met free Chapter 23: The person was arrested ahead of schedule.
Chapter 23: The person was arrested ahead of schedule.
The samurai's quarters were detached wooden houses, which looked no better than the tenant farmers' huts.
There were indeed many warning traps outside, but these traps wouldn't be triggered by Chunin. Besides, long before Haruka arrived, these traps had already been eaten away by insects.
In addition, there were two guards outside the door, but they were dressed in rags and were not carrying samurai swords, but sharpened wooden sticks.
Sato Kichisuke gestured, and Aburame Shisei understood, and the two of them flanked from both sides.
The two men on watch didn't even have time to make a sound before their throats were silently slit and they were knocked to the ground.
At that moment, Sato Yoshisuke kicked open the wooden door and, without even looking, threw out a shuriken.
However, the room was empty, containing only a broken wooden table, a few straw mats, and some farm tools piled in the corner. There wasn't even a decent weapon, let alone a samurai.
"Damn it," Yoshisuke Sato cursed, "we've been tricked."
Standing not far from him, Aburame Shisei had been trying hard to suppress his smile. He had already scouted the situation earlier, and his true form had infiltrated the main house first.
That's right, he only left behind a shadow clone. As for when he switched, we have to go back to before Operation Spring Grass.
The back of the shantytown.
Naoto's kunai flashed with a cold light, precisely stabbing at the oncoming bandit.
The other person was dressed in tattered men's clothing, his face smeared with mud and ash, but he was thin and clumsy, and did not look like a trained person at all.
The moment the kunai pierced his shoulder, Naoto suddenly saw the other person's face clearly—it was the face of a young girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, distorted by pain, but there was no ferocity in her eyes, only pure fear and despair.
Zhi Ren was startled and instinctively withdrew his strength, but the kunai had already pierced her flesh. The girl groaned, staggered, and fell to the ground, blood gushing from her shoulder.
Seeing this, another bandit screamed and lunged forward, brandishing a rusty sickle. Naoto easily dodged, then subdued him with a backhand and pinned him to the ground.
Only then did he realize that the thug he had pinned down was just a teenager.
The two were pinned to the ground, their bodies trembling violently, but they gritted their teeth and didn't cry out.
Their eyes were fixed on the straight man, filled with fear, resentment, and unwillingness, but not with ferocity.
Such a look left Zhi Ren bewildered. He thought to himself: Perhaps they were only following their parents' orders, forced to join, and had no choice.
"Naoto, over here!" Ono Yuki's voice came from inside the house.
Naoto took a deep breath, pulled out bandages from his pocket, tossed them to the two men, and ordered, "Stay here and don't move."
The two boys looked at him with complicated expressions.
Naoto turned and rushed into the house.
Inside the house, Ono Yuki had already taken control of the situation.
Several farmers who had taken hostages were lying in pools of blood, but many women had also been used as human shields and had suffered injuries, though not too serious, and were still alive.
Ono Yuki was also encountering this situation for the first time, and he didn't know what to do, so he panicked.
"Straight Man, they won't die because of me, will they?"
"No." Naoto walked to the corner where the trembling women were, took out some hemostatic medicine, and poured it on their wounds.
These injuries were not only caused by the reckless and indiscriminate shooting of shuriken by the tree, but also by the previous abuse.
Naoto couldn't bear it, so he became even gentler. The women quickly recovered and looked at Naoto and the others as if they were their saviors, and they all knelt down and kowtowed.
"Thank you... thank you everyone..."
"Please help us..."
Ono Yuki had never seen anything like this before, and quickly went to help them up: "Get up quickly, we are ninjas from Takigakure, and the lord of the castle invited us to rescue you."
The women cried even harder.
Naoto watched this scene, then looked back at the two boys lying in the yard, feeling a heavy weight on his heart.
He felt as if he was being swept up by something.
He could sense that neither side was at fault, so why were they so hostile towards each other?
Just then, a woman covered in blood walked into the courtyard; she was there to deal with the spring grass in the farmland and mine.
The farmers in the village were timid. After she dealt with a few of the ringleaders, the rest laid down their weapons and surrendered obediently.
Seeing the two injured boys in the yard, she mistakenly assumed they were also victims and said, "Naoto, I'm leaving this to you. Go and bring those two outside in too, don't let them die."
She left the more experienced Naoto behind to help treat the wounded, and then she took Ariju to surround the ronin.
Naoto returned to the courtyard. The two teenagers were still lying there, bleeding, clutching the bandages on their hands tightly, not moving an inch, their eyes full of vigilance.
"You..." He opened his mouth, but didn't know what to ask.
In the end, he simply bent down and led the two of them into the house. Their bodies were very light, not the weight one would expect for their age.
Naoto placed the two women on a straw mat in the corner, took out some medicine from his ninja tool bag, and re-treated their wounds.
At this moment, the girl with the injured shoulder bit her lip and looked at him, then suddenly asked in a low voice, "Are you... hired by the city lord to kill us?"
Zhi Ren's hand trembled, and the medicine bottle almost fell to the ground.
He looked up into the girl's eyes, which held no tears, only a numb calm.
"We..." he began with difficulty, "are here to restore order."
The girl smiled, but the smile was faint and bitter.
"Order?" she repeated softly. "So this is what order is: locking us in cellars, letting the supervisors abuse us, sending men to the mines to be worked to death...
Naoto froze, but quickly finished treating the wounds on the two of them.
The captain is right. There are some missions he shouldn't know; he just needs to carry them out. Because they are ninjas, completing missions is their duty.
For some reason, he began to suppress an emotion, an emotion he wanted to express but couldn't.
Outside, Aburame Shisei leaned against the wall in the backyard, taking in Naoto's changes.
He didn't linger any longer, but picked up the four wandering warriors in his hands and headed to the mine in the back mountain.
He had just detected through the stones that this was actually an aluminum-iron mine. This mine extended from the surface to underground, which could support a group of corrosive insects and even induce some insects to undergo benign mutations.
The previous consumption of tens of thousands of corrosive insects had depleted his insect stock considerably. This was not a battlefield; it was impossible for corpses to magically appear out of thin air.
Besides, he couldn't possibly go around slaughtering entire cities and villages every day just to raise insects.