"Explode."
It was an extremely soft word, transmitted through a mud-stained Mask, yet it became the last sound Venom Fang would ever hear.
His vaunted ANBU instincts had become a complete joke at this moment. Who could have imagined that a low-level cannon fodder shinobi with almost no Chakra left and the left half of his body paralyzed by potent poison could have silently stepped on an Explosive Tag and buried it deep in the swamp when he was knocked away just now?
Even more frightening was the fact that he had completed the Chakra guidance for the "Tiger Seal" with only one hand!
This was the one-handed, silent ninjutsu-casting technique that even Elite Jonin found extremely difficult to master. Venom Fang's gaze had remained fixed on Baishi's right hand hanging at his side, wary that he might pull out a ninja tool, but he had completely fallen into the fatal psychological blind spot that "forming seals requires both hands."
"Boom!"
A muffled explosion suddenly erupted beneath the muddy water.
There was no earth-shaking blaze, only an extremely concentrated shock wave mixed with foul-smelling sludge, like an invisible heavy hammer smashing viciously into Venom Fang's legs.
Venom Fang's body pitched forward uncontrollably, and the flow of Chakra circulating within him was violently disrupted by the close-range shock. His brain frantically issued the command to retreat, but his muscles fell into a fatal half-second paralysis.
That half-second was all it took.
Baishi moved.
He did not retreat to evade the aftershock. Instead, he charged forward into the flying gravel and scalding mud, pouncing like a starving wolf driven into a corner.
The left half of his body remained completely numb, but his right hand, which had just finished forming the seal, suddenly seized the hilt of the dark-green poisoned Kunai embedded in his left collarbone.
He had to be ruthless with himself to seize the chance to live.
"Spurt!"
A trace of utterly rational madness flashed through Baishi's eyes. His five fingers suddenly tightened, and amid the horrifying sound of grinding bone, he forcibly pulled the Kunai wedged between his bones free!
Thick black blood instantly sprayed out like water from a high-pressure hose. Scalding blood splashed across Baishi's pure-white Mask and dripped down from his chin.
The pain made the muscles on his face twitch violently, but he forcibly did not let out even a muffled groan.
Using the force of pulling out the Kunai and the tremendous inertia of his forward lunge, Baishi slammed his entire body into Venom Fang's arms. The Kunai, stained with Baishi's own blood and Iwagakure's deadly poison, swept through the dim Canyon in a harsh streak of cold light.
Venom Fang's pupils suddenly widened behind his Mask.
He saw the cold light aimed straight at his throat and desperately tried to swing his Ninja Blade to block it, but the neural paralysis caused by the Explosive Tag slowed his movement by half a beat.
That half beat was the boundary between life and death.
"Shhk—"
The faint sound of the blade slicing through flesh and severing the windpipe was exceptionally harsh in the wind.
Scalding blood instantly burst through the carotid artery and sprayed out without restraint, drenching Baishi from head to toe. The intense smell of blood immediately overwhelmed the stench of the swamp.
Venom Fang's body crashed heavily into the swamp like an empty sack with all its strength drained away, splashing a ring of murky water.
He clutched his gaping neck tightly, but blood continued to gush wildly through the gaps between his fingers, dyeing a large patch of muddy water red.
"Ghk... ghk-ghk..."
Meaningless syllables emerged from his shattered throat. Venom Fang's bulging eyes remained fixed on the thin figure half-kneeling before him, filled with extreme terror and disbelief that shattered everything he knew.
He could not understand.
How had Danzo's perfect plan to use one blade to kill another, personally devised by the man himself, fallen apart in the hands of a piece of cannon fodder whose file described him as "timid and cowardly"?
Why did this useless wretch, who would even tremble when killing a Genin, possess such terrifying tactical calculations and such ruthless methods?
Baishi gave him no chance to find the answer.
Villains died from talking too much. He never made such a foolish mistake. When facing an enemy, only complete physical extermination was the safest course.
Baishi coldly reversed his grip on the Kunai, aimed it at Venom Fang's heart, and stabbed down without hesitation, twisting hard as it went in.
"Spurt."
His heart was completely crushed.
The light in Venom Fang's eyes instantly dispersed. His body convulsed violently twice, and his hands, which had been clutching the mud, went limp. He completely became a cold corpse.
Baishi pulled out the Kunai and collapsed into the muddy water as if all his strength had left him.
His chest heaved violently like a bellows as he gasped for breath.
"Cough... cough-cough!"
He spat out another large mouthful of blackened venomous blood. Because he had forcibly pulled out the Kunai, the wound at his left collarbone had lost its physical compression and was now bleeding profusely. The poison followed his accelerated blood circulation and began irreversibly surging toward his heart.
The overlapping images in his vision grew increasingly severe.
Baishi clenched his teeth and shakily formed the one-handed seal for Lightning Release with his right hand.
"Zzt-zzt!"
Faint blue arcs of electricity struggled to leap across his fingertips. Without hesitation, he pressed those fingers, wrapped in high-voltage current, against the spurting wound.
The stench of flesh instantly burned by electricity spread through the air once more.
He forcibly used the extreme heat of Lightning Release to cauterize the ruptured blood vessels and muscles together, stopping the massive bleeding through an exceptionally brutal method. The immense vitality of the Incomplete Uzumaki Constitution finally caught up with the rate of depletion, clinging stubbornly to his heart and slowly breaking down the poison within his body.
Only the howl of wind passing through the cracks in the rocks remained in the Canyon.
Nine bodies lay sprawled in every direction. Eight Iwagakure elites and one Konoha ANBU captain.
Baishi leaned against a waist-high chunk of rubble and closed his eyes for over ten seconds.
He had survived.
But he knew very clearly that this killing trap had only just begun.
Konoha's higher-ups were not fools. The Third Hokage's ANBU and Danzo's Root both had sensor-type shinobi specifically responsible for examining crime scenes. A mediocre low-level ANBU had not only survived an assault by Iwagakure elites but had also "coincidentally" witnessed his captain's death.
Even a Genin who had just graduated from the Ninja Academy would not believe such a story.
If he wanted to retreat unscathed, he had to give Konoha's higher-ups a "truth" that was flawless and aligned with the interests of all parties.
Baishi staggered to his feet, muddy water dripping from his tattered ANBU uniform.
He walked over to Venom Fang's corpse and pulled out the standard-issue ANBU Ninja Blade embedded in the mud. The blade gleamed with a chilling cold light in the faint illumination.
The blade turned around.
Baishi looked at his right abdomen, where he had just stopped the bleeding. His expression did not waver in the slightest, as though the body about to be pierced did not belong to him.
The first step in fabricating the scene was that his injuries had to fit the logic of "being gravely wounded by Iwagakure and then being saved at the cost of the captain's life." The wound made by Venom Fang's blade was entirely different from the wounds caused by Iwagakure's Kunai. He had to leave sufficiently convincing fatal injuries on his own body.
Just as the blade tip was about to pierce the skin of his abdomen,
Baishi's gaze casually swept over Venom Fang's pure-white Mask, half shattered by the Explosive Tag.
His movements abruptly stopped.
The hair on the back of his neck instantly stood on end, and an overwhelmingly intense sense of danger shot straight toward the crown of his head.
Baishi threw away the Ninja Blade and abruptly tore the broken Mask from Venom Fang's face.
On the inside of the Mask, in an extremely concealed spot near the edge of the chin,
there was a strange mark formed from a black formula, resembling a bird spreading its wings.
The Flying Thunder God Formula!
Namikaze Minato had actually left a Flying Thunder God Mark on Venom Fang's Mask!
Baishi's breathing instantly stopped, and his pupils contracted violently.
He immediately understood Minato's calculations. That blond genius had never completely trusted Venom Fang. This mark was Minato's contingency plan. Once the intelligence-acquisition mission at the Redwood Forest was complete, or once Minato noticed something amiss, he could cross space at any time and descend directly into this Canyon!
Looking at Venom Fang, who had been killed in a single blow, and the traces covering the ground left by Lightning Release and Explosive Tags,
the time Baishi had left to erase suspicion from himself and complete a perfect disguise had been reduced to an unknown and extremely brief countdown.