Trap

Three hundred thousand ryō, exactly his entire fortune.

Lin Chongshu was about to say "custom identity" when the words reached his lips and suddenly stopped.

That middle-aged man seemed to have been sneaking glances at him the whole time.

Lin Chongshu swallowed the words that had reached his mouth, lowered his head, flipped through two pages of the booklet, and pretended to study the other bounty notices.

At the same time, a small portion of the Gold Sand bracelet around his wrist silently scattered and crawled up his back onto the roof.

In the shadows beyond the lamplight, the Gold Sand condensed into an Eye of Sand that clung to a beam, its pupil turning downward.

His right eye narrowed slightly, and an overhead perspective appeared in his vision.

The middle-aged man sat behind the table. Sure enough, his gaze drifted over again, first lingering for two seconds on the black linen cloth covering Lin Chongshu's face, then moving to the Hidden Mist forehead protector at his waist before withdrawing.

Lin Chongshu's mind raced. If he chose a custom identity, he would have to remove his mask and let the man make a new identification document based on his face.

And once the mask came off, that face was worth one and a half million ryō. How much could he possibly earn from making fake papers?

Thinking of that, Lin Chongshu felt a lingering chill. He had nearly let his guard down.

This was no charitable institution that followed the rules. Everyone here was a rogue ninja who lived with a blade at their throat.

He closed the booklet and raised his head.

The middle-aged man looked away a split second before he raised his head.

Lin Chongshu opened his right eye, and the Eye of Sand on the beam silently crumbled away in the shadows.

Once his mind had cleared, he went over the entire matter again.

This Bounty Exchange was not particularly well hidden. The booklet even marked two other Bounty Exchanges nearby.

Even the Kazekage used Bounty Exchanges to post bounties, which meant these underground outposts definitely operated with the tacit approval of the Five Great Nations.

To those in power, every kind of person in the world had a use. Rogue ninja could be used for dirty work too.

He stared directly into the middle-aged man's sinister eyes. "No need. An ordinary civilian identity."

The middle-aged man's expression did not change, but his gaze lingered one second longer on Lin Chongshu's face beneath the black linen cloth. "Thirty thousand ryō deposit. Pick it up in three days."

Lin Chongshu directly took out fifty thousand ryō in banknotes and placed them on the table.

"I'll pay one hundred and fifty thousand. This is fifty thousand for the deposit. Tomorrow morning, leave the documents beneath the third sand dune east of the village. Once I see the goods, you can take the rest of the money."

The middle-aged man glanced at the bills without counting them and slipped them beneath the counter. "Fine."

Once the deal was settled, Lin Chongshu turned and left.

That night, Lin Chongshu shed that tall outer shell and returned to being a black-haired youth.

When he climbed back through the window into Shan Tianzhu's house, only the woman was inside. Shan Tianzhu was nowhere to be seen.

Hearing movement at the windowsill, the woman looked up at him. She was not frightened, merely placing the child she had just soothed to sleep into the cradle as she asked evenly,

"Do you still need hot water?"

"Yeah."

The hot water washed over the wound on Lin Chongshu's shoulder, which had not fully healed yet, causing a faint sting.

He leaned against the edge of the tub and stared blankly at the steam rising from the water.

The bounty notice had already been posted. The owner of the Bounty Exchange had definitely noticed him.

Thinking back now, the Bounty Exchange owner had probably begun to suspect him the moment he entered. Someone wearing a Hidden Mist forehead protector spending so long flipping through the Land of Wind bounty pages...

He could not stay here any longer.

More importantly, judging by the timeline, the Uchiha Clan massacre should happen within the next six months.

If he arrived too late, forget taking Sharingan—he would not even catch the corpses while they were still warm.

He had to get to the Hidden Leaf Village quickly.

He opened his eyes and looked through the steam at the woman sitting by the door.

She sat on the threshold with her back against the doorframe, clutching the towel in her hands and staring into space as well.

Her hair was casually tied in a bun behind her head, with a few loose strands hanging by her ears. Under the oil lamp, her face looked younger than she really was.

Her waist had drawn in a little compared to when he had first seen her days ago, though her shoulders and chest still carried the soft curves unique to a nursing mother. She looked much more docile now, completely unlike the trembling figure who had cowered in the corner when they first met.

Perhaps because he had not done anything improper to her these past few days, she had relaxed.

Lin Chongshu lowered his head and looked at his own greatness in the water basin.

Though he was still far from the peak of his life, perhaps because of the system, this body had developed fairly well.

For the past few months, he had either been fleeing for his life like a dog or fighting for it. If he could survive tomorrow and get both the money and the documents, then he could count it as having made it over one hurdle.

It was time to relax a little.

"Do you want to come with me?" he asked, his voice drifting through the steam.

The woman froze. Her face reddened for a moment in the lamplight, but instead of answering, she asked,

"Are you leaving?"

"With your man's temperament, he won't let yesterday's matter go. Once I leave, he'll only take that anger out on you." Lin Chongshu wrung out the towel and draped it over the edge of the tub, his voice quiet.

"But I'm in no position to save anyone either. Think it over carefully."

The woman fell silent. Her eyes rested on Lin Chongshu's face for several seconds, as if judging whether he meant it or had merely asked in passing.

Lin Chongshu did not look at her. He rested the back of his head against the tub's edge and closed his eyes.

"Give me your answer before noon tomorrow."

Early the next morning, before dawn had fully broken, Lin Chongshu left Shan Tianzhu's house.

He found a piece of weathered rock some distance from the village entrance, crouched behind it, lowered his body, then manipulated the sand to bury himself layer by layer beneath the desert floor.

He spread out his palm, and Gold Sand peeled away from the bracelet.

The strands of Gold Sand gathered again dozens of meters away, condensing into an Eye of Sand one foot above the ground.

The view spread across his right eye.

The sand dune was still the same dune, but many more marks had appeared in the surrounding sand.

The footprints were distributed too evenly. They had not been left by merchants traveling through, but by people lying in wait as they shifted their positions.

He manipulated the sand. The banknotes, wrapped in fine grains, slowly burrowed deep into the sand from the far side of the dune, stopping at the designated spot without disturbing the surface at all.

The sun slowly rose.

Someone approached from the direction of the village, walking quickly.

He reached the base of the dune, bent down and dug into the sand, surprise flashing across his face.

He pulled out the stack of money, placed an oil-paper parcel beneath the dune, roughly covered it with sand, then stood up and quietly signaled toward the dead shrubs before turning and striding away.

But Lin Chongshu saw that little gesture perfectly through the Eye of Sand.

Lin Chongshu split the sand into two paths.

One went underground to retrieve the parcel, supporting its bottom as it slowly pulled it back through the deep sand; the other moved in the opposite direction, deliberately pushing up a thin trail across the surface.

The people behind the dead shrubs were indeed drawn out by the sand trail. Two figures sprang out at once and chased after it.

The one in front pulled a Kunai wrapped in Explosive Tags from behind his waist and flung it at the tip of the trail.

The Kunai struck the sand and exploded with a boom, sending grains raining down.

The two people chasing the trail rushed to its end, but found nothing when they dug.

At the other end, the sand had already dragged the parcel back beneath the weathered rock.

Lin Chongshu extended half a hand from the sand and grabbed the parcel in one swift motion.

He tore open the oil paper. Inside was a thick stack of documents stamped with the seal of the Land of Grass. The name field read "Yucun Chong." There were also several talismans he could not understand and two scrolls.

He gave them a quick glance. The scrolls were not ninjutsu scrolls, and he did not recognize the patterns on the talismans either.

He had no time to investigate. Who knew what the Bounty Exchange people had hidden in the parcel? He would not take unnecessary bargains.

Sand surged up around his body and condensed into a human shape behind the weathered rock.

He stuffed an Explosive Tag into the sand man's chest cavity, then draped his black linen cloak over it.

"Over there!" someone shouted.

The two men near the sand trail immediately turned around, while the other ambushers beside the weathered rock revealed themselves one after another.

Lin Chongshu controlled the sand man to hold the parcel and glide swiftly along the ground, dragging a clear humanoid trail through the sand.

Five people converged from three directions and rapidly closed in on the eastern dunes, chasing the dragged trail.

Even after watching everyone leave, Lin Chongshu did not move.

He remained curled inside the hollow of the weathered rock. The Eye of Sand had condensed again, hovering in midair as it looked down over the entire stretch of desert.

Then an explosion sounded from deep within the dunes, and the Eye of Sand's view was completely swallowed by dust and sand.