The Puppet Master

"Ka-lak..."

The sound of the puppet's joints grinding was grating.

A puppet shaped like a Six-Legged Pincer Bug blocked his way.

The other puppet chasing him arrived right behind it. It was a Blade-Shield Puppet.

The two puppets, one in front and one behind, blocked Mo Jingxian's path.

He couldn't sense any Sand Ninja puppet master nearby.

As expected, they were devious. Both of them were hiding more than fifty meters away, ruining his plan to behead them.

He had no time to think.

As soon as the puppet behind him arrived, the two puppets coordinated their attack.

"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!"

The Pincer Bug Puppet opened its jaws and fired a volley of senbon straight at him.

Mo Jingxian leaped aside, using the terrain to circle behind the puppet before slashing hard at the gaps in its joints.

"Clang!"

The Blade-Shield Puppet suddenly appeared, blocking the attack with its arm shield. It staggered back several steps, nearly falling from the tree.

The two puppets worked together with astonishing precision.

The instant the Blade-Shield Puppet intercepted his attack, the Pincer Bug Puppet seized the fleeting opening and spewed a cloud of poisonous smoke.

The poison spread quickly, turning the leaves in its path black at once. They then withered and dropped away in spots.

The great tree beneath his feet visibly shriveled, and the stench of decay began to fill the air.

Mo Jingxian appeared ten meters away, watching the scene before him with a grave look in his eyes.

He had never faced an opponent so troublesome and deadly. He quickly analyzed what he knew about the enemy.

The puppets were faster than him, so he could only deal with them at close range.

The two puppet masters worked together seamlessly. The puppets' bodies were hard, and they concealed poisoned needles and toxic smoke, making them extremely difficult to handle.

The puppet masters were hiding out of his sensing range.

Their weakness was their delayed attacks and lack of agility. Perhaps he could take advantage of that.

The thought flashed through his mind. In reality, only an instant had passed. As he dodged, the two puppets attacked him again.

Using the foresight granted by Mist of Vitality, Mo Jingxian engaged them in close combat.

Several times, he used the battle to approach the puppet masters, but they always kept a safe distance from him.

As expected, no one who survived on the battlefield was a pushover.

A commotion drifted from the direction of the convoy in the distance. The clash of weapons, the release of ninjutsu, and all kinds of other sounds mingled together.

The battle had been split into several separate skirmishes, cutting off communication between them. No one knew what would happen next.

Mo Jingxian closed in again, feinting past the Blade-Shield Puppet before bringing his short blade down on the Pincer Bug Puppet.

The next instant,

The Pincer Bug came apart where it stood. Its eight legs flew into the air, each joint gleaming with cold, sharp metal spikes.

Mo Jingxian's attack missed. The Pincer Bug Puppet trapped him with its body, and its eight bladed legs shot back at him like arrows.

"Pff, pff, pff..."

The strikes landed one after another, and the Blade-Shield Puppet's long blade followed right behind.

Caught between the two attacks, Mo Jingxian's body broke apart into flowing water. It traveled along the Chakra Thread, leading him straight to the enemy's hiding place.

Wind Release: Vacuum Blade, the technique he had just mastered, sent wind-nature Chakra whirling along the edge of his short blade.

A blade rang out in the forest, and a wooden log split in two. The enemy escaped the attack with the Substitution Technique.

His teammate was about to arrive. If he survived this attack, the two of them could join forces against their enemy again.

The enemy, having narrowly escaped death, had just prepared to recall his puppet when he suddenly felt his body tighten.

A Water Flood Dragon coiled around him. He had no idea when his opponent had begun casting the technique.

A thought of terror had only just crossed his mind when his vision went black.

Before he died, he seemed to see the world spin rapidly, and a headless body slowly fall to the ground.

In the blink of an eye, one of the two attackers was dead. The one remaining abruptly stopped, hesitating to advance.

The distant convoy had fallen silent. A bird called out in the stillness of the forest.

Hearing the signal to retreat, the enemy took one last long look at Mo Jingxian before withdrawing from the battlefield under the cover of his puppet.

"Whew—"

He let out a long breath and casually wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

The pressure from the enemy had been considerable. After fighting them, he was sure both had the strength of Chunin.

But they were nothing like Chunins raised in a greenhouse.

They were seasoned, ruthless, and had given him plenty of trouble in a short time.

He sealed his spoils into a scroll and immediately returned to the convoy.

When he arrived, the scene before him still startled him.

The blasted carriage lay in pieces, with many fragments embedded in the surrounding tree trunks.

Several civilians lay on the ground, their bodies incomplete.

A third of the convoy had been destroyed. The mission had practically failed.

When Captain Yamashiro saw Mo Jingxian return safely, he nodded at him, then began reorganizing the convoy.

Mo Jingxian went to lean against a tree and rest for a moment. Then he began checking the panel he hadn't paid much attention to earlier.

The two enemies had provided him with 60 reputation points in a short time.

The one who escaped contributed 10 points, while the one he had killed instantly earned him 50.

As expected, hatred was easier to gain than love.

The damage report came in: five carts of supplies had been destroyed, and of the four Genin, only he had returned alive.

Yamashiro Baiyun's expression wasn't good. Almost everyone who had survived was injured.

After resting for a while, the convoy set off again.

Mo Jingxian remained silent along the way, repeatedly reviewing the battle in his mind.

Puppet masters were truly difficult to deal with, especially before they reached the level of an elite High Ninja.

As Mo Jingxian quietly reviewed the battle, two people were nearby, one chasing the other.

Nishikawa Jiken felt that he might not make it back to the Sand Ninja. He hoped his mother would forgive him.

His pursuer, Tono Kojiro, was also at his limit.

After a night of fighting and pursuit, both men were injured. They had made it this far only by holding on to sheer determination.

An open clearing appeared ahead. A transport convoy happened to be stopped there for a rest.

"Quick, catch him! He's a Sand Ninja spy!"

Yamashiro Baiyun had actually noticed the two men long ago. Ever since the convoy was attacked, he had been like a startled bird, reacting to every little disturbance.

The only reason he hadn't acted yet was that he couldn't confirm their identities.

Both men wore traditional ninja vests and Konoha Forehead Protectors. Making it this far while fleeing was already a miracle.

Yamashiro Baiyun certainly wasn't going to take someone's word for it. He quickly subdued them both.

Unexpectedly, before they could interrogate them, a sudden attack caught everyone off guard.

"Wind Release: Wind Cutter Technique!"

Mo Jingxian reacted at once, putting up a defense. The next moment, a storm of wind blades swept through the camp.

Towering trees toppled, and the ninjutsu plowed through the convoy, carving a huge clearing out of the forest.

"Leave no one alive."

Rasa spoke coldly.

"Yes!"

His two subordinates immediately began clearing the scene.

For this deep incursion behind enemy lines, Rasa had brought only two trusted High Ninjas: Karura and Dafangang Qihu.

Sometimes, a smaller force was more effective than a larger one. A squad of three elite High Ninjas was more mobile.

"Bang! Bang!"

Two figures burst out from beneath the rubble. They were Yamashiro Baiyun and Mo Jingxian.

They fled in opposite directions without the slightest intention of stopping to fight.

The technique just used made it clear that the newcomers belonged to the tiny fraction of top-tier ninjas, and they had come in a group of three.

"Hmph! Struggling in vain."

Rasa and Dafangang Qihu went straight after Yamashiro Baiyun.

Karura touched the tree trunk beneath her feet and was already more than ten meters away. In just a few steps, she appeared behind the boy.

"Sand Binding Coffin!"

Sand ropes suddenly shot up around Mo Jingxian's feet, binding him tight in an instant.

Water splashed everywhere. The boy had already run far away, escaping with Water Substitution.

Karura's mood suddenly soured. As an elite High Ninja of the Sand, she had been tricked by a Konoha boy.

The boy had used the technique so skillfully that even she hadn't noticed the deception, but how could she let this insult go?

"Kid, you've piqued my interest."

Karura pressed both palms to the ground. With a bang, she summoned a Sand Scorpion.

"Find the boy who used that technique."

The Sand Scorpion lowered its head and licked the traces left by the Water Substitution. The scent of Mo Jingxian's Chakra excited it.

It gave two sharp "chik-chik" cries, sank into the ground, and followed the scent of Chakra in pursuit.

"Hmph! Let's see how you escape this time."

Karura sped off in the direction indicated by the Sand Scorpion.

[Reputation from Karura +10]

Mo Jingxian's eyelid twitched. That was 10 reputation points already?

Oh, so if you didn't let someone kill you, they held a grudge? Did no one in the Ninja World have any sense of fairness?

He had no idea why he was so unlucky. It had only been a few days, and he was being attacked by another elite High Ninja.

Worse, this time he had no reputation points to turn things around.

Mo Jingxian thought as he ran. Judging by his current location, he should be getting close to the Land of Rivers.

If he remembered correctly, south of the Land of Rivers was a river that flowed straight into the sea.

It had been so long that his memories had grown hazy. He only vaguely remembered there being such a river.

He knew who Karura was. As the mother of the Fifth Kazekage, she was undoubtedly a bloodline-limit expert.

If someone like her had set her sights on him, he'd lose a layer of skin even if he survived.

He had to go for it!

Only if he made it there would he have a chance to escape.

The two ran and chased each other for an unknown distance. For the third time, Karura blocked Mo Jingxian's path.

"Karura, don't you think you're taking this a little far? You don't have to chase me down like this."

He leaned against a large tree, panting heavily as he complained indignantly.

Karura wasn't swayed in the slightest. Even though the other party had called her by name, she still attacked without mercy.

This brat was cunning. The first two times, he'd taken advantage of her curiosity to find an opening and slip away.

She'd thought that dealing with a brat who wasn't even a Chunin would be easy.

She hadn't expected Mo Jingxian to escape all the way here. Now, no matter what he said, Karura wouldn't listen.

She simply attacked with ruthless force.

"Sand Style: Sand Lightning Needle!"

It was a large-scale ninjutsu with a range of more than a hundred meters.

Sand needles rained down, whistling through the air.

They left Mo Jingxian no room to dodge.

Even Water Substitution wouldn't work. The needles covered too wide an area, completely blocking his escape routes.

He had no choice but to take the attack head-on.

"Water Dragon Technique (Seal)."

A gigantic Water Flood Dragon emerged from beneath his feet, and Mo Jingxian stood right inside its open jaws.

The Water Flood Dragon seemed to have been buried deep underground before suddenly raising its head and swallowing him.

Scales surfaced, marked with faint golden symbols. The sand needles bounced off them the instant they struck.

The ground all around was covered in densely packed sand needles.

Just as the Sand Lightning Needle technique was about to end, a bolt of lightning was drawn down from the clouds.

In an instant,

The sand needles absorbed the lightning's power and transformed into bolts of lightning that struck Mo Jingxian, trapped at the center.

"I'm dead!"