By then, Might Guy had already packed everything up and covered their tracks as well. It was an indispensable habit for every qualified ninja: leave as little evidence behind as possible for others to find.
"An eyelid twitching isn't necessarily a bad thing. Haven't you heard that a twitching left eye means wealth, while a twitching right eye means disaster? Which one of yours is twitching?" After Xing Ran had pulled that little stunt on her, Nara Izumi irritably tried to regain some balance by picking on Guy.
"...Both my eyelids are twitching." Guy honestly took a moment to feel it out before giving his somewhat airheaded answer.
"Then I suppose it's half good fortune and half disaster." Nara Izumi wore the expression of someone uninvolved who was eagerly waiting to watch the show.
But creatures like Guy were strange. On the surface, he seemed carefree and even somewhat forgetful, yet his beast-like intuition was absurdly accurate at crucial moments. What had left the deepest impression on Xing Ran in the original plot was the episode where Kakashi revealed his true face. No one had seen through Kakashi's disguise, but Guy alone had noticed that something was wrong. That was not an ability one could learn.
"Everyone, accelerate. Head for the destination at full speed." The moment Guy heard "half good fortune and half disaster," he jolted. For no particular reason, he simply felt that something had happened. Amid his two teammates' baffled expressions, he gave the order to advance at full speed.
Guy was the captain, as well as an elite Chunin. Rumor had it that after this war ended, he would be promoted to Special Jonin. Though that was merely gossip Nara Izumi had heard, Xing Ran knew it was only a matter of time. He even wondered whether his butterfly effect was the reason Guy had somehow still not been rated as a Special Jonin. This was the man who, in the original plot, would become the strongest ninja without Kaguya Otsutsuki's bloodline as he grew older—the man who had nearly kicked out the ending with a single blow.
Both Xing Ran and Nara Izumi were still his subordinates. In many situations, Guy's demands were military orders. The three stopped fooling around, and an inexplicable tension began to spread among them. It was the feeling that came just before entering battle.
With their speed pushed to the limit, the difference in their abilities became obvious. As members of the Nara Clan, who usually stayed in the rear to provide battlefield support, Nara Izumi's physical strength and Chakra reserves were rather lacking. Xing Ran, however, used Chakra in conjunction with his underdeveloped Steel Body and was still able to keep up with Guy's pace. Their formation thus became a two-one formation, with the two in front constantly accommodating the one behind. Whenever Guy tried to speed up, he quickly slowed down again to wait for Nara Izumi.
They had not noticed much before, but now that the three of them had entered combat readiness, Xing Ran suddenly realized that their current combination was a bootleg version of Ino-Shika-Cho. The only difference was that the Butterfly, responsible for taking hits and dealing damage, had been replaced by the Azure Beast.
At the same time, this team composition let Xing Ran see Konoha's weakness. It was indeed difficult to find an Ino-Shika-Cho trio like Hai Yi and Ino, with companions of the same age to form a team with, but groups with an age gap of within five years could still be found.
Yet simply finding people from clans with secret techniques was not enough. They also needed comparable strength in order to form effective teamwork. Having experts lead novices might seem balanced, but it often got people killed faster.
There had been no suitable member of the Akimichi Clan in Xing Ran's generation whose strength matched his and Izumi's. The Hokage's arrangement could only be considered a helpless compromise.
"Something's wrong." As the team's eyes and ears, Xing Ran had unlocked a secondary profession, but his primary skills as a Sensor Ninja had not weakened in the slightest. After Guy began to give off a grave atmosphere, Xing Ran raised his vigilance to its highest level and was the first to spot a Konoha camp in the distance that had almost been razed to the ground.
Since he had not detected any signs of enemies, Xing Ran did not ask them to heighten their guard. Instead, he had everyone continue onward while describing what he saw along the way.
Before long, the three arrived at the devastated border camp.
This place had just been attacked. The attackers had been extremely aggressive, practically sparing no expense as they flattened the traps and defensive installations outside the camp. After entering, they had inflicted heavy casualties before swiftly withdrawing. The enemy had been extremely cunning; their rapid assault and retreat had left several nearby camps with no time to send reinforcements.
"Where is the person in charge here? I'm Might Guy, the Chunin leading the unit sent by the Hokage to relieve you." Guy grabbed a lightly injured Konoha Ninja and began questioning him.
The results were terrible. The person in charge was dead. Of the small camp's eighteen people, fewer than ten were still alive, and every one of them was in a miserable state. The squad that had been scheduled to rotate out with Might Guy's Team had been wiped out entirely. It was a truly tragic sight.
Xing Ran's feelings were conflicted, and he was trying to adapt to this tragic environment. They had only just reached the mission's destination when an opportunity to test the knowledge he had learned over this period appeared before him. Yet Xing Ran felt that this sort of opportunity would be better off not existing. Many people in this ninja world had long since abandoned hope. He had only been transported here recently, and there would be plenty more occasions when he encountered scenes like this.
Xing Ran remained silent as he opened the medicine pouch at his side. Inside were some unprocessed herbs, along with plenty of ready-to-use bandages, hemostatic cotton, and other supplies.
The nine survivors could be counted at a glance. Four of them appeared largely uninjured, while another two had minor wounds. The rest were severely injured. Xing Ran swept his gaze across them. With Super vision combined with the Yamanaka Clan's sensory abilities, it took him less than two seconds to identify the most seriously injured person.
Mystical Palm Technique!
After Grandma Qiu's guidance, the green glow produced by the Mystical Palm Technique no longer diffused into the surroundings. Instead, it became increasingly condensed in his palm. Its formerly pale green sheen had turned a richer emerald.
The injured man had a massive slash across his chest, the kind that left his internal organs visible. Although a companion was pressing a towel against the wound, the excessive blood loss was unavoidable. The injured man was already drifting in and out of consciousness.
With one hand, Xing Ran pressed the dense fluorescent glow against the wound. With the other, he swiftly pulled out several herb leaves. Conditions were crude, and he did not overthink it. He simply tossed them into his mouth and began chewing.
Soon, the herb juice mixed with his saliva, turning the leaves into a greenish paste. Xing Ran did not waste even a second before smearing the paste over several other wounds on the injured man's body that were still bleeding. Those wounds were not fatal, but they were still losing blood. If the bleeding was not stopped in time, it would still be difficult for the injured man to hold on until his primary wound healed.
Guy and Izumi also possessed some first-aid knowledge. In fact, most ninja knew a few battlefield emergency measures. They were useless against major injuries, but handling minor wounds was no problem.
Even so, everyone present could not help stealing glances at Xing Ran while they worked.
He was a Medical Ninja who knew the Mystical Palm Technique. Encountering one on the front lines was quite rare. The despair everyone had felt moments earlier unknowingly vanished when they saw the shimmering green light filling Xing Ran's hands.
Many times, because ninja placed such importance on their ability to preserve their own lives, they could endure for longer after being injured. This allowed many ninja to survive until a battle ended, but surviving until the battle ended did not mean they were fine.
To be continued
Before you continue