Four corpses lay before Jiraiya and Akaseki—
When they saw the bodies of the two Land of Rain civilians, both Jiraiya and Akaseki frowned. Judging from the wounds, one had been killed instantly by a kunai, while the other—looked like an accidental killing during a struggle.
And—
Though the differences were slight, the two still recognized the kunai that had made the wounds. They were standard-issue kunai distributed to Chunin during Konoha's wartime!
With that, the two could roughly guess what had happened.
It should have been that when this pair, who looked like husband and wife, appeared, the Konoha ninja had panicked and thrown kunai at them, accidentally killing the woman. The man had then rushed forward in agitation and gotten tangled up with them, only to be killed as well.
What made Akaseki especially uncomfortable was—
The woman had red hair!
In the central region of the continent—the northeastern Land of Wind, the Land of Rain, and the other small countries around there—people with red hair basically all carried Uzumaki Clan blood, to varying degrees.
The only thing that gave Jiraiya and Akaseki a little "comfort" was that, judging by the fatal wounds, the woman's body fit the signs of an instant, accidental strike, while the man's body fit an accidental killing after close-range entanglement. There was no sign of deliberate murder.
If it had truly been deliberate, two Chunin killing ordinary people would not have left any clues behind at all.
Most likely, the two had gone to the already deserted village to search for supplies, heard a noise, and mistaken them for enemies.
Though he had serious doubts about the professionalism of those two Chunin—
They were dead.
"They actually used fake Konoha kunai to kill our comrades and tried to pin the blame on them—if