A Huge Haul!

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Li Tong had just reached the grass and dropped the corpse when Chen He and four Anbu appeared out of nowhere, surrounding him.

Chen He looked at the corpse, and his eyelid twitched involuntarily. It was a gruesome sight! The body had been stabbed at least several hundred times, and half its head had been hacked apart. With his keen eye, Chen He could tell right away that most of the wounds had been inflicted after death.

This demon had desecrated the corpse again!

"Another one tried to assassinate me. See for yourselves!" Li Tong said with practiced ease. Then he wiped his face and headed for the bathroom beside the wooden cabin.

He was filthy!

Li Tong looked ragged, too. The lake water had washed away the blood, so Chen He couldn't tell where Li Tong had been injured—or even whether the blood was his. It could just as easily have belonged to the assassin he'd killed.

Li Tong had deliberately stabbed Uesugi Kama's corpse until it was mangled, then torn up his own clothes. That way, Chen He couldn't tell that Uesugi Kama had died from a Shikotsumyaku attack, or that Li Tong had suffered a fatal wound to the chest!

Those were things he couldn't explain!

The best solution was to make sure they couldn't tell in the first place. Then he wouldn't have to explain.

Li Tong went into the bathroom.

Chen He and the others crouched down to inspect the corpse. It was in such terrible condition that they hardly knew where to begin. They had no choice but to grit their teeth and examine it anyway; they needed to determine certain things, such as whether the ninja had come from the village or outside it.

Chen He removed the corpse's battered mask and saw the assassin's face.

Part of the head had been damaged, leaving the face incomplete, but it was still clear he was a middle-aged ninja around forty. He had gray-blue eyes and wasn't exactly ugly, but handsome he certainly wasn't. He looked utterly ordinary.

"Do you recognize him?" Chen He asked.

The other Anbu Jōnin all shook their heads.

"He came from outside the village."

"If he dared to assassinate Li Tong, he must have been at least a Chunin."

"Huh? He was carrying so much money!" The Anbu Ninja codenamed Uta pulled a crumpled wad of banknotes from the corpse's clothes. They were stained with blood and riddled with holes. He counted them in his hand, then added, "Why would an assassin carry so much money? There's two hundred thousand ryō here!"

Chen He froze. He glanced at the money in Uta's hand, then his expression changed dramatically. He shot to his feet and said, "Notify the captain to come over!"

"Yes!" An Anbu Ninja immediately obeyed, formed Hand Seals, and vanished.

Normally, if Li Tong killed an assassin, there was no need to notify White Fang. This wasn't the first time anymore. Li Tong had been killing people every day lately, and the Anbu had to retrieve the bodies.

But this time was different!

The wad of banknotes reminded Chen He of what White Fang had told them earlier.

The Hyuga Clan ninjas who had gone on a mission to the Black Market were returning to Konoha today. They might hire Black Market assassins to eliminate Li Tong and get rid of the problem.

The battered corpse before them might well be a Black Market assassin hired by the Hyuga Clan. That would explain the large sum of money on him: it was his payment from the Hyuga Clan!

"Could he have been a Jōnin?" Chen He murmured, unable to believe it.

Li Tong had survived a Jōnin's assassination and killed him in return?! How was that possible?!

For most elite Chunin, becoming a Jōnin was the greatest hurdle on the path of cultivation. It was a barrier, a chasm! Becoming a Jōnin required not only sufficient strength, but also extensive experience and extraordinary combat instincts.

Compared with Chunin and elite Chunin, Jōnin were terrifying creatures!

Konoha had once had many talented people who became Chunin in their second or third year as Genin. But they took eight, ten, or even twenty years to become Jōnin—or never managed it in their entire lives!

The Jōnin rank was so difficult to attain that the Special Jōnin rank existed as an awkward in-between. A Special Jōnin was someone whose abilities met the Jōnin standard in some areas, but not in others.

A Chunin could be said to have less than a one-in-ten chance of killing a Jōnin, whether through a sneak attack, a scheme, or an ambush! And when targeted by a Jōnin, a Chunin's chance of surviving was less than one percent!

More importantly!

If Chen He's guess was right, this wasn't an ordinary Jōnin. He was a Black Market assassin Jōnin who specialized in powerful assassination techniques!

So—

How could Li Tong possibly have killed him?!

"No, no, I must have guessed wrong. It's impossible. Half a month ago, he was still a Genin. Now he has the strength to kill a Black Market assassin Jōnin? That's absolutely impossible!" Chen He dismissed his own suspicion.

The assassin must have been carrying so much money for some other special reason. He might have been only a Chunin!

"Lord Chen He, what's wrong?" Uta noticed Chen He's restless gaze and asked quietly.

"Hm?" Chen He glanced at Uta, then shook his head with a self-deprecating smile. "Nothing. I overthought it. Let's examine the body."

"The corpse is in such bad shape that aside from his face, there's little useful information we can get from it," Uta said.

"Right. But it's fine. The captain will be here, and with his abilities, he should be able to figure something out. He might even work out who the man was. Let's count the stab wounds first..." Chen He said.

......

In the bathroom, Li Tong sank into a wooden tub filled with warm water and let out a satisfied sigh.

"Wonderful!"

He leaned back in the tub and rested with his eyes closed until the fatigue had completely left his body. Then he opened his eyes and waved a hand. A thick stack of cards appeared in it.

After killing the elite Jōnin Uesugi Kama, Li Tong had not only completed the "Kill" storyline for the second time, earning one Reputation point and an A-Rank Random Ninjutsu Card, but had also received more than thirty cards from the kill drop!

It was a huge haul!

First, he sorted through the dropped cards.

Five D-Rank Ninjutsu Cards, including a Water Style: Hidden Mist Technique.

He'd obtained fourteen C-Rank Ninjutsu Cards: eight Water Release techniques, four Wind Release techniques, and two secret techniques.

He'd obtained two B-Rank Ninjutsu Cards: a Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique and a Wind Release: Vacuum Serial Waves.

He'd obtained one A-Rank Ninjutsu Card: a Water Release: Great Waterfall Card.

That made twenty-two Ninjutsu Cards in all, including the A-Rank Ninjutsu Card Li Tong had long dreamed of. It was clear Uesugi Kama knew more than one A-Rank Ninjutsu, but because of the drop rate, Li Tong had only gotten one of them.

The remaining eleven cards were three Basic Healing Cards, two Basic Mana Recovery Cards, two Spirit Enhancement Cards, one Specialty Weapon Random Card, one Double Drop Rate Card, one Reputation Shop Lock Card, and one Reputation Shop Refresh Card.

"Spirit Enhancement Cards can actually drop now? And two of them?!" Li Tong's eyes lit up.

A lot of cards that had never appeared before had dropped this time. Li Tong didn't even know what some of them did yet, but the one he cared about most was the Spirit Enhancement Card!

What he lacked most right now was chakra, and Spirit Enhancement Cards could directly increase Li Tong's total chakra!

"Ding! Reminder to host: when you kill a target with a Reputation value over three thousand, there's a certain chance they'll drop a Spirit Enhancement-type card," the Card Emperor Sprite said, as though it knew what Li Tong was thinking.

"Over three thousand? So, a Jōnin! I see." Li Tong muttered, then eagerly put both Spirit Enhancement Cards in his mouth and crunched them!