Village Slaughter

Lin Qing and the others crossed mountains and valleys, then sailed across the sea, leaving the Land of Water behind. They passed through the Land of Waves along the way, but didn't encounter any more drug trafficking.

Lin Qing didn't think their last encounter had taught the traffickers a lesson and made them turn over a new leaf.

The Land of Waves was rotten to its core. Knocking over a few boats and killing a few crewmen and samurai wouldn't solve the problem. They were probably just transporting and selling drugs in more covert ways.

They made it through the Land of Waves without incident, and Lin Qing and Sasuke returned to the Land of Fire for the first time in a long while.

The survivor village was in the northern part of the Land of Fire, deep in a dense forest. The road ahead wouldn't be easy. There were no paved roads, so they could only travel through the forest on foot.

Fortunately, they all had at least a little cultivation under their belts. Even Mayuri and Haku, who had never trained, had physiques far beyond ordinary people's because of their Kekkei Genkai.

The journey was much easier for Lin Qing than it had been on the way there. More accurately, he'd been enjoying Mayuri's care the whole way.

From setting out to cooking meals to settling in for the night, Mayuri was like a gentle older sister, keeping everything neatly organized.

Lin Qing wasn't some spoiled landowner. He'd tried to help several times, but couldn't keep up with Mayuri's pace and only got in the way. In the end, he could only shamelessly enjoy being looked after.

Just like that, more than two months passed.

Since they weren't in a hurry, the group traveled at a leisurely pace, stopping now and then. Whenever they passed through a town, they went in to restock their supplies.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique."

Lin Qing quickly formed Hand Seals and performed the jutsu on an open patch of ground.

With no enemies around lately, Lin Qing had decided to try learning ninjutsu from Sasuke.

It wasn't that he planned to become a ninja. It was simply good to have another way to deal with problems—and the better he understood his opponents, the better.

But—

A tiny flame, about the size of a balloon, appeared.

"Still no good."

Lin Qing slapped the jutsu away.

His Hand Seals were fine, and so was the jutsu. The key problem was chakra.

Lin Qing couldn't properly gather chakra.

Chakra was a supernatural energy created by combining the body and the mind. Lin Qing's body was powerful; the problem lay with his "mind."

Sasuke rubbed his chin as he thought it over.

"Brother Qing, could it be because you're a Stand User? Maybe all your mental energy goes into forming your Stand, so you can't use it to make chakra."

That was certainly possible.

But there was another possibility...

Lin Qing's soul didn't belong to the Naruto World.

Compared to the souls of the locals, Lin Qing's was missing something needed to produce chakra. If he could figure out what was different about his soul, maybe he could try training in ninjutsu.

Lin Qing thought it over for a moment, then shook his head and abandoned the idea.

He didn't have the knowledge to investigate it.

Rather than waste time on this, he was better off focusing on training in the Ripple Technique.

"Vrrm—vrrm—"

Aero Smith circled overhead.

Lin Qing had reached his destination. The survivor village should be nearby.

After searching for nearly an hour—

"Beep beep—"

Small animals' faint breathing became scarce within Aero Smith's detection range, which meant the edge of human habitation was about a kilometer ahead.

"We're almost there," Lin Qing said.

Their journey of more than two months was nearly over. Mayuri gently hugged Haku. They were about to reach their new home, and both of them felt nervous and excited.

Xiaotao and Sasuke smiled. They had gotten to know quite a few of the survivors aboard the ship, and they looked forward to seeing them again.

Seeing how happy everyone was made Lin Qing smile, too. But little by little, his smile faded.

"Brother Qing?" Sasuke asked.

"Something's not right," Lin Qing said.

The traces of small animals had indeed disappeared, but... why couldn't Aero Smith detect anyone breathing?

Even if everyone had gone out to farm or hunt, surely the whole village hadn't left.

Lin Qing charged ahead with the Blade of Ruin on his back, while Sasuke and the others followed close behind.

They leaped through the forest and soon spotted a shattered wooden sign. The words "Hope Village" were written on it.

That was the name the survivors had given their village.

Hope, reborn after the deepest despair.

Lin Qing set the wooden sign back down and hefted the Blade of Ruin in one hand. Before he even entered the village, a powerful stench hit him.

It was a familiar stench.

Lin Qing thought back for a while before remembering where he'd smelled it before.

On his first day in the Naruto World.

The Uchiha Compound.

When he'd opened the gate to his own courtyard and stepped out into the street, this was the smell that had filled the air—

The smell of blood, organs, corpses, and feces.

But the stench in Hope Village carried an added note of decay.

Collapsed houses stood everywhere, weeds overran the fields, and rotting corpses lay scattered about... Lin Qing closed his eyes, and scene after scene appeared before him.

People full of hope, working hard for a new life, had been slaughtered for no reason by hunters who'd suddenly barged in.

Yes, for no reason at all.

They weren't ninjas, they had little money, and they hadn't been captured for sale.

It had been nothing but pure, wanton slaughter.

Everyone turned their eyes to Lin Qing.

Clang—

Lin Qing drove the blade into the ground and rolled up his sleeves. His voice was calm. "Let's take care of the bodies first."

They carried the bodies to the center of the village. There were 103 of them. Some had been dismembered and scattered everywhere, so for now they could only gather up their upper halves.

Lin Qing looked over every corpse. When he reached the last one, he nodded to Sasuke.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"

A massive fireball, dozens of meters high, appeared.

After training in the Ripple Technique, Sasuke, a local, had grown vastly stronger in both body and mind. His chakra was many times stronger than before.

The flames consumed the corpses with a crackling roar.

The five of them stood silently before the fire, watching until it died out and left only ashes behind.

Star Platinum thrust both hands into the ground and heaved. The earth flipped over, covering the ashes and forming a simple grave.

Mayuri conjured a flower of ice between her hands and handed it to Lin Qing.

"Brother Qing, what do we do now?" Sasuke asked.

"There were 160 survivors who left the ship and decided to build Hope Village. There are only 103 bodies here, so more than 50 people are still unaccounted for."

Those who hadn't gone home or sought political refuge in Konoha, but had instead chosen to build a village, were people who truly had courage and hope in their hearts.

They had trusted Lin Qing, so they'd followed his guidance here and begun a new life.

Lin Qing placed the ice flower in front of the grave.

He'd only met the people of Hope Village by chance; he didn't owe them anything. He simply felt that these poor people, who'd held on to hope, shouldn't have died.

At the very least, they shouldn't have died such an unjust death.

"I'm going to find the survivors and ask them what happened."

"But... how do we find them?" Xiaotao asked.

Judging by how badly the bodies had decomposed, half a month had passed since the disaster. Even if anyone had survived, the trees and undergrowth would have covered their tracks by now.

Lin Qing knew that, of course.

"We'll go to a nearby city."

"I'm going to buy a camera."