A Ripple Caused by Kaedeji

The zombie's rotten flesh suddenly exploded, splattering pus mixed with dark green matter that wrapped around the enemy's arm like living creatures. The Sunagakure Ninja watched in horror as his skin rotted away at a visible rate.

"Poison doesn't work on the dead."

Chakra used to detonate the zombie still lingered on Kaedeji's fingertips.

The zombie whose head had been pierced displayed the last of its value on the battlefield, turning into a human bomb and blasting its attacker at point-blank range.

The instant the Sunagakure Ninja heard the sizzling, he tried to retreat and flee. But one of his hands was gripped tightly. When he suddenly pulled back, even the flesh on the surface was torn open. Unfortunately, he still could not escape. He could only watch as the flames of the explosion rushed toward him, turning half his body into something like charred coal, like a dead branch scorched by fire.

Morino Ise's kunai delivered the final blow, killing the enemy.

Standing at Kaedeji's side, he guarded against enemies from other directions. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the Sunagakure Ninja's curled-up, scorched corpse, then turned to the Sealing Scroll at Kaedeji's waist. "You injected poison into these corpses?"

"I only stored venom extracted from Tobitake Tonbo in the corpses' gallbladders. I refuse to believe every Ordinary Ninja in Sunagakure carries an antidote for this poison. They can use this poison against us, so it's perfectly reasonable for me to extract some and use it against them."

As Kaedeji spoke in a low voice, he summoned another zombie to stand in front of him. On this kind of battlefield, aside from following the orders of commanders and strategists to attack in designated directions, one also had to deal with all sorts of chaotic situations. For all he knew, one of the corpses on the ground could be an enemy playing dead, waiting specifically for someone to approach.

Hiding his strength without the power to back it up was simply courting death. Kaedeji could only summon new zombies to prioritize his own safety—when enemies saw two figures, they naturally split some of their attacks, indirectly raising Kaedeji's chances of survival.

Genin were the group least qualified to guarantee their own survival, but if they had a special skill, then unless they were Too Much unlucky, they could generally hold on a little longer.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

When Sunagakure's poison smoke bombs exploded over the battlefield for the third round, Kaedeji's personal tactics were continuously Subverted the understanding of many Konoha Ninja.

New zombies appeared, forming humanoid, self-propelled barriers. Pus, blood, and poisonous mist circulated through the horde of corpses, like a walking biochemical fortress. Anyone who came close would suffer. Even the best outcome was taking a self-destruction blast and fleeing far away in terror.

And being frightened into making evasive movements inherently meant exposing an opening. Other nearby Konoha Ninja would seize that precious gap to launch fierce attacks, often gaining unexpected results and claiming kills.

In less than an hour of continuous fighting, after similar situations occurred around Kaedeji three times in succession, the Konoha Ninja naturally began to notice something—on this battlefield filled with danger at every turn, approaching this medical unit always seemed to bring unexpected surprises.

With a loud boom, one zombie kicked an enemy away with all its strength. The force was so immense that the leg it used burst apart on the spot!

That one kick alone caved in the enemy's chest. The blood he coughed up was mixed with fragments of internal organs, and the expression on his face remained forever frozen in that instant of terror.

"This zombie is basically useless now. It's a shame I didn't put an Explosive Tag on it..." Kaedeji said regretfully. One of his hands remained in a hand seal the entire time, ready to summon a new zombie at any moment. The occasional changes in seals were also to allow him to detonate a zombie at any time.

That was because he had not fully unleashed the zombies' power—the truly astonishing thing about zombies was their troublesome infectiousness.

If Kaedeji truly let loose without regard for any consequences, every time he detonated a zombie, the splattered flesh and blood could trigger a small-scale zombie outbreak. The infected enemies could then return to their camp, turn into zombies, and continue infecting healthy enemies...

It would expand crazily like a snowball. Before the enemy's upper ranks could react and establish a quarantine system, it would be Enough To inflict unimaginable casualties.

But Kaedeji would not do that. He was only a Genin, and because of his physical condition, his upper limit was locked in place. Before obtaining a body he found satisfactory, Kaedeji would not unleash his full firepower. The true terror of Corpse Manipulation should not be openly displayed in broad daylight.

The Second Great Ninja War was the stage of Konoha's White Fang, the Sannin, and Minato Namikaze. It was absolutely not the stage of Kaedeji.

The time for him to truly shine would not be now. If all went well, it should be during the Third Great Ninja War several years later.

Kaedeji had to make sure he survived, lived until the war ended, and displayed his talent in certain fields.

"You call this thing the Dead Soul Technique? The Dead Soul Technique can be used like this?"

The more the fellow Medical Ninja learned, the more dumbfounded they became.

One Medical Ninja followed the other Konoha Ninja from a position farther to the rear. He had just used the Mystical Palm Technique to heal a wounded man who had hastily retreated. As he watched the man charge forward again, he turned his head and saw Kaedeji forming seals with one hand and pointing with the other. A Chunin zombie sprinted at high speed until its legs showed signs of breaking apart. After approaching an enemy, it traded injury for injury, wildly stabbing with a kunai. Once its combat strength was completely depleted, it decisively self-destructed.

This method was practically like the suicidal tactics of Shadow Clones. But no sane ninja would be so extravagant as to casually send Shadow Clones to self-destruct. That painful manner of death would be fully fed back to the original body, placing a heavy burden on the brain, and their Chakra was not abundant enough for them to dare play like that.

When word spread everywhere that this was the Dead Soul Technique, all the Medical Ninja who knew the technique were numb. The other ninja who learned from the Medical Ninja what the technique was originally supposed to be were numb as well.

During the gap after one of his Subordinates was killed, Morino Ise used a Chakra Scalpel to slice through the throat of a Sunagakure Ninja who had launched a surprise attack. He Take The Opportunity to retreat behind his other companions and catch his breath. "This kid has turned corpses into something like this. It's simply unheard of. I Fear even the ninja who created the Dead Soul Technique never imagined it could be used this way."

The Medical Ninja were the most deeply shaken. They discovered that this technique did not seem as useless as they had imagined. Letting Medical Ninja gain a degree of unpredictability meant a higher survival rate—battles between ninja were information wars to begin with. Any practical skill that caught people off guard was useful.

Well, Naruto seemed to think the same way when he used the Harem Technique on Kaguya Otsutsuki.

But in the end, everyone merely thought about it. The Dead Soul Technique was not any respectable ninjutsu. The mere fact that it involved manipulating corpses made many people shy away from it, and it was unsuitable for widespread promotion among too many Konoha Ninja.