After settling the matter of forming a team, Hyuga Kagami once again began flipping through the mission sheets.
Itachi stood obediently to the side, quietly waiting for Kagami to choose a mission.
When Kagami turned to the second page, a name suddenly caught his attention.
“Shinnō!?
Who the hell is this guy?
That’s quite the name he’s got.”
After grumbling inwardly, Kagami began carefully reading through the mission details.
The mission itself was simple: escort a physician named Shinnō to the Land of Rice Fields, which bordered the Land of Fire.
Staring at the mission description, Kagami frowned slightly.
For some reason, he had a strange feeling that he had heard of this before.
A moment later, it finally came back to him.
In his hazy memories, there really had been a remnant of the Land of Sky who disguised himself as a physician and traveled from country to country.
While building up his reputation, he secretly looked for opportunities to steal confidential forbidden techniques from the various hidden villages.
And if Kagami remembered correctly, that man was called Shinnō.
Later on, the guy had apparently even created an artificial Tailed Beast known as the Zero-Tails, causing quite a commotion in the process.
“Could it really be him?”
After thinking it over for a moment, Hyuga Kagami decided that whether this was really the man he remembered or not, he was taking this mission.
Once the paperwork for accepting the mission was completed, Kagami and Itachi soon met their client.
Kagami carefully sized up the man named Shinnō standing before him, and quickly arrived at an answer.
Whether it was his appearance or the way he dressed, the man before him largely matched the Shinnō from Kagami’s memories of his previous life.
There was no doubt about it.
This guy was indeed a remnant of the Land of Sky—the future creator of the Zero-Tails.
Now that he knew the man’s true identity, Kagami calmly introduced himself without betraying anything on his face.
“My name is Hyuga Kagami.
I’m a Konoha Chūnin and the team leader assigned to your mission.
The one beside me is my teammate, Uchiha Itachi.
He’s a Konoha Genin.”
Shinnō, who was only in his early thirties, behaved very politely.
He bowed and said, “Then I’ll be counting on the two of you.”
“We’ll certainly do our best.
But before we set out, there are a few things I need to know.” After a brief pause, Kagami asked, “You raised the mission to B-rank, so you must have had a reason.
Tell me—who are your enemies?”
Shinnō looked somewhat uncomfortable and coughed lightly twice.
“I wouldn’t exactly call them enemies.
It’s just a small misunderstanding.
When I was traveling through Kumogakure, there happened to be a theft in their village. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
For some reason, they suspected that I had something to do with it.
But as you know, I’m just an ordinary physician.
How could I possibly be involved in something like that?”
“Yeah, like hell I believe you!”
Kagami laughed inwardly, then another thought crossed his mind.
“This guy must be pretty damn good at stealing things!”
A place like Kumogakure was notoriously difficult to infiltrate.
Even Konoha’s highest-level spies would have a hard time getting inside, let alone stealing intelligence, ninjutsu, forbidden techniques, or anything of the sort.
Yet this unremarkable-looking Shinnō had actually managed to steal something from Kumogakure.
Even more astonishingly, he had escaped in one piece.
Kagami couldn’t help but find that impressive.
Considering that Shinnō might prove useful to him someday, Kagami chose not to expose him.
After making some brief preparations, the three of them set off for the Land of Rice Fields.
The moment they left the village, Kagami got his first taste of just how meticulous Itachi was.
Whether it was choosing their travel route or selecting a campsite, Itachi handled everything with practiced competence, leaving virtually nothing to criticize.
While they traveled, Itachi would even occasionally correct errors and omissions on the map he carried with him.
Whenever they made camp, he would record the day’s journey and sometimes add a few notes about what he had learned or observed.
Itachi’s presence saved Kagami quite a bit of trouble.
Naturally, Kagami wasn’t simply sitting idle either.
Taking advantage of the Tenseigan’s unparalleled powers of observation, he constantly watched Itachi and Shinnō.
By studying the changes in their facial expressions and the subtle contractions and relaxations of their muscles, he trained his own ability to observe and predict their actions.
The perceptive Itachi quickly noticed what Kagami was doing.
However, he assumed Kagami was merely evaluating whether he was truly qualified to be a Genin, so he didn’t mind.
Shinnō had undoubtedly noticed as well, but he did his utmost to conceal it.
He acted as though he were completely oblivious, spending his days cheerfully recounting amusing stories from his travels across the various lands.
After several weeks of traveling, with frequent stops along the way, the group finally reached the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Rice Fields.
Seeing that it was already getting late, Hyuga Kagami instructed, “Itachi, find us a suitable place to camp.
We’ll get a good night’s rest and cross the border tomorrow.”
“Yes!”
Itachi answered obediently before leaping into the trees to search for a suitable campsite.
Shinnō, standing nearby, smiled.
“Kagami-kun and Itachi-kun truly live up to your prestigious clans.”
Kagami waved a hand dismissively.
“What surname you have doesn’t matter.
In the shinobi world, strength is what ultimately speaks for you.”
“I’ve met plenty of shinobi during my travels, but very few as outstanding as the two of you.
I imagine it won’t be long before your names are known throughout the shinobi world.”
Knowing exactly what kind of person Shinnō really was, Kagami paid no attention to his flattery and instead shifted the conversation toward medicine.
There was no denying that Shinnō was highly accomplished in the medical arts.
In particular, his knowledge of bandaging techniques, the human meridian system, herbal pharmacology, and similar fields far surpassed that of an ordinary physician.
That was also one of the reasons he could successfully travel from country to country while posing as a doctor.
Without genuine medical expertise, he would have been exposed and arrested as a spy long ago.
After finding a campsite with a wide, unobstructed view of their surroundings, the three ate their rations while discussing the human meridian system.
Of course, it was mainly Shinnō doing the explaining, while Kagami and Itachi listened and learned.
For Kagami, who had been born into the Hyuga Clan, the human meridian system was hardly unfamiliar.
However, the Hyuga Clan taught knowledge of the meridians primarily for the sake of the Gentle Fist, whereas Shinnō approached the same subject from the perspective of medicine.
Different fields, different ways of thinking, different perspectives.
As those ideas came together, Kagami found himself gaining a much deeper understanding of the human meridian system.
Itachi listened just as attentively.
Before long, he had already filled several pages of the small notebook he carried with notes and sketches.
The human meridian system wasn’t exactly unfamiliar to the Uchiha Clan either, given their possession of the Sharingan.
However, the Uchiha had no medical tradition centered around the body’s meridian system, which made Shinnō’s knowledge particularly valuable to Itachi.
Shinnō explained everything with great care, but naturally, he had his own motives for doing so.
In his eyes, Hyuga Kagami and Itachi were both scions of Konoha’s prestigious clans and were well worth befriending.
If he could establish a personal relationship with them, then the next time he operated in Konoha, he would have two more potential sources of assistance.
As their conversation continued, Kagami suddenly asked, “By the way, what exactly did Kumogakure lose?
Why are they so determined to make trouble for a mere physician like you?”
“How would I know?
I had absolutely nothing to do with that incident!”
Shinnō laughed awkwardly before explaining, “If it weren’t for an epidemic breaking out in a village over in the Land of Rice Fields, I really wouldn’t want to be traveling around at a time like this.
An old friend of mine in that village sent word begging me to come no matter what, so I had little choice.”
Realizing that he wasn’t going to pry anything useful out of Shinnō, Kagami said, “All right, that’s enough for tonight.
Get some rest.
We still have a long way to travel tomorrow.”
Hearing this, Itachi immediately took out some wire and bells and set up several tripwires around the campsite as an early-warning system.
Once he was finished, he leaped into a tree and settled down on a branch with a good view of the surrounding area.
Watching Itachi expertly set up the traps, Kagami couldn’t help but sigh inwardly.
“The Uchiha really are good with ninja tools.
Itachi’s still so young, yet he already knows exactly what he’s doing when it comes to setting traps.”