Chapter 104: Your Superior Is A Mole, And Your Superior’s Superior Is Also A Mole【subscribe】
On the cliff edge under the moonlight, the corpses of several Kirigakure Ninjas lay scattered around, their blood glistening darkly in the cold light.
Yet they did not die at the hands of the Shura before him, but were personally finished off by their captain Kisame Hoshigaki.
Facing this mysterious strong enemy Shura, with no hope of escape, Kisame Hoshigaki unhesitatingly swung his ninja sword to prevent the enemy from obtaining Kirigakure’s intelligence through capturing Kirigakure Ninjas.
Even though no one was captured at this moment, he still chose to carry out the mission in the most cruel way.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kisame Hoshigaki held his ninja sword across his chest, his expression unchanged as he simultaneously reached with his other hand for the kunai bound with an explosive tag, preparing to finish off the still-living Mei Terumi.
Sizzle—
The sound of wind broke sharply as the Shura opposite flung something with a toss of his hand, which rolled to a stop before Kisame Hoshigaki.
He looked down and saw it was a scroll.
“This is evidence of Suigetsu Hozuki’s collusion with a neighboring country. You can take a look.” Shura’s voice was low and iron-like; this was something he had found on Suigetsu Hozuki while collecting spoils of war.
With that, he slowly walked to the side of the still-living Mei Terumi, squatted down, and checked her injuries.
He found it was just a shoulder wound, along with fainting caused by excessive terror.
Menma then raised his head and looked toward Kisame Hoshigaki opposite.
Kisame Hoshigaki had already picked up that intelligence scroll Menma had searched from Suigetsu Hozuki’s body. As he read, the pupils of his shark eyes contracted violently.
“Impossible…” Kisame Hoshigaki instinctively wanted to refute, but the handwriting above was so familiar—it was clearly the handwriting of Anbu Captain Suigetsu Hozuki!
“The corpses of Jūzō Biwa and Suigetsu Hozuki are still in the outskirts of that small town called Apricot City in the southern part of Kirigakure. You can go look for their bodies.” Menma stood up, his black robe flapping loudly in the wind.
He said slowly: “As an elite Anbu like you, examining corpses and collecting evidence should be a piece of cake.”
Kisame’s large bluish hand gripped the scroll, nearly crushing it.
His direct superior, the captain of Kirigakure’s Anbu, had actually sold Kirigakure’s intelligence to a neighboring ninja village?
This was unacceptable to Kisame Hoshigaki, who had always carried out confidential missions in Kirigakure’s Anbu.
His bluish-gray face twisted into terrifying furrows from anger.
Kisame Hoshigaki still remembered when he had just entered Anbu, the secret mission given to him by Anbu Captain Suigetsu Hozuki.
If during a mission there were injured Kirigakure Ninjas who could not be brought back, or if facing encirclement with no way to break out, prioritize protecting Kirigakure’s intelligence secrets and slaughter those ninjas.
Kisame Hoshigaki had always walked in the darkness with the identity of such an executioner, protecting Kirigakure.
But now he was told that his immediate superior was the traitor!
How could this not shatter his heart!
“Oh, by the way, the one who ordered you to chase and kill me was Yagura, or rather, the person behind Yagura.” Seeing that Kisame Hoshigaki’s beliefs had already begun to collapse, Menma mockingly revealed an even more shocking secret.
？！！
Kisame Hoshigaki jerked his head up, his shark-like face full of shock, his small eyes filled with bloodshot veins.
“What do you mean?!” Kisame Hoshigaki put away the scroll and raised the ninja sword in his hand, pointing it at the Shura opposite.
“You bastard, slandering the Mizukage! What do you want? To make me betray the village’s intelligence? Don’t even think about it!” As an Anbu Ninja, Kisame Hoshigaki guessed at the opponent’s purpose.
Menma kicked away the corpse of a fat ninja at his feet and clicked his tongue twice.
“That guy has been controlling your Mizukage since the time of the Third Great Ninja War. After all these years, you still haven’t noticed?”
“Don’t you suspect why his Bloody Mist Policy changes from morning orders to evening ones, why he strikes down each ninja clan one by one.”
“A perfectly good Kirigakure, messed up like this.”
“As for my purpose…”
Menma took a step forward, coming before Kisame Hoshigaki, the knife edge already pressing against his chest, yet he paid it no mind.
“Actually, I think highly of ninjas like you. I just feel sorry for you.”
“How about working for me?”
“I will end the chaos of the ninja world, wipe out the Five Great Nations and more than twenty countries, and a dozen ninja villages—leaving only one country and one ninja village.”
“Just like how Hashirama Senju ended the mutual slaughter of ninja clans in the Warring States Period, I will bring an end to the ninja world’s warfare.”
“I don’t guarantee there won’t be other wars or chaos in the future, but at least in my era of rule, the ninja world will usher in years of peace without war.”
Looking at Shura who had approached right up to his knife edge, Kisame Hoshigaki didn’t dare move rashly.
His body’s instinct told him he would die!
He swallowed hard.
He had little interest in Shura’s proposal to end the ninja world’s chaos and establish a peaceful nation without war.
He only wanted to return to the village immediately and investigate whether Suigetsu Hozuki had betrayed Kirigakure’s intelligence, and whether Fourth Mizukage Kagura Yagura was being controlled by someone!
If it was really as Shura said, his superior was a traitor, and his superior’s superior was also a traitor—then what meaning did all these years of secret missions have?!
How many Kirigakure Ninjas had he silenced because of the orders from this secret mission?!
Kisame Hoshigaki now only suspected Suigetsu Hozuki, as there was no evidence that the Mizukage was being controlled, so he planned to investigate in his own way.
If even the Mizukage…
Kisame Hoshigaki’s mind was somewhat chaotic; the collapse of his beliefs struck his body harder than any battle wounds.
“I look forward to your answer.” After confirming that the seed of doubt had been planted in Kisame Hoshigaki’s heart, Menma turned and walked to Mei Terumi’s side, picking up the fainted Mei Terumi.
Then, he tossed a specially made Flying Thunder God Kunai at Kisame Hoshigaki’s feet.
“If you face a life-and-death moment, or want to contact me, inject chakra into this kunai, and I will come.”
“I hope by then, your answer satisfies me.” Menma looked down at Mei Terumi in his arms, his fingertips lightly stroking her long hair: “As for this woman, consider her the item you’re pawning to me.”
With those words, Shura’s figure suddenly vanished.
Kisame Hoshigaki was left alone under the moonlight, eyes wide as he searched left and right, listening carefully, but he truly found no trace of the opponent’s departure—not even deeper marks from footprints on the ground.
“Is it space-time ninjutsu?” Kisame Hoshigaki could only associate the opponent’s departure with the mysterious and unfathomable space-time ninjutsu.
This involuntarily reminded him of the famous ‘Golden Flash’ from the Third Great Ninja War period, Minato Namikaze.
“Damn it!” Looking at the four Kirigakure Ninja corpses on the ground, Kisame Hoshigaki slowly lowered the ninja sword in his hand.
After silently burying his comrades’ bodies, Kisame Hoshigaki headed in the general direction Shura had indicated to search.
Soon, he smelled a bloody scent coming from deep in the forest.
When Kisame Hoshigaki arrived at this ruined site of a great battle, he saw several wild dogs gnawing at Suigetsu Hozuki’s corpse, which had been chopped into two sections, while not far away Jūzō Biwa lay dead in the wilderness, his headband gleaming coldly.
And in the forest, a corridor blasted out by large-scale ninjutsu, filled with countless broken branches and fallen trees scattered in disarray.
Just from looking at these battlefield traces, one could guess how intense the battle had been!
