Time slipped by, second by second.
A few minutes later, Qian released his hand.
Standing where he was, he thought in silence for a while. Then he stepped forward again, came to Chikamura Dahui, and once more used Ninja Art: Mind Reading Technique.
His palm gripped the man's head, and a vast flood of memories poured into his mind, where he searched and examined them.
Soon, he had roughly gone through the man's memories from the past few months as well.
By combining the memories the two men shared, Qian finally figured out the whole story.
First was the identities of these two men.
From their memories, Qian learned that both of them had once been ninja of Kirigakure, but they had chosen the wrong side when the Fourth Mizukage, Karatachi Yagura, came to power.
On top of that, they had made certain mistakes during the Third Great Ninja War, and when old scores were settled later, they had no choice but to defect from Kirigakure.
This time, the reason they had appeared here was because they had accepted a mission from an organization they had newly joined—to assassinate the ruler of a small country attached to the Land of Water.
Originally, everything had gone smoothly, and they had completed the mission without trouble.
However, after the mission ended, Koike Raiko, who had been cooped up in the base for far too long, insisted on wandering around for a while.
As a result, their trail was exposed.
What followed immediately after was the pursuit of Kirigakure's tracking unit.
Fortunately, they had reacted quickly. Before Kirigakure's tracking unit could fully close in, they had forced their way out of the encirclement, and they also had a shark as a Summoning Beast. Otherwise, they would have died long ago.
What happened after