Naruto watched this scene from the periphery of the crowd, his brows furrowing slightly, but he didn't move his feet.
In order to avoid attracting attention, Rock Lee and Tenten had disguised themselves as weaklings, so they didn't fight back even when hit.
Since it was someone else's plan, why would he go up there?
Besides, this kind of showing off definitely required the 'King of Cool' to make an appearance. Naruto shifted his gaze to the side.
Sure enough, Sasuke moved. He strode forward from the back of the crowd and passed through the crowd without even glancing at anyone around him and walked straight up to the two gatekeepers.
"Move aside, we're going through."
The two wanted to speak, but were interrupted by Sasuke.
"Also, you should hurry up and dispel this barrier created by low-level genjutsu. I'm heading to the third floor, not the second."
In an instant, the surrounding crowd erupted in an uproar.
"Genjutsu? He said this is genjutsu?" A Genin nearby lowered his voice and said to his teammate.
"How is that possible? This is clearly a 301 sign, I can even see seats through the crack in the door." His teammate pointed at the door, looking unconvinced.
"That's correct, this is the second floor." Sakura stood at the front of the crowd, her tone firm.
She had stared at this door for less than a minute before discovering something was wrong. The writing of '301' on the sign had extremely subtle fluctuations. Her Chakra control and sensitivity to genjutsu were considered high among her peers, and the traces of this genjutsu were, in her eyes, practically a small trick laid out right in front of her.
The two gatekeepers were silent for a moment.
"Hmph!"
One of them curled the corner of his lips slightly, then performed a hand seal.
Immediately, the air trembled slightly, and then the '301' on the wall squirmed and changed back to '201'. The outline of the door frame also distorted slightly, merging back into the structure of the second-floor hallway.
The crowd gathered at the entrance gasped in unison.
"Pretty impressive. However, just seeing through it isn't eno—"
Before the gatekeeping Genin could finish his sentence, his right leg had already kicked out, his instep aiming straight for Sasuke's face with a sharp whistling wind.
The speed of this kick was faster than when he had kicked Rock Lee earlier. Clearly, these two hadn't used their real skills at all.
Sasuke's pupils constricted slightly, and his left leg kicked out at almost the same instant. He had been training his taijutsu incessantly since the Land of Waves mission, so his leg speed was faster than before.
But just as their feet were about to collide in mid-air, a green afterimage inserted itself between the two. Both of their feet were caught simultaneously by a pair of hands wrapped in white bandages.
Sasuke's foot was firmly gripped in the left palm, and the gatekeeper's foot was gripped in the right palm. Both of their feet stopped in mid-air, less than a palm's width away from each other's faces.
At this moment, the anxious expression Rock Lee had during the earlier argument was gone, replaced by a completely different kind of seriousness and focus.
'So fast...' Sasuke was shocked inside.
He hadn't even clearly seen how Rock Lee had instantly appeared in the middle from the edge of the crowd.
The surrounding crowd was silent. The thick-browed boy in front of them, who had just been getting kicked all over the hallway, was now displaying a performance that made everyone refresh their perception of him.
"Lee, this isn't what we agreed on."
At this point, Neji stepped forward from the crowd, his tone indifferent. "Didn't you say you didn't want to attract too much attention, so as to avoid being guarded against prematurely?"
"But..."
Upon hearing this, Rock Lee's expression switched instantly from serious to a shy shade of red. His gaze passed over Sasuke and landed straight on a patch of pink hair in the crowd ahead.
He released their feet, and in 0.1 seconds, switched from combat mode to confession mode.
He excitedly took a step forward and spoke loudly to Sakura, "My name is Rock Lee, you are Sakura, right? Please go out with me. I will definitely protect you."
Sakura's expression went from nervous to confused, to shocked, to disgusted, completing a textbook-level four-stage facial transformation.
She looked at Rock Lee in front of her—thick-browed, wearing an all-green bodysuit and hair cut into a bowl cut. Her lips twitched involuntarily and she made an 'X' with her hands in front of her.
"Absolutely not! I don't like boys with such thick eyebrows!"
Rock Lee was petrified on the spot.
Taking advantage of this opening, Naruto waved at Tenten. "Long time no see, Tenten."
Tenten was rubbing her cheek, which had been slapped red. Hearing the voice, she looked up and saw Naruto standing in the crowd waving at her. She was stunned for a moment, then smiled.
"It's Naruto, I almost didn't recognize you. Long time no see."
Her eyes lit up. "Did you change your look?"
"You were still wearing that orange one when we last met. This outfit is nice, it looks much sharper than your previous one."
Naruto was about to answer, but Neji, standing beside him, tilted his head slightly to look at him.
He asked, "Do you know each other?"
Tenten answered, "Yeah, he ordered ninja tools from my family's ninja tool shop, so we've met once."