Xia Yan's first match held no suspense whatsoever. Even he did not think the fight had been particularly difficult.
Xia Yan watched a little of the remaining selection trials before finding them rather uninteresting.
Some were simply one-sided routs, offering no reference value at all.
In others, the contestants gave everything they had, letting Xia Yan see their limits at a glance. Those offered little reference value either.
Fortunately, the matches were mostly finished that morning. Although quite a few people participated, there were fewer than ten matches in total.
That afternoon, Xia Yan naturally still had his routine patrol to do. To him, such assignments were practically no different from relaxing.
Pursuit and elimination missions and outside deployments made up the bulk of the Anbu's assignments, but regular patrols were their everyday work.
With Kakashi in tow, Xia Yan soon set off.
Their patrol location this time was very interesting. It was the area where Xia Yan and Kakashi had encountered Root last time.
"So it's here." Kakashi clearly remembered the place quite well too. "Hopefully we won't run into any trouble this time."
"Exactly. I don't like them, and I certainly don't want to run into them." Xia Yan nodded in complete agreement.
Among all the people in Konoha who knew Root existed, probably very few liked them.
That went for Xia Yan, and for Kakashi too.
After all, Kakashi had been in the Anbu for quite some time and had already filled the gaps in his knowledge. Naturally, he had learned quite a bit about Root.
Their last encounter had been troublesome enough. Neither of them wanted to run into something like that again.
They were not so unlucky this time. Today's patrol was perfectly normal.
Perhaps the Root ninja's poor performance last time had prompted Danzo