In the end, Tsunade still left, carrying her doubts with her, but she had no intention of going back to Konoha to investigate the source of the Higashino family's bloodline.
Although the excessive amount of chakra in Makoto's body, as well as the vitality filling it, did indeed resemble some of the Senju Clan's traits.
But so what if it did, and so what if it didn't.
The Senju Clan had already vanished from the shinobi world's public eye, and even she herself had never used the ancient surname Senju.
Inside the inn room, Makoto and the other three split up the money they had won from the casino and stuffed it into their respective sealing scrolls.
In the shinobi world, if you had decent space-time talent and high-level sealing ability, life was actually very convenient. At the very least, you could make yourself into a humanoid storage bag and never have to carry your things around in big bundles wherever you went.
Back then, Makoto's talent in space-time ninjutsu had been about the same as Genma and the other two now, but as the white natural energy continuously optimized his body, all of his talents were rapidly increasing along with his age.
Tatami Iwashi, this honest kid, still felt as though he had done something bad, and he was uneasy inside. "I just hope that once the Hokage-sama finds out, he won't start having some strange opinion of us."
Genma said, "Don't worry, Iwashi, this is a perfectly normal thing. When you went on missions before, did you never run into unexpected valuables?"
"Well… I guess I really never did."
"Then the captain will slowly get you used to it in the future. If you're still worried, you can give the money to me. I'll bear your suffering for you."
"I think do I look like an idiot to you?"
"Heh, you talk like you're worried, but your heart's being very honest."
Namiashi Raidō, on the other hand, was not worried at all. He asked, "Captain, is this mission over at this point? Are we heading back to the village next?"
Makoto said, "No. For now, all we've done is rule out the possibility that Tsunade-sama is helping Kusagakure. But we still don't know who's providing the medical technology behind Kusagakure, or whether it has any connection to Konoha, so we still need to continue the investigation."
"Yes!" x3
Naturally, the three of them had no objections to that.
...
Mahoro Town was not far from the Land of Grass.
By evening, outside a small town on the border between the Land of Grass and the Land of Waterfalls, Makoto and the other three arrived here after conducting their investigation.
The town was not large, and its economy and people's livelihoods were in decline. Many of the buildings still bore traces of damage caused by ninjutsu.
After sensing through the place, Makoto discovered that only a few residents were left in the town, and none of them had particularly strong life force. They were either old people unwilling to leave or orphans who had been left behind.
As for the other adults, most of them had probably already fled. This was the frontline area where Kusagakure and Takigakure were fighting, and the battles between shinobi frequently spread to these towns and villages.
Normally, the great shinobi villages at least cared a little about appearances during war. Unless absolutely necessary, they would not attack ordinary people. But the smaller shinobi villages were far less particular in how they did things. They did not value the lives of civilians at all.
That much could be seen from the large graveyard near where Makoto and the others were standing.
Quite a few of the graves in it were new, buried not long ago. They were townspeople who had died recently.
Kusagakure was currently the least willing to stay quiet out of all the shinobi villages of the small nations in the shinobi world. Its strength was not great, but its ambitions were not small either, and it too dreamed of becoming the sixth great shinobi village.
This shinobi village liked to imitate the ninjutsu of the Five Great Shinobi Villages. Although most of the ninjutsu they developed only resembled the originals in form and were not very powerful, a small number of their release techniques had developed their own characteristics, and because of that they had cultivated quite a few fairly capable shinobi.
In terms of its stance toward the outside world, Kusagakure was just like its name suggested: a classic fence-sitter. Although nominally it was Konoha's ally, in secret it also maintained close ties with Iwagakure, often moving back and forth between the two great nations in an attempt to curry favor with both sides.
After the Shinobi World War ended, and while the strength of the Five Great Nations had been damaged and their control over the surrounding forces had loosened, Kusagakure's ambitions became active.
At first, they delusionally wanted to extend their influence into the Land of Rain.
But Hanzō of the Salamander was merely old and had lost the bold ambition he once had—he was not dead yet. Amegakure, this former challenger to the order established by the Five Great Nations, was far stronger than Kusagakure.
After being viciously taught a lesson by the Rain shinobi, they shifted their gaze to Takigakure instead.
Takigakure had once been the strongest shinobi village beneath the Five Great Nations in the generation before last. Decades ago, it had even been allocated a tailed beast. Outside the Five Great Shinobi Villages, it was the only small shinobi village that possessed a jinchūriki.
But the past was the past, and the present was the present. Takigakure's strength was no longer what it used to be. It had withered badly, and the crafty Kusagakure set its sights on the tailed beast.
A jinchūriki was a very good thing. Treasure like that naturally belonged to the virtuous, and Kusagakure now felt that its virtue was very great indeed.
At present, the two sides were tearing at each other along the national border as a matter of routine.
...
After leaving the ruined little town, Makoto and the other three advanced in the direction of the Land of Earth, searching for traces of Grass shinobi along the border between the Land of Grass and the Land of Waterfalls.
Their preliminary plan had been to capture a lone squad of Kusagakure shinobi and wring out the location of the enemy command post from them, but things did not go as planned. The shinobi they encountered were a bit too numerous.
As the sun was setting, Makoto sensed the presence of a large number of shinobi.
"Shinobi are coming from the direction of the Land of Waterfalls. Their numbers are a bit high. Let's hide first."
Not long after, a Kusagakure shinobi force of roughly fifty or sixty men crossed the border between the two nations not far from where the four of them were hidden and advanced toward the Land of Grass.
This force clearly seemed to have just gone through a major battle. Many of them were seriously wounded, and they were even carrying quite a few corpses on their backs.
Judging by the forehead protectors, most of those corpses were their own comrades, and only a small number belonged to Takigakure.
The corpses of shinobi were also quite valuable. From them, one could analyze the ingredients of secret medicines used during their lifetime and the traces left behind by ninjutsu. Many of Kusagakure's ninjutsu had been gathered through precisely this method.
Unlike Konoha, small shinobi villages lacked the foundation in sealing techniques, and talented sealing shinobi were even rarer. They did not have that many sealing scrolls to use for collecting the dead, so they could only carry them back by manpower.
It looked extremely shabby.
These Kusagakure shinobi were moving in a great hurry and did not notice the four unfamiliar shinobi hiding nearby at all.
Not long after they left, Makoto led his squad in concealing their chakra fluctuations with natural energy, then quietly followed behind them, tracking them all the way to the frontline camp Kusagakure had established here.
Outside the camp, Makoto closed his eyes and carefully sensed within it, trying to find anyone in Kusagakure's frontline camp whose chakra stood out as unusual.
The chakra reserves of someone from the Uzumaki Clan were far greater than those of ordinary shinobi. In particular, a pureblood Uzumaki like Karin's mother, with her special abilities, possessed chakra that was even more abnormal than normal.
When Makoto opened his eyes, Genma asked, "Captain, did you find anything?"
"No. I'm planning to infiltrate and investigate. You stay here, avoid Kusagakure's patrol squads, and don't get into any meaningless clashes."
"Yes!" x3
Very soon, Makoto infiltrated Kusagakure's frontline camp. In the temporary hospital, he saw quite a few of the wounded shinobi who had returned earlier receiving treatment.
But it was basically all very ordinary cleaning and disinfecting, applying medicine, and wrapping bandages. Very few people there could use medical ninjutsu. Compared with Konoha's medical conditions, it was the difference between heaven and earth.
That was completely normal.
Among the people providing logistical and medical support, he did not see a single woman with a vivid head of red hair, and everyone's chakra was entirely normal.
Makoto knew that Karin and her mother were in Kusagakure, but he did not know whether they were at the frontline or in the village itself, which was why he had come here to scout things out.
Now it seemed that the people of Kusagakure were not stupid. They had not casually thrown someone with such a special constitution onto the frontline, but were instead keeping her under strict guard inside the village and using her as a hidden trump card.
Afterward, in the corpse-processing section of the temporary hospital, he saw shinobi sealing enemy corpses into scrolls and handing them over to a fairly capable middle-aged shinobi.
This middle-aged shinobi was also badly injured, but he had only received simple treatment and had not recovered any real combat ability at all.
After coming out, the middle-aged shinobi left the camp that very night together with seven companions in roughly the same condition as himself, heading in the direction of Kusagakure.
Among the buffer nations between the great countries, the Land of Grass was on the smaller side in terms of territory, and Kusagakure was not all that far from the frontline camp either.
From the looks of it, they were planning to return to the village for treatment.
With the existence of a super blood bag like Karin's mother, they could be healed that very night and continue fighting for the village on the battlefield the very next day. This was the secret behind what Takigakure had described—how those enemy fighters with formidable strength always seemed able to recover from their injuries so quickly.
Seeing this, Makoto used the Flying Thunder God Technique to return to Genma and the other two. "Let's go. There's nothing special here. We're heading to Kusagakure."
When Genma, Raidō, and Iwashi saw that Makoto could now already use the Flying Thunder God Technique skillfully, they were all extremely envious.
Unfortunately, they could not learn it. For now, the few of them could only settle for the next best thing, like Hayate's squad, and study the Flying Thunder Formation Technique that Namikaze Minato had specially developed for them.
Even so, their progress was slow, and they still could not successfully use it.
Without enough talent, learning certain special ninjutsu was just that difficult.
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