Kaguya Shiro rose slowly, his gaze beneath the black cloth sweeping across the street.
The sun was slanting westward.
Lights were flickering on in the gambling halls one by one.
Tanzaku Quarter’s nightlife was about to begin, and more money and desire would flow through here.
For now, he needed more intelligence about Tsunade, about Konoha, about this era that seemed peaceful on the surface but churned with undercurrents.
As he turned to go downstairs, the shopkeeper had just finished seeing off a customer.
Hearing the movement, he looked up at Shiro.
“Young Master Souji, you’re heading out?” “Yes.
To Kichoya.” Kichoya was the largest of their three gambling establishments in Tanzaku Quarter, and the best place to gather information.
“Shall I send someone to accompany you?” “No need.” Waving off the offer, Shiro strode out the shop door.
The noise of the crowd washed over him.
He walked with a plain bamboo staff, weaving through the throng.
Through the Six Eyes, every person’s chakra flowed like flames of different colors.
Suddenly, he stopped.
Three hundred meters away, at the entrance of a tavern, a mass of abnormally vast chakra had appeared.
The quality, the density, far beyond an ordinary jonin, even stronger than most elite jonin he had encountered over these six years.
More strikingly, the chakra possessed a vitality so exuberant it bordered on violent, tinged with a faint, hidden coldness.
Shiro’s heart quickened slightly.
This feeling, these characteristics…
He adjusted the Six Eyes’ perception, piercing through the walls, and saw the woman inside the tavern clearly.
Blonde hair, the blue diamond-shaped seal on her forehead, a bold sitting posture.
More than a dozen empty sake jugs sat at her feet.
She laughed and chatted with the black-haired woman beside her, her ample chest bouncing with each burst of laughter.
Tsunade and Shizune.
Finally.
Shiro took a long, deep breath and forced himself to look away.
He couldn’t stare too long.
Someone of this caliber was extremely sensitive to being watched.
He turned and walked casually into a tea house, taking a seat in the corner.
After three years of waiting, his target had finally appeared.
But how could he approach her?
How could he make her willing to treat a Kaguya orphan of unknown origin who carried the Dead Bone Pulse?
Directly asking for treatment would surely be refused.
Displaying his strength might invite suspicion or even an attack.
As for money, Tsunade loved gambling, but she couldn’t be bought.
He still needed a natural opportunity to establish a connection without revealing too many of his cards.
Shiro wasn’t impatient.
He had waited three years.
He could wait a little longer.
He ordered a pot of green tea, his fingers tracing idle circles on the tabletop.
He kept a sliver of his attention, through the Six Eyes, fixed on Tsunade in the distant tavern while his mind raced.
Then his fingers stopped.
Gambling.
Tsunade was a compulsive gambler, but her luck was atrocious.
She lost every bet, hence her nickname, “The Legendary Sucker.” If he could cross paths with her at the gambling table and establish an initial connection as a fellow gambler, it might be a good choice.
However, the risk was also great.
When Tsunade lost badly, she would smash up the gambling hall, and Shizune, her calm advisor, was always by her side.
Still, this was the most natural approach and the least likely to arouse suspicion.
With that thought, he patted the money pouch at his waist.
The caravan’s dividends over the years, combined with his own savings.
Losing some of it in exchange for a chance to make contact.
It was worth it!
But he couldn’t lose too deliberately.
Tsunade was a seasoned gambler.
If he threw the game too obviously, she would see through it.
Shiro finished his tea, paid for it, and rose, heading toward Kichoya.
Through the Six Eyes, Tsunade and Shizune had already settled their tab and were aimlessly strolling through the streets toward the gambling district.
He quickened his pace.
The sun sank completely below the horizon.
Tanzaku Quarter lit up in brilliant splendor.
… The clamor of Kichoya reached its peak at midnight.
The smell of sweat, tobacco, and sweet sake mingled with the feverish breaths of gamblers, rising beneath the hanging lanterns into a hazy, dreamlike mist.
At the largest dice table in the house, the crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder.
The dealer’s forehead dripped with sweat, and even his hands trembled slightly.
This was already the fifth consecutive three-of-a-kind sweep of the night.
An eerie silence fell around the table, broken only by the rustle of chips being raked away.
The mountain of chips piled up in front of Tsunade was tall enough to block her face.
Yet she wasn’t looking at the money.
Instead, she stared at the palm she had just drawn back, her brow furrowed into a tight knot.
Shizune stood behind her, pale as paper.
The little pig Tonton in her arms squirmed restlessly.
“Tsunade-sama…” Shizune’s voice trembled.
“Let’s go.” Tsunade rose abruptly, her chair scraping across the floor with a harsh screech.
She didn’t take the chips.
Instead, she pushed straight through the crowd toward the exit.
The gamblers automatically parted to make way for her, not one of them daring to stop her.
The aura she exuded at that moment was enough to send a chill down the spine of even the greediest gambler.
Shiro stood in the shadows behind the second-floor curtain, quietly watching Tsunade’s departing figure through the Six Eyes beneath the black cloth.
He couldn’t see the so-called omen of misfortune mentioned in the original manga.
Yet through the Six Eyes, he could clearly perceive faint, indescribable disturbances rippling along the edges of the immense Yang Release chakra within Tsunade’s body.
He didn’t dwell on it.
After waiting for the span of three breaths, Shiro tapped his bamboo staff against the ground and quietly slipped out through the side entrance.
… On the west side of Tanzaku Quarter lay an abandoned alley.
Moonlight was sliced into pale white strips by the towering walls.
Dirty water seeped slowly through the cracks between the stones.
Tsunade stood in the middle of the alley, her blonde hair gently swaying in the breeze.
“Come out.” Her voice wasn’t loud, yet it echoed with remarkable clarity through the empty alley.
“From the very first roll of the dice, that gaze behind the second-floor curtain never left me.
Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for me at first sight.” From the shadows came the steady tapping of a bamboo staff.
Shiro stepped out from the alley entrance into the moonlight, stopping ten meters away.
He gave a slight bow.
“Tsunade-sama.” “Blind?” Tsunade raised an eyebrow, her gaze sweeping over the black cloth covering his eyes before shifting to the bamboo staff in his hand.
“That’s a convincing act.
But your stance, your balance, your breathing.
Not a single thing about you resembles a real blind man.” “My eyes are indeed unable to see normally.
I simply perceive the world through other means.” Shiro replied calmly.
“I am Yamada Souji, a humble merchant.” “A merchant?” Tsunade snorted, folding her arms across her chest, causing her ample bosom to sway noticeably.
“Merchants smell of money.
They don’t carry the stench of corpses like you do.” “And what’s with that strange energy inside you?
Your chakra is decent enough, but what’s that cold thing mixed in with it?” “A dead man’s resentment?” Shiro’s heart stirred slightly.
As expected of one of the Sannin.
Even without specializing in sensory techniques, her experience and a medical ninja’s keen perception of the body’s energy allowed her to detect the existence of cursed energy.
“You may call it cursed energy.” He made no attempt to hide it.
“It was born from slaughter and grows stronger through slaughter.
As for the smell…” He raised his left hand, his sleeve slipping back.
Under the moonlight, the faint outline of the bones beneath the skin of his forearm became visible.
“I believe it comes from this.” Before the last word had fully left his lips, a gray-white bone pierced through his flesh, carrying with it a trace of unnatural decay.