Crimson seawater drifted over.
Along with the current came countless severed limbs and broken arms.
The people on the warship behind leaned over the railing, eyes wide, staring at the bodies floating in with the tide, trying to find survivors, someone they could ask what exactly had happened ahead.
Did they fall into an ambush by the Land of Hot Water?
It had to be, right?
Otherwise, how could they explain that over a thousand mercenaries had turned into corpses scattered across the sea in just one or two hours?
"Weren't they saying the people of the Land of Hot Water love peace and aren't good at fighting?"
An old mercenary gulped nervously.
Lucky for him he was on this ship, otherwise, he'd be one of the dead ones.
"Wait! Someone's moving!"
A voice called out nearby. Everyone turned toward the sound, and sure enough, in the water, someone's body twitched slightly.
There really was a survivor...
None of the mercenaries had the patience to dive in and save him. One grabbed a harpoon, tied a rope to it, and thrust it toward the survivor's thigh.
Shhk!
The harpoon hit its mark, splattering blood. Several mercenaries yanked hard on the rope and pulled the "survivor" out of the sea.
With a heavy thud, the body hit the deck.
Two mercenaries skilled in medical ninjutsu rushed over to heal him, but before their hands could even touch him, their hearts sank halfway.
This wasn't a survivor at all. It was clearly a corpse.
The reason it had moved was because three or four fish were inside the abdominal cavity, chewing away, feasting on their "fresh" meal.
They were eating so aggressively that they'd disrupted the seal of the corpse, letting out a foul stench of waste.
The medic standing closest took a deep breath to start his healing technique, and instantly that fishy, rotten smell filled his nose and mouth. Furious, he cursed and kicked the corpse away.
But what he didn't expect was that those three or four fish used the momentum of the kick to leap through the air. With a flick of their tails and their sharp fanged mouths wide open, they lunged straight at the medic, one of them biting onto his nose before he could react.
By the time the others rushed to help pull the fish off, the medic's nose was already gone.
Blood covered the deck. Everyone stared at the fish still flopping violently on the boards, and a cold chill crept up their spines. The entire deck fell silent.
And in that silence, they began to hear more sounds...
Click… click… click…
Tiny gnawing noises echoed from the ocean.
The mercenaries and samurai turned around and saw the sea filled with corpses twitching and trembling. Through gaps of flesh and blood, they saw them,
Fish.
Dozens, maybe hundreds, with blood-red eyes.
Everyone instinctively backed away, back until they couldn't see the corpses, or the blood, or the fish.
Suddenly, in the distant sky, a bright green signal flare rose slowly.
Its faint light pierced the sea fog, dyeing a patch of sky green.
The decoy ship had been equipped with signal flares before departure.
Red meant enemy attack or danger.
Yellow meant they'd encountered a difficult problem.
Green meant everything was smooth, they'd reached the coast of the Land of Hot Water and were requesting permission to land.
Seeing the green flare, they should have been relieved, steering straight ahead to regroup with the decoy team and prepare for the final assault. But…
The bloodstains still smeared across the deck told another story, one that silently screamed of the ocean's strangeness.
"What are you all afraid of!"
A deep voice boomed through the broadcast, Kitsuchi.
"A few man-eating fish? Some corpses? A little blood?"
"You people weren't afraid of death when you boarded this warship to make a name for yourselves, so why now? You're going to be scared of these little things?"
"Forward! Full speed ahead!"
"No matter what lies ahead, crush it!"
Kitsuchi's voice was calm yet powerful. After speaking, he waited a few seconds. When he noticed there was still no movement on deck, he added, "Just like the decoy unit, your pay will be doubled."
"Hurrah! Hurrah!"
The mercenaries suddenly came to life, morale surging as they prepared for battle.
Make a name for themselves? What nonsense.
They didn't care about fame. They cared about money.
The warship accelerated to full speed. The thunk thunk of something hitting the hull kept repeating, it was the sound of body parts striking the ship.
At first, every impact made people flinch a little.
But after a while, they grew numb to it. A few mercenaries from the Land of Lightning even started making up rap lyrics to the rhythm of the corpses thudding against the hull.
Halfway through his improvised song, one of the dark-skinned mercenaries frowned.
"Wait a minute, how many people died out here? I've already finished a whole song, and there are still bodies hitting the ship?"
There had only been about a thousand mercenaries on the decoy ships. Even if they'd all been chopped into mince, they should've passed through the "body zone" long ago.
Mercenaries were naturally attuned to danger. Many of them sensed something off and walked back to the railings, peering into the fog.
Visibility had dropped again, less than ten meters now. When they looked down, their hairs stood on end, and several stumbled backward in shock.
It was as if they were sailing down the mythical River of Three Crossings. The red hue had completely spread through the sea, and scattered body parts floated just below the surface.
If that had been all, these battle-hardened killers wouldn't have reacted so strongly, but there were fish.
Fish tearing flesh from corpses, their jaws working relentlessly, their eerie red eyes staring directly at the warship.
Maybe it was just imagination, but it felt like they were thinking…
How to drag the people on the ship into the water to eat them.
A wave crashed over the deck, flinging one of the fish onto the ship.
Everyone instinctively backed away, exchanging nervous glances, and then laughed awkwardly.
Were they really letting a single fish scare them like that,
"D…die…"
A garbled sound came from the fish's mouth.
It didn't have human vocal cords, so the tone was distorted, but if you listened closely, the words were clear,
"Die."
At that moment, every mercenary, every samurai, and even Kitsuchi in the control room above, looking down at the deck, fell into dead silence.
Kitsuchi saw more than the others.
The ship's radar showed that, for the past half hour, they'd been circling around the same point.
The pilots had tried everything, but they couldn't escape the pull of the current.
Talking man-eating fish.
Endless circular currents.
Severed limbs floating in the water.
'What is this… Have I entered hell?'
Unease flooded Kitsuchi's heart. As a ninja from Iwagakure, he could never bring himself to like the ocean.
'Is it Ryosuke?'
'But the reports said Ryosuke's fighting style was straightforward and overwhelming, just like mine, wasn't it?'
'Or… is this the Land of Hot Water's countermeasure?'
Kitsuchi looked down at his palm.
In it lay a trace of white.
It was the "White Zetsu Spore," distributed by Akatsuki to every battlefield commander before the operation.
Inject chakra into it, and it would supposedly create a "messenger skilled in Earth Release," capable of delivering messages at incredible speed.
'Should I use it…?'
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