The sickly green glow moss clinging to the sewer walls gave off a faint halo. The air reeked of rotting rat corpses mixed with excrement.
"Shhk—"
An almost imperceptible scraping sound was perfectly masked by the dripping of water from the pipes.
In the darkness, a poisoned glint flashed like a viper's fangs, stabbing straight toward Baishi's nape. No killing intent leaked out, and the angle of the strike was viciously cunning. This was unquestionably a veteran who had spent years spilling blood in the underground black market.
Baishi didn't turn around.
The instant that cold glint came within half an inch of his skin, the filthy water beneath his feet suddenly exploded into a ring of ripples. Lightning-Nature Chakra flooded into the muscles of his legs within one-thousandth of a second. The extreme burst of power brought by Cell Activation sent his entire body sliding three yards forward in a posture that defied the laws of physics.
The blade missed, cutting off only a few strands of black hair.
The attacker's eyes, hidden beneath a tattered hood, widened instantly. Before he could change his move, a cold hand had already reached out from the darkness and clamped around his wrist like an iron vise.
"Crack!"
The muffled sound of shattering bones echoed through the cramped passage. The attacker opened his mouth in pain, but before his scream could leave his throat, Baishi's left hand had already formed a blade and struck viciously against the soft cartilage of his throat.
Faint blue arcs of electricity danced across his fingertips, instantly paralyzing the other man's vocal cords and central nervous system. The attacker collapsed into the filthy water like a lump of mud, his entire body convulsing and his eyes bulging from sheer terror.
Baishi looked down at him from above. There was no anger in his eyes, only the coldness of someone gazing at a lab mouse.
He crouched down and skillfully tore open the other man's hood. In the faint glow of the moss, a scar-covered face was revealed. There was no Konoha forehead protector, nor any Root Cursed Seal.
"An underground black market hyena," Baishi murmured. He casually flung the bounty notice bearing Kakutani's information onto the man's face. "Who sent you to ambush me here?"
The hyena opened his mouth. His vocal cords had been destroyed by Lightning Release, so he could only make a wheezing "h-ho" sound as he desperately shook his head.
Baishi said nothing else. He pressed his right hand directly against the hyena's chest, and Lightning-Nature Chakra seeped thread by thread through his palm into the man's heart meridians. Under the stimulation of the current, the heart muscles began to convulse violently. The agony far surpassed that of any torture device.
The hyena's features twisted completely out of shape. Tears and snot mixed with the filthy water as they flowed into his mouth. Trembling, he extended his only remaining left hand and used bloodstained fingers to crookedly draw a pattern on the moss-covered stone slab.
A one-eyed figure wrapped in tree roots.
"Root."
Baishi looked at the pattern, the curve of his lips growing wider and wider until it became an intensely mocking sneer.
His guess had been right. The bounty notice for Kakutani, the deputy director of the Finance Department, was nothing more than a carefully prepared bait.
That old dog Shimura Danzō had not only placed him under Class-A surveillance inside the village, but had also laid an inescapable net in the underground black market outside the village. The bounty notice had deliberately been spread among low-level information brokers to lure out those who desperately needed resources and harbored ulterior motives toward Konoha's upper ranks.
If greed had clouded Baishi's mind just now and he had put on a mask to assassinate Kakutani, what awaited him would certainly not have been chakra crystals, but an Explosive Tag formation and sealing barrier laid by Root's elite forces.
"Use the black market hyenas as the final screening process on the outskirts. If I die at a hyena's hands, it means I'm nothing but trash. If I kill the hyena and keep moving forward, I'll plunge straight into a dead end."
Baishi rose to his feet, casually placing his right foot on the hyena's throat as he slowly applied pressure.
"Crack."
The neck bone snapped completely. The hyena's convulsions stopped, and dark-red blood slowly spread through the dirty sewer water.
Baishi felt not the slightest psychological burden. In this enormous breeding ground, casting off moral restraints was his first rule for survival. What people called compassion had already died completely the first time the Nine-Tails' claws pierced his chest during a simulation.
He crouched down and quickly searched the hyena's body, which still held some warmth. A few shoddy shuriken, a small pouch of Soldier Pills, and a Black Notebook soaked through with sweat, its edges curled up.
Baishi opened the notebook. It was a genuine underground black market bounty register, densely filled with records of various prey active along the borders of the Land of Fire.
He needed a high-purity chakra crystal to activate the second "Life Script Simulator." Since the Kakutani lead had been cut off, he had to find another sufficiently lucrative target.
In the faint light, Baishi's fingers quickly skimmed across the rough pages.
"Sunagakure rogue ninja, skilled in Wind Release, bounty of eight hundred thousand ryō... No. Wind Release counters Lightning Release, and the cost of killing him is too high."
"Mist Hidden exiled samurai, bounty of five hundred thousand ryō... Too poor. I won't be able to squeeze much chakra out of him."
He needed prey that was strong enough, carried a substantial bounty, and preferably possessed a Lightning affinity. That way, he could obtain a crystal while also looting the opponent's Lightning Release ninjutsu scrolls, further perfecting his Max-Level Lightning Release system.
The cold wind of the sewer poured in through the ventilation shaft, making the hem of Baishi's soaked clothes flap loudly. He leaned against the icy wall and searched page after page. His extreme patience made him resemble a grim reaper lurking in the darkness, choosing his prey.
At last, his fingers stopped on the third page from the end of the register.
It was a somewhat blurry portrait. The man in it wore a battered Cloud Hidden forehead protector. A scar ran through his left eye, and his gaze was ferocious.
[Target: Raija (codename)] [Identity: Class-A rogue ninja of Kumogakure] [Bounty: 1.2 million ryō] [Characteristics: Proficient in Lightning Release Nintaijutsu and innately brutal. Recently active in "Howling Canyon" along the northwestern border of the Land of Fire; suspected of carrying a large quantity of Lightning-Nature Chakra Crystals.]
Baishi's gaze locked onto the words "Lightning-Nature Chakra Crystals."
Perfect.
Raija's strength was probably somewhere between Elite Chunin and Special Jonin. Although he would be troublesome, Baishi possessed the absolute suppressive power of Max-Level Lightning Release. Since both belonged to the same offensive school, he was confident he could kill him within ten moves.
Moreover, Howling Canyon lay along the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth. The terrain was complicated and thick fog blanketed the area year-round, making it difficult for Root's claws to reach that far.
Baishi stuffed the Black Notebook into his robes and took a pure white, faceless mask from his waterproof pouch.
He dipped a finger into the blood on the hyena's corpse and casually drew a blood-red lightning pattern over the mask's right eye.
The cold mask fastened over his face, concealing every expression and leaving only a pair of fathomless black eyes exposed. From this moment onward, he was no longer the timid bottom-rung cannon fodder "Owl" of Konoha's ANBU. He was a grim reaper about to reap lives.
Baishi rapidly formed hand seals, chakra surging through his body.
"Lightning Release: Micro-Activation."
A layer of extremely faint blue arcs appeared across his skin. His entire body became like a ghost merging into the darkness as he sped along another branch of the sewer toward the outside of the village.
Two hours later.
The northwestern border of the Land of Fire, outside Howling Canyon.
The howling wind tore through the canyon's gaps, producing a shrill sound like the cries of ghosts and wolves. The dense white fog compressed visibility to less than ten meters.
Baishi crouched on the branch of a dead giant tree, looking coldly down at a hidden camp below.
A campfire burned in the center, its flames flickering in the fog. Three wandering ninjas sat around it, tearing into roasted meat. At the mouth of a rocky cave in the deepest part of the camp, a burly figure sat cross-legged, violent Lightning Release Chakra flashing around him from time to time.
It was Raija.
Baishi didn't hurry to act. Like a lifeless stone, he restrained all his aura and quietly observed the other man's hand-seal habits, defensive blind spots, and any traps that might exist nearby.
Suddenly, Baishi's Lightning Release Sensory Field detected an extremely faint abnormal fluctuation.
It wasn't Raija's chakra, nor did it belong to the three wandering ninjas.
It was an extremely concealed chakra carrying the sharp cutting sensation of Wind Release, rapidly approaching from the other side of the canyon at an incredible speed!
The pupils beneath Baishi's mask suddenly contracted.
He abruptly pulled the Black Notebook from his robes and flipped to the back of Raija's bounty notice. In tiny characters, an additional piece of intelligence had been recorded there: [The target recently attacked a Konoha border supply line and has been placed on Konoha's upper ranks' extermination list.]
An extremely dangerous name flashed through Baishi's mind.
Konoha's upper ranks, extermination list, Wind Release Chakra rapidly approaching.
He suddenly turned his head and looked through the thick fog toward the direction from which the chakra was coming. A Three-Pronged Kunai marked with a peculiar technique silently tore through the white mist and precisely embedded itself in the boulder at the cave entrance.
The next instant, the Golden Flash illuminated the entire canyon.