Daily Life After Discharge and the Ubiquitous Surveillance of the Root

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Three short swords coated in a dark blue poison, like vipers flicking their tongues, lunged from the treetops in a blind spot without warning, instantly sealing off all of Baishi's escape routes.

There was no killing intent, no superfluous movements, just cold machines existing purely to eliminate.

A hint of mockery flashed in Baishi's eyes. The terrifying neural response from his max-level Lightning Release allowed him to clearly track the trajectory of the blades slicing through fallen leaves. He only needed to form a single hand seal, and a violent lightning flash would pierce the hearts of these three trash in zero-point-one seconds.

But he didn't.

Baishi forcibly suppressed the boiling chakra within him and, yielding to the pressure of the blade wind, stumbled forward in a disheveled manner.

"Bang!"

A small section of Substitution Log, hidden in his sleeve beforehand, was shattered, sending wood chips flying.

Baishi landed heavily on the leaf-strewn dirt ground, rolling twice before coming to a stop. The wound on his collarbone, which had just scabbed over, was roughly torn open, and crimson blood instantly soaked through his ANBU uniform. He clutched his shoulder, panting violently like a startled wild dog, his eyes displaying just the right amount of fear and pain.

"Your hand seal speed is zero-point-three seconds slower than the file record."

A Root ninja wearing a Fox Mask landed silently in front of Baishi. He looked down at his prey on the ground, the poison on his blade dripping onto the dry leaves, instantly corroding them into a pungent green smoke.

Baishi gritted his teeth, cold sweat trickling down his forehead, his voice trembling, "ANBU regulations... private fights are forbidden within the village."

"Private fight?" A Raccoon Dog mask beside him let out a disdainful snort, as if looking at a dead man. "This is just a routine inspection. Lord Danzo asked me to tell you that Root's eyes are more ubiquitous than Konoha's sunlight. Don't think you can sleep soundly hiding behind a woman's skirt."

As the words fell, three dark figures vanished into the treetops like ghosts, leaving only a faint, foul stench in the air.

Baishi slowly got up from the ground.

He brushed the dirt off his knees, and in his lowered eyes, there was no trace of fear left.

Only the extreme coldness of looking at a dead man.

Danzo's patience was running out. This blatant probing was forcing him to reveal a flaw. As long as he had shown strength beyond that of a "low-level cannon fodder," Root would have immediately executed him on the spot under the charge of "hiding strength and harboring ill intentions."

"Three dogs, I'll let you live a few more days."

Baishi clutched his bleeding collarbone and limped towards the civilian district.

Along the way, Konoha's streets gradually became livelier.

The exhaust fan of Yakiniku Q spewed out a rich aroma of cumin and meat, and a few genin who had just completed D-rank missions were laughing and playing on the street. Behind the curtain of Ichiraku Ramen, the sound of soup pots boiling could be heard.

This everyday life of Konoha, filled with the scent of cooking, felt like a giant, malicious Truman Show to Baishi.

His max-level Lightning Release Sensory Field spread out like a radar.

The apple vendor on his left had a breathing pattern of three short breaths and one long one, the standard ninja breathing technique; behind the chimney on the right rooftop, a faint chakra fluctuation was hidden; even in the sewer beneath his feet, there were the sounds of tiny insects crawling.

Grade A surveillance.

Danzo had deployed Root's elites to watch him.

Baishi walked into the corner pharmacy expressionlessly, bought a few rolls of the cheapest bandages and styptic powder, and then returned to his cramped single dormitory.

As he opened the door, a musty smell of old mold hit him.

Baishi didn't turn on the lights. He walked to the sink and turned on the rusty faucet. The cold water washed away the bloodstains on his hands, and also stimulated his brain, which was feeling a bit groggy from blood loss.

He looked up, staring at the face in the mirror, hidden in the dim light.

The situation was more dangerous than he had anticipated.

Kushina's pathological favoritism, while temporarily repelling Namikaze Minato, had also pushed him completely into the spotlight. A perfect genius like Minato, once suspicious, would definitely stare at him like a viper in the dark.

And Danzo was ready to bite his throat at any moment.

"Although my current chakra level has reached quasi-jōnin, combined with max-level Lightning Release, I can catch them off guard. But if I face Minato's Flying Thunder God, or Root's suicidal encirclement, it's still not enough."

Baishi casually grabbed a towel and wiped his face.

He needed more power. He had to activate the "Life Script Simulator" for the second time as soon as possible.

But activating the simulator required consuming a massive amount of chakra or extremely precious resources. His current chakra had to be reserved as a trump card for survival and could not be squandered. The only way was to plunder.

Konoha village had strict defenses, and the higher-ups kept each other in check. He couldn't act here.

The only breakthrough point was outside the village. In that underground black market filled with blood and profit.

The night was deep.

Baishi lay on the hard wooden bed, his breathing steady and long. His heartbeat was maintained at a perfect frequency of sixty beats per minute, and his body temperature was also controlled at the level of deep sleep.

On the pagoda tree outside the window, the Root ninja with the Fox Mask stared intently at the silhouette on the bed through night-vision binoculars, finally yawning out of boredom.

"Target has entered deep sleep, no abnormal chakra fluctuations."

He didn't know that what lay on the bed at this moment was just a high-level Shadow Clone, whose internal structure had been meticulously sealed by Baishi using Lightning Release chakra.

The real Baishi had, half an hour ago, quietly slipped into Konoha's abandoned drainage network through an underground secret passage that he had spent half a year digging out, bit by bit, with a kunai, from beneath the bed board.

In the cold and damp underground sewers, water droplets hit the moss-covered stone slabs, echoing hollowly.

Baishi changed into a black tight-fitting outfit with no markings.

He leaned against the rusty pipe wall and took out a waterproof bag, wrapped layer by layer in oil paper, from his chest. Under the faint light of the night-glowing moss, he slowly unwrapped the oil paper.

Inside was a pure white, faceless mask, and a black market bounty poster stained with dark brown blood.

This was intelligence he had acquired at great expense through underground channels during his hospitalization.

To initiate the second simulation, he needed a high-purity Chakra Crystal. Such a strategically vital resource was inaccessible to ordinary ninjas; only S-rank rogue ninjas wanted by the major ninja villages or top brokers in the black market would possess it.

Baishi's slender fingers gently smoothed the creases on the bounty poster.

As his gaze swept over the target's name and portrait on the list, his actions of organizing his ninja tool pouch abruptly halted.

In the narrow sewer, the temperature seemed to instantly drop to freezing point.

Baishi's pupils contracted slightly, and then, his lips involuntarily curled upwards, forming an extremely cruel and excited arc.

"Truly... I found it without even looking."

He stared intently at the bounty poster.

What was depicted on it was not some wandering rogue ninja, nor a spy from another country. It was the deputy head of Konoha's Finance Department, Shimura Danzo's most trusted money-laundering glove—the infamous "Kakutani."

Below the bounty poster, a line of red text was clearly written: Tonight at midnight, at the black market on the border of the Land of Fire, a subterranean transaction will take place involving a lightning-attribute Chakra Crystal.

Just as Baishi was about to put on the Blank Mask, an extremely incongruous detail suddenly flashed through his mind.

The whereabouts of a core figure like Kakutani would absolutely be top secret to Root. How could this bounty poster have so easily fallen into the hands of low-level intelligence dealers?

Baishi's hand hovered in mid-air, the edge of the pure white mask only an inch from his cheek.

He suddenly turned his head, looking towards the impenetrable darkness deep within the sewer. From there, came an extremely faint scraping sound of a kunai being drawn.