Naruto: Choosing from Birth — Chapter 47

Three roads leading to Green Cloud City each had a merchant caravan of varying size traveling along at an unhurried pace.

Behind all three caravans, Konoha ninja were secretly tracking them.

Hatake Sakumo was tracking the largest caravan on the middle road.

Uchiha Cheng was tracking the second-largest caravan on the road to the right.

Mikoto Uchiha and Anna Tachibana were tracking the smallest caravan on the road to the left.

That was right, this was an A-rank mission for the White Fang Squad.

Konoha intelligence agents operating in the Land of Grass had repeatedly been assassinated by a Stone Ninja unit exceptionally skilled at disguising themselves.

Hatake Sakumo had then accepted the mission to eliminate this assassination squad.

After half a month of tracking, the targets had been tentatively narrowed down to these three caravans headed for Green Cloud City. But they were only seventy percent certain.

So, in order not to alert the enemy and to gather more clues, they could only continue tracking them in secret.

Now, after a year and a half, Mikoto Uchiha and Anna Tachibana had finally shed their immaturity amid bloodshed and officially become experienced ninja.

Their strength was relatively weak, so they only needed to trail this small caravan from afar. The task of investigating the caravans' true nature could be left to Hatake Sakumo and Uchiha Cheng.

At that moment, twelve-year-old Uchiha Cheng followed closely behind his target at an unhurried pace.

His features had gradually grown more mature. Combined with his height of over 1.6 meters, taller than most peers his age, anyone unfamiliar with him would mistake him for a handsome fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy.

The caravan he was tracking had around thirty people. Like the other caravans, they appeared to be ordinary people, and even the guards they had hired were merely samurai who had never cultivated Chakra.

Either they really were just ordinary people, or they possessed some special secret technique that concealed their ninja aura.

"Ding! Faced with an unpredictable enemy, you felt somewhat troubled. Please choose."

"A: Better to kill the wrong ones than let the real ones go! Cut through the mess with a swift blade and directly eliminate this caravan. If you kill the wrong targets, the enemies hidden among the other two routes will continue to remain concealed. Reward: Open the Third Gate of the Eight Inner Gates with no side effects!"

"B: A gentleman keeps his weapon hidden and waits for the right moment! A ninja's greatest virtue is endurance. Continue tracking them silently; even the most cunning enemy will eventually reveal a flaw. Reward: Open the Third and Fourth Gates of the Eight Inner Gates with no side effects!"

"C: If you can neither kill nor endure, then go wild! Use an unconventional trick to determine whether this caravan has a problem before it enters Green Cloud City. Reward: Open the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Gates of the Eight Inner Gates with no side effects!"

Uchiha Cheng had originally intended to continue tracking them quietly and obtain the reward safely.

But upon seeing the third option, he could not help racking his brains for some unconventional trick that could expose their problem.

There was no helping it. Every additional gate opened in the Eight Inner Gates brought a world of difference, let alone one without side effects. He had to fight for the best reward.

Thus, fifteen minutes later, his tightly furrowed brows slowly relaxed.

"Boss, we'll be at Green Cloud City soon. You have to treat us all to a drink then," a young samurai among the caravan guards said as he walked up to a burly man.

"Haha, no problem. The employer was generous this time, and the pay is good. I'll treat everyone—drink as much as you want," said the guards' boss, a scar-faced burly man, laughing heartily.

Just then, a bare-chested man suddenly sprinted past the front of the caravan, chased by a handsome youth wielding a kitchen cleaver.

"Don't run! You stole and drank my eight jars of aged wine—how are you going to pay me back?!"

The two whizzed past in front of the caravan.

"What was that? Did they come from Green Cloud City?"

"Are the people there really that tough? Though that bare-chested guy looked kind of familiar."

"Idiot, doesn't that guy look exactly like Old Tian from our group? No, aside from the clothes, he was practically identical to Old Tian."

"Everyone, stay alert!"

Scarface had barely warned the caravan to be vigilant when two more people came panting up from behind it.

This time, a young man wearing only underwear ran in front, with the cleaver-wielding youth still chasing after him.

"Don't run! When are you going to repay the one million taels of silver you owe me?!"

The two once again sped past the caravan. Before long, only their backs could be seen.

"What? Damn it..."

Beside Scarface, the young man who had spoken earlier became agitated and tried to draw his sword to chase after them.

Because he had discovered that the young man in underwear looked exactly like him.

"Don't be rash. They're obviously ninja who can use the Transformation Technique. Be careful—it could be a trap."

Scarface held the young man down while shouting at the others around him.

Sure enough, a while later—

Two more people ran past on the left side of the caravan.

Then another two ran past on the right.

And so, two people would occasionally dash past from above, below, left, or right of the caravan.

The only constant was the youth holding the kitchen cleaver.

The person being chased, however, constantly changed. Nearly everyone in the caravan had taken a turn.

And apparently, everyone in the entire caravan was disheveled and owed the youth quite a lot of things.

Look, another one had just run past—owing him two steamed buns.

"Boss, I can't take it anymore. Please let me chop him up!"

"I can't stand it either! As long as I can go chop him up, I don't even want this mission's reward!"

The caravan guards were fired up.

"Chop him up? You'd have to catch him first! Endure it. We'll reach Green Cloud City soon."

"Exactly. The boss is patient—better to avoid trouble when possible. Everyone, calm down. Just treat it as a bit of entertainment."

The only woman among the guards spoke teasingly. She was the only one who had not appeared as the person being chased. It seemed this ninja really knew how to cherish women.

Suddenly, another figure appeared in front of the guard squad.

This time, it was a beautiful woman in a bikini. The dazzling white flesh bounced enticingly as she ran.

As expected, the cleaver-wielding youth chased closely after her.

"Don't run! You still have to serve a thousand men before you can leave!"

"Pfft!"

"Pfft!"

"Pfft!"

Nosebleeds sprayed through the caravan, along with the sounds of people failing to hold back their laughter.

This bikini beauty looked exactly like the only woman among the guards.

No one had expected her to have such a curvaceous figure.

"Ahhhhh! I'm going to kill someone!!! Earth—"

"Hold it in!"

The girl's words were loudly cut off by Scarface in time.

"Hold it in!"

"Hold it in!"

The men in the group repeated Scarface's words with glee at her misfortune.

Just as everyone was teasing one another—

The two people chased up from behind the caravan again.

This time, the person being chased was a burly man, completely naked, with a toothpick-sized little thing swaying in the wind.

Most importantly, the burly man had a deep scar on his face.

The cleaver-wielding youth behind him shouted angrily once more:

"Don't run! You raped a sow in broad daylight—are you even human?!"

The scar-faced burly man waddled like a turtle as he quickly shuffled away past the caravan.

The entire caravan fell silent, and everyone glanced at Scarface's crotch.

BOOM!!!

A visible wave of air surged from Scarface's body. His immense Chakra whipped his clothes into a violent flutter despite the absence of wind.

"Kill!!!"

"Anyone who dares stop me dies!"

Scarface's years of disguise and assassination had honed his patience to perfection, but at that moment, it completely shattered!