Rewards, Rest, and Loss

"Stop!"

Jian Dong and her three teammates gradually approached the Konoha front-line camp, but they encountered an interception by Konoha's hidden sentries while they were still far from the camp.

"We're Squad Z, which went out ten days ago to carry out a special mission. We've completed the mission and are now returning."

Jian Dong obediently stopped. As she spoke, she signaled to Xinliang to hand over the "evidence" they had brought back.

"This is..."

"Cloud Hidden Jonin and Storm Release Ninja, Koto."

The hidden sentry was startled. He carefully identified the "evidence," then blew a whistle.

"Come with me."

Under the other man's guidance, the four of them returned to the Konoha camp.

Jian Dong then went to report the mission to the senior commander. After Yuhara and the other two had undergone the necessary examination, they were sent directly to Konoha's front-line hospital.

The code name "Squad Z" sounded rather ominous. Yuhara soon learned that besides the four of them, only two other squad members had returned to the camp alive.

With a casualty rate of seventy-five percent, the mission could be called brutal from Yuhara and the others' perspective. But in the eyes of Konoha's higher-ups, the situation was precisely the opposite... This exchange had been incredibly worthwhile.

After returning to the camp, Jian Dong still had plenty to do. Besides reporting the situation to the higher-ups, she also had to determine the rewards and punishments for the completed mission. The foreign ninja who had sacrificed themselves without hesitation each had different terms of exchange with Konoha, such as allowing their relatives to enter Konoha and live there.

Failure meant punishment; success meant payment. This was the foundation on which the ninja villages stood, so everything that needed to be carried out would certainly be implemented.

Those who survived would receive the mission's remuneration. The payment for an A-rank mission was generally between one hundred fifty thousand and one million ryo. Considering the enemy's strength and their own numbers, this mission's payment was the highest possible for its rank: one million ryo.

Divided evenly, Yuhara would probably receive a little over one hundred sixty thousand ryo. Converted into currency units—one ryo equaled ten Japanese yen, or sixty cents—he would receive around one hundred thousand yuan this time.

An average of ten thousand yuan per day during the mission. But was that a lot of money? Considering that it was money earned by risking his life, one hundred thousand was really not much.

Because of the excessively high casualty rate, Squad Z would probably return to Konoha to rest and await reinforcements. After all, this team required personnel with rather special qualifications.

Yuhara had to find a way to increase his combat power while using the time spent returning to Konoha. But the journey back to Konoha did not go entirely smoothly.

Konoha's front-line hospital.

After the hospital's examination, it was confirmed that Yuhara was fine. According to the Medical Ninja, his body was extremely healthy, and there was absolutely no need for him to be hospitalized.

Yuhara thought, Someone put a hole through my shoulder. How am I extremely healthy? But when he casually lowered his head, he discovered that the wound had already become nothing more than a thin layer of blood scab.

He had nothing left to say.

Although Yuhara's body had no serious problems, Xinliang's condition seemed somewhat dire.

After completing the examination, Yuhara returned to the tent serving as a ward. He planned to pack up and leave immediately. The doctors had ordered someone as lively as him not to occupy medical resources.

When he arrived at the tent, he found Xinliang alone inside, staring blankly at his injured arm.

"How's your injury? How long will it take to recover?"

Out of basic concern for his teammate, Yuhara asked him this.

After surviving a life-and-death ordeal together, Xinliang was at least no longer resistant to communicating with Yuhara. However, he did not answer Yuhara's question. Instead, he said, "Do you know what a ninja's lifeline is?"

"Ninjutsu? Secret Techniques?" Yuhara answered casually without thinking.

Xinliang shook his head. "No. It's the seals."

As he spoke, he began unwinding the bandages on his right hand. As the bandages came off, the pitch-black wound was exposed to the air.

"The enemy's weapon was coated with poison. I can barely feel the fingers of my right hand anymore."

"Nerve necrosis?" Yuhara had not expected Xinliang's injury to be so severe.

"Yes."

Xinliang had practically lost his dominant hand. From now on, he could no longer form hand seals, which meant that his career as a ninja had come to an end.

"Is there no chance of healing it?"

"It'll be difficult."

Xinliang calmly rebandaged his right hand. With only one usable hand, he struggled somewhat with the task.

"Once my right-hand problem is confirmed, I'll have to leave the front line. Even just for the sake of the other ninja's opinions, the village won't send someone as useless as me to the front line to die... I'll probably live in Konoha as a civilian from now on."

Hearing Xinliang describe his future, Yuhara suddenly froze. Then, an absurd thought surfaced in his mind.

"Xinliang, was the enemy's weapon really coated with poison?"

That Cloud Hidden Ninja was a Storm Release and Lightning Release expert. With his style of attack, had he really needed to use poison? Besides, Xinliang had only displayed symptoms of poisoning some time after being injured.

The question plunged Xinliang into silence. After a while, he spoke. "Why do you ask?"

"Nothing. I just feel that your emotions were a little off when you described your future... It seems that losing your identity as a ninja isn't something worth regretting. Instead, civilian life seems to be what you long for." Yuhara said.

Where had that poison come from?

"You're very perceptive... Then how do you think I was injured?"

"I? I don't know, and I don't care." Yuhara did not want to investigate exactly how Xinliang had been injured. In any case, with his identity, it was impossible for him to report anything to Konoha.

As Yuhara lifted the tent flap and prepared to leave, he suddenly stopped and finally said to Xinliang:

"In the first half of my life, the only thing I regretted was that the inferior alien monkey didn't end up with the tasteless Earth woman. The only thing I disliked was Ironmonger's Fierce Mammoth. The only thing I found amazing was that the tomcat escorted Backfire... But later, I learned that reality was far more bizarre and absurd than you could imagine."

All right, what Yuhara had said was not about the first half of his life, but the first half of his previous life.

Later, he fell ill and was hospitalized. And later still, he came to this world.

"Reality can turn the wrong choice into the right one, and it can also turn the right choice into the wrong one. But no matter what, a person has to take responsibility for their choices."

After saying this, Yuhara walked away.

Xinliang: "..."

Although he did not understand what Yuhara was talking about, at that moment, he felt that Yuhara carried himself somewhat like a senior who had experienced life.

He didn't understand it, and in truth, he wasn't particularly moved.

What Yuhara had said to Xinliang could at most be considered an emotional outburst. After saying it, he himself had not paid it any mind.

But the reason a jinx was called a jinx was that he possessed the ability to unwittingly make a prophecy come true.

As retaliation for the Yellow Flash's excessive activity some time earlier, that night, Cloud Hidden sent several elite squads to launch a surprise attack on Konoha's front-line camp.

Facilities like the front-line hospital were always the enemy's highest-priority targets.

Their priority was even higher than that of the command post.