Painstaking Efforts

"Water Release—Small Waterfall Technique!"

"Idiot, stop! The clues on these Sand Ninja are already hard enough to find. Are you trying to completely erase the few clues we have by using Water Release now?

Also, searching is done with your hands. What are you doing with those two broken branches?

Nawaki, don't be afraid of getting dirty or tired. You need to be serious. Hey, don't throw away their briefs; maybe some weirdo hid some secrets here!"

Weak, pathetic, and helpless were the best adjectives to describe Nawaki at this moment. At first, Nawaki had been complaining and roaring angrily at Zhou Duan from time to time. But after a series of commands from Zhou Duan that clearly weren't intended to prank him, Nawaki had broken down!

After a long while, under Zhou Duan's instructions, Nawaki, who had stripped the Sand Ninja naked and even shaved their hair, completed the search. Senju Nawaki, whose hands were stained with the lives of billions, let out a broken smile and pointed at the pile of searched scrolls and shuriken beside him:

"Zhou Duan, I've finished my work now, hehe, hehehe!"

"Mm, you've worked hard!"

Seeing Senju Nawaki's completely broken expression, Zhou Duan felt a little bad. After all, he was his teammate, and going too far wouldn't be good. With that thought, Zhou Duan didn't say anything more. He took out a pair of gloves, put them on, and began to examine and sort the pile of items collected from the four Sand Ninja!

"...Hey, Zhou Duan, something seems a bit off!"

Nawaki looked at the gloves Zhou Duan took out, and his eyes immediately turned red:

"Why did you take out a pair of gloves?"

"Mm?"

Zhou Duan looked surprised:

"Is there something wrong with me taking out gloves to examine things that are too dirty? You know I gave each of you a stack of gloves!"

"Then why didn't you remind me to do that earlier?"

"Oh, I forgot!"

"Bullshit! With your brain, you'd forget something like that? You clearly just wanted to torture me!"

"Alright, don't dwell on these minor details! Come on, use some Water Release on these things to clean them up!"

"Holy crap, are you even human? You just forbade me from using Water Release, so why can you use it now?"

"Hey, you can't say that. At first, I thought these ninja tools still had some hope, so they couldn't be further contaminated. But now that I see these ninja tools are already so dirty, it's fine even if I wash them with water!"

"Zhou Duan, do you have any humanity left? Are you even speaking human words? No, I'm going to fight you! Water Release—Water Bullet Barrage..."

"Slap!"

A crisp sound echoed at Nawaki's feet. Nawaki looked down and saw a shattered medicine bottle lying at his feet. Through the residual purple liquid in the bottle, Nawaki despairingly uttered two words:

"Holy crap!"

It was as if flames were raging in his heart, and an endless sense of excitement surged towards his brain again. The desire to conquer everything reignited the reason in his heart!

Swift as the wind, fierce as fire, and thundering like lightning!

When the familiar feeling passed, Nawaki, though he knew what was happening, despaired to find that even though he had clung to a different big tree, he was still uncontrollably making forward and backward motions on the tree in front of him!

"Zhou Duan, I'll kill you!"

Nawaki let out the desperate roar of a dying beast. After five minutes of futile shouting:

"Zhou Duan, if you let me go now, I'll be magnanimous about everything you've done to me!"

Another five minutes later:

"Zhou Duan, I was wrong, please let me go. I won't question anything you do anymore!"

"Zhou Duan!"

Seeing Zhou Duan take out an antidote and lift Nawaki out of his state, Hyuga Hyakusho still felt a pang of sympathy:

"Wasn't that a bit excessive?"

"Excessive? I don't think so!"

Ignoring Nawaki, who was lying on the ground like a dead dog, Zhou Duan took out his scroll, unsealed a basin of clear water, and began cleaning the ninja tools of the Sand Ninja:

"Never mind anything else, but if I had asked you, not Nawaki, to clean up the four Sand Ninja corpses on the field, and to do it the same way as Nawaki, would you have done it? Would you have complained?"

"..."

"I would have cleaned them up, and I wouldn't have complained, because..."

Hyuga Hyakusho paused for a moment, understanding Zhou Duan's meaning:

"Because the academy taught us this knowledge, your orders were completely correct!"

"Exactly!"

Zhou Duan's expression turned serious:

"The ninja world is cruel. Merely searching a few dirty corpses is nothing. The reason you think I went too far with Nawaki is entirely because that idiot Nawaki, who only knows how to rush forward when faced with trouble, has influenced you!

We're about to head to the front lines. Compared to there, this battle is nothing. That's the meat grinder of the battlefield. To put it bluntly, we graduates are just cannon fodder to relieve the pressure on the front lines. Only high-level combatants, Jonin and above, have a chance of survival. As for us, we can only rely on luck.

Don't think that Minato and I are the first and second in this graduating class, and you're in the upper-middle tier. But Nawaki's abnormal combat awareness can completely drag us down. You saw it too; when a large number of Sand Ninja attacked, and Jonin Karui told us to retreat, if I hadn't grabbed Nawaki in time, that guy would have still wanted to fight the Sand Ninja, believing we could win despite the overwhelming odds!

This kind of thoughtless personality is secondary. The most important thing is that Nawaki himself has no awareness that he's made a mistake, and that's the most fatal flaw!

I believe Nawaki won't listen to these things, or if he does, he won't care. Therefore, I have to engrave these things deeply into this guy's bones. You can choose not to listen, you can choose not to care, but when you encounter these situations, you must know the correct way to deal with them!"

"Everything I did wasn't for nothing!"

Shudan pointed at Nawaki, who lay on the ground in despair, and said to Hyakusho:

"Did you notice? The attack Nawaki just launched at me was a D-rank Water Release with a faster release speed, not the A-rank Earth Release with a snail's pace that he used when we first met!"

"...I've learned my lesson!"

Hyakusho looked at Shudan before him, shedding his usual role as the comic relief for the first time, and spoke with a serious tone:

"Shudan, when I received the team assignment and found out my captain wasn't a Chunin, but a fellow graduate who was a Genin and younger than me, I was very unhappy. But today, I, Hyakusho, officially recognize everything Hatake Shudan has done and officially acknowledge Hatake Shudan as my captain!"

"Hyakusho, you... I'm so touched! Finally, someone understands my efforts!"

Shudan was overcome with emotion, almost moved to tears:

"Finally, someone knows my experiments with medicine in the village were the right thing to do!"

"Uh!"

Hyakusho looked bewildered:

"Are we talking about the same thing?"

"Finally, someone knows that even though those medicines have significant side effects, their actual healing effects are quite useful!"

"Uh, let's talk about the upcoming battle!"

"Hyakusho, you finally understand that even though my test subjects did some bad things to the Hokage Rock, compared to their contributions to the village, the Hokage Rock is nothing!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, I never agreed to that!"

"Since that's the case..."

Shudan looked at Hyakusho with a fanatical expression:

"I happen to have a bottle of medicine here that's very helpful for improving a ninja's physique. Hyakusho, as a sign of your acceptance, you should drink it!"

Hyakusho: "..."