Chapter 1023

It was not fear of the enemy — fear that someone could still be alive after a jutsu of such devastating power — but fear of oneself: at this very moment, wounded by the enemy's blade while trying to protect oneself, calling out and receiving no answer at all.

"One-Tail!" Scorpion slowly sheathed her blade. Now her attention was already on the giant salamander holding a defensive posture behind them. Even as she passed the two siblings clinging to each other, Scorpion's footsteps did not pause in the slightest, as if they simply did not exist.

"Unforgivable!" Kankuro gently laid Temari flat on the ground. Staggering to his feet, he fixed Scorpion with a gaze full of hatred.

"You bastard, absolutely unforgivable!"

Kankuro, burning with rage, linked up with the puppets lying in standby around the giant salamander. These puppets, normally sealed within scrolls, were now all activated by him — all for the sake of performing a certain puppet jutsu he had not yet mastered.

Scorpion halted her advance. Around her, the puppets seemed to form an inescapable encirclement, each one meticulously crafted by Kankuro — puppets armed to the teeth, no inferior to the "Crows". With a light stomp, black sand-iron rose from the surrounding desert, instantly creating a black ocean.

Kankuro lay sprawled on the ground, his whole body paralyzed. The puppets he took such pride in had all returned to a state of scattered parts — after all, who could know their weaknesses better than the very maker of these puppets?

"Big Sis… I, Gaara…" He could barely stay conscious. The poison Scorpion had mixed into the sand-iron flowed through his entire body with his blood. Now he could only watch helplessly as Scorpion pulled the completely defenseless Gaara out of the giant salamander's remains.

Regarding the combat power of a jinchūriki — or rather, a Tailed Beast — Scorpion of the Red Sand still had some understanding. After all, added up across the whole world, there were only nine of them, and to a great extent they were weapons hidden away by the Five Great Nations. Any one of them, fully unleashed, could cause devastating consequences — there were precedents in history.

And now, the One-Tail's jinchūriki, for reasons unknown, truly did look as if he were half-dead.

Still needing others to protect Scorpion, she glanced back at Kankuro, who still refused to close his eyes, and at Temari, motionless from shock and blood loss, then looked again toward the direction of the Sand Village.