The instant Shinya completed his hand seals, the ground beneath his feet suddenly sank.
A mud-covered hand burst from the earth and clamped around his ankle like an iron shackle.
“Damn it!” Shinya’s pupils contracted sharply.
Before he could react, an enormous force dragged his body downward.
The earth seemed to come alive, swallowing him in an instant until only his head remained above the surface.
Then, right before his eyes, the “Shuji” riddled with poisoned senbon vanished into a cloud of white smoke that scattered in the morning breeze.
**Earth Release: Double Suicide Decapitation Technique!** And…
**Shadow Clone Technique!** A jōnin?!
The earth crushed tightly around Shinya’s body as he struggled wildly.
Then a sudden, piercing agony tore through his abdomen.
“Ghh—!” His face twisted in pain.
Several hardened wooden spikes had pierced his internal organs and were growing violently inside him.
Fibrous roots spread through his blood vessels while branches punched through flesh and organs alike.
With every beat of his heart, new shoots forced their way out through the wounds.
“Cough—!” Blood erupted from his mouth and splashed across the soil before him.
Crimson seeped from his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, gathering beneath his chin before dripping steadily into the dirt.
Shuji appeared in front of Shinya’s exposed head and looked down at him.
“Puppetry.
Poisoned senbon.
That’s very Sunagakure.” His voice remained perfectly calm.
“A rogue shinobi?” Shuji studied him for a moment.
“What the villagers from Shirakawa Village took was only a fraction of the loot, wasn’t it?
Where did you hide the rest?” His eyes swept over Shinya.
“Not on you, apparently.” Then, almost casually, Shuji asked, “Anything you want to leave behind?
A reason for deserting your village, maybe?
It would make writing my report easier.” He shrugged.
“Of course, if you don’t want to talk, I’ll just make something up.” The wooden branches inside Shinya continued twisting deeper through his body.
His eyes bulged, blood vessels spreading across the whites.
He desperately opened his mouth, but only bloody foam came out, accompanied by a broken rasp from his throat.
“Too…
exhausting…” His hoarse voice sounded like gravel grinding against stone.
“There was…
no hope…” The wind and sand grew worse with every passing year.
Missions weren’t increasing, yet the military funding provided by the daimyō of the Land of Wind kept shrinking.
War never seemed to end.
And yet those weak merchants—ordinary people without chakra, without years of brutal training—somehow lived lives more peaceful and prosperous than shinobi like him.
Why?
Why should the strong spend their entire lives honing themselves, only to continue walking the line between life and death, while ordinary people enjoyed peace?
He couldn’t accept it.
During the chaos of the Third Shinobi World War, Shinya had used the confusion to desert his village.
He waited patiently until the ANBU sent to confirm his death had withdrawn, then remained hidden until the search died down.
Afterward, he carefully assembled a group, chose their targets with caution, and accumulated enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life.
Then he would dispose of his followers.
They were unstable seeds—people who had grown accustomed to robbery and easy money.
If Shinya wanted to retire peacefully, they had to disappear.
When he realized the villagers of Shirakawa Village had finally lost patience and decided to eliminate the bandits themselves, he’d simply gone along with it.
Everything should have been flawless.
So why…?
Why had everything fallen apart just before he reached the finish line?
Those damned villagers.
They had concealed the fact that the people investigating the robberies were shinobi.
If he’d known—if he’d known from the beginning that shinobi were involved—he never would have been this careless.
It didn’t make sense.
If shinobi had come to eliminate the bandits, why had ordinary villagers climbed the mountain instead?
That wasn’t how shinobi normally operated.
For a shinobi, tracking down common bandits should have been simple.
They would investigate traces along the trade road, follow the trail toward the mountains, and inevitably trigger the warning puppets Shinya had positioned along the route.
Instead, ordinary villagers had triggered them.
The Land of Tea…
The image remained painfully vivid in his mind.
Endless green fields.
Warm sunlight.
Camellias swaying gently in the wind.
He had planned to build a villa there—white walls, a red roof—and wake every morning to breathe in the salty sea breeze.
Now it was all gone.
His vision blurred.
In the growing morning light, Shuji’s figure dissolved into a dark silhouette.
A cold flash sliced through the air.
Shinya’s head fell to the ground.
The **Double Suicide Decapitation Technique** had reached its literal conclusion.
Shuji pulled a scroll from the pocket on his chest and unfurled it.
He placed Shinya’s severed head on top, formed a series of hand seals, and activated the sealing formula.
The scroll gave off a faint glow.
The head disappeared, leaving behind sealing characters that flickered once before fading.
When a shinobi encountered and killed a rogue ninja from another village, bringing the head back was standard procedure.
Konoha’s Intelligence Division would find a way to extract whatever information remained useful.
If the information proved valuable, there would be a special reward.
Even if they found nothing important, there was still a basic bounty payment.
The moment Shuji finished sealing the head, Itachi appeared at the entrance to the encampment.
“Everything settled?” Shuji asked.
“Yes.
I negotiated with Shirakawa Kisuke and the other village leaders according to your instructions.” Itachi’s report was concise and formal.
“I made it clear that Konohagakure will keep the affairs of Shirakawa Village confidential as agreed, and that publicly, the bandits will be reported as having been eliminated by us.” Itachi produced a cloth pouch.
“These are the valuables they surrendered.
I accepted them as instructed.” Shuji took the pouch and stored it away.
“Let’s search the area and see whether this Sunagakure rogue left anything else behind.” He glanced toward the bodies scattered throughout the encampment.
“We’ll have the villagers deal with those later.” Originally, the corpses were supposed to serve as physical proof to the Land of Rivers that the mission had been completed.
That was no longer necessary.
The severed head of a rogue shinobi from Sunagakure was more than enough.
Konoha’s Intelligence Division would confirm that Shinya had been the mastermind, and Konohagakure itself would guarantee that the commission had been fulfilled.
For a mere C-rank mission, killing an actual shinobi already went far beyond the original requirements.
Itachi approached the shattered puppet lying on the ground, but he didn’t recklessly touch the main body.
His hands quickly formed seals.
**Shadow Clone Technique.** A duplicate appeared beside him and cautiously approached the wreckage.
The instant the clone’s fingers touched the wooden surface, the skin around the point of contact turned bluish-purple.
The poison wasn’t potent enough to immediately dispel the shadow clone, so Itachi had it move faster, carefully reaching into the puppet’s chest cavity and removing a scroll.
The scroll itself wasn’t poisoned.
Even so, Itachi remained cautious.
He ordered the shadow clone to open and inspect it first.
Only after confirming there were no triggered traps did his real body approach for a closer look.
“Senpai, this is a sealing scroll.” “An item-storage seal.” Shuji nodded in understanding.
“The rest of the stolen valuables are probably inside.” He wasn’t skilled enough in unsealing techniques to safely break the formula himself, so they would have to bring it back to the village.
Shuji took out a specially made miniature sealing tube, collected a sample of Shinya’s blood, and carefully sealed it inside.
That blood would serve as a key for breaking the seal.
Chakra was created from a mixture of physical and spiritual energy.
Once a shinobi learned to refine chakra, traces of it became permanently embedded within the body’s cells.
That was why a shinobi’s own blood could be used as a medium for summoning techniques.
By the same principle, before blood completely lost its biological activity, it could also be used to help break an item seal created by its owner.
Of course, doing so required an expert proficient in fūinjutsu.
Shuji placed the sealing scroll inside his ninja-tool pouch and carefully searched the entire encampment one more time.
Once he was certain nothing had been overlooked, he dusted off his hands and turned toward the boy beside him with a relaxed smile.
“That basically wraps up the mission.
All that’s left is to return to the village and submit the report.” Itachi remained standing quietly where he was.
Shuji suddenly blinked as though remembering something.
“Oh, right.
Before we head back, want to look around Koizumi Town for a while?” “Look around?” The eight-year-old Uchiha tilted his head slightly, confusion flickering through his eyes.
“The mission’s finished.
What’s the point of coming all this way if we don’t relax a little afterward?” Shuji laughed and reached out to lightly pat Itachi on the shoulder.
“Yes…
senpai.” Itachi’s voice remained steady.
Shuji crouched down until their eyes were level.
“That wasn’t an order.” He smiled.
“So you don’t have to answer with ‘yes.’ Just tell me whether you actually want to go.” Uchiha Itachi fell silent for a moment.
The morning breeze swept through the ruined encampment, carrying the lingering metallic scent of blood along with the fresh fragrance of grass and trees.
His gaze seemed to pass beyond the broken wooden palisade toward the faint outline of the trade road below.
Then he quietly asked: “Dango?” “Great idea!” Shuji stood and stretched, the morning sunlight outlining his figure.
“Then let’s go try the dango in Koizumi Town.
Since we don’t get out this way often, we might as well pick up some local specialties to take home too.”