Watching Yan walk away without looking back, with Itachi following close behind, Jiraiya wished he could slap himself twice.
He could only awkwardly trail after Yan and Itachi.
Yan paid no attention to Jiraiya behind them. He raised a hand and patted Itachi on the shoulder, tilting his head as he asked,
"Is it hard to accept?"
"Yeah."
Itachi nodded honestly.
A few minutes ago, he had genuinely held onto a sliver of hope for Jiraiya.
Unfortunately, that sliver of hope had shattered as well.
The funny thing was, Jiraiya, who did not dare make promises and kept contradicting himself, still wanted to use Yan to ease the relationship between the village and the Uchiha.
That was rather ironic.
"Hahaha, you'll get used to it."
"..."
He really wanted to find a hole and crawl into it!!!
How embarrassing, utterly embarrassing!!
Jiraiya knew he had thoroughly humiliated himself today.
For the following period, Jiraiya remained calm, serious, and diligent in searching for Tsunade's whereabouts.
He had originally planned to have Yan and Itachi run errands for him, but he even went around gathering intelligence himself.
Meanwhile, Yan and Itachi mostly stayed idle, resting at inns or hotels.
The people who knew Tsunade best, aside from Tsunade herself, were probably Jiraiya and Orochimaru.
With Jiraiya gathering intelligence specifically targeted at her,
as long as Tsunade had not hidden herself away in some remote, uninhabited place, she would eventually be found.
Gathering information about Tsunade was not difficult either. A stroll through a casino would yield plenty of clues.
A female gambler, a big fat sheep—follow those keywords, and they would not lead them wrong.
In the fourth town they reached after leaving Konoha, Jiraiya successfully gathered relevant information.
A few days earlier, some big fat sheep had suffered a crushing defeat