Meanwhile.
At the other end of the night market.
Kakashi, Kurenai, and Aoba Yamashiro, all cloaked in robes, were moving through the crowds of the night market.
According to Konoha's intelligence network, they had tracked down the Akatsuki Organization members who had recently been attacking Konoha shinobi with alarming frequency. They were in this small town.
At first, only Genin and Chunin had been attacked.
The village immediately dispatched a team led by a Special Jonin to investigate.
Yet unexpectedly, the team sent to investigate also lost contact.
That immediately drew the village's attention.
After all, Special Jonin from the Five Great Shinobi Villages were already outstanding shinobi capable of standing on their own. For a team led by one to vanish without a trace meant the situation was far more serious than imagined.
That was why the village had dispatched Kakashi this time.
Kurenai said softly, "Who exactly are these people from the Akatsuki Organization? How dare they attack our Konoha shinobi within the Land of Fire?"
Aoba Yamashiro was equally puzzled. "They're far too lawless."
To hunt down and kill shinobi from Konoha, the foremost of the Five Great Shinobi Villages, within the Land of Fire—the provocation in that was even greater than the killings themselves.
Nothing like this had happened in many years.
Kakashi said nothing.
Unlike Kurenai and Aoba Yamashiro, he had received some intelligence about the organization known as Akatsuki from the Third.
He knew they absolutely could not treat this organization as some ordinary group of rogue shinobi.
Nearly all of its members were S-rank wanted criminals from various villages. Even Orochimaru, one of the Legendary Sannin, had once joined the organization.
Thus, the Third's mission for him this time was not merely to investigate the disappearance of Konoha shinobi. He was to secretly