A Close Call

After killing the Chunin Feimu, the mysterious man left. For a time, the little grove was utterly silent. He had cleaned up the scene, erasing every trace of ninja activity and leaving nothing behind. The surroundings were frighteningly quiet, and even the air seemed to have frozen.

After quite a while, the mysterious man suddenly reappeared among the trees. His murderous gaze swept over the surroundings, and with a wave of his hand, he sent more than a dozen Shuriken whizzing toward several suspicious spots in the bushes. Still, nothing happened.

The mysterious man grew suspicious. He could not help searching the area again, his gaze sweeping back and forth. "Come out," he said coldly. "I've already sensed where your Chakra is!"

He brought his hands together and quickly formed several seals. "Do you want me to force you out with Ninjutsu?" he sneered.

Some time passed after he spoke, but the grove remained silent, without a sound. Unfortunately, he was not a sensory-type ninja at all. As an excellent ninja, however, his senses were far sharper than an ordinary person's, and not the slightest rustle of wind or grass around him could escape his eyes.

The mysterious man's expression suddenly changed. "Looks like you won't shed tears until you see the coffin!" he said in a low voice. His hand seals changed, and he took a deep breath, drawing the Chakra in his body up into his chest all at once. He seemed ready to use some kind of Wind Release Ninjutsu to sweep away the surrounding vegetation in one blast!

But just then, he suddenly sensed someone approaching nearby.

"Ah~ I wonder if Feimu's team has finished tallying up?"

The mysterious man forcibly deflated his swollen chest, then drew a short blade from his waist, apparently intending to silence the newcomer. However...

"Long Aotian, Ye Feng, you're just in time. Once Feimu gets here, the four of us will have just enough for mahjong."

When the mysterious man heard that there were three Chunin nearby, his eyes narrowed, and he slowly put away his short blade.

He swept a resentful gaze over the surroundings once more. Still finding no sign of movement, he had no choice but to leave.

"Phew~"

Yet shortly after the mysterious man left, Shunren slowly emerged from an inconspicuous clump of bushes. His face was filled with terror and shock as he looked in the direction the man had gone, his heart still pounding with fear.

"Thank goodness... I wasn't discovered."

"Hmph! You cunning brat, did you really think I hadn't found you?" The mysterious man appeared once more, moving like a ghost behind Shunren and plunging the poisoned short blade in his hand into his heart.

But in the next second, Shunren's figure trembled and dissolved into nothingness!

The mysterious man flew into a rage and immediately turned his gaze toward the camp. Shunren was sitting there quietly with his legs crossed. "You bastard brat, you fooled me with a Clone Technique?"

The mysterious man stared at Shunren from afar for a long while, then muttered to himself, "Never mind... If it's just a Clone Technique, information won't be fed back to the original. He doesn't know anything about what happened here."

At the same time, Shunren, sitting quietly there, confirmed his suspicion. Otherwise, he would have been frightened into turning tail and running long ago. Besides, how could a little brat use a Shadow Clone, which had a physical body and could feed back information?

He stared fixedly at Shunren for a long while and found that the latter truly did not move a muscle. Only then did he believe that Shunren really knew nothing. His figure flashed, and he slipped soundlessly into the darkness.

Long after the mysterious man's figure had vanished, Shunren, who had been sitting quietly outside the tent, dissolved into nothingness. At the same time, Shunren slowly emerged from the bushes the phantom had just walked out of.

"Drip~" Blood fell to the ground. This was Shunren's true body!

Shunren's face was deathly pale,

and he gritted his teeth against the pain as he pulled two Kunai out of his shoulder. There was no doubt about it: when the mysterious man had relied on his subtle intuition to throw Shuriken at several suspicious spots, Shunren had been unfortunate enough to be hit by the enemy's Shuriken from the very beginning! The story went back five minutes.

Feimu had approached the camp, intending to test the students' alertness. Once he came within eighty meters, Shunren spotted him and guessed that it was Teacher Feimu. He threw a Kunai to drive him away, meaning to tell him, "I've already passed the test."

Out of caution, Shunren still woke Kurenai and Shizune, who were resting in the tent, and told them to stay in the woods two hundred meters away. If they heard any commotion, they were to do as he had instructed and speak loudly while pretending to be other Konoha teachers.

Shunren himself followed alone. Sure enough, the small animal disguised with the Transformation Technique was Feimu.

Then, unexpectedly, he saw something he should not have seen.

Feimu was killed!

The mysterious man had apparently sensed Shunren's presence as well, but fortunately, he was not a sensory-type ninja.

Shunren quietly used Genjutsu, but after seeing that the man had the strength to kill a Chunin in an instant, he immediately abandoned his plan to ambush him with Genjutsu. Even slightly disrupting the man's senses was already a stretch; if he got close, the man would probably reflect the Genjutsu back at him in an instant.

Though the mysterious man was not a sensory-type ninja, his senses were still remarkably sharp. He immediately picked out several places where Shunren might be hiding and threw Shuriken. Shunren was hit, without a doubt, but he endured it, holding his breath and refusing to come out no matter what.

At that point, as planned, Kurenai and Shizune pretended to be other Konoha teachers and spoke, "scaring off" the mysterious man.

Shunren did not believe the man would give up so easily, so he controlled a phantom from the Mirage Technique and sent it out to lure the enemy.

Sure enough, the mysterious man had not truly left and immediately struck, killing the phantom in an instant. After seeing Shunren's "original body" sitting cross-legged in the camp, he mistakenly assumed that the phantom that had followed him was nothing more than an ordinary Clone Technique. After confirming that no information had leaked, he left.

Only after truly confirming that the mysterious man had left did the injured Shunren emerge from the bushes.

"Shunren!" A little while later, at the agreed-upon time, Kurenai and Shizune arrived at Shunren's location.

"It isn't safe to stay here. Let's go!" Shunren stopped the two from saying what they wanted to say.

The three hurried out of the woods.