"Hey, hey, tell me this—we're really going to fight that guy Uchiha Chizumi?"
"Everyone should've heard by now, right?"
"That guy overturned all of Kirigakure by himself, and then killed tens of thousands of people in the Land of Water."
"Is the Akatsuki supposed to be some kind of righteous organization?"
"If we run into a guy like that, shouldn't we be trying to recruit him instead of kill him?"
"And most importantly—are we actually a match for that monster?"
Hidan, who had only joined the Akatsuki not long ago, kept chattering the whole way there. He had joined the organization to spread the glory of Jashin and offer sacrifices to his great god.
But he had barely joined, and already he was being dragged into a fight with someone this dangerous?
"Shut up."
If he could, Kakuzu really wanted to sew Hidan's mouth shut.
He had already accepted Hidan as his partner in their so-called immortal duo, but Kakuzu clearly still hadn't adapted to Hidan's nonstop rambling.
As far as Kakuzu was concerned, he had been looking forward to this job for a long time.
It wasn't just that the Land of Earth was paying generously—the underground bounty on Uchiha Chizumi kept climbing like it had no ceiling.
Especially after the news from the Land of Water spread on a massive scale, practically every noble started pouring money into the underground bounty exchange. In an absurdly short time, the price on Uchiha Chizumi's head shot up to 1.7 billion.
That was 1.7 billion!
Kakuzu swore he had never seen that much money in his life. And if he killed Uchiha Chizumi, he'd get paid three times over: the Land of Earth's money, the underground bounty money, and Koharu Utatane's life savings.
Just the money from the Land of Earth and the underground bounty office alone added up to a full 2 billion. At this point, anyone who tried to stop Kakuzu from killing Uchiha Chizumi was going to make the old man genuinely angry.
"If I turned him into a puppet, that would probably be very interesting."
Sasori spoke softly.
His puppet technique could preserve the kekkei genkai a human puppet had possessed in life. It was precisely because of those experiments with human puppets that he had killed Sunagakure's Third Kazekage.
But even the Third Kazekage was nothing in front of Uchiha Chizumi.
If Sasori could get Chizumi's corpse, he felt he could raise puppet techniques to an utterly unimaginable level.
Never mind whether the strength would really come from Uchiha Chizumi or from puppet mastery—you tell me, if Sasori actually turned Uchiha Chizumi into a human puppet, who would be the one controlling him?
"Don't underestimate him. This is very likely going to be a hard fight."
Konan warned the group of walking disasters in a low voice.
She still thought the Akatsuki really had no need to fight Uchiha Chizumi to the death. After all, weren't they all striving for peace in the shinobi world in their own ways?
But Nagato had already made his decision, and Konan wasn't going to oppose him.
She was just worried about Nagato's body. Even controlling the Deva Path of Pain placed a heavy burden on him, and if he had to fight on top of that, the strain would only get worse.
Nagato was already half-crippled. If the battle got too intense and he ended up dying by accident, Konan truly wouldn't know where to begin grieving.
"I will act."
"No matter how strong he is, he amounts to nothing before a god."
Nagato spoke through Pain with full confidence.
To deal with Uchiha Chizumi, Nagato had even gathered the full Six Paths this time. The only slight regret was that the Six Paths still didn't include a loli path...
"A god?"
"The only true god is the great Lord Jashin!"
Hidan, still new to the Akatsuki, argued back on the spot. He absolutely did not consider Pain a god—at most, just a strong guy.
"Word came in from Tobi."
"The route we set the ambush on is correct. Uchiha Chizumi should arrive here in about half an hour."
"But the odds of a true ambush succeeding are low. Based on the intelligence we have, Uchiha Chizumi's sensory abilities are extremely strong. He'll most likely notice us, so prepare for a full fight."
Konan spoke again.
She actually had some confidence in this battle.
According to the plan the Akatsuki had made internally, Kakuzu, Sasori, and Konan herself would strike first. Their goal was to get Uchiha Chizumi's blood and hand it over to Hidan.
As long as Hidan got Chizumi's blood, Konan was confident Chizumi would die for sure.
People die when they're killed—except Hidan. And Kakuzu too, I guess. But Uchiha Chizumi shouldn't be an exception, right?
"The paper bombs are all planted."
"When he passes through here, all 1 billion paper bombs will go off at once."
"Though I still have a question. If the Akatsuki has this many paper bombs, why are we even bothering to make money the hard way?"
"Why not just sell paper bombs?"
Kakuzu looked at Konan.
Before, he had thought she was just a pretty ornament—fine, maybe a strong ornament, but still. Then Konan casually brought out 1 billion paper bombs, and that completely shattered his worldview.
To put it bluntly, a whole shinobi war would use about that many paper bombs. And Konan had just pulled out enough to support an entire war in one go. What kind of absurdly rich woman was this?
"No. My paper bombs only have about one-third the blast power of normal ones. So even though it's 1 billion paper bombs, the real explosion is only equivalent to a little over 300 million normal paper bombs."
"And because my paper bombs only have one-third the normal explosive output, they don't sell well on the market."
Konan clearly had secretly tried selling them before. Judging by how familiar she sounded with the issue, it was probably exactly like she said—hardly anyone wanted them.
And Konan happened to be the type who liked stockpiling paper bombs whenever she had nothing better to do, so a mere 1 billion was just pocket change from her overall stash.
"The equivalent of 300 million paper bombs is still more than enough. It might just blow him to death outright."
Kakuzu was in a fantastic mood. In his entire life, he had never fought such a well-funded battle before. He didn't even know what losing was supposed to look like.
And this was 1 billion paper bombs. Sure, the quality was lower, but even discounted, it was still worth 300 million standard paper bombs. If Kakuzu had had that many back when he fought Hashirama, he felt like he might actually have been able to blow Senju Hashirama to death.
"He's here!"
Just as Pain and the others were talking, a White Zetsu popped out of the ground to deliver the report.
Really, it wasn't even necessary. The moment Pain set up the ambush, a light rain had already begun to fall across the area. This whole region was already under the coverage of Pain's Rain Tiger at Will technique.
"There's chakra in the rain…"
"Nagato—or rather, Pain—has come out of the Land of Rain?"
"And judging by this setup… he's here to kill me!"