The desert stretched endlessly beneath the afternoon sun. Three figures travelled across the dunes in silence; the trio moved as fast as they could so as not to miss the Chūnin exams.
Hyori remained at the center of the formation, her Byakugan continuously active as her vision swept beneath the shifting sands. Shinra and Inumaki maintained a loose perimeter several dozen meters away while Yoshimaru darted across the dunes, his nose constantly pressed toward the ground.
They had searched the desert from midnight until afternoon without finding a single trace of the perpetrators. Whoever was behind this incident was by no means a rookie.
"Yogi-sensei is late, should we go looking for him?" Inumaki asked quietly.
Shinra and Hyori remained silent, unlike other missions where one of them was appointed as the team captain Yogi hadn't assigned anyone, this means that the last order given to them by Yogi is their top priority.
Shinra hesitated a bit then said, "We will wait a few more hours, if he still doesn't show up we will search for him. He is a Jounin, it is quite unlikely for him to be taken out silently."
Hyori suddenly stopped.
"…Wait."
Both Shinra and Inumaki landed beside her immediately.
"What is it?" Shinra asked.
Her brows furrowed, "I found a tunnel, quite a long one. But the weird part is that there are no chakra signatures throughout the parts I can see."
Both boys looked toward the empty stretch of desert.
"I don't see any manmade structures that constitute an entrance."
Although Hyori had managed to locate a potential trace, finding the entrance to the tunnel amidst the desert is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack.
' Could this be a trap? We've found nothing for almost half a day, and now Hyori suddenly discovers a tunnel? We could force our way through the sand… but if the enemy is waiting below, we'd be walking straight into an ambush. Yogi told us not to engage if the situation exceeded our capabilities.'
Shinra remained contemplating his options in silence, he looked at Hyori and thought, 'Although I haven't learned much about the Byakugan ever since I have been here, I do remember that there should be things that block the Byakugan's see through ability such as Obito's mask. The question is whether we are dealing with high-level shinobi or not.'
Hyori noticed Shinra's gaze and looked back at him, "Do you have any plan in mind?"
"Can you pinpoint the nearest part of the tunnel that is closest to the surface?"
Hyori led them over to a nearby area and stopped, "This should be it."
Shinra stood above the spot and looked at his teammates, "Heading straight in without waiting for Yogi-sensei is very dangerous, this could be a trap after all. I will send my shadow clone in to scout the tunnel first, if it discovers anything, the memories will flow back to me immediately. We will stay here for an hour. If the clone doesn't return— or if Yogi-sensei still hasn't arrived— we'll abandon the search and locate him first."
Inumaki and Hyori nodded their heads in agreement to his plan.
Shinra formed a single shadow clone, which appeared right next to him. The clone formed hand signs and began sinking into the ground, 'Earth Release: Hiding like a Mole Jutsu' in a few seconds the clone phased through the ground and exited through the tunnel.
Shinra looked at the tunnel silently, the tunnel was dimly lit by electric bulbs spaced several meters apart.
The clone studied the tunnel carefully before proceeding further downward. The passage had clearly been excavated by someone with experience. Thick wooden beams reinforced the walls at regular intervals while small electric lamps illuminated the otherwise endless corridor. Despite descending for several minutes, the tunnel showed no signs of ending.
His sensory field continued to sweep ahead.
Nothing.
Not a single chakra signature appeared within its range.
'No wonder Hyori couldn't scan the entire tunnel. Whoever built this place intentionally made it descend far deeper than necessary. If this really is a hideout, they clearly wanted to avoid detection.'
The tunnel eventually widened into a larger chamber.
Several wooden crates had been stacked neatly against the walls while shelves filled with unfamiliar mechanical parts occupied the opposite side of the room. Shinra cautiously approached one of the tables and picked up a strange metal joint. It resembled part of a human elbow, except it had clearly been manufactured rather than grown.
His eyes narrowed.
'Puppet components…'
Nearby lay dozens of tightly wound chakra strings alongside carving tools, polishing oils, and brushes coated with fresh varnish. The faint smell lingering throughout the room matched Yuna's description almost perfectly.
'So Yogi-sensei was right.'
Shinra quietly returned the metal joint to the table before continuing deeper into the underground complex.
The deeper he travelled, the stronger the strange smell became.
The scent had become so deeply embedded within the tunnel that even someone without an exceptional sense of smell could detect it.
His hand slowly drifted toward the hilt of his sword.
The next chamber was considerably larger than the previous ones.
Rows of wooden worktables stretched throughout the room, each covered by large white sheets. For a brief moment, Shinra assumed they were concealing unfinished puppets.
Then…
A pale human hand slipped from beneath one of the sheets.
The clone froze.
Slowly, he approached the nearest table before pulling back the cloth.
Silence filled the chamber.
A lifeless woman stared back at him.
The corpse had been meticulously dissected. Both arms had already been removed while the joints around the shoulders had been carefully carved open cleanly. Thin grooves had been cut throughout the body as though someone had been preparing it for further modifications.
Shinra's expression gradually stiffened.
Without saying a word, he pulled back the remaining sheets.
Another body.
Then another.
Then another.
Dozens of corpses occupied the chamber.
Men.
Women.
Children.
Every single villager from the abandoned settlement had been transformed into little more than raw materials awaiting processing, some of them had already been partially transformed into wooden puppets.
His sensory field was never wrong.
There truly hadn't been any living humans within six kilometers.
Because none of them were alive anymore.
Shinra slowly exhaled.
After calming down for a moment, the clone's face gradually began losing its color after connecting the dots, 'A puppet user who transforms humans into puppets, uses Chiyo's special poison.'
'Only one missing-nin was infamous for turning human bodies into puppets…'
Unknown to Shinra, he had triggered a fuinjutsu engraved into the last puppet he had touched. The puppet's chest opened, and dozens of senbons shot through the clone, instantly destroying him.
The seals continued activating in rapid succession, as though linked together in a chain reaction, the tunnels connecting to the chambers started collapsing, causing an effect akin to an earthquake leading to a large portion of the desert to fall in height.
The entire team was still in the area and was surprised by the sudden collapse of the land. Hyori and Inumaki climbed out of the sand and looked at Shinra whose face had turned pale.
"So it was a trap after all, did you manage to find the villagers?" The first to speak up was Hyori.
Shinra looked at both of them and said clearly, "The mission is a failure. The villagers were all killed— we will return to the village immediately, the enemy isn't someone we can handle."
"No way, if we return without completing the mission we won't be able to participate in the Chūnin exams," Hyori replied almost immediately.
Maybe it was due to fear, but for the first time in this world, Shinra had finally snapped. "Are you stupid?! I told you all the kidnapped villagers were killed, there is no way to complete the mission. If you want to hunt an S-rank missing-nin then you can do so yourself, I am heading back to Konoha."
Shinra turned around to return to the village.
"An S-rank?" Hyori was shocked to the core. S-rank shinobi are the highest level of strength in the shinobi world, if they are truly dealing with such a person then death is inevitable.
"We can't leave without Yogi-sensei." Inumaki who was silent voiced out.
Shinra stopped in his tracks and looked at the desert in front of him, if he were to be asked about whom had supported him the most in his path as a shinobi, his answer would undoubtedly be Yamanaka Yogi.
There is a chance that if he stays to look for Yogi, they would all die. But if he abandoned Yogi now, he knew he would regret it for the rest of his life.