Guidepost of the Camellia

Yūkimaru informs the Orochimaru Search Team that both Naruto and Guren are sealed inside the Three-Tailed Turtle, and that he can pinpoint the beast's location. Acting on this, Kakashi divides his forces: Lee, Tenten, Kiba and Akamaru are ordered to confront Team Guren, while everyone else concentrates on tracking down the tailed beast and pulling Naruto free.

Within the turtle, swarms of Three-Tails mini clones wipe out Naruto's shadow clones. When he urges Guren to look after herself and takes on a huge clone alone, she instead deflects a strike aimed at him using her Crystal Release: Jade Crystal Blade. Spotting a gap overhead, Naruto scoops up the flustered woman and launches them both upward with a pair of clones. Guren demands to know why he bothered saving her, and he shrugs that the choice was as free as hers had been.

Sent into an Illusionary Mist given off by the beast, Naruto is caught in a vision of Sasuke cutting him down with his blade. Guren throws herself into the same mist and faces a phantom of Yūkimaru's mother, pleading for forgiveness and swearing to guard the boy with her life. Freed of the illusion, she reaches Naruto and slaps him awake. Learning he means to reclaim Sasuke from Orochimaru, she bursts out laughing at the thought. Above the water, Yūkimaru has Sai drop camellias into the lake as Kakashi and Yamato tear a hole in the barrier with the Lightning Cutter and Wood Release. The floating flowers reveal the exit. Guren confesses that she killed Yūkimaru's mother under Orochimaru's command, then Naruto lifts her and rips the opening wide with a Rasengan.

The installment first aired in Japan on May 7, 2009, with its English broadcast following on January 24, 2012. It uses the opening theme Light of a Firefly and the ending theme Deep Breath, and adapts material from the Three-Tails' Appearance arc.