Chapter 307 Quarantine Zone
Chapter 307 Quarantine Zone
"Brother Scorpion, wait for us!"
Kana Uzumaki weaved through the woods, following closely behind Sasori like a little tail, while Shizune also stayed close behind the two.
Scorpion remained aloof, his hands in his pockets, his pace seemingly unhurried, yet the two little girls struggled to keep up.
Suddenly, Chanel slowed down.
Her large, ruby-like eyes blinked in confusion, and her small nose sniffed the air, like a little animal that had sensed the scent of its prey.
"Huh? This feels really strange..."
Chanel stopped beside a towering ancient tree, tilted her head, and looked at a cluster of unusually lush blue ferns.
"What's wrong, Kana?" Shizune hurriedly stepped forward, glancing around warily. She was now extremely cautious about everything in the forest.
"There……"
Chanel stretched out her chubby little hand and pointed to the center of the ferns.
"I felt a very familiar fluctuation... like the feeling when Minato-nii took us flying up in a flash. But it was also a little different, like being enveloped by something."
"Flying Thunder God Technique?" Shizune was taken aback, then tensed up. "Could it be that Minato left something here?"
The scorpion, a few steps ahead, also stopped.
He turned his head slightly, and although he didn't speak, the chakra threads hidden in his sleeves had already quietly hooked onto the scroll behind him.
As a top-tier puppeteer, he had an extremely high sensitivity to chakra, but he did not sense the special fluctuations that Kana had mentioned.
This girl's perception... is a bit strange.
"I'll go take a look!"
Chanel's curiosity instantly overcame her fear of the unknown.
"Hey! Chanel, don't go!"
Shizune quickly grabbed her arm: "Senior Nishikawa said that this forest is full of traps. What if they were left by bad people? Let's go with Senior Scorpion."
"It's okay, mute it."
Chanel patted her chest, looking confident.
"Brother Che and Brother Minato would never harm us, and Sister Tsunade also said that high risk comes with high reward. Maybe this is a hidden grand prize that the examiners specially left for us! Like... an unlimited supply of three-colored dumplings!"
"..."
Silently watching Kana, whose eyes were filled with dumplings, Shizune thought to herself that this girl's thought process was always so peculiar.
"Don't touch it." Scorpion coldly uttered three words. His intuition told him that the thing was definitely not a good thing.
But it was too late.
Chanel, like a cheerful little rabbit, hopped over to the clump of blue ferns.
"Hehe, let me see what kind of treasure it is..."
She reached out her little hand and parted the dense leaves.
Beneath the leaves lay an inconspicuous black wooden plaque, engraved with an extremely complex rune resembling a vortex and lightning bolt.
"What kind of scribbling is this?"
Chanel curiously poked the wooden sign.
"Buzz—"
The moment her fingertips touched the wooden sign.
A powerful sense of spatial distortion suddenly erupted!
The blue light instantly engulfed Chanel like a vortex.
"Kana!"
Shizune was terrified and instinctively reached out to grab it, but only caught a fleeting glimpse of it.
Scorpion stared at the empty bushes, his eye twitching slightly.
"What an idiot."
……
Inside the Leaf Village Giant Egg.
"It seems we have a brave young Konoha player who has successfully triggered our hidden surprise!"
Nishikawa Tetsu's commentary rang out at just the right moment, his tone full of schadenfreude, showing no sign of worry for Kana.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is the special feature of our Chunin Exams this year—the random teleportation trap!"
Nishikawa Tetsu pulled up a virtual forest map on the commentary platform, with a few red dots flashing on it.
"These red dots are miniature teleportation coordinate arrays that our examiner Minato personally set up throughout the forest using his superb space-time ninjutsu."
"Any candidate who touches these coordinates, whether they are stealthily moving, fighting, or resupplying, will be instantly and forcibly teleported to the deepest and most dangerous quarantine zone in the Death Forest!"
In the VIP section, the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, twitched upon hearing Minato personally deliver those words, and couldn't help but glance at Minato Namikaze, who was awkwardly touching his nose in the corner.
"Minato, when did you start using the Flying Thunder God Technique in this kind of situation?" the Third Hokage thought to himself. This kid doesn't learn anything good, he just follows Nishikawa Tetsu and learns these underhanded tricks.
Onoki's expression changed, and he secretly prayed that his genin would not fall into such a perverted trap.
Ai smiled, hoping Killer Bee would land the hit and show off his skills in front of so many people.
……
quarantine area.
"thump!"
Chanel felt like she had been rolled around in a washing machine seventeen or eighteen times, and then was violently thrown onto a soft, wet patch of grass.
"Ouch... my butt..."
She rubbed the sore spot from the fall and groggily got up.
"Where is this? Silent One? Brother Scorpion?"
No one responded.
The surrounding light was much dimmer than before, and the canopies of the towering trees almost completely blocked out the sky.
The air was thick with the stench of decay, and occasionally a chilling roar of a beast could be heard.
Chanel swallowed hard; the excitement of searching for treasure vanished instantly.
"It seems... we've gone too far."
She carefully gripped the kunai, preparing to find a place to hide.
"rustle……"
Suddenly, a rustling sound came from the bushes on the right.
Kana turned her head abruptly like a startled cat, holding a kunai across her chest.
The bushes parted, and a girl with short orange hair and a healthy tan emerged.
She held a kunai in her hand, her eyes warily scanning her surroundings, muttering curses under her breath:
"Damn Maki, why did he have to take such a shortcut? Now look what happened, I stepped on a broken wooden sign and it teleported me to this godforsaken place..."
The white sand Nagisa hidden in the sand.
The two locked eyes.
"Ah! It's you!"
"It's you again, you loud, red-haired guy!"
The two recognized each other at the same time; they were the Sand Village genin and the Konoha girl they had met briefly in the shopping street before.
"You were teleported here too?" Shirasagi frowned slightly, looking at Kana all alone. "Where are your teammates? Where's that fierce old lady?"
"Kushina-neechan isn't an old lady!" Kana retorted angrily, but then pouted pitifully, "I... I accidentally touched a strange wooden sign and ended up here."
Shirasa rolled her eyes and put away her kunai.
"What an idiot, touching things randomly in the exam room. You're lucky you didn't get blown up."
Despite his outward disdain, Nagisa Shirasa did not make a move against Kana.
She looked around and said in a low voice, "Something's not right here. When I came in, I sensed several strong chakra fluctuations. This is definitely not an ordinary examination area."
Before he could finish speaking...
"It seems the little sister from Sunagakure has a very sharp intuition."
A clear, mature voice came from the tree trunk above their heads.
Nagisa Shirasa and Kanae both looked up at the same time.
A female ninja from the Hidden Cloud Village with short blonde hair and a stunningly hot figure was standing with her arms crossed, looking down at them.
Samui.
Her icy blue eyes held a coldness that kept strangers at bay.
"It's not just you."
Samui said calmly, "I was chasing a mechanical golem when I accidentally stepped into a trap and was teleported here."
"Since we're all unlucky, why don't we..."
"Not as good as what?"
A gentle yet slightly cunning voice interrupted Samyi.
A girl with delicate features, wearing an earth-brown vest, emerged from behind a boulder a dozen meters away from them.
Hiroshi Tsugami's gaze swept over the three of them.
"Why don't we check with each other first to see what kind of bracelets we have?"
Hiro Tsugami smiled and posed an extremely sensitive question.
"After all, in this special area, if you can collect a complete set of bracelets, it might be your only hope of survival."
The air froze instantly.
Kana, Nagisa Shirasa, Samui, and Hiro Tsugami, four girls from different ninja villages, stood facing each other at four corners, their eyes filled with wariness.
In the outside world, they might keep to themselves and not interfere with each other.
But here, faced with the temptation of clearing the level and the fear of the unknown, no one can guarantee that the other party won't stab them in the heart with a kunai the next second.
"Giggle giggle..."
A strange laugh suddenly broke the suffocating silence.
"The girls seem to be having a good chat."
Outside their encirclement, behind a giant tree that was so thick that it would take two people to hug it, a tall figure slowly emerged.
Kisame Hoshigaki.
He carried a long knife, and a cruel smile graced his grayish-blue, shark-like face.
His eyes, devoid of white, stared intently at the four people present.
"I was also teleported to this godforsaken place by that damn trap."
Kisame stuck out his tongue, which had sharp teeth, and licked his lips.
"But it seems I'm in luck. Four lost lambs should be enough for me to get through this game."
Even the usually calm Samui and Tsugami Hiroshi changed their expressions.
Kisame Hoshigaki's oppressive aura was not something these girls could easily handle.
however.
Before Kisame could even savor the fear in his prey's eyes...
"boom--!!!"
A deafening roar, accompanied by a violent tremor of the earth, came from less than fifty meters away from them.
The dense trees fell in swathes, like weeds swept away by a strong wind.
"What is that?!"
Kisame suddenly turned his head, and the sinister smile on his face froze.
Amidst the smoke and dust, a colossal creature, standing two meters tall, emerged slowly with heavy steps.
It was a humanoid mechanical puppet.
Unlike the previous Silver Moon model, which was slightly slender and agile, this puppet was practically a muscular hunk made of cast steel!
Its arms were thicker than an ordinary person's thighs, and three chakra reactors flashing red light were embedded in its chest. Its whole body exuded a violent physical pressure.
"This is..." Hiro Tsugami's voice trembled as he looked at the off-the-charts readings on the detector.
"Ladies and gentlemen!"
Nishikawa Tetsu's excited commentary echoed inside the dome.
"Welcome to the ultimate survival challenge in the quarantine zone!"
"Here, venomous insects and ferocious beasts are merely appetizers. The real main course is a combat puppet, codenamed Kongo, meticulously crafted by our Dean Orochimaru, combining the concepts of Lightning Release armor and puppetry techniques!"
"This puppet won't stroll around gently like the Silver Moon. Its programming is to actively search, lock onto, and then 'gently' embrace every examinee entering the quarantine area with the highest level of non-lethal force!"
"By the way, this Vajra has five bracelets hanging from its limbs and neck!"
"Want to beat the game? Want to escape this hell?"
"Then, all candidates, please set aside your prejudices and challenge this mighty warrior to your heart's content!"
Inside the quarantine zone.
"Beep—Five vital signs detected. Threat level: Low. Initiating cleanup procedure."
The cold, electronic voice of King Kong rang out.
next second.
With a sudden kick of its thick metal legs, its massive body hurtled towards Kisame, Samui, and the others at a speed disproportionate to its size, like a cannonball!
"Oh my god! A monster!" Kana was so scared that she covered her head and crouched down in defense.
"That examiner from Konoha is absolutely insane!!!"
This is the shared sentiment of several candidates from other villages present at this moment.
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