After treating Hyuga Kagami’s wounds, Anko understood the situation they were both in.
She said nothing more and quietly returned to her own room.
Hyuga Kagami, meanwhile, lay on his bed, carefully going over everything that had happened that day.
There was no doubt about it—the mission today had been a trap, and Sunagakure had been involved as well.
If Sasori hadn’t interfered, the ones he would have faced today would most likely have been a Sunagakure assassination squad.
And perhaps, if necessary, his own squad captain, Mitsui Chuichi, would have joined them!
As for why Sunagakure would involve itself in Konoha’s purge, Hyuga Kagami thought it over briefly and soon arrived at an answer.
Sunagakure’s Fourth Kazekage had only been hastily elevated to the position because of the Third Kazekage’s disappearance.
Now that the pressure of the war was gone, the Fourth Kazekage would inevitably seek to weaken the Third Kazekage’s lingering influence within Sunagakure.
In other words, Sunagakure also had a need to purge its own ranks—and that need was actually far stronger than Konoha’s.
On top of that, in the aftermath of the war, Sunagakure also had intentions of forming an alliance with Konoha.
This also explained why Sunagakure had participated in Konoha’s purge.
The upper echelons of both villages had clearly reached some sort of agreement, helping each other dispose of those they had chosen to abandon.
That way, they could avoid staining their own hands with the blood of comrades from the same village, while also having a convenient excuse to shift the blame if anything went wrong.
Once Hyuga Kagami figured this out, he also realized that even if Danzo was the one overseeing this purge within the village, the Third Hokage and the other higher-ups must have either tacitly approved of it or at least known about it.
Otherwise, Danzo alone simply didn’t have the authority to bypass the village and negotiate an operation of this magnitude with Sunagakure.
The thought that so many people had been mercilessly abandoned by the village filled Hyuga Kagami with both shock and anger.
It could be said that ninety percent of these people were innocent.
Only a small handful had actually participated in Orochimaru’s human experiments, and even then, most had merely been involved in peripheral experimental projects, just like Hyuga Kagami himself.
The truly core projects—the ones involving bloody human experimentation—were almost entirely carried out by Orochimaru personally.
Very few people were allowed to participate in them.
Even Hyuga Kagami hadn’t been qualified to come into contact with such work.
This wasn’t Hyuga Kagami trying to shirk responsibility.
The simple truth was that aside from Orochimaru, there really weren’t many people in the village capable of independently conducting complex human experiments.
“Why is the village going so far with this purge?”
The more Hyuga Kagami thought about it, the more he felt that something was wrong.
There was no way Konoha’s higher-ups could be unaware that this purge would sweep up a great many innocent people.
There had to be some reason behind it that Hyuga Kagami didn’t know about.
Then he thought of Orochimaru’s voluntary defection—and of Danzo, who had always maintained a cooperative relationship with Orochimaru, suddenly acting completely out of character…
A thought suddenly occurred to Hyuga Kagami.
Could Orochimaru really have done something so utterly outrageous that it had driven the village’s higher-ups to pursue the matter with such hysterical intensity?
Whatever the cause, the purge had already begun.
Hyuga Kagami could only rein in his wandering thoughts and calmly sort through the various threats he currently faced.
The most immediate threat was undoubtedly the village’s purge.
Since the purge had already begun, the village wouldn’t simply stop halfway.
Even though Hyuga Kagami had escaped this time, there would inevitably be another attempt waiting for him—and each one would be more dangerous than the last.
Aside from that, the threat posed by Sasori couldn’t be ignored either.
The Third Kazekage had once been hailed as the “Strongest Kazekage,” yet he had somehow fallen into Sasori’s hands without anyone even realizing what had happened.
That alone showed just how formidable Sasori was when it came to surprise attacks and assassination.
Now that Hyuga Kagami had made an enemy of Sasori, he had no choice but to remain on guard against a covert attack.
But after thinking it over, the most pressing issue was actually how the village would react to Mitsui Chuichi’s death.
If the village came to suspect that Hyuga Kagami had been responsible for it, then his only option would be to defect.
“I wonder if that little performance of mine was enough to fool the village.”
Having the Third Kazekage Human Puppet pose as a wandering ninja had actually been a rather clever move.
Because of the previous war, large numbers of rogue and wandering ninja were active throughout the various regions.
As a result, in border areas where the major ninja villages had only a weak degree of control, occasionally running into a wandering ninja was perfectly normal.
On top of that, the other two squad captains at the outpost, both suspected of being members of Root, had personally seen the Third Kazekage Human Puppet disguised as a wandering ninja and had even fought against it.
This made Hyuga Kagami’s story all the more convincing.
After spending the entire night lost in thought, Hyuga Kagami found an opportunity the next day to retrieve the Third Kazekage Human Puppet that he had hidden near the outpost and sealed it inside a scroll he carried with him.
At present, the outpost had suffered severe losses.
Of the four remaining ninja, both Anko and Hyuga Kagami were wounded.
The village could therefore send a reinforcement squad at any moment.
In fact, the reinforcements might already be on their way.
If Hyuga Kagami continued allowing the Third Kazekage Human Puppet to linger around the outpost, there was a good chance it would run into the reinforcement squad and be exposed.
Ultimately, the Third Kazekage Human Puppet was simply too conspicuous.
Forget Hyuga Kagami—even someone as audacious as Sasori wouldn’t dare use it casually in everyday situations.
If it were exposed while in Hyuga Kagami’s possession, not only would he lose one of his trump cards, but he would also have an extremely difficult time explaining how he had obtained it.
The Third Kazekage might be dead, but he had once been the leader of an entire village and had represented the dignity of Sunagakure.
Even if only to preserve the authority and prestige of one of the Five Great Ninja Villages, Sunagakure would spare no cost to recover the Third Kazekage Human Puppet—and kill whoever possessed it.
Hyuga Kagami, who had already been marked by the village for elimination, had no desire to create even more trouble for himself by provoking Sunagakure as well.
After all, the only two people who currently knew that the Third Kazekage had been turned into a Human Puppet were Hyuga Kagami and Sasori.
And as the culprit who had killed the Third Kazekage and turned him into a Human Puppet, Sasori certainly wasn’t going to publicize the matter himself.
Besides, given Sasori’s personality, he was probably still thinking about how to reclaim the Third Kazekage Human Puppet from Hyuga Kagami.
So long as Hyuga Kagami didn’t make any mistakes on his end, the existence of the Third Kazekage Human Puppet wouldn’t be exposed anytime soon.
The next few days passed peacefully without incident.
Taking advantage of this brief and precious respite, Hyuga Kagami shut himself away and began studying the Tenseigan’s ability to control puppets.
After repeated experiments, he discovered that a puppet’s agility depended entirely on the amount of Tenseigan chakra he infused into it.
Simply put, the more chakra he poured into the puppet, the more agile and responsive it became.
Hyuga Kagami didn’t know much about puppets.
He wasn’t sure whether it was because the Third Kazekage Human Puppet was an especially high-end puppet, but simply activating it required at least half of Hyuga Kagami’s chakra to maintain.
And if he went a step further and wanted the Third Kazekage Human Puppet to retain the ability to use Magnet Release, maintaining it required at least two-thirds of Hyuga Kagami’s chakra.
In other words, while the Third Kazekage Human Puppet was activated, Hyuga Kagami could retain at most half of his chakra, barely leaving him with chakra reserves at the level of an elite chunin.
Hyuga Kagami had also tried pouring all of his chakra into the Third Kazekage Human Puppet to see whether he could push it a step further and grant the Human Puppet a small degree of autonomous consciousness.
The result, however, left him disappointed.
He didn’t know whether his total chakra reserves were simply too low or whether there was some other reason, but even after pouring every last bit of his chakra into it, the Third Kazekage Human Puppet showed no further transformation.
At most, it became slightly more agile and lifelike than when he infused it with two-thirds of his chakra.
By now, however, Hyuga Kagami had learned to adjust his expectations.
He no longer compared everything he could do with the Otsutsuki Toneri he remembered, so he didn’t feel particularly discouraged.
He was merely a little annoyed…