely shaken.
An attack of that magnitude — even his own strongest defensive technique couldn't have withstood it.
He'd never intended to take the Fifth Hokage's life. He hadn't expected things to spiral like this at all...
The white beam hanging in the sky felt like the boundary between life and death itself — anything caught within its reach would be annihilated instantly, without exception.
No one knew how long passed before the blinding white light in the sky finally faded away.
Every eye stayed fixed, tense, on the scene unfolding.
Alive. Alive. Please be alive!
At that moment, Sasuke's Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan spun rapidly, and Amatsukami activated in an instant.
A figure stood, suspended in midair.
Watching this, Sasuke couldn't help the corner of his mouth curling upward. Against an attack that devastating, Sakura had survived — exactly as he'd willed it.
But—
The girl before them was hardly in good shape. Her red-and-white athletic wear had been nearly obliterated, leaving only the black mesh armor beneath. The arms she'd used to shield herself from the cannon's blast were covered in bloody wounds, faint threads of black smoke still curling off her skin, and even her pink hair had curled and singed from the heat.
And—
Everyone present could sense it: the once ocean-vast reserve of chakra inside the Hokage had been drained almost completely dry.
Orochimaru stared at the sight, his whole body going numb.
He knew the chakra cannon's power better than anyone. He genuinely hadn't expected an attack of that magnitude to fail to kill his own junior.
"Sakura!"
Sasuke shot toward her at once.
Not just Sasuke — Obito surged forward too.
This is the perfect, God-given chance to kill the Hokage. Miss it, and there may never be another.
"Sakura!"
"You can stop now."
Watching her survive, Hashirama felt a wave of genuine relief — but immediately strode forward again, expression calm.
He could sense it clearly: right now, this girl was, functionally, no different from an ordinary person. Weathering that last attack had drained nearly every drop of chakra she had.
"What are you planning to do?!"
Sasuke saw Hashirama advancing and immediately placed himself between them, wary, watching the man closely.
"Sakura!!!"
A streak of gold light shot toward them at high speed from the distance — clearly Naruto had witnessed the same thing.
Naruto looked at Sakura, weakly half-crouched over the water's surface, and reached out a trembling hand toward her — only to pull it back halfway, hesitant.
"Sakura."
By now, Karin had also reached her side, unhesitatingly rolling up her sleeve and holding out her wrist.
Her meaning needed no explanation.
Sakura looked at the pale wrist offered to her and, without a word, simply grabbed hold of Karin's hand instead, using her body to steady herself and pull upright.
Her gaze settled on Orochimaru in the distance, then shifted to Hashirama, still blocked from her by Naruto and Sasuke.
Orochimaru needed to die. But right now, his priority ranked behind Hashirama's.
"Stop?"
"Hashirama Senju. I've had my fill of hearing that empty phrase."
"There's only one way to stop me now."
"Kill me."
The finality in Sakura's words left something indescribable crossing Hashirama's face.
He genuinely didn't understand why things had to escalate to this point.
At that moment, something shifted across Naruto's expression.
"I see. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, huh..."
The words slipped out of him almost involuntarily.
"Hm? What?"
Sasuke, still watching Hashirama warily, caught the shift in Naruto's demeanor.
"Nothing. Karin, get Sakura out of here."
"Leave this to me and Sasuke."
At Naruto's words, something clicked into place for Sakura, and she gave him one long, deep look.
"Right. Karin, let's go."
With that, Karin threw one last glance at Naruto, hesitant.
"Naruto. Be careful."
Then she moved quickly, guiding Sakura toward shore.
Watching this unfold, Obito's own advance slowed noticeably.
Hashirama held no real killing intent toward the Hokage — he only wanted to steer her back onto what he saw as the right path. If Obito tried to assassinate the Fifth Hokage now, he'd first have to get through Hashirama himself.
Which meant—
Obito exchanged a glance, unspoken, with Madara nearby, his expression dark.
While Naruto and Sasuke kept themselves squarely in Hashirama's path, the two of them slipped quietly out of view, unnoticed by everyone else.
...
"Looks like it's time for us to leave."
Orochimaru's expression had turned grim.
The original plan had been to end the Hokage outright with a single shot. He hadn't expected even a chakra cannon of this magnitude to fail.
He'd need to keep a much lower profile going forward.
Just as Orochimaru prepared to withdraw, a figure blocked his path.
"Not so fast, Senior Orochimaru."
A figure stood directly in front of him.
"Minato. Same as ever."
"Of everyone here, aside from the Fifth Hokage, you're the one who's given me the most trouble."
Orochimaru let out a light laugh, looking at Minato before him.
"If that's meant as a compliment, I'll take it."
The moment Minato finished speaking, two more figures landed beside him.
Hiruzen. Itachi.
"Orochimaru."
Hiruzen fixed Orochimaru with a gaze that held nothing but undisguised killing intent.
The Fifth Hokage had inherited everything he'd built. He would not allow the slightest harm to come to her.
And what had just happened proved, beyond any doubt, that Orochimaru had both the capability and the willingness to seriously wound — or even kill — the Fifth Hokage outright.
Which meant Orochimaru had to die.
"Three of you?"
Orochimaru let out a light laugh at the sight, then pointed a finger toward where Konoha's forces had been positioned.
"Rather than worrying about me, shouldn't you be more concerned about your own..."
"Two-Tails jinchūriki?"
At Orochimaru's words, alarm shot through Hiruzen, and he instinctively turned toward the Land of Frost forces.
Matatabi's chakra—
Was gone.
"Is this your doing as well?"
Hiruzen ground his teeth, glaring at the man who'd once been his most promising student.
"Not my doing, this time."
"This time, it's..."
"Time to hand over the Nine-Tails."
At that moment, a man in crimson armor appeared before all of them, his pale-lavender, ripple-patterned eyes fixed squarely on Minato.
Madara Uchiha!
—
While the situation shifted dramatically with Sakura's withdrawal from the fight, Karin had already begun tending to her wounds.
Sakura, though, paid little attention to her own injuries. There was something far more pressing she needed to attend to — she let her consciousness sink inward, into her own inner world.
Blue sky. White clouds.
She found herself, once again, in the city that held only one person.
"Didn't expect it would happen like this."
Sakura looked, calm, at Inner Sakura sitting at the edge of the rooftop — exactly the same as the last time they'd met.
Exactly the same as now.
"Isn't that always how it goes?"
Inner Sakura rose from the rooftop's edge and turned to face Sakura.
"Though that chakra cannon really packed a punch."
"Hurt like hell."
Inner Sakura rubbed her arm, faintly annoyed.
Whatever Sakura felt, Inner Sakura felt too — she'd experienced the full impact of that chakra cannon strike firsthand, just the same.
"That little bit of pain, and you're already out of commission?"
Sakura answered, calm.
The first time she'd soaked in Shikkotsu Forest's sage pool, the pain hadn't been much different from this blast.
Right now, on the outside, her body simply looked worse than it actually was — the real problem was her chakra reserves, completely drained.
Once she recovered enough chakra, the damage would heal quickly.
After all, Sakura was the strongest medical shinobi in the entire shinobi world.
As long as her head stayed attached, even being cut clean in half wouldn't be fatal — reattach the two halves, and she'd be back to full strength.
"Can't I complain a little?"
"Just didn't expect that in my final stretch, it'd be that bastard Orochimaru who got the last shot in."
Inner Sakura sounded genuinely put out.
Sakura listened to the words, layered with unspoken meaning, and fell silent.
She wasn't quite sure how to respond to that.
"Oh, right."
"Once you wake up, go kill Orochimaru."
"Damn snake. Been wanting that for a while now."
Inner Sakura stepped closer and took Sakura's hand.
"Right. I will."
Sakura nodded, agreeing.
"And that Hashirama Senju!"
"Damn old relic. Once this is over, put him to work farming!"
"Ten thousand acres! No — a million acres!"
"He's got all that chakra, doesn't he? Don't let him stop until it's completely tapped out! Once it's gone, feed him the special-recipe soldier pills and make him keep going!"
"Get him out there planting crops! Cilantro!"
"Plant cilantro across the entire shinobi world!"
"Nine-nine-six schedule! No, wait—"
"Nine-nine-seven!"
"Bring his wife back too and put her to work planting cilantro right alongside him!"
"And you stand there with a whip — every time he slacks off, give him a crack!"
"Whip him till he can't stand!"
"And another thing, another thing..."
Inner Sakura kept rambling on in front of Sakura, and something cold settled into Sakura's hand.
A small pink dagger, formed entirely from Inner Sakura's own concentrated Yin Release chakra, had been pressed into her palm — and even as she kept rambling, Inner Sakura closed her own hand over Sakura's, guiding the grip on the blade.
"And another thing — once Naruto has kids someday—"
"Make Might Guy their teacher for Boruto!"
"'Not flammable'? Burn it anyway, you bastard!"
"They've got to shout 'youth' ten thousand times a day and run laps around Konoha ten thousand times!"
"And another thing..."
A sharp, glaring red welled up at the corner of Inner Sakura's mouth.
That red trickled slowly down her chin, dripping, one drop at a time, onto the ground below.
The small pink blade had already sunk into Inner Sakura's own stomach.
With the last of her strength, Inner Sakura kept her grip locked tight around Sakura's hand — the one holding the blade.
"And another thing... what else was there..."
The wind carried away the tie holding back Inner Sakura's hair, and her cherry-blossom-pink hair spilled loose, cascading like a waterfall.
She looked at Sakura's calm, unreadable face, and reached up with a bloodstained hand to gently touch her cheek.
"What else?"
Sakura's expression stayed calm, watching her.
"And... I'm super handsome..."
"Heh heh..."
"Just kidding."
Inner Sakura stepped forward, and the blade in her grip sank fully into her own body.
Two slender arms wrapped around Sakura's waist, and Inner Sakura buried her whole self against her, breathing in deeply, greedily, the scent that belonged only to this one particular girl.
"And..."
"I love you. Always."
"..."
Weak as she'd become, Inner Sakura's arms, wrapped around Sakura, felt strangely, impossibly strong in that moment.
Pink light enveloped her entirely, and Sakura simply watched it happen, calm.
At that moment, the entire inner world began to shudder, in step with Inner Sakura's own fading presence.
Before long, the rooftop held only Sakura, alone.
Sakura looked up at the blue sky overhead.
Cracks were spreading across it.
Pink cracks.
One after another.
As Inner Sakura faded away completely, this entire inner world — built entirely from Sakura Haruno's own accumulated Yin Release chakra — began to collapse.
What was chakra, really?
The union of a shinobi's physical strength and spiritual strength, combined into one.
Physical strength represented Yang Release. Spiritual strength represented Yin Release.
Which meant everything within this inner world had always been Yin Release chakra, through and through.
Inner Sakura had come into being to protect the body's own will from being overwhelmed by that same unmatched reservoir of Yin Release.
She was a firewall, born of the body's own self-protective instinct.
Now, with the body finally strong enough to hold that overwhelming reservoir of Yin Release on its own, the firewall's purpose had grown smaller and smaller by the day.
And now, at last, it was disappearing entirely — this moment simply accelerating a process already well underway.
Looking down at her own hand, stained with that same crimson red, something unnamed flickered through Sakura's emerald eyes.
"You really were handsome..."
The crimson in her hand shimmered with a faint pink glow, and dissolved into a single point of light, drifting up toward the sky above.
That point of pink light floated into the crack overhead.
And in that instant, the sky itself broke open entirely, like a dam finally giving way!
Countless waves of pink Yin Release chakra, like an ocean unleashed, surged forward and swallowed the entire inner world whole.
Sakura watched it happen, calm, letting that pink tide sweep over her, swallow her completely...
And in the outside world, at that same moment, Sakura's body was undergoing a transformation Karin couldn't begin to comprehend.
Countless threads of pink chakra rose from Sakura's skin like silk, wrapping around her, binding tighter and tighter, cocooning her whole body — forcing Karin to stumble backward, retreating from what she was witnessing.
(End of chapter.)
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