The eastern part of Kataya Town is a market town, completely different from the orderly and elegant villa area to the west. This area has no paved roads, and underfoot is sandy soil that has been trodden by hundreds of pairs of shoes.
The smell of camel dung and spices during the day seeps into the soil, and the aroma becomes even stronger when the cool wind blows at night.
Several narrow alleys were crookedly squeezed between low houses, with wooden signs nailed haphazardly to the walls. The faded lettering on the signs read "Kataya Spice Shop," "Old Ali Hookah House," and "Sand Horse Feed Specialist."
After the rebels occupied the market, it became their supply warehouse. The spice shop was filled with ammunition boxes, the Suien shop was converted into a temporary canteen, and a dozen or so military horses were tied up at the entrance of the feed store, with half a trough of uneaten hay in the manger.
Mila crouched on the roof of a two-story low house at the entrance to the market.
This house was originally a fabric shop. Several bolts of coarse cotton cloth, left behind by the owner when he fled, still hung on the clothesline on the second-floor balcony, swaying gently in the night breeze.
She knelt on one knee behind the balcony railing, one hand on the knife handle, the fingers of the other hand gently touching her lips, biting the fingertips of her glove with her teeth, silently tightening the glove.
The market area has a lower guard density than the western villa area, but its layout is more chaotic.
The patrolmen did not follow a fixed route. Some walked in a straight line along the main alley, while others wandered randomly between alleys. A few sentries even sat on cargo boxes and smoked, with their muskets resting on their knees, the red glow of their cigarettes flickering in the darkness.
This random deployment method is actually more troublesome than the fixed patrols in the villa area. Fixed patrol routes can be calculated, but random movements require more patience to observe each one.
Mila made no sound when she rolled off the roof.
Her landing was completely different from Roy's, which involved slamming down with his weight. She first dangled from the balcony railing with one hand, her toes touching the protruding brick seams of the wall, then she let go, bent her knees, and landed. The whole movement was done in one smooth motion, with the hem of her desert cloak only fluttering slightly behind her.
She walked along the wall into the alley, her first target being a lone sentry leaning against the earthen wall at the corner of the alley, head down, whittling a piece of wood with a dagger.
He was carving out the outline of something, probably a saddle ornament, and he was very focused on it.
Mila walked around him from the side, her feet stepping over a patch of pebbles without making a sound.
The sentry tilted his head slightly, as if listening to something, then probably thought it was just the wind, and continued whittling the wood.
Mila drew her knife and slashed it across his throat. The sentry's dagger stopped, the piece of wood slipped from his hand, and the sawdust still floated in the air.
She dragged the body behind the stack of containers, covered it with a burlap sack used for covering containers, and then continued forward.
The piles of boxes at the market serve as natural cover.
The rebels packed the looted supplies into wooden crates and piled them up on both sides of the alley, making them taller than a person.
Mila weaved through the narrow gaps between the cargo containers, occasionally stopping to peer through the gaps in the wooden planks at the other side.
She had fought countless such infiltration battles in the alleys. The piles of crates in the market and the piles of crates at the Orange Town docks were essentially the same, with gaps, blind spots, and the disorientation created by the sound of footsteps being squeezed and deformed between the wooden planks.
These details are crystal clear coordinates for the Sharingan.
A patrolman walked past the other side of the cargo container, his lantern swaying from side to side, its light seeping in through the gaps in the wooden planks.
Mila pressed her body against the side of the cargo box, and only emerged from the gap when the light had completely disappeared through the gap, the blade being passed from behind.
The instant the knife tip pierced his back, she accurately covered his mouth with her other hand, suppressing the muffled groan in her palm, while simultaneously applying force with the hilt of the knife.
The lantern's arc as it fell to the ground was caught by her toes and gently placed on the cargo box, without even a drop of lamp oil spilling.
She wiped the blade clean with a piece of charcoal cloth and continued walking towards the next alleyway.
She encountered a rebel soldier who was feeding horses at the entrance of the feed store with his back to her. The man was bending over, pouring hay into the manger, humming an off-key tune, completely unaware of what was happening behind him.
The horse saw the shadow behind him and instinctively pulled its ear back, but Mila was faster, slashing at his carotid artery behind his ear.
As he collapsed, her arm slipped under his armpit, supporting him against the manger without disturbing the other horses. The horse flicked its tail and lowered its head to continue grazing.
She encountered two people at the entrance of the Suien lounge.
The Suien lounge had been converted into a makeshift canteen for the rebels. Two kerosene lamps hung at the entrance, and two rebels sat eating under the lamps.
Mila's knife slit the throat of the first man the moment he dropped his soup bowl. The second man had just stood up when she kicked him in the back of the knee with the tip of her boot. As he fell forward to his knees, she grabbed his chin and twisted it to the left, cleanly snapping his cervical vertebrae.
She dragged the two bodies into the shadows behind the Suien lounge, where half a bowl of soup remained on the table, still steaming.
Her infiltration style is completely different from Barlow's.
When Barlow cleared the villa area, he was like a precisely calibrated clock, every cut calculated, every step within the planned path, without expending any unnecessary effort.
Mila is more like a snake moving through the grass, stopping and waiting for a long time in some places, and then passing through three alleyways in a row without stopping in others.
Her Sharingan detected the predictability of the patrolmen's behavior in the darkness.
Smokers will look for sheltered spots, people urinate in corners, people are most distracted when two people meet and chat, and people alone will instinctively slow down at corners.
She broke down these subtle behavioral patterns one by one, utilized them, and then erased them one by one.
Everything was going smoothly until an explosion was heard from the south.
A burst of Kakkō erupted on the southern horizon, and the orange-red ball of light rapidly expanded in the darkness, turning half the sky a dark red.
The muffled thud of the explosion traveled along the ground, making the wooden planks on the cargo container vibrate.
The second tone follows, slightly softer than the first, but closer.
All the remaining rebels in the market who had not yet been quelled were alerted at the same time. Some were shouting, some rushed out of the Suien bars, and some knocked over iron pots on the shelves, which crashed to the ground and rolled several times.
Mila emerged from behind the stack of crates, her blade cleanly slicing across the nape of the necks of two rebels who were running away. Without pausing, she moved directly toward the town center.
As she walked through the widest alley on the north side of the market, she bumped into a rebel soldier who was rushing out of a feed store.
The guy had just woken up; his clothes weren't buttoned up yet, and he was dragging a curved knife in his hand.
He saw Mila emerge from the smoke, paused for a moment, and then instinctively swung his knife.
Mila sidestepped the blade, closed in on him, and slammed the hilt of her knife into the nerve on the inside of his wrist, causing the curved knife to slip from his hand.
Then her elbow slammed into his temple, and he went limp and fell to the ground.
She continued forward, getting closer and closer to the command post. The alleys here were no longer the winding, narrow lanes of the market, but main roads connecting various areas.
As Mila walked along the wall to the vicinity of the command post, she saw Barlow's figure.
He was emerging from a dark alley, holding a file bag he had torn from a messenger, and was looking down at its contents.
Deep in the alley, the soles of a pair of military boots peeked out from behind a trash can. His clothes were almost spotless, and he walked through the chaotic center with the composure of someone who had just come out of a chamber of commerce meeting room.
Mila looked up and glanced at the roof of the low building diagonally opposite the command post.
Roy had arrived, crouching on the roof ridge. A corner of his clothes was scorched, and a faint bloodstain on his face gleamed in the Kakkō.
He looked down and saw Mila, grinned, pointed the tip of his knife towards the southern barracks, then drew a line across his neck. Most of the rebels at the barracks were already dead in their sleep.
Mila nodded in his direction as a response.
She didn't speak. The three of them hadn't physically met yet, but they had each finished clearing their assigned areas and arrived at the three directions of the town center intersection.
She pulled a charcoal cloth from the inner pocket of her cloak, wiped the bloodstains off the hilt of her knife, then took a new hair tie from the back of her belt, bit it between her teeth, and gathered her loose hair with both hands to tie it tightly again.
The rebels in front of the command post were shouting each other's names. Some were moving sandbags to build makeshift shelters, some were mounting muskets on the roof, and some were yelling at the messenger, "Where are the reinforcements?"
Mila's gaze pierced through the chaotic crowd, meeting for a fleeting moment with Barlow at the alleyway opposite and Roy on the rooftop.