"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"
Three short blades coated in a dark-blue poison shot out of the treetops from a blind spot without warning, sealing off all of Baishi's escape routes in an instant.
There was no killing intent and no unnecessary movement—only the cold efficiency of machines created purely to kill.
A trace of mockery flashed through Baishi's eyes.
The terrifying neural reactions granted by Max-Level Lightning Release let him clearly track the blades as they sliced through the fallen leaves. All he needed was a one-handed hand seal, and violent lightning could pierce the hearts of those three trash within 0.1 seconds.
But he did not do so.
Baishi forcibly suppressed the chakra boiling within him and, following the pressure of the blades' wind, threw himself forward in an extremely clumsy manner.
"Bang!"
The small section of Substitution Log he had hidden in his sleeve was chopped to pieces, sending wood splinters flying.
Baishi crashed heavily onto the muddy ground covered in fallen leaves and barely came to a stop after rolling twice.
The wound over his collarbone, which had only just scabbed over, was brutally torn open. Bright-red blood instantly soaked through his ANBU uniform.
Clutching his shoulder, he panted violently like a startled stray dog, an appropriately frightened and pained look showing in his eyes.
"Your hand-seal speed was 0.3 seconds slower than what's recorded in your file."
A Root ninja wearing a Fox Mask landed silently in front of Baishi. Looking down at his prey from above, he watched the poison dripping from his blade onto the dead leaves, instantly corroding them and producing a pungent green smoke.
Baishi gritted his teeth as cold sweat slid down his forehead. His voice trembled. "ANBU regulations... private fights are forbidden within the village."
"Private fight?" The Raccoon Dog Mask beside him let out a contemptuous snort, as though looking at a dead man. "This is merely a routine inspection. Lord Danzo asked me to tell you that the eyes of Root are more ubiquitous than Konoha's sunlight. Don't think you can sleep peacefully just because you're hiding behind a woman's skirt."
As soon as he finished speaking, the three black figures dispersed into the treetops like ghosts, leaving behind only a faint, fishy stench in the air.
Baishi slowly climbed to his feet.
He patted the dirt from his knees, his eyes lowered. Where was the slightest trace of fear now?
Only an extreme coldness, like that of someone looking at the dead.
Danzo's patience was running out. This blatant probing was forcing him to reveal a weakness. If he had displayed strength beyond that of a "bottom-tier cannon fodder" just now, Root would have immediately executed him on the spot under the charge of "concealing his strength and plotting treason."
"Three dogs. I'll let you live a few more days for now."
Clutching his bleeding collarbone, Baishi limped toward the civilian district.
Along the way, Konoha's streets gradually grew noisier.
The exhaust vent of Yakiniku Q spewed out the rich aroma of cumin-seasoned meat, while several Genin who had just completed a D-Rank mission laughed and played by the roadside. From behind Ichiraku Ramen's curtain came the bubbling rumble of a boiling soup pot.
This ordinary Hokage life, brimming with the warmth of daily living, seemed to Baishi like a gigantic, malicious The Truman Show.
His Max-Level Lightning Release sensory field silently spread out like radar.
The apple vendor on the left was breathing in a pattern of three short breaths followed by one long one—the standard breathing method of a ninja. Behind the chimney on the rooftop to the right lurked an extremely faint chakra fluctuation.
Even beneath his feet, in the sewers, he could hear the faint scuttling of insects.
Class-A surveillance.
Danzo had mobilized Root's elite forces to watch him.
Baishi entered a pharmacy at the street corner without changing expression, bought several rolls of the cheapest bandages and some hemostatic medicine, and then returned to his cramped single-room dormitory.
The moment he opened the door, a stale, moldy odor rushed at him.
Baishi did not turn on the light. He walked to the sink and twisted open the rusty faucet. Cold water washed the blood from his hands and stimulated his somewhat hazy mind, dulled by blood loss.
He raised his head and looked at the face half-hidden in the dim light of the mirror.
The situation was even more dangerous than he had expected.
Kushina's pathological favoritism had temporarily driven Namikaze Minato back, but it had also pushed him straight into the eye of the storm. Once a perfect genius like Minato became suspicious, he would definitely watch Baishi from the shadows like a venomous snake.
And Danzo was even more prepared to bite through his throat at any moment.
"My current chakra has reached the level of a Semi-Jonin. Combined with Max-Level Lightning Release, I can catch someone off guard. But against Minato's Flying Thunder God, or a suicidal encirclement by Root, it's still nowhere near enough."
Baishi casually pulled over a towel and dried his face.
He needed greater strength. He had to activate the Life Script Simulator for the second time as soon as possible.
But activating the Simulator required an enormous amount of chakra or an extremely precious resource. He had to save his current chakra as a trump card for survival and could not squander it freely. The only path was plunder.
Konoha was heavily guarded, and the higher-ups kept one another in check. He could not act here.
The only chance to break through the deadlock lay outside the village, in that Underground Black Market filled with bloodshed and enormous profits.
The night deepened.
Baishi lay on the hard wooden bed, his breathing steady and even. His heartbeat remained at the perfect rate of sixty beats per minute, while his body temperature was controlled at the level of someone in deep sleep.
On the locust tree outside the window, a Root ninja wearing a Fox Mask stared fixedly at the outline on the bed through night-vision binoculars. In the end, he yawned in boredom.
"The target has entered deep sleep. No abnormal chakra fluctuations."
He did not know that the person lying on the bed was merely an Advanced Shadow Clone whose internal structure had been precisely sealed by Baishi with Lightning Release chakra.
The real Baishi had slipped silently into Konoha's abandoned drainage network half an hour earlier, following the underground passage beneath the bed that he had spent six months digging out little by little with a Kunai.
In the cold, damp underground waterway, droplets struck the moss-covered stone slabs, producing hollow echoes.
Baishi changed into a black outfit with no identifying marks.
Leaning against a rust-covered pipe wall, he took a waterproof bag wrapped in layer after layer of oiled paper from his clothes. By the light of the faint nocturnal moss, he slowly unwrapped it.
Inside was a pure-white Blank Mask and a black-market wanted poster stained with dark-brown blood.
This was intelligence he had obtained through underground channels at great expense during his hospital stay.
To activate the second simulation, he needed a High-Purity Chakra Crystal. Ordinary ninjas could not come into contact with such a strategic resource. Only S-Rank rogue ninjas wanted by the major hidden villages, or the top brokers of the black market, might possess one.
Baishi's long fingers gently smoothed the creases on the wanted poster.
When his eyes swept over the target's name and portrait, his hands, which had been organizing his Ninja Tool Pouch, suddenly froze.
The temperature in the narrow sewer seemed to plunge to freezing point.
Baishi's pupils contracted slightly. Then the corners of his mouth involuntarily curled upward, forming an extremely cruel and excited arc.
"Well... when you wear out your shoes looking for something, it turns up without effort."
He stared fixedly at the wanted poster.
The person drawn on it was neither a wandering rogue ninja nor a spy from another country. It was the deputy minister of Konoha's Finance Department, Shimura Danzō's most trusted money-laundering front—the infamous "Kakutani."
Beneath the wanted poster, a line of red writing stood out starkly: At midnight tonight, the border black market of the Land of Fire. Carrying a Lightning-Nature Chakra Crystal for an underground transaction.
Baishi was just about to put on the Blank Mask when an extremely incongruous detail suddenly flashed through his mind.
A core figure of Kakutani's level had movements that were absolutely Root's highest secret. How could this wanted poster have so easily fallen into the hands of a low-level information broker?
Baishi's hand hovered in midair, the edge of the pure-white mask only an inch from his cheek.
He abruptly turned his head toward the impenetrable darkness deep in the sewer. From there came an extremely faint scraping sound—the sound of a Kunai being drawn.