About an hour later.
The sky was growing dark.
Qian finally returned to the vicinity of Black Stone Outpost.
At this point, flying any farther would have been somewhat inappropriate.
Although his surgery had already been completed, and he no longer cared whether anyone discovered that he had secretly left the outpost, if he could avoid some trouble, it was better to avoid it.
What was more, there were now quite a few Mist Village squads roaming outside the outpost, and his Chakra was at an absolute low. There was really no need to invite complications.
However, just because Qian did not want to look for trouble did not mean trouble would not find him.
Just as he was carefully approaching Black Stone Outpost, behind him, roughly a kilometer away, a Mist Ninja squad suddenly stopped in its tracks.
One of them crouched down and looked at the ninja dog beside him, which was not even calf-high, and said, "Happy, did you find something?"
This ninja dog named Happy was the Summoning Beast of this Mist Village Special Jonin.
It possessed a sense of smell far beyond that of ordinary dogs. Even the faintest scent in the air could be distinguished by it.
At that moment, it twitched its nose, carefully sniffed around, then raised its head and said, "Ryu, we may have trouble."
Its voice was low and grave, nothing like the youth its body size suggested.
And its words made all four people present a little nervous.
Inoue Ryu knew Happy would not speak without reason, so he hurriedly said, "What exactly is going on?"
Hearing this, Happy did not speak immediately. Instead, it sniffed the surrounding air again before continuing, "I smelled a familiar scent."
"Whose?"
Inoue Ryu asked.
"Uchiha Qian."
Happy replied.
"What?"
"Ghost Sword Qian?"