Drip... drip...
By the faint moonlight filtering in from outside the door, Mist Capital gripped the kunai in his hand tightly, his pupils trembling slightly as he studied the boy before him.
Even dressed in a sharp black trench coat, with an unchanging expression, black bandages covering his eyes, and cold ripples lurking beneath the surface, he could not conceal the immaturity in his bones.
When he heard the other party call his name, Mist Capital felt as though his teeth had been hollowed out by decay, and an unsettling ache spread through his entire body.
"Who... exactly is this brat?"
Mist Capital searched his memories, trying to recall whether he had ever seen him before, but he had absolutely no recollection or impression of him.
He had great confidence in both his memory and his judgment. If he was not mistaken, the boy before him was the same age as his son back in the Land of Fire.
Four years old, five at most.
For a boy so young to possess such a chilling aura completely at odds with his immature appearance, there were probably more lives on his hands than Mist Capital's.
Mist Capital instinctively thought of the warriors whom Lord had trained as deathsworn from childhood, but even those mindless walking corpses were not this cold.
And...
"When did I get exposed, and how?"
Mist Capital's expression darkened. As he asked, his gaze began to flicker.
He had entered the city under a clean identity. He had been undercover for months without discovering anything unusual, and he had remained still without taking any action...
Had there been some surveillance method he had failed to notice, some even more secretive measure, or some unforeseen accident?
However, a large part of the reason Mist Capital had survived infiltration missions time and time again was that he never believed in accidents.
Since he had now been completely exposed, the mission would likely be impossible to complete. He could only force his way out.
With that thought, Mist Capital's finger muscles tightened as he clenched the kunai in his hand, Chakra circulating within him.
"Your acting really is quite good."
Nagato suddenly spoke, sneering. "But the counter-surveillance measures in your home—the hair placed in the door crack, the dirt ash scattered outside the door... You did something guilty, so you were feeling pretty uneasy, weren't you?"
Before his words even fell, Mist Capital brought his hands together, his fingers rapidly forming seals.
Snake! Boar! Dog!
He formed the hand seals for the ninjutsu he was most proficient in, his fingers moving so fast that afterimages could be seen.
Then he slammed a hand against the ground and let out a deafening roar that rang through the entire warehouse and the rainy night:
"Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld!"
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Earth and stone fragments burst from the ground, but in the next instant, reality was completely different from what he had shouted.
With a thunderous boom, a thick rock wall abruptly rose from the ground, instantly sealing Nagato in on all sides!
Bang!!
At the same time he formed the seals—or rather, at the same time he opened his mouth—Nagato slightly crouched.
Accompanied by dim black light, his entire figure burst forth in a flash.
What explosive speed!
Mist Capital's pupils abruptly shrank. He wasn't disrupted at all?
The process of a Ninja releasing a "technique" involved Chakra of different attributes flowing through fixed chakra points in different ways.
Any lapse would cause the "technique" to fail or weaken, wasting Chakra for nothing.
Ordinary Ninja could not perfectly control the flow of Chakra, which was why they needed hand seals as assistance—to transform the Chakra they refined into "techniques" before releasing them.
Shouting the name also helped focus the mind and gather energy.
That was why many Ninja had the habit of calling out their techniques, and why many Ninja instinctively reacted to them accordingly.
Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall.
This was Mist Capital's most practiced ninjutsu. He had become so proficient with it that he no longer needed hand seals, and at full power, it rivaled a large-scale ninjutsu.
Upon hearing "Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld," an ordinary Ninja's instinctive reaction should have been to leap away and evade it, thereby losing the only opportunity to pursue him.
Yet his ever-reliable method of disruption had no effect whatsoever on that brat.
"It doesn't matter."
Mist Capital rapidly formed hand seals, his eyes fixed tightly on the distance. "Whether he breaks through the earth wall or jumps over it, he will inevitably slow down. And once he slows down..."
As he thought, Chakra fluctuations appeared around his body, like the distortion of air unique to high heat.
Then, like ink dropped into an ink bottle, he gradually turned transparent and vanished into the shadows.
"Bloodline Limit: Invisibility Release!"
As long as he fully activated the Bloodline Limit of Invisibility Release, unless they tore down the entire city, he would eventually find an opportunity to escape successfully.
A curve formed at the corner of Mist Capital's lips as he backed into the darkness.
But just then—
Squelch!!
The wind shrieked, kicking up dust from the ground, and Mist Capital suddenly felt a sharp pain in his abdomen.
Before he could react, his entire body was sent flying backward, only stopping when he slammed into the wall behind him.
Blood bloomed on the wall like an epiphyllum, then slowly trickled down.
The release of his ninjutsu was interrupted, and Mist Capital's body reappeared, pinned dead against the wall.
"Puh!"
Mist Capital coughed up a mouthful of blood. It felt as though all strength had been drained from him in an instant. His lips trembled as he lowered his head to look at the source of the agonizing pain in his abdomen.
A cold short blade had pierced through his stomach, its blade covered in bright red blood and fragments of organs.
"How... is that possible?"
The smile at the corner of Mist Capital's mouth stiffened, and a trace of helpless bewilderment twisted across his face.
How had that brat seen him through the stone wall after he had become completely transparent and invisible, then thrown a short blade to pin him to the wall?!
In the distance, Nagato stood atop the stone wall, his eyes hidden beneath black cloth as though he were looking down at Mist Capital below.
"Do you like playing hide-and-seek with a blind man?"
"But that foul stench of Chakra on you—I can smell it even from hundreds of meters away."
There was an added note of mockery in his voice. In the blink of an eye, he appeared before Mist Capital. Looking at that pale, vacant old face, he reached out, grabbed the hilt, and viciously twisted it.
"Aah!!"
The pain of his abdominal organs being mangled made Mist Capital howl. The truly uncontrollable agony that made him tremble erupted, directly interrupting the small movement he had been making to secretly refine Chakra.
All the strength in his body drained through that wound, along with the confidence and composure he had possessed before.
His screams nearly pierced through several floors above and below, drifting endlessly into the night sky outside the window.
The emptiness of mission failure, the terror of blood flowing away...
And the regret he had deliberately ignored before, suddenly surging up like a tidal sea.
"No, no..."
Looking at the executioner before him, Mist Capital's lips could not help trembling. As his teeth clattered together, his dazed mind made him instinctively mutter, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Who exactly was he apologizing to?
Those old companions he had come to regard as friends, or Yun Chuan, who had given him a chance?
His life here had actually been quite good.
He could no longer tell whether he had truly been hiding himself or deliberately neglecting the mission.
If he could, he too wanted to live here, settle down, and have children...
But it was already too late.
"Boring." Watching his ugly state, Nagato coldly spat out, "The other one was the same as you. He kept apologizing until he died."
"But apologies like that make me sick."
Squelch!!
Amid Mist Capital's hoarse, miserable scream, Nagato mercilessly pulled the short blade out little by little.
Blood splashed across the wall, dyeing the ukiyo-e painting red like crimson clouds and a sea of blood from a hellscape.
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