Seemingly hurt by Aizen's words, Kazuma simply greeted Aizen and left. He had originally wanted to ask Aizen's name, whom he had been chatting with, but in the end, he didn't ask.
Aizen watched Kazuma's silent departure, pushed up his glasses reflecting the white light, and smiled slightly. He had achieved his goal. Now he just had to patiently wait for the seeds he had planted to blossom and bear fruit.
Thinking this, Aizen sensed his surroundings and, after confirming that no one was paying attention to him, vanished in a flash. For him, there was no need to stay there any longer.
He had only intended to take a casual stroll, but unexpectedly, he encountered people from the original story. He wasn't too concerned about whether his casual move would have any effect; he was simply trying to find something for Konoha to do in the future. He knew that the plan his main body was to carry out couldn't be exposed too early, and he needed someone to distract Konoha's attention.
After finishing his game of Go, Aizen infiltrated the residence of the Daimyo of the Land of Fire, where he was looking for something. Upon entering the Daimyo's residence, Aizen found it to be enormous, resembling a palace; anyone unfamiliar with the area would surely get lost.
However, Aizen was not worried. After entering the Daimyo's residence, he did not hesitate and went straight to the Daimyo's library. This was because before coming to the capital of the Land of Fire today, he had already bought a map of the Daimyo's residence on the black market, which showed the location of the Daimyo's library.
There was no guard at the entrance to the library. Once inside, the bookshelves were filled with books, but the library seemed to be neglected. The books were covered in dust, and cobwebs were piled up between the shelves.
Upon seeing this scene, Aizen frowned. Something was amiss. Why was the Daimyo's library neglected to be cleaned and maintained? Moreover, judging from its rather dilapidated state, the place hadn't been repaired for some time.
Aizen was unaware that this library used to be maintained by a dedicated person, and the daimyo would occasionally contribute money for repairs. However, gradually, the daimyo came to believe that the ancient books, which had been passed down from a long time ago, were of little value and no one cared about them, so he stopped contributing money and abandoned the place.
Instead, he used the money meant for repairing the library to build his residence. That's why the library fell into disrepair and became what Aizen sees now.
However, for Aizen, an abandoned library without anyone watching over it suited his wishes better, so that even if the books inside disappeared, no one would notice. With this in mind, Aizen went all out, using the Shadow Clone Technique to search for valuable ancient books and documents, packing them all up.
It must be said that the Daimyo's collection of books was enormous. Even with the help of his Shadow Clone, Aizen still spent three hours searching through thousands of books to find what he wanted and pack those documents away.
Having finally achieved his goal, Aizen found an inn and settled in to rest.
The next morning, Aizen woke up at the inn. There were still many tasks assigned to him by his original self that needed to be completed. So he continued his mission career, heading to the gold exchange where he had previously accepted a mission.
Upon entering the exchange, he noticed its unusual quietness. None of the bounty hunters present spoke, merely glancing at him with feigned indifference and fear. This time, no fool dared to provoke him.
Ignoring the stares from those around him, Aizen walked straight to the counter manager, who was the same person as yesterday, but today looked radiant and had a smile on his face.
"Hello, could you please show me the mission manual?" Aizen politely asked the person in charge. The person in charge, seeing Aizen, bowed deeply and replied, "Yes, Aizen Aizen." He then took the mission manual from under the counter and handed it to Aizen with both hands.
After Aizen took the manual, he slowly flipped through it. Several pages were filled with similar assassination missions. However, most of these missions were related to both Konoha and Sunagakure, involving either assassinating high-ranking officials of Konoha or assassinating well-known ninjas of Sunagakure.
Although the rewards are quite good, the task is extremely difficult. First, the assassination must be successful, and second, the pursuers must escape after the assassination.
The income didn't match the effort, Aizen lamented inwardly. Then, he found a bounty on a Kekkei Genkai ninja in his handbook. This mission suited his purpose without causing too much trouble: a traitorous ninja from Kusagakure, Kawasaki Ya, a user of Dark Release.
Dark Release, that's quite a powerful Kekkei Genkai, possessing the ability to absorb and Ninjutsu Ninjutsu. It appeared in a Hokage movie, where Hiruko it as one of her Kekkei Genkai to compensate for her own shortcomings. It's an exceptionally outstanding Kekkei Genkai, and one of the few in the entire Shinobi World capable of absorbing Release Technique.
Aizen found the mission increasingly appealing, the only problem being the need to hand over the deceased target to the black market. However, Aizen quickly reconsidered. He could simply forgo the bounty; wouldn't it be better to keep such an excellent Kekkei Genkai user for his own experiments? His own body, too, needed a large number of Kekkei Genkai ninjas to validate his theory on the path to godhood.
Having made up his mind, Aizen said to the person in charge of the exchange, "Give me Kawasaki Ya's information. I'll take this mission."
Upon hearing Aizen's instructions, the person in charge at the counter didn't hesitate and immediately handed over the information about Kawasaki Ya to Aizen, saying, " Aizen, future information will be provided free of charge by our exchange shop."
"Oh, why? Can you tell me the reason?" Aizen knew there was no such thing as a free lunch, and he wanted to know what made this highly profitable exchange willing to suffer such a loss.
"Because you have proven your strength, our Exchange Shop is willing to establish special privileges for the strong. Strong individuals like you do not need to pay intelligence fees when they come to our Exchange Shop to complete missions. Only for extremely special intelligence will we charge a portion of the bounty as payment." The person in charge replied respectfully to Aizen's question.
He had already discerned from Aizen's mission yesterday that Aizen was definitely a powerhouse surpassing even a Jonin. Such a powerful individual was worth their efforts to win over at the Gold Exchange. Therefore, in order to leave a good impression on Aizen, after reporting to the higher-ups in the black market, he decided not to charge Aizen any intelligence fees. The higher-ups agreed with his approach and instructed him to fulfill Aizen's requests as much as possible.
This is precisely why the profit-driven black market is willing to suffer losses to curry favor with Aizen.
Faced with the gold exchange's overtures, Aizen nodded, accepted the information handed to him by the manager, and left. Little did he know that the quiet atmosphere inside the gold exchange would be shattered the moment he left.
"The one who just left was that killer from yesterday, right?"
"That's right, that's right. I saw him when I came in yesterday, and then I saw corpses all over the place. Now that I think about it, I was really lucky. If I had gone in earlier, I probably wouldn't have been able to escape either."
"You're really lucky. I heard from Tanaka that yesterday, that group of people were all killed just for making a slight mockery of him. That's incredibly cruel."
The surrounding chatter intensified immediately. The person in charge of the gold exchange, sitting behind the counter, looked at the bounty hunter ninjas who were discussing the matter with disdain.
In the end, they were just short-sighted people.