Uchiha Mo frowned slightly and began searching carefully again.
None of the corpses bore any obvious signs of the killer, which meant the villagers had been unable to resist when they died.
Besides that, all the corpses had been piled in the streets, while every house stood empty... Mo immediately thought of looting, but when he turned his gaze toward the houses, he found that although there were signs of ransacking, the valuables had not been completely cleared out.
The more closely he looked, the deeper Uchiha Mo's doubts became.
In the time it took him to investigate, the three members of Team 8 had already subdued all the bandits before them. They lay on the ground, either howling in agony or unconscious.
Asuma stood among them with a proud smile on his face. Kurenai Yuhi and Gekko Hayate were also flushed with excitement.
But the next moment, a voice rang out like a basin of icy water dumped over them in the dead of winter, thoroughly extinguishing their excitement.
"What are you waiting for? Aren't you going to kill them and let them go harm more people?"
Mo's expression was cold, and Kurenai Yuhi and the other two immediately panicked.
"K-Kill...?"
"Use your kunai to slit their throats and pierce their hearts. Do I need to teach you how to do that?!"
As soon as he finished speaking, the three of them turned pale. Looking at the groaning bandits on the ground, their bodies began to tremble slightly.
"D-Don't kill me! Times are hard. I could only survive by coming out to loot. I had no choice!"
When one bandit saw Kurenai Yuhi turn her gaze toward him, he immediately began begging in terror.
Kurenai Yuhi trembled as she turned her head, looking helplessly at Uchiha Mo. Mo's expression remained icy. His black eyes were like an abyss, devoid of the slightest trace of pity.
Meeting Mo's cold gaze, Kurenai Yuhi's heart abruptly clenched. After a long while, she bit down on her lower lip, turned back around, and viciously thrust her kunai toward the bandit's chest with her eyes shut tight!
"I'm sorry!"
"Ah—!"
The sensation of the kunai entering flesh was startlingly smooth. It was unlike ordinary training or battle; there was just the right amount of resistance, as if the kunai had been made to pierce someone's heart.
A warm sensation splashed across her face. Kurenai Yuhi knew it was blood, the warmth of life. She used all her strength to squeeze her eyes shut, not daring to leave the slightest gap, as though terrified of seeing the scene before her.
Thus, she failed to notice that, in her panic, the kunai had not struck the bandit's heart precisely. It had missed by roughly half a centimeter.
The intense pain stirred the bandit's ferocity. Ignoring the soreness in his body, he suddenly grabbed the steel blade beside him and swung it at Kurenai Yuhi's head!
Clang!
The sound of clashing weapons exploded beside her ear. Kurenai Yuhi opened her eyes in terror and found Uchiha Mo standing at her side. The ninja sword at his waist was slightly drawn, firmly blocking the steel blade beside her face.
He raised his left foot and stomped fiercely on the bandit's arm. The bandit let out a scream, dropping the steel blade to the ground. Then his entire right arm went limp and hung uselessly at his side.
Uchiha Mo glanced at the stunned Kurenai Yuhi, drew the steel blade from his waist, and held it out before the girl.
"Take this blade. Keep your eyes open and cut off his head."
As soon as he spoke, Kurenai Yuhi's body trembled. Her face became even paler, utterly bloodless. She raised her gorgeous ruby-like eyes, mist gathering in them, and looked at Mo with a haggard, almost pleading expression.
Yet Mo maintained the same posture, without showing the slightest emotion.
"Follow my orders, leave Team 8, or give up on becoming a ninja."
Hearing that, Kurenai Yuhi bit her lower lip again. Only when a streak of blood slipped from her lips, ran down her fair chin, and dripped into the dirt did she take the ninja sword from Mo's hand with trembling breaths.
"N-No! Don't! I was wrong! I'll never dare again! I shouldn't have ambushed you! I'll never rob anyone again, I..."
"..."
The blade was swift. Kurenai Yuhi did not even use chakra to strengthen her body. With only her own strength, she easily cut it off.
Looking at the terrified head, Kurenai Yuhi's face turned white as paper. A violent wave of nausea suddenly surged into her heart like a beast, and she could no longer hold on.
"Bleurgh—"
Beside her, Asuma and Gekko Hayate, who had been watching the whole time, were equally pale and frozen in place. Only when Uchiha Mo turned his gaze toward them did they suddenly snap back to their senses, hurriedly close their eyes, and drive their kunai into the bandits' hearts before them, terrified that Mo would give them the same treatment.
"Don't... don't kill..."
"Spare me! I still have an old mother and a child who need—"
The kunai entered flesh, and the voices abruptly stopped.
Mo nodded slightly. "Not bad. Next, kill all these bandits."
"What?!" Asuma and Gekko Hayate cried out in unison.
"Kill all of them?" Asuma's voice trembled, and even his breathing unknowingly grew heavy.
Mo frowned slightly. "I don't want to repeat myself a second time."
As soon as he spoke, Asuma could no longer endure it. Perhaps his fear had reached its limit and his emotions had peaked. He even forgot his fear of Uchiha Mo and shouted furiously:
"They're just ordinary people! Even if they're bandits, do they need to be slaughtered to the last one? You're a madman! A demon!"
Conflict, Sand Ninja
"Madman? Demon?"
Mo repeated the words with a cold laugh and took the ninja sword back from Kurenai Yuhi.
His long blade pointed diagonally at the ground as he took a step toward Asuma, blood dripping from the blade onto the dirt.
Asuma swallowed and unconsciously took half a step back. The next moment, Uchiha Mo stopped. Looking at Asuma, he raised his hand and swung his blade at a bandit lying on the ground.
Splurt!
After a crisp, strange sound, a head flew into the air. Then Mo swung his ninja sword again, and another head soared high!
On the other side, seeing this brutal scene, Asuma's stomach churned. A violent wave of nausea surged within him, and he frowned tightly, yet at the same time, he unconsciously let out a sigh of relief.
"Heh."
Uchiha Mo saw Asuma's reaction clearly. A mocking smile curled across his lips as he flicked the blood from his blade.
"Didn't you pity this scum? Why didn't you stop me? Why did you look relieved once you realized my target was this scum rather than you? Did you defy my orders merely because you couldn't bring yourself to do it?"
As soon as he finished speaking, Asuma's expression stiffened. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but did not know how to begin. In the end, he could only lower his head with an ugly expression.
Mo sneered and slowly sheathed his ninja sword.
"Do it. Say any more nonsense, and I'll kill you!"
As he spoke, Mo's eyes sharpened and turned scarlet. Bone-chilling killing intent erupted from his body!
Asuma Sarutobi's body trembled, his heart seeming to skip a beat.
This guy... isn't joking...
Asuma gritted his teeth, and the hand holding his kunai shook violently. His breathing gradually became rapid. Driven by overwhelming fear, he crouched down and tremblingly thrust the kunai into the chest of an unconscious bandit.
Splurt!
Splurt!
Following Asuma's lead, the three of them began moving one after another. Seeing this, Mo withdrew his killing intent, and his eyes returned to their clean black color.
Terada Yusuke swallowed with a pale face. Though his expression was ugly, he did not look overly frightened.
"Sir... with such extreme methods, aren't you afraid these children will be left with psychological scars?"
As the foreign minister, Terada Yusuke's knowledge was broad by ordinary standards. He knew about the ninja training known as "bloodshed missions."
Mo merely glanced at Terada Yusuke without answering.
He was no patient life mentor. The only reason he had tolerated becoming a Jonin leading a team was to gain more freedom during the upcoming Third Shinobi World War. Naturally, he had no intention of spending effort helping them grow smoothly.
A quarter of an hour passed. Not a single bandit on the ground remained alive, while the three members of Team 8, who had initially been flushed and excited, now looked like frostbitten eggplants, utterly wilted.
Mo ignored them and arranged for the team to continue along their planned route.
As they traveled, he continuously used Clairvoyance to scan their surroundings, attempting to uncover the cause of the village's earlier tragedy and the unrest in the Land of Rain.
Yet as the team ventured deeper into the Land of Rain, Mo found no further clues whatsoever.
Night fell, and the team had already entered deep into the Land of Rain. They stopped at an inn within its borders.
The bright moon hung high overhead, and the sky had gone completely dark.
Uchiha Mo lay on a bed in the dormitory, his chest rising and falling evenly, his breathing long and steady. He had clearly fallen asleep.
Creak—
Suddenly, the dormitory's wooden door was pushed open a crack.
The boy on the bed abruptly opened his scarlet eyes. At almost the exact same instant, he raised his right hand, summoned a kunai from the scroll on his wrist, and flung it out!
Whoosh!
Clink—
Outside the door, Kurenai Yuhi froze stiffly in place. A silver blade tip protruded from behind the door, only a few centimeters from her pupil. She swallowed, then still gathered her courage and pushed the door open.
"Mo... I... I'm a little scared... Can I...?"
The girl stood uneasily at the doorway in pajamas, clutching a pillow. The room was pitch-black, with only a pair of scarlet Sharingan glowing blood-red in the darkness.
Mo watched Kurenai Yuhi at the door for a while, then lay back down without saying anything. The room fell silent for a moment.
Kurenai Yuhi bit her lip with her pearly teeth, standing there without knowing whether to advance or retreat.
What had happened during the day had dealt her a tremendous mental blow. At night, the moment she closed her eyes, the terrified faces of the bandits at death would appear in her mind.
But unlike Asuma, perhaps because Kurenai Yuhi was more mature, or perhaps because she was simply wishfully thinking, she believed Mo had done it so they could adapt to the life of a ninja more quickly. Before the mission began, Yuhi Shinku had told her to prepare herself mentally. Thus, she did not blame Mo for his cruelty. Instead, she wondered whether she was simply too weak.
After a long while, Kurenai Yuhi gritted her teeth and finally backed out of the room. She closed the door, turned around, and walked toward her own room.
Inside the room, a pair of blood-red eyes suddenly opened in the darkness. They glowed at the ceiling for a while, only slowly dimming after the footsteps in the corridor completely vanished.
Something truly seemed to have happened within the Land of Rain. Over three days of travel, Team 8 encountered several groups of bandits, and most of them were inexperienced, appearing to have only recently turned to banditry.
After their previous ordeal, all three had undergone some kind of change. During battle, they carried the chilling aura of true ninjas, having completely adapted to killing.
Along the way, the team also passed villages that had once been looted by bandits. After seeing the villagers' tragic condition, the last traces of mercy in their hearts completely vanished. Asuma and Gekko Hayate's attitudes toward Mo changed once again as well.
As the team advanced, they arrived once more at the border of the Land of Rain, bordering the Land of Wind...
After approaching the Land of Wind, Mo could clearly sense that there were far fewer people nearby, at least far fewer than when he had carried out his previous mission.
This made Mo smell something unusual. His eyes narrowed at once as he constantly scanned their surroundings while moving forward.
Finally, after the group passed through a ruined village, three familiar figures appeared in Mo's vision.
Two men and one woman: men with orange hair and medium-length red hair, along with a woman with short aqua-blue hair. They were Yahiko's group of three.
They were fighting a group of ninjas dressed in pale yellow combat vests and white sand veils wrapped around their heads. Mo shifted his gaze slightly toward the forehead protectors on their heads.
"Sand Ninja?"
Uchiha Mo frowned slightly, immediately connecting them to the village that had been massacred earlier.
Fire Style: Scarlet Scorch!
"So they were previously searching for the Kazekage? But why would the Sand Ninja think..."
Mo stopped halfway through the thought as he remembered something else. More than a month ago, he had wiped out the squad led by Baki within the Land of Rain and destroyed all traces before leaving.
"That explains it..."
Baki was one of the more capable Sand Ninja at present. For someone like him to vanish without a trace within the Land of Rain, it was understandable that Sunagakure would suspect something was amiss, perhaps related to the Kazekage's disappearance.
He glanced back at the members of Team 8 behind him and quickened his pace slightly, because the battlefield between the Sand Ninja and Yahiko's group lay directly along their route.
About a quarter of an hour passed when the clear sounds of weapons clashing faintly reached everyone's ears. The three members of Team 8 swiftly went on guard, drew their weapons, and slowed their steps.
However, before they could take action, Uchiha Mo raised one hand to stop them.
Before you continue