The Green-Eyed Guy Makes His Entrance

Damn, a ghost?!

The moment Genye heard that, his face filled with terror.

Sir, if you're dealing with ghosts, ninjas aren't the right professionals to call. You need the Demon Slayer Corps next door!

The old man invited them into the house and served them tea before slowly recounting the strange events that had taken place in the village.

"It all started a few months ago..."

The old man sank into his memories, terror once again creeping uncontrollably across his face.

"Daniu was the strongest young man in our village, a real natural at farming. But the boy was perfectly healthy, with nothing wrong with him, and then suddenly, just like that, he was gone."

[At the time, we thought the boy must have had some hidden ailment. We buried him with a heavy heart, then gradually put the matter out of our minds.

But seven days later, another strong young man in the village died under mysterious circumstances.

That was when we started to feel something was wrong. We hurried back to Daniu's grave, hoping to find some clue.]

"Th-then..." The old man's voice trembled, and even the hand holding his teacup shook.

"We found that Daniu's grave was empty. The boy's coffin was just lying there, but... but Daniu had disappeared."

"The village locksmith examined it and was certain there were no signs that anyone had pried the coffin open from the outside. Th-that means..."

"That means," Jiraiya finished for him, "you think the corpse lifted the lid itself, rose from the dead, and walked away?"

Damn, that's intense!

Genye was breaking into a cold sweat. Thank goodness it was daytime. Otherwise, he would've Body Flickered right out of there!

"At first, we refused to believe it. We thought the locksmith was old and had poor eyesight, and that he'd made a mistake," the old man continued with a bitter smile.

[So that night, all of us gathered together to keep vigil over the poor boy.

After midnight, something even more terrifying happened!

No one had gone near the boy's coffin, yet its lid... suddenly flew up into the air all by itself.

A few of us steeled ourselves and went over. We saw the boy sit up in the coffin, his face blank, then climb out with his limbs stiff!

"Boruto! Boruto!" someone shouted his name, thinking the boy had come back to life.

But Boruto didn't respond. He walked out of the mourning hall in a daze and ran straight outside.

Strangely enough, although his movements were incredibly stiff, he was astonishingly fast. Not one of us could catch up. All we could do was watch his corpse disappear into the night.]

"But all of that was only the beginning of the nightmare!" The old man clutched at the few remaining hairs on his head and spoke in anguish.

"Ever since then, every seven days, a young person has died for no reason, and their corpse has mysteriously vanished afterward. Everyone is terrified."

"The village shaman said an evil spirit had latched onto our village. Every seven days, it came to drain the life force from one of our young men, then returned at night to drag the corpse back to the mountains and devour it."

"Many of the young people were so frightened that they left the village. Only us old folks, who put down roots here, refused to go. But the evil spirit doesn't seem picky. Someone still dies every seven days!"

At that, the old man fell to his knees before them, tears and snot streaming down his face.

"If this goes on, our village will die out! Honored ninja, please show mercy and save us!"

"Old sir, don't worry." Jiraiya helped him up, his expression solemn. "We'll take care of this evil spirit for you."

"Thank you! Thank you, both of you!" the old man said gratefully.

According to the old man, someone had died again that very day. Jiraiya took Genye with him to inspect the deceased's mourning hall.

With nightfall fast approaching, Genye tugged his clothes tighter and asked nervously, "Lord Jiraiya, do we really have to get involved in this?"

"Of course!" Jiraiya answered with a hearty laugh. "A case this mysterious will make excellent material for a story!"

"But, Lord Jiraiya," Genye pointed out, "to be honest, the rather tame novels you write these days don't seem to call for this kind of material."

"Who says they don't?" Jiraiya grinned lecherously. "Draining life force... The other party might turn out to be a gorgeous female ghost!"

At that, Jiraiya suddenly gave Genye a thoughtful look. "Hey, you're not scared, are you?"

Even though he was scared to death, Genye still stubbornly denied it. "As if! I've punched the Nine-Tails. Why would I be afraid of some measly evil spirit?"

The two of them used ninjutsu to hide inside the deceased's mourning hall, waiting for the so-called evil spirit to come and take the body.

The night grew ever darker, like a mass of ink that could never dissolve, slowly staining the earth black.

Tap.

After an unknown amount of time, the coffin in front of them suddenly began to shake violently. The next moment, a deathly pale arm pushed its way out from within, forcing the lid open.

Watching this, Jiraiya and Genye both wore pained expressions.

They'd spent so long looking forward to—or dreading—this, waiting around like idiots for half the night, only for this?

Just now, the two of them had clearly seen several nearly invisible threads shoot from a concealed spot into the gap in the coffin, connecting to the corpse.

In the darkness, an ordinary person wouldn't have been able to detect them. But they were both ninjas. Not only could they see the threads, they also knew what they were.

"Damn it, they're Chakra Threads used by Sunagakure to control puppets!"

Genye muttered a curse and Body Flickered behind the middle-aged ninja controlling the threads, kicking him to the ground.

"Did you kill the people in this village? Why are you collecting ordinary people's corpses?" Jiraiya appeared beside them and asked with a frown.

"You're ninjas from Konoha?" Caught red-handed, the middle-aged ninja wasn't afraid at all. Instead, he gave them a provocative smile.

"Why? Obviously, I'm using the corpses of you Land of Fire scum as materials to upgrade my puppets."

Crack.

Jiraiya smashed the man's throat with a palm strike, then wiped his hand and explained to Genye, who was standing beside him with a puzzled look.

"Not every puppeteer can afford to build puppets out of rare metals. Some bastards with no power or influence, who've lost all humanity, use human bones instead."

And a Sunagakure ninja skilled in poisons naturally had countless ways to make ordinary people "die of natural causes."

Having dealt with the "evil spirit" in the village, Jiraiya and Genye declined the money the villagers had gathered for them and set off on their journey once more.

Half a year passed in a flash. Genye and Jiraiya traveled here and there, covering the whole Land of Grass.

Sadly, he still couldn't find Karin and her mother.

"They're supposed to be in the right place at the right time. Why can't I find them?" Genye wondered, completely baffled.

(In a magnificent underground palace.

Uchiha Xia planted her hands on her hips and laughed triumphantly. "Hahahaha! Hyuga Genya really is my lucky star."

"I just happened to take a casual trip around Kusagakure, and I found two descendants of the Uzumaki Clan!"

In the direction Xia was looking, a red-haired woman held her child and nervously surveyed her surroundings, bewildered about what fate had in store for them.)

"Ah, that feels good..."

In the hot spring, Jiraiya scooped up a ladle of hot water and poured it over his head. Looking straight ahead at the girls in tattered clothes, he spoke.

"Genye, you've been traveling with me for so long. Have you learned anything from me?"

"...How to soak in bathhouses, write dirty jokes, and flirt with women?" Genye struggled for a long while before finally managing to say that.

"Cough, cough!" Jiraiya began coughing violently. "Aside from that, haven't you learned anything decent?"

"'Decent' isn't a word that has anything to do with you," Genye said earnestly, landing a decisive blow on Jiraiya.

Jiraiya immediately lost interest. After watching for another half hour, he left the hot spring with Genye.

"Genye, is there anywhere else you want to go?"

Walking through the dense forest with his hands behind his head, Jiraiya glanced sideways at Genye.

"Hmm, next I want to go to the Land of Water... Something's wrong!"

Genye had only gotten halfway through his sentence when he suddenly turned to look behind them, his expression grave.

In his field of vision, a man cloaked entirely in black, with only a pair of green eyes visible, was striding toward them.

"Oh? Has some formidable character shown up?"

Curious, Jiraiya followed Genye's gaze. Before long, he spotted the man in black.

"This guy has a lot of chakra..."

The moment he saw the other man, Jiraiya immediately dropped his playful attitude. His expression turned just as grave.

"Who are you? Why are you following us?" Jiraiya demanded loudly.

The man in black didn't answer. He pulled a wanted list from his clothes and casually flipped through it right in front of them.

He looked at the list, then at the two of them, repeating this several times. Finally, a gleam of delight flashed in his bright green eyes.

"Right, Hyuga Genya, bounty: thirty million ryo! Jiraiya, bounty: forty million ryo!"

A full seventy million ryo!

Rounded up, that was a hundred-million-ryo job!

[Not feeling great, so I'm writing a short side story to bridge things over. The fight starts tomorrow.]