Contradiction, Sand Ninja

"Madman? Demon?"

Mo repeated with a cold sneer, taking the ninja sword back from Kurenai Yuhi's hand.

With the long blade in his hand angled toward the ground, he took a step toward Asuma. Blood dripped 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 the bandits lying on the ground.

"Splat!"

After a crisp, unnatural sound, a head flew into the air. Then Mo swung his ninja sword again, and another head soared high!

Seeing the brutal scene, Asuma's stomach churned. A powerful wave of nausea rose within him, and he frowned tightly. Yet at the same time, he unconsciously breathed a sigh of relief.

"Heh."

Uchiha Mo saw Asuma's reaction perfectly clearly. A mocking smile curled at his lips as he flicked the blood from his blade.

"Weren't you pitying this scum? Why didn't you come stop me? Why did you look relieved when you realized my target wasn't you, but this bunch of scum? Did you defy orders simply because you couldn't bring yourself to do it?"

As the words fell, Asuma's expression froze. 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 gave a derisive snort and slowly sheathed his ninja sword.

"Do it. Say any more of that nonsense, and I'll kill you!"

As he spoke, Mo's eyes sharpened and turned crimson. Bone-chilling killing intent erupted from his body!

Asuma Sarutobi trembled, his heart seeming to skip a beat.

"This guy... isn't joking..."

Asuma clenched his teeth, and the hand holding his kunai shook violently. His breathing gradually grew ragged. Driven by overwhelming fear, he crouched down and tremblingly plunged the kunai into the chest of an unconscious bandit.

"Splat!"

"Splat!"

Following Asuma's lead, the other three began moving as well. Seeing this, Mo withdrew his killing intent, and his eyes returned to their clear black color.

Terada Yusuke swallowed, his face pale. Though his expression was unpleasant, there was not much fear on his face.

"Sir... aren't you afraid that such extreme methods will leave these children with psychological trauma?"

As the foreign minister, Terada Yusuke had broader horizons than most ordinary people. He knew something about the ninja training known as "blood-seeing missions."

Mo merely glanced at Terada Yusuke and did not reply.

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 mature gradually.

A quarter of an hour later, none of the bandits on the ground remained alive. The three members of Team 8, who had initially been flushed and excited, now looked like eggplants wilted by frost.

Mo ignored them and arranged for the group to continue along their planned route.

As they traveled, he continually used Clairvoyance to scan the surrounding situation, attempting to uncover the reason behind the village's earlier tragedy and the unrest in the Land of Rain.

Yet as the group ventured deeper into the Land of Rain, Mo did not discover a single clue.

Night fell. The group had already entered deep into the Land of Rain and stopped at an inn within its borders.

A bright moon hung high overhead, and the sky had gone completely dark.

Uchiha Mo lay on a bed in the dormitory room, his chest rising and falling steadily, his breathing long and rhythmic. 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 crimson eyes. Almost at the same instant, he raised his right hand, summoned a kunai from the scroll around his wrist, and hurled 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 gathered her courage and pushed the door open.

"Mo... I... I'm a little scared... Can I..."

The girl stood uneasily in the doorway, hugging a pillow and dressed in pajamas. The room was pitch-black, with only a pair of crimson 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, unable to either step inside or retreat.

What had happened during the day had dealt her a severe mental blow. At night, whenever she closed her eyes, the terrified deaths of those bandits would surface in her mind.

But unlike Asuma, perhaps because Kurenai Yuhi was more mature, or perhaps because she simply wanted to believe it, she thought Mo had done this to help them adapt to a ninja's life more quickly. Before the mission began, Yuhi Shinku had told her to prepare herself mentally in advance. So she did not blame Mo for his cruelty. Instead, she wondered whether she herself 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 headed toward her own room.

Inside the room, a pair of blood-red eyes suddenly opened in the darkness. They glowed toward the ceiling for a while, only slowly fading after the footsteps in the corridor had completely disappeared.

It seemed that something truly had happened within the Land of Rain. Over three days of travel, Team 8 encountered several groups of bandits, and most of them were inexperienced, seemingly having only recently turned to banditry.

After their previous ordeal, all three had undergone some sort of change. In battle, they carried the cold, murderous aura of true ninja, having completely adapted to killing.

Along the way, the team passed through villages that had once been plundered by bandits. After witnessing the villagers' miserable state, the last traces of compassion in their hearts completely vanished. Asuma and Hayate Gekko's attitudes toward Mo changed once again.

As the team continued onward, they once more reached the border of the Land of Rain and the Land of Wind...

After approaching the Land of Wind, Mo could clearly sense that there were far fewer traces of human activity in the area—at least much fewer than during his last mission.

This made Mo catch a whiff of something unusual. His eyes narrowed at once as he continuously scanned the surroundings while moving forward.

Finally, after the group passed through a ruined village, three familiar figures entered Mo's field of vision.

Two men and one woman—a man with orange hair, a man with medium-length red hair, and a woman with short aqua-blue hair. They were none other than Yahiko's group of three.

They were fighting a group of ninjas clad in light-yellow combat vests, their heads wrapped in white scarves to ward off the sand. Mo's gaze shifted slightly and fell upon the forehead protectors they wore.

"Sand Ninja?"

Uchiha Mo frowned slightly, immediately recalling the village that had been massacred before.