Itachi Uchiha's Divine Jab to the Heart

Boom!

A Kumogakure Chunin was distracted while forming hand seals when a pangolin burrowed out from behind him, its claws piercing through his chest.

The others were horrified, cold sweat streaming down their faces.

Whoosh!

Another man had his chest pierced by a kunai.

Only then did the others react, rapidly retreating and focusing their eyes on one spot. A figure slowly emerged, carrying a corpse, with the pangolin following behind him.

"Lord Kawasuke." The Kumogakure ninja stared in horror at the corpse in his hand.

Lord Kawasuke, who had rendered great service to Kumogakure, had actually been turned into a corpse by the enemy. Every one of them felt the urge to retreat.

Itachi and Anko looked at the newcomer and also let out a sigh of relief.

Just as the Kumogakure ninja focused their attention on him, Tobitake Tonbo formed hand seals.

"Demonic Illusion: Tree Binding Death."

Rustle!

The four remaining men were bound by long trees rising behind them, their limbs exposed.

All of them revealed terrified expressions.

This genjutsu allowed its victims to remain rational, so they all knew they had fallen under an illusion. But with Tobitake Tonbo's current mastery of genjutsu, coupled with the fact that they had already been fighting for some time and were severely depleted, how could they break it?

"Damn it, we don't have enough chakra to use Lightning Body Charge." The four struggled desperately, trying to break free with brute force.

Tobitake Tonbo shook his head. The effect of genjutsu was for its victims to bind themselves, not for the enemy to bind them. Without breaking the illusion, even Taijutsu masters like Guy could not escape through brute force.

He looked over the nearby battlefield, the environmental damage caused by shuriken, kunai, and ninjutsu, then habitually reconstructed the scene in his mind using mathematics, geography, and experience.

Then he looked at his two teammates and bared his teeth in a grin. "Yo, not bad. The two of you not only took out five enemies, but even held on until now. As expected of my teammates."

Once they were rescued, the tension in Itachi and Anko's hearts finally dissipated, and they both sat down on the ground to rest.

Hearing Tobitake Tonbo's words, Anko rolled her eyes. "Stop making sarcastic remarks. If you'd come any later, we'd have been finished."

Huff, huff!

She was exhausted to death.

Itachi Uchiha looked at Tobitake Tonbo, then at the four enemies who seemed to be entangled by something and unable to move.

"Konoha's traditional genjutsu, Binding Death?"

He made his judgment inwardly.

At the same time, his evaluation of Tobitake Tonbo rose another level.

Not only did he possess his own Will of Fire, he was already acting on it?

He recalled what Tobitake Tonbo had said before: if one possessed the power of the First Hokage and the Uchiha forefather, one could protect both the village and one's family.

Tobitake Tonbo's current strength must have come from upholding the Will of Fire!

Could I do it?

Itachi shook his head inwardly.

Even the First Hokage and the Uchiha forefather had needed to negotiate with other nations. How could they possibly have possessed the strength to protect everything? Hadn't they also died in battle?

Neither Konoha's records nor the Uchiha records contained accounts of the two elders who founded Konoha dying of old age.

That meant they had died in battle.

This further solidified the conviction in his heart. He agreed even more with what Shisui had said, believing that only the resolve to abandon everything could bring peace to Konoha.

Having witnessed the battlefield at only a few years old, he understood that peace was hard-won.

Tobitake Tonbo had no idea what he was thinking. He walked up to the four terrified enemies, formed hand seals, and placed his right hand above one man's temple, the area with the densest nerves and closest to the brain.

Illusory,

A tunnel through time and space,

The long-missed scene of mind reading,

He passed through the ninja's life, experiencing it as an observer yet also nearly in the first person.

After frowning for a moment, he finally found the key point.

The enemy's mission.

"Stop! What did you do to him?" A Kumogakure ninja beside them roared.

"Damn it, Konoha bastards! Captain Seshamatsu will kill you!"

"If you're men, give us a quick death!"

"You bastard born without a mother to raise you, kill me already!"

"Bastard, kill me!"

The other three also sensed that something was wrong and tried to provoke Tobitake Tonbo into killing them.

"Don't worry. You're next."

Tobitake Tonbo smiled slightly and began reading the second person.

Such a pathetic attempt at provocation, and they thought it could shake his will of steel?

As for their so-called Captain Seshamatsu, he had already sensed that Hayama had killed the enemy.

He was on his way over.

One,

Two,

Three,

Four,

No matter how the four struggled, Tobitake Tonbo read through their memories one by one. While he was at it, he also read the memories in the head of the Jōnin corpse at his feet.

Mitaraishi Anko, sitting on the ground nearby, watched him touch one enemy's head after another and muttered, "Could he have some weird fetish? Does he like touching other people's heads?"

Itachi said, "Sister Anko, Brother Tonbo should be using the Mind Reading Technique to investigate enemy intelligence. He mentioned it when he introduced himself. Did you forget?"

Hearing Itachi call her sister, Anko felt delighted.

But upon hearing the rest, she blushed. This kind of intelligence mistake really should not have happened.

The more she thought about it, the redder her face became.

This is so embarrassing. Exposing her mistake in front of Itachi, an eight-year-old brat, was far too humiliating.

It was all Tobitake Tonbo's fault. His introduction had been forgettable, so she hadn't remembered it. Yes, that was it. It was all his fault.

Watching her expression shift again and again, Itachi thought this female ninja was truly frightening. He could not grasp even the slightest bit of what she was thinking at this moment.

He had thought he had applied the psychology he studied quite well, yet he still could not see through what this older sister was thinking.

Puff, puff, puff, puff!

Tobitake Tonbo killed the four men with a kunai.

Then he piled the other dead enemy corpses together.

He took a scroll from his waist pouch, laid it flat on the ground, and opened it. After forming hand seals, he pressed down on a blank section. Runes began flowing out from the scroll, wrapping around all the corpses. The bodies slowly turned into streams of light and were drawn into the center of the scroll, while the character for "corpse" appeared in the blank area.

Tobitake Tonbo put the scroll away in his pouch.

"Hey, why did you put away the corpses too?" Anko asked in confusion.

Itachi was even more confused. "Sister Anko, corpses are an important source of ninja intelligence. Whether it's obtaining intelligence from an enemy's body, finding ways to counter an enemy's ninjutsu,

"reading enemy memories, or conducting other experiments, they can all be useful. I remember it being mentioned in the second-year intelligence class at the academy.

"The Corpse Disposal Unit of the Konoha Medical Department was established for that very reason!"

Red,

Bright red,

Steam seemed to rise from her head as Mitaraishi Anko felt ashamed by every word Itachi said.

She was clearly the Chunin, yet she kept forgetting such common knowledge...

"Yeah, Anko, aren't you studying under Senior Orochimaru? I heard he defected from Konoha specifically for experiments. He should have taught you all sorts of ways to handle corpses." Tobitake Tonbo smiled as he delivered the finishing blow.

"Bastard! It's because Orochimaru sealed my memories that I forgot these important things. That's right, that's exactly it! What are you so smug about? Who do you think you are?

"You're lecturing me, but you're not even the captain..."

Crackle, crackle. As if she had found an outlet for her frustration, Mitaraishi Anko did not roar at Itachi, who was only eight years old, but kept roaring at Tobitake Tonbo instead.

Her hands made exaggerated gestures, as though they contained a rich language of their own.