Explosive Suicide

Tsunade sat where she was, showing not the slightest shock at having her secret meeting discovered, and continued drinking indifferently.

Other than Tsunade, everyone burst through the roof and rushed into the starry night outside.

Minato leaped out through the hole Jiraiya had smashed open and landed on the roof.

Countless crows circled above the roof, gathering intelligence.

Uchiha Ishijima and Fugaku Uchiha had even activated their Three-Tomoe Sharingan, staring in a certain direction.

Minato was even more nervous than Uchiha Ishijima. He had initiated this reconciliation between the Senju Clan and the Uchiha Clan, and he did not want anything to go wrong.

Uchiha Ishijima and Fugaku Uchiha left first, using the Body Flicker Technique to head toward the direction they had been watching.

Jiraiya shouted, "Minato! This is your first real battle! Let's see who dares spy on Tsunade's meeting with Uchiha Ishijima!"

Minato nodded. He had great talent for the Body Flicker Technique and would not hold them back.

Master and disciple vanished from the rooftop.

When Akimichi Jirokuma and Haneina jumped onto the roof, all they saw was the flock of crows flying into the distance.

Tsunade's voice came from the hole in the roof. "You two brats, come down. This isn't a battle the two of you can take part in."

Akimichi Jirokuma and Haneina exchanged glances and helplessly jumped down through the hole.

All three of them were genin, yet in everyone else's eyes, Minato was far beyond a genin.

Tsunade yawned and consoled the two children. "Don't be discouraged, you two. Once your strength grows, you'll naturally experience all kinds of dangerous battles. For now, it's too soon."

She glanced into the distance. Catching up to and finding the eavesdroppers would not be difficult. The difficult part was identifying the mastermind behind them.

Tsunade knew who had been monitoring her without even going there.

The village still did not trust her, believing that the Uzumaki Clan's Book of Sealing was in her hands.

The aftermath of the Uzumaki Clan's destruction had yet to settle. The struggle over the surviving descendants of the Uzumaki bloodline and the whereabouts of the Uzumaki Clan's Book of Sealing were both under the village's close attention.

Heh. Tsunade sneered inwardly. If the village had sent more support back then, how could the Uzumaki Clan's Book of Sealing have vanished without a trace?

In the forest outside the town, three ninjas dressed in black and wearing beast masks were sprinting outward.

The flock of crows overhead proved that they had failed to shake their pursuers.

The three suddenly stopped. Uchiha Ishijima appeared before them with the Body Flicker Technique.

The three tomoe within his scarlet Sharingan slowly rotated. Uchiha Ishijima did not waste words or try to persuade them. He attacked directly.

The three beast-masked ninjas rapidly exchanged information with their eyes. One charged at Uchiha Ishijima instead of retreating, while the other two turned to face the people pursuing them.

Jiraiya's towering figure was in the lead, with Fugaku Uchiha and Minato Namikaze behind him.

One ninja charged at Jiraiya, while the last one circled around Jiraiya and rushed toward Minato Namikaze.

Behind his mask, his gaze was filled with resolve.

Among them, Jiraiya and Uchiha Ishijima were the strongest, while that eleven-year-old blond boy was obviously the weakest.

As long as he caught the blond boy as a hostage, there might still be a chance to turn things around and escape alive.

Minato frowned slightly. So they took me for an easy target.

Fugaku Uchiha rapidly formed hand seals. "Don't be afraid, Minato Namikaze. I'll stop him."

A fireball dozens of meters wide erupted forth, instantly lighting up the forest.

The opposing ninja used a Water Release technique, canceling out Fugaku Uchiha's Great Fireball Technique.

Fugaku was somewhat surprised. He was already a jonin, yet the other side's ninjutsu was no weaker than his.

As the firelight faded, water vapor rose dozens of meters high in the already dark forest.

An eerie sound came from the ground, as if something were burrowing toward them through the earth.

Minato slammed both hands onto the ground. "Summoning Technique!"

Thicker white smoke appeared within the mist.

A huge blue-green toad fell from the sky and smashed into the ground.

Fugaku Uchiha turned in astonishment to look at the toad over thirty meters tall. Was this the giant toad summoning technique of Mount Myōboku mastered by Jiraiya, one of the Three Ninja?

The ground across dozens of meters around them was smashed into deep cracks.

Just then, Jiraiya suddenly shouted from ahead, "Watch out! They have suicidal Exploding Tags!"

Toad Hiro immediately leaped up.

Sure enough, an explosion erupted from beneath the ground the next second.

Explosions appeared not only beneath Minato, but also where Uchiha Ishijima and Jiraiya faced their respective enemies.

Standing atop Toad Hiro's head, Minato scanned the surroundings and discovered that every one of them had dozens of Exploding Tags tied to their bodies.

The moment their mission failed, they had actually used Exploding Tags to blow themselves up.

Not only could they kill their enemies, but they could also destroy their bodies and ensure that no intelligence leaked out.

After two thunderous explosions and one muffled blast from underground, the forest fell silent.

They were dead. All three eavesdropping ninjas were dead.

Jiraiya stood beside Toad Hiro and said with a smile, "Not bad, Minato. Using Toad Hiro to smash up the ground and prevent the enemy underground from sneaking close—full marks for how you used that summoning technique!"

Minato was still absorbed in the eavesdropping ninjas' resolve. Only after a few seconds did he say, "It was nothing. It's because Jiraiya-sensei's summoning technique is so powerful."

Uchiha Ishijima searched several corpses, even digging up the bodies underground. However, they had been thoroughly blown apart, leaving behind no valuable information.

He said in a low voice:

"One jonin and two Special Jonin—such a lineup would be considered luxurious in Konoha Village.

I wonder which ninja village's ANBU they belonged to. Even Konoha Village doesn't have ANBU squads that extravagant."

After thinking for a moment, Minato asked:

"This squad was indeed powerful, but it was still far from enough to deal with Jiraiya-sensei and Clan Head Ishijima.

I suspect this squad was not specifically here to eavesdrop on us. It seemed more like they were monitoring someone else."

Minato did not say it, but everyone knew whom he meant by the person being monitored.

One jonin and two Special Jonin were nothing before Jiraiya and Uchiha Ishijima, but if they were monitoring Tsunade, then the lineup made much more sense.

Jiraiya said, "Go back and tell Tsunade your guess. If they were monitoring her, Tsunade should have noticed something.

It's just that their methods were far too extreme. We might not even have killed them. For such a powerful squad, we would have been more likely to send them back to the village's Interrogation Department.

Who would have thought they would directly commit suicide—and with Exploding Tags, no less."

As they returned, Fugaku Uchiha kept turning to look at Minato Namikaze from time to time.

Uchiha Ishijima, beside him, felt quite gratified. His son's growth had been too smooth. Among those his age, he stood head and shoulders above the rest, far ahead of everyone else.

Although Fugaku hid it well, his pride was still impossible to conceal.

A jonin at fifteen, with extraordinary talent—if he had been another ninja from the village, a little pride would have been nothing. But Fugaku could not afford to be proud.

Fugaku was the next clan head of the Uchiha Clan. He could not make a single mistake.

This was a good opportunity to let Fugaku see the talent of the Hokage's direct disciples and make him understand the Uchiha Clan's true predicament.

After returning to the inn, Tsunade showed no interest at all in who had been eavesdropping. Looking at Minato Namikaze, she said, "Brat, you're clever, and you're Kushina's boyfriend. Come talk with me."

Kushina was very important to Tsunade. Not only had she inherited the Nine-Tails from Tsunade's grandmother, Mito Uzumaki, but she was also the cousin Tsunade had been closest to within the Uzumaki Clan. Thus, Tsunade was very interested in Minato.