Seeing the shapely girl ten meters in front of him, Teizawa was genuinely a little delighted.
He hadn't expected Ōnoki that old bastard to have this much nerve.
To actually send out his own granddaughter.
In truth, the moment Iwagakure started slipping into the camp, Teizawa had already sensed it.
But Kurotsuchi showing up was still an unexpected bonus.
It also confirmed his guess.
The one coveting his little pile of wealth…
Was, sure enough, Ōnoki that crafty old man.
"You are…?"
Kurotsuchi sized Teizawa up from head to toe and spoke in a sweet, teasing voice.
"You're the new Kazekage of Sunagakure?"
"Not bad-looking. Kinda like a pretty boy."
"Pretty boy?" Teizawa bared his teeth in a grin. "I'm not a pretty boy. I'm a wild wolf. Wanna try me?"
"Careful. Something's off!"
Bunmatsu stared at the man warily.
Too calm.
This guy was surrounded by Stone shinobi. The Sand shinobi at his side had already been completely wiped out.
Yet he didn't look panicked at all.
Whoosh, whoosh—
A figure appeared behind Bunmatsu, speaking at high speed.
"Sir, the boxes on the wagons are all empty."
"What?" Bunmatsu and Kurotsuchi both blurted out, faces changing.
"Empty?" Kurotsuchi's brows drew tight. "How is that possible? According to the intel, that twenty-three billion is definitely packed in those crates."
"We checked one by one. Every box on every wagon is empty," the Iwa shinobi hurried to explain.
"Surprised? Didn't see that coming?" Teizawa laughed loudly when he saw Kurotsuchi's expression turn ugly.
"Bastard. You knew we were going to raid the camp?" Kurotsuchi snapped, glaring at him.
"More or less. I mean, I didn't want you Iwa shinobi to all be… big-chested and empty-headed…"
He'd barely finished before he added awkwardly, "Sorry, my bad. You don't even have a chest. A-cup, no thanks."
"You…" Kurotsuchi's face twitched.
What was wrong with this guy's mouth? It was nonstop.
She really wanted to rip his lips off.
Bunmatsu stayed composed, his voice low and heavy.
"So you left an ambush on the perimeter, planning to surround us?"
"Maybe." Teizawa shrugged.
"I'll just say this: your plan's nice, but…"
Bunmatsu waved, signaling the Iwa shinobi to close in. "But you've underestimated us."
"We've already dealt with nearly half the Sand shinobi, and you, the Kazekage, are trapped right here."
"Even if the rest of them surround us, what can they do?"
"Should I call you naive… or just young?"
"Sunagakure really is getting worse with every generation."
Teizawa rolled his eyes. "Dumbass, did you snorted glue as a kid?"
"What?"
"Why are you wasting words with him? Take him down and interrogate him properly. Find out where the money is!" Kurotsuchi barked, already forming seals.
Teizawa's expression finally turned serious. "Wait."
When the Iwa shinobi didn't slow, Teizawa sighed.
"You really think you've already 'dealt with half' the Sand shinobi?"
As he spoke, the firelight cast sharp shadows across his face, making his expression look even more bewitching, almost wicked.
"What do you mean?" Bunmatsu froze, a bad feeling creeping up his spine.
Teizawa suddenly pointed past them and grinned.
"By the Sand shinobi you 'dealt with,' you mean them, right?"
Bunmatsu, Kurotsuchi, and the rest of the Stone shinobi all reflexively turned.
The Sand shinobi who'd been lying there dead as dead could be were twitching, then crawling back up in grotesque poses.
They looked exactly like the walking dead.
Blood still streamed from their wounds.
And yet it didn't hinder them at all.
"Damn it, what the hell is that?"
"They won't die! Why won't these Sand shinobi die?"
"Fall back! This is witchcraft…"
Alarmed shouts erupted behind them.
"This is…" Bunmatsu's pupils snapped wide.
A thought flashed through him immediately.
These corpses getting back up… were they the Sand shinobi they'd just killed?
Or were they bodies disguised as Sand shinobi from the start?
If it was the latter…
A cold, prickling dread crawled over his skin.
And he wasn't the only one.
Almost every Iwa shinobi had the same thought.
Did we kill Sand shinobi?
Or were they corpses from the beginning?
No one was going to give them an answer.
Bunmatsu was a veteran, though.
He forced himself to think, then suddenly blurted, "You made this many human puppets? Is Sunagakure insane?!"
In past wars with Sunagakure, he'd seen deranged puppetmasters refine corpses into human puppets.
The methods were bloody and brutal enough to turn your stomach.
The actual combat power wasn't that impressive.
It was just eerie. It looked terrifying, so it rattled people.
Later, he'd heard it was so inhumane that human puppets had become taboo in Sunagakure, forbidden outright.
But as his thoughts churned, Bunmatsu realized something else.
"No… I don't sense chakra threads. And there's no way you could control this many bodies at once…"
Kurotsuchi forced down her unease and shouted, "Doesn't matter what kind of demon trick this is. Grab him first!"
"Right. Whatever this is, once we control you, Kazekage, it's all over," another Iwa shinobi snarled.
Stone shinobi chakra began gathering in their hands.
All it would take was an instant—
And a barrage of powerful Earth Release would surge in together, locking Teizawa down completely.
"You guys… you really are underestimating me."
Teizawa let out a sudden sigh and tipped his head up toward the sky.
"If all I had were human puppets, how would I ever swallow up greedy trash like you?"
"Honestly, I've only been running my mouth this long to buy time."
"Doton: Doharyū (Earth Release: Earth Wave Flow)!"
But at that moment, Kurotsuchi couldn't hold back and struck first.
A violent shockwave surged up from the ground.
In the blink of an eye, it swallowed Teizawa.
"Tch, tch, tch. Nasty woman. You're coming at me now, but later I'm going to investigate you real thoroughly," Teizawa tossed out.
Then—boom—
His body vanished beneath Kurotsuchi's jutsu and exploded into a cloud of yellow sand.
"This…" Bunmatsu's body, mid-lunge, jerked to a stop. His face went blank. "A sand clone?"
His stomach sank.
He was more certain than ever: this was a setup.
"Everyone, don't get tangled up with those human puppets. Withdraw from the canyon immediately—"
He didn't finish.
A voice screamed from somewhere nearby:
"Above—above us—there's… someone!"
Someone above?
Bunmatsu remembered: Teizawa had looked upward too.
In that instant, not just Bunmatsu but even Kurotsuchi and every Iwa shinobi present snapped their heads up.
In the dim night sky…
A figure in a black onmyō-style robe was floating in midair.
It was Teizawa, the same grinning bastard from a moment ago.
"W-what is he doing?" Kurotsuchi sounded genuinely baffled.
Because Teizawa's movements were strange.
He spread his arms wide to either side, hands shaped like claws, as if he meant to grab the steep mountains flanking the canyon and pull them in.
"Trash."
A voice like a temple bell boomed across the sky.
"Ever been hit with a mountain?"
And then, before Bunmatsu, Kurotsuchi, and the rest of the Stone shinobi's eyes—
The mountain moved.
(End of Chapter)
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