"Don't kill her! Don't kill this girl!"
Over the past decade and more, Tsunade had fought many powerful ninja, including top-tier experts like Chiyo of Sunagakure and Demigod Hanzo.
Yet this beautiful girl before her was still the most troublesome opponent she had ever faced.
The girl wasn't strong—not even close. She swung her blade without any technique, and her frail body was so weak that she had barely any strength. She was simply acting on instinct as she slashed at Tsunade.
An instinctive hatred more intense than blood.
She really must have been from the Land of Rain.
Tsunade scrambled to defend herself and dodge, all the while carefully protecting the beautiful girl from her own blade and from the Exploding Tags and Ninjutsu the assassins hurled at them.
Jiang Feng gathered Chakra and Internal Energy in his hands. With a casual swing, he unleashed a powerful gust that swept up a fierce wind. It wasn't any powerful technique—just brute force.
The incoming Exploding Tags and all manner of Ninjutsu were swept away by the gale, while the two ninja leading the charge were sent flying.
Kurenai Yuhi, Asuma, and Kurenai reacted swiftly as well. Using either Illusion Technique or Taijutsu, they subdued all the ambushers in the blink of an eye.
They weren't especially strong. By Konoha's ranking standards, most of them didn't even qualify as Genin.
Against an elite team led by Kurenai Yuhi and Jiang Feng, they were naturally taken down in no time.
As the assassins were subdued, Tsunade finally managed to restrain the beautiful girl, knock the short blade from her hand, and pin both her wrists.
Even so, the girl refused to give up. She struggled with all her might, trying to bite Tsunade, her once beautiful, delicate features twisted into a terrifying grimace.
"Who are you people? Why did you try to assassinate Lady Tsunade?!"
Kurenai Yuhi released one of the assassins from his restraint and began the customary interrogation. If someone had tried to assassinate them, they needed to know why.
"You Konoha murderers, you lapdogs—you'll all die horribly! You ruined our lives and destroyed our families! I'll curse you from hell..."
The assassin being questioned had sunken eyes full of hatred. He gritted his teeth and spat out a string of curses.
Young Asuma and Kurenai were utterly bewildered. Why did these people hate Konoha so much? To hear them tell it, Konoha—the supposedly righteous village—could do no wrong.
Tsunade and Kurenai Yuhi fell silent. The truth was already clear: all these assassins were people from the Land of Rain...
Konoha hadn't done many things to be ashamed of. The Second Shinobi World War was one of them.
You could come up with a thousand, ten thousand reasons to prove that Konoha hadn't meant to invade its neighboring small countries. But the fact remained that the great ninja villages had turned the Land of Rain into a battlefield and reduced someone else's home to rubble.
Jiang Feng, meanwhile, remained expressionless. You're cursing the Konoha that fought in the Second Shinobi World War. What does that have to do with me?
I didn't fight in the Second Shinobi World War.
After spitting out his curses, the assassin seemed to slip further out of the grip of the Illusion Technique. Suddenly, he pulled a kunai from his sleeve, his face twisted with hatred.
"Protect Lady Tsunade!"
Kurenai Yuhi instinctively stepped in front of Tsunade.
Thud!
The sharp kunai pierced the assassin's own throat. His empty eyes remained fixed on Tsunade and the others as he killed himself.
His suicide was like a spark setting the prairie ablaze. The remaining surviving assassins began killing themselves one after another, some slitting their own throats, others biting through their tongues. Blood flowed everywhere, and their hollow, hateful stares seemed almost to pierce Tsunade and the others.
Jiang Feng didn't stop them. Neither did Kurenai Yuhi.
In terms of their positions, the assassins were enemies of Konoha. Letting them go would cause trouble for Konoha; crippling them and then releasing them would be nothing but fake mercy; and they couldn't bring themselves to kill them...
Letting them kill themselves was probably the best outcome.
Thud!
Another sound of a sharp weapon piercing flesh came from behind Kurenai Yuhi.
Kurenai Yuhi spun around. Her eyes flew open as she saw Tsunade—the invincible, fearsome Sannin—trembling uncontrollably and rendered completely incapable of fighting for some reason.
The beautiful girl, who was just an ordinary person, had managed to break free from Tsunade's grip and stab her in the lower abdomen.
Thud!
Gritting her teeth, the beautiful girl pulled out the dagger and stabbed Tsunade in the lower abdomen again. Her hatred was stronger and more steadfast than that of the assassins who had killed themselves.
Don't kill her...
Don't kill her...
Don't kill her!
Scarlet blood blossomed before Tsunade's eyes, and the overwhelming stench of blood filled her nose. Her heart raced and her body shook violently. She tried to scream the words with all her might, but all she could manage was to part her thin lips a few times.
Thud!
Kurenai Yuhi instinctively struck the beautiful girl in the back with her palm.
The hand holding the dagger fell limply to her side. The beautiful girl collapsed into Tsunade's arms, every one of her internal organs shattered by Kurenai Yuhi's blow. As a Konoha Jonin, Kurenai Yuhi couldn't possibly know nothing about Taijutsu.
She was dead.
She died with her eyes open!
My Dao heart!
Tsunade's already lifeless Dao heart shattered all over again. Suffering from severe Hemophobia, she felt dizzy, trembled violently, and retched uncontrollably, nearly passing out on the spot. But she still fought through her body's instinctive revulsion and used every last bit of strength to hold the beautiful girl's corpse tight.
The sudden chaos ended just as abruptly as it had begun.
Kurenai Yuhi and the two youngsters stood there helplessly, watching the dejected, broken Tsunade. It seemed they hadn't done anything wrong, and yet somehow they had done everything wrong.
Jiang Feng took out a storage scroll and sealed the corpses inside one by one. Then he walked over to Tsunade and pried her pale arms apart finger by finger, before sealing the beautiful girl's body in the scroll as well.
"Lend me some money..." Tsunade knelt in a pool of blood, utterly dazed.
Jiang Feng took out a wad of cash and handed it to Tsunade.
It wasn't enough to keep Tsunade at a gambling table for half an hour. At a table with no limit, it might not even last a minute. But it was enough to buy a dozen or so fine coffins and prepare a dignified funeral.
"Thank you..." Tsunade parted her lips, her voice hoarse.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I had no idea she was an assassin..."
The owner, who had gone back to the kitchen to cook before the assassination began, finally came out after everything had settled down. He apologized as he walked toward them.
Jiang Feng raised his hand and pointed at the owner. Twenty-Four Solar Terms Shocking Spirit Finger: Awakening of Insects!
In an instant, spring thunder rumbled, rousing the hibernating creatures. A fierce streak of lightning, formed from a mix of lightning-nature Chakra and Internal Energy, shot toward the owner.
In Say Hero Who Is Hero, this was Bai Choufei's most frequently used move. It was also one of the most powerful and fastest of the Twenty-Four Shocking God Finger techniques. It could even be linked with Spring Equinox and Grain Rain to form an unrelenting barrage of attacks.
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