Orange

Hayato Kamihara was soaking comfortably in the hot spring.

Ever since he'd started working with Lin Qing, he'd made a fortune—but he was also so exhausted his head was spinning.

Tonight, he had a date with a girl from the Land of Lightning. Supposedly, she was skilled in dual cultivation and Lightning Release Ninjutsu. Hayato Kamihara planned to relax properly.

"Hot springs, then pretty girls. The old Daimyo can't hold a candle to me."

Hayato Kamihara began humming softly, quite pleased with the haiku he'd written. The more he recited it, the more he liked its rhythm.

Hayato Kamihara swept his hair back, revealing a fairly handsome face. Unfortunately, his expression was rather lecherous. Wrapped in a bath towel, he swayed as he pulled aside the curtain.

"Beauty, I'm coming—"

His voice rose as he abruptly opened his towel, eager to hear the girl from the Land of Lightning's distinctive, coquettish moan.

Silence.

There wasn't a girl in sight.

Lin Qing and Sasuke were sitting on the sofa, one on each side.

Lin Qing turned his head away, not wanting to look at anything so offensive. Sasuke made a gesture with his thumb and index finger that would infuriate Koreans.

"Wait... why are you two still haunting me?!"

Hayato Kamihara was genuinely furious.

Hadn't they agreed to take separate vacations?

"Sorry. I thought it over, and you're the only one I could ask."

Lin Qing pulled the unconscious Sato from behind the door, then took out the coded message from earlier and handed it to Hayato Kamihara. He recounted everything that had happened.

"Could you help me figure out if it's genuine?" Lin Qing asked.

The lust in Hayato Kamihara's eyes faded, replaced by helplessness. He sighed. "Why do I get the feeling you have some kind of power that keeps attracting these strange situations?"

Lin Qing didn't know how to answer, so he kept quiet.

Hayato Kamihara shook his head, wrapped his towel securely around himself, fetched paper and a pen, and got down to work.

He went over the message several times, scribbling notes and sketches. It took him the entire night before he finally gave Lin Qing an answer.

"Intelligence organizations all use special codes. To decipher them, you need the organization's 'core text,' and the codes are changed and adjusted regularly.

"Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be able to understand this document even if you handed it to me. But once you use the information the other party let slip to reverse-engineer the code, it gets much easier."

Hayato Kamihara picked up the document and tapped it. "He wasn't lying to you, but he did withhold some information. Root wasn't the only one investigating this trail. Someone else is watching it, too.

"The city mentioned in the intel is Mirage City. The city is a jumble of all kinds of people these days. If you go there, you could draw attacks from all sorts of factions. It'll be dangerous."

Hayato Kamihara knew Lin Qing's style all too well. He was like a spear, charging straight at his target and tearing apart anyone who stood in his way.

It was a bold, unstoppable way to move through life.

But...

Who could stay undefeated forever?

The strongest things were often the first to break. If you kept pushing forward, sooner or later you'd face a setback beyond anything you could imagine.

"I advise you not to go."

"Is that professional advice from an information broker?" Lin Qing asked.

"No."

Hayato Kamihara said seriously, "It's a friend asking you not to go."

Lin Qing smiled.

If he could, he wouldn't want to take risks either.

Who didn't love a life of wine and women, enjoying girls of all kinds every day like Hayato Kamihara? What more could anyone ask for?

But he couldn't.

Naruto was a hot-blooded shonen manga. Lin Qing had never read it, but he could roughly guess how the story would go.

The protagonist would keep getting stronger, the enemies would grow more formidable, and the battles would escalate from small-scale skirmishes to conflicts spanning the whole country, then the entire world.

The JoJo series was a counterexample.

Every part of JoJo had a different protagonist.

Why do that?

To give each protagonist room to grow, enough to create a character arc.

But Lin Qing had heard of Naruto when he was very young, and it took more than ten years before he heard that it had ended. And Naruto had only one protagonist—

Naruto Uzumaki.

To keep readers hooked, the world would grow more dangerous, and the conflicts more terrifying.

The strongest people now might be the Kage of each village, but who knew what the future would bring?

Danzo wanted him dead.

Itachi Uchiha wanted him dead.

Now, Root's ninjas had already made their way to his doorstep. If Lin Qing got complacent over drawing a new five-star Stand and stopped moving forward, next time it might be him lying unconscious on the ground.

"When you still have a choice, don't let yourself end up regretting it."

Lin Qing valued the choices he still had.

"We're leaving."

Lin Qing patted Hayato Kamihara on the shoulder and stood up. Sasuke followed him.

"Hey! Are you even listening to me?!"

Hayato Kamihara shouted after Lin Qing.

All he got in reply was the sight of two figures, one large and one small, waving goodbye as they walked away.

The Land of Water was small to begin with. The two had also mastered the Ripple Breathing Method, and as they raced along, they were little more than a pair of shadows flashing by.

The whole way, Aero Smith hovered above them, scanning the area below and helping Lin Qing scout the road ahead.

By the afternoon of the following day, Lin Qing had reached Mirage City.

Mirage City lay beside the ocean. Around noon, water vapor rose into the air, and clouds and mist swirled as the sun's rosy light shone through them. It looked like a dream, like a fairy-tale city that existed only in the imagination.

But once they drew near and parted the mist, they could see the city walls, mottled and dilapidated.

The air was salty, voices crowded together, and the harbor was packed.

After entering the city, Lin Qing saw pickpockets slash open travelers' bags more than once.

He also saw an unlucky thief get caught and have his hand chopped off on the spot. Blood sprayed everywhere, making Sasuke's eyelid twitch.

Beneath its dreamy appearance, the city hid chaos, gloom, and oppression. That was Lin Qing's first impression of Mirage City.

Lin Qing found an inn and checked in.

It wasn't a good idea to act during the day, so he rested at the inn and practiced his breathing technique.

Late that night, the window on the inn's second floor opened. Lin Qing and Sasuke leapt lightly outside and disappeared into the darkness.

Dark clouds covered the sky, and the moonlight was faint. Apart from the entertainment district in the city center, where lights shone amid all the revelry, the rest of the city was dark.

There were few people on the streets. Every now and then, a person just off work hurried by, one hand tucked inside their coat.

The locals all knew that the hand hidden in someone's coat was gripping a knife.

The day belonged to pickpockets; the night belonged to muggers.

Listening to the screams and curses echoing from the alleys, Lin Qing briefly couldn't tell if he'd come to the Naruto World or ended up in Gotham City, a place with famously wholesome local customs.

"This is the place."

Lin Qing and Sasuke hid atop a building, watching a processing plant a hundred meters away.

A rusty sign hung over the entrance:

"Murata Sausage"

Everyone knew the so-called processing plant was just a front.

Lin Qing had made a plan on the way there.

The Seven Ninja Swordsmen were ninjas officially affiliated with Kirigakure. Once he fought them, he probably wouldn't be able to stay in the Land of Water.

Lin Qing wanted to first find out what kind of business they were really running. They were so secretive about it, it had to be something shady.

He would use that as a starting point to stir up trouble in Mirage City and draw out the people hidden there.

The more chaos, the more opportunities Lin Qing would have.

As long as he defeated a few strong opponents, the trip wouldn't be for nothing.

"Aero Smith!"

Lin Qing pointed ahead. Aero Smith took off and flew into the processing plant.

"Begin reconnaissance."

The carbon dioxide detection device activated.

At once, countless red dots appeared in Lin Qing's field of vision.

Lin Qing's first thought was:

Was this really a meat-processing plant?

Judging by the size of the red dots, they were about the size of pigs.

But Lin Qing immediately realized something.

Why would a sausage factory raise its own pigs?

And even if it did, what kind of pigs lived in stacked cages?

People!

They were all people!

Lin Qing increased Aero Smith's resolution. The area within its scanning range came into focus, and he saw—

People locked inside cages.

The cages were tiny, about 1.3 meters high and less than a meter wide.

It was an incredibly uncomfortable height.

If they didn't want to sit all the time, they had to duck and hunch over whenever they stood up.

Only a handful of "lucky ones" could stand straight.

But how many adults were only 1.3 meters tall?

The ones who could stand straight were all children.

Aero Smith scanned the area. There were more than four hundred red dots.

That meant more than four hundred people, locked in cages like livestock!

"The Land of Water... Yagura is running a human trafficking business?!"

As Aero Smith explored the plant, Lin Qing noticed someone.

She sat with her knees drawn up. The carbon dioxide in her breath outlined her face.

"Xiaotao?"

Lin Qing couldn't imagine seeing her in a place like this.

Hadn't Xiaotao come to the Land of Water with her mother to visit relatives? How had visiting relatives ended with her in a cage?

Where was her mother?

What kind of hellhole was this processing plant?

Questions flooded his mind.

But now wasn't the time to seek answers.

Whether or not his suspicions were correct didn't matter. What mattered was...

What were they going to do?

Lin Qing and Sasuke looked at each other and saw the answer in each other's eyes.

Save them.

No waiting for a more thorough plan. No elaborate preparations.

They would do it tonight.

Aero Smith circled overhead, marking the positions of all the visible and hidden guards in the factory grounds.

Lin Qing and Sasuke were like ghosts in the night, taking out the guards along the way and slipping into the processing plant without a sound.

The guards usually worked in shifts. A supervisor oversaw them, rotating through at regular intervals to check on the staff and make sure nothing went wrong.

Lin Qing didn't have much time.

He had to rescue Xiaotao and get out of the factory grounds within ten minutes.

Otherwise, they'd have no choice but to fight head-on.

Lin Qing had confidence in his strength, but he wouldn't underestimate his enemies.

According to the information Hayato Kamihara had provided, the Seven Ninja Swordsmen were among the best of the best. Each of them was an A-rank, or even S-rank, fighter in their own right. And there were three of them, along with a group of Kirigakure ninjas.

If they had to fight, it would be best to wait until their opponents were separated and take them on one at a time.

They hurried through the factory grounds and, guided by Aero Smith, found a hidden door.

Lin Qing pushed it open.

The air grew foul.

The stench was difficult to put into words.

The stink of sweat, blood, infected wounds, and urine all blended together, fermented over time into a foul reek.

Sasuke instinctively started to cover his nose, but the moment he took in what lay before him, he froze.

Lin Qing had told him what to expect, but a verbal description and seeing it with his own eyes were completely different kinds of shock.

Hundreds of people were trapped in cages, unable even to straighten their backs. They were like patches of paint smeared across a miserable world.

Under the crushing weight of the cages, their human dignity had been bent out of shape, along with their hunched spines.

Lin Qing found Xiaotao in one of the cages.

Her eyes were dull and gray. In her hands, she held a shriveled, rotten orange.

A twisted smiley face had been drawn on it.