The Price of Staying Alive

Lin Chongshu looked at the sentry's back, slowly reached out, and wrapped his arms around the sentry's neck.

The sentry bounced him up slightly, supported the backs of his knees with both hands, stood, and headed southwest.

Lying on his back with his chin resting on his shoulder, Lin Chongshu could smell sand mixed with tobacco leaves on his collar.

The young sentry took the initiative to chat with Lin Chongshu. "What's your name? Where are your parents?"

"...My name is Lin Chongshu. My parents both died during Shukaku's rampage."

The young sentry fell silent for a few seconds. His walking rhythm did not change, but his hands supporting Lin Chongshu's knees tightened slightly.

"They were both heroes! Dying for the Land of Wind is an honor. Ninja are people who silently devote everything from the shadows."

Lin Chongshu did not respond. He thought of the original owner's parents, who had died beneath Shukaku's claws, leaving him only a drafty mud-brick house and a monthly pension that kept getting skimmed. He did not know whether the original owner would have considered that glorious.

Lin Chongshu spoke again. "Shukaku is rampaging right now. If you were about to die, what wish would you still have left unfulfilled?"

The young sentry was silent for two seconds.

"I'm an orphan too." His voice softened until Lin Chongshu had to press his ear against the back of his neck to hear him clearly.

"My father, my older brother, my second uncle—they all died in the Third Shinobi World War. All at the hands of Hidden Leaf Village ninja."

"You asked what wish I have." The young sentry's voice was soft, but he no longer sounded like he was chatting. "I only have one regret: the Third Shinobi World War ended too early, and I didn't get to kill a few more Hidden Leaf Village ninja."

"Especially that Yellow Flash, Minato Namikaze." The young sentry slowed when he said that name.

"But I heard he died a few years ago too, because of his village's tailed beast rampage. What a pity. I never got to witness his miserable death."

Lin Chongshu was both surprised and unsurprised that someone hated Minato Namikaze.

The Fourth Hokage in the original story had been an impeccable good man—a good father, good teacher, good student, Hidden Leaf Village's guardian deity, harmless to all appearances.

From beginning to end, the entire character had been molded into a perfect hero.

But when Lin Chongshu thought carefully about his deeds, a man who had risen to fame during wartime, prompting other great nations to issue orders that anyone who encountered the Yellow Flash could immediately abandon their mission and retreat without it counting as disobeying orders—

The Yellow Flash's renown had been built atop heaps of corpses.

Moreover, the Land of Wind had been Hidden Leaf Village's opponent in both the Second and Third Shinobi World Wars, and had won neither. Most surviving ninja already bore blood feuds against Hidden Leaf Village. Their hatred for the Yellow Flash was only to be expected.

"I'll help you kill a few more Hidden Leaf Village ninja someday," Lin Chongshu said.

The young sentry laughed. He tilted his head, crow's-feet appearing at the corners of his smiling eyes as he glanced at Lin Chongshu. "You little brat, you've got quite the mouth."

A little kid who had just crawled out of Shukaku's mouth, covered in bandages, was lying on his back and saying he would help him kill Hidden Leaf Village ninja.

That tone made him want to laugh, but it also made his heart ache.

He turned back and kept walking, not taking those words seriously.

Lying on his back, Lin Chongshu silently let a thin stream of sand slide out from his palm.

His fingers pressed against the young sentry's nape. The sand had already gathered into a spike as thick as a chopstick, its point aimed at the gap between the cervical vertebrae.

With one push, the sand spike would pierce through the gap between the cervical vertebrae and skull and sever the brainstem.

But his hand was trembling. Although he had indirectly caused Jiro Hijikata's death and had seen Gaara kill people, he had never personally killed anyone in his life—and this was someone who had just saved him.

But if he was taken back, he would die. Rasa would not spare him.

This man was carrying him toward the outpost, but once Shukaku's chaos subsided and word came through, nothing would add up.

His identity would be investigated, his lies exposed, and then he would die.

The young sentry was innocent, but the price of letting him live was Lin Chongshu's own life.

He did not want to die.

Lin Chongshu made his move.

But his hand shifted slightly. He did not know whether it was because he was shaking, or because at the instant he struck, fear made him instinctively hold back.

The sand spike pierced in through the side of the sentry's neck, grazed the edge of his trachea, and struck the muscle beside his cervical vertebrae.

Blood gushed out, dark red and streaming down his neck, but the wound was not immediately fatal.

The young sentry's body suddenly stiffened.

He staggered a step, flung Lin Chongshu off his back, and reached for his neck.

Moonlight shone across the young sentry's face.

Blood seeped through the gaps between the fingers clutching his neck. His lips moved, his eyes wide with confusion.

He did not understand. He lowered his head, looked at the blood on his hands, then looked at Lin Chongshu sitting on the ground.

The boy whose wounds he had just dressed, the boy who had just lain on his back and said he would help him kill more Hidden Leaf Village ninja, was clutching a handful of bloodstained sand. His face was white as paper, and his hands shook even harder than the sentry's.

"You..."

The sound squeezed out of his throat, wet with the bursting of bloody bubbles, but the rupture in his trachea had already rendered him unable to speak.

He reached for the signal flare at his waist, moving ten beats slower than usual. He was growing weaker and weaker.

Lin Chongshu pounced on him at once.

The sand gathered again. He compressed it in his palm, swung it up, and smashed it down at the young sentry.

A dull thud, then a second blow, then a third.

The young sentry's hand slipped from the signal flare.

His body toppled sideways onto the sand, his face buried in it. Blood still seeped from his neck, but his heart had stopped beating.

Lin Chongshu rolled off him and sat in the sand, gasping for breath.

The stone in his hand crumbled, turning back into sand and slipping through his fingers.

He lowered his head and looked at his hands. They were covered in blood, dark red and sticky, dripping through his fingers.

The man lying on the ground still had his eyes open, his mouth slightly parted as if he still had something to say.

The contents of Lin Chongshu's stomach rose into his throat. He turned and bent over the sand, dry-heaving twice, but nothing came out.

When he looked up again, he saw the ninja tool pouch at the young sentry's waist.

He had nothing in his hands and blood all over his body. With these injuries and this little strength, without supplies, it would be hard for him to leave the desert alive.

He closed his eyes and reached out.

Even through the clothes, the young sentry's body was still warm. The leather buckle was a little tight; Lin Chongshu tugged several times before he finally ripped the ninja tool pouch free.

Then he staggered toward the southwest.

He did not dare look back and ran all the way.

He crossed one sand dune, then another.

He did not know how long he ran after crossing the border.

Only when his strength was completely exhausted did he collapse on the shaded side of a dune, gather sand over himself, and make a crude sand nest.

In the darkness, a voice exploded inside his mind.

[Detected that Rasa has developed intense negative emotions toward the host. Rasa is enraged by the host's escape and deception.]

[Random draw in progress...]

[Obtained: Bloodline Limit: Magnet Release—Gold Dust.]

At the final instant before he passed out, a thought flashed through Lin Chongshu's mind.

He had really pissed Rasa off.