"Shh, go to sleep."
Sou whispered in his ear as his hands flashed through a series of movements. Several fine steel wires instantly wrapped around the warm corpse.
"What's wrong? Sam, find anything?" one of his comrades called from a distance.
Sou hid behind the corpse and tugged on the wires.
Pulled by the threads, the dead "Sam" stiffly waved one hand, then casually scratched his head with the other. His voice came out deliberately low and hoarse:
"There was some movement over there just now. I thought it was a person, so I threw a kunai. Damn, it scared me. Turns out it was just a wild rabbit."
"Shit! Sam, you coward!"
"You got scared by a rabbit? You might as well go back to the village and hold babies!"
The three comrades cursed him out, and the tension eased considerably.
But one of them, a Ninja with a scar on his forehead, narrowed his eyes slightly. He remembered Sam was left-handed. Hadn't he scratched his head with his right hand just now?
He didn't call attention to it. Instead, he laughed the loudest. "All right, all right, Sam. Hurry up and wipe your piss away before the guy taking over for you gets sick."
Whoever had killed Sam in an instant could just as easily kill him. Better to let this mysterious Ninja go inside and leave the problem to the bigwigs below.
How many Silver Taels did he make in a month, anyway? Why risk his life?
Sou hadn't realized he'd been found out, but before leaving, he slipped four specially made Explosive Tags, stacked together, into Sam's arms.
Sou headed down the dark, damp passage. As expected, a guard was still stationed at the entrance.
The man leaned against the wall, idly fiddling with his fingers.