allendalepharm Chapter 384 Walking Posture
Chapter 384 Walking Posture
Chapter 384 Walking Posture
He couldn't handle a large force; he didn't have that many troops. But he could take down small squads of three to five men. He had White Zetsu, underground fortifications, and the advantage of terrain. Three to five people going in was like falling into a funnel—it got narrower and deeper, and by the time you realized something was wrong, there was no turning back.
Neji narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Li is the bait."
"That's right," Chi Quan said. "Capturing Lee wasn't about killing him, it was about luring us there. Kabuto didn't want Lee's life, he wanted Konoha to send someone to rescue him. As long as they sent someone, whether they came back or not, he had already won. If they came back, he could observe our abilities, tactics, and teamwork patterns in the process. If they didn't come back, he would have another experimental subject—Lee's body contained the cellular memories of the Eight Gates, which were more valuable research material to Kabuto than White Zetsu."
Kai clenched his fists. So tightly that his knuckles turned white, his nails dug into his flesh, and blood seeped from between his fingers, dripping onto the ground. He felt no pain, or perhaps he felt it but didn't care. He looked at Chi Quan, his eyes even more bloodshot than before, but not from anxiety, but from anger.
"You've said so much," Kai's voice was low, almost as if it came from underground, "just to say, we can't go?"
"No," Chi Quan said. "I'm saying all this because we have to go. But we can't go the way he wants."
We can't send a small team of three to five people from Konoha, along the straightest route to the Land of Rice Fields, and plunge headlong into his funnel. That's what he wants to see. What we need to do is, in turn, let him see what he wants to see, but do not do what he wants us to do.”
Kai loosened his fist, looked at his bleeding palm, and wiped it with the sleeve of his bodysuit. The blood smeared onto the green fabric, turning into a blackish color, like an overripe mulberry being crushed and smeared on it.
"What do you mean?"
Chi Quan walked to the middle of the yard, squatted down, and drew on the ground with his finger. The ground was dirt, and it had rained a few days ago, so the soil was still a little damp, leaving clear marks when he ran his finger across it. He first drew a large circle and then placed a dot in the center of the circle.
"This is Konoha." He wrote the character "木" (wood) on the dot.
Then, three lines were drawn north of Konoha. The lines were drawn very straight, but at a certain place they suddenly turned a corner, as if they were blocked by something, and then split into two, one going east and the other going west.
"This is the Land of Fields." He drew a small square at the end of the line. "This is Kabuto's base. It's located northeast of Chiba Valley, eighty meters underground. There are three exits: north, south, and east. There's none to the west."
Then he drew a winding road between Konoha and the Land of Rice Fields, like a snake crawling across the ground. He marked the road with three small circles labeled "1", "2", and "3".
"It takes two days to travel from Konoha to Chiba Valley at a normal pace. If we march quickly, it will take a day and a half. If we sprint at full speed without stopping, it will take a day. But no matter which way we go, we will have to pass through these three places." Izumi pointed to three small circles in turn. "This is the valley, this is the mine, and this is the abandoned village. The valley is the only way through. There are cliffs on both sides, and only a passage less than two meters wide in the middle. If someone ambushes us above the valley, those below will be trapped. The mine has many abandoned mine tunnels, which are interconnected underground. Kabuto's White Zetsu can use the mine tunnels to bypass the valley and flank us from behind. The abandoned village is the most open, with no cover, making it the most comfortable place to run. But if Kabuto has placed White Zetsu there, we will be surrounded in the open area with no cover available."
Kai squatted down and looked at the map on the ground.
How do you know so much?
"Because I walked this road half a month ago," Chi Quan said. "I passed through river valleys, mines, and abandoned villages."
There were White Zetsu footprints on the cliffs of the valley, not just one, but a group. The mine tunnels showed signs of human excavation, not by miners, but by someone who had recently widened them, the widening pointing towards the valley. Under every house in the abandoned village were White Zetsu; they didn't move when I passed by, but I could sense them.
Neji squatted down and traced the path drawn by the pond with his finger.
"In other words, Kabuto has placed something at every point along this path. He's been watching us from the moment we left Konoha."
"Yes." Chi Quan stood up, patted the dirt off his hands, "So we can't take this road."
He drew a new line east of Konoha. This line made a large loop, first going east, then north, then west, and finally turning towards Pheasant Valley. The route was at least twice as long as the previous winding road, and it had more obstacles drawn on it—rivers, mountains, swamps, and a large forest.
"Take this route. First, head east to the coastline, then north along the coastline, bypassing the mines, and enter the Land of Rice Fields from the east. This route is almost twice as long, but Kabuto won't deploy troops there because he didn't expect anyone to take this route. This route is the most difficult; you have to cross a mountain, a river, traverse a swamp, and then cross another mountain before you can reach Chiba Valley. But there's one advantage: Kabuto can't see us."
Kai stood up, looked at the two routes drawn by Chi Quan, and then at his still bleeding palm. He clenched his fist, then loosened it, clenched it again, and loosened it again, letting the blood flow faster—not to harm himself, but to make the wound scab over quickly.
"How long will it take to walk that far?"
"Three days," Chi Quan said. "If we run at full speed, it'll take two and a half days. But Li can't wait that long."
"So we still have to take the shortcut," Kai said.
"No." Izumi drew another small dot next to the map, not far from Konoha, located slightly west of Konoha and the Land of Rice Fields. "There's a place here that Kabuto doesn't know about. Or rather, he doesn't think anyone knows about it. I discovered it by chance when I went to the Land of Rice Fields last time. There's an underground river at the bottom of the valley, flowing north, passing under the mine, and all the way to the vicinity of Chiba Valley. The water level in the underground river isn't high; an adult can walk through it while bending over, but in some places you have to climb. But the water in the underground river is alive; there's air in it, so you won't suffocate. By going through the underground river, you bypass the valley section. After coming out of the underground river, we're already north of the mine, less than fifteen li from Chiba Valley."
Everyone stared at the small dot on the ground.
"Where is the entrance to the underground river?" Neji asked.
Chi Quan drew an X on the location of the valley with his finger, and then put a dot next to the X.
"On the east side of the valley stands a large oak tree with its roots exposed. There's a narrow crevice between the roots and the rock face, so narrow that you have to squeeze in sideways. After going in, walk down about twenty meters, and you'll hear the sound of water. The entrance to the underground river is mostly blocked by a large rock, leaving only a gap less than half a meter high. Water flows out from that gap, making a soft, gurgling sound, like someone taking a bath in a distant bathroom. If you don't listen carefully, you might mistake it for the wind."
Kai looked at the lines and dots that Chi Quan had drawn on the ground again. His eyes scanned them while his mind raced, like an old-fashioned calculator inputting all the information, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, finally arriving at a result. That result wasn't a number, but an expression—his brows went from tightly furrowed to slightly furrowed, then from slightly furrowed to relaxed, and from relaxed to not relaxed, but determined.
"Go and gather the men," Kai said. "Not too many, just the best. Neji, Tenten, me, and Ikezumi. Four people. No more than that, or we'll be too conspicuous. Hanabi and Yamato, wait for news in the village. If we don't hear from you in three days, then you set off again, taking the long road to the east with the main force."
Hanabi opened her mouth as if to say something, but Kai glanced at her and she closed her mouth again.
Tian Tian took the crumpled note back from Kai and looked at it again. The handwriting on the note was still the same, crooked and messy, like a child's writing. But this time, she noticed a detail she hadn't noticed before—the last stroke of the character "找" (find) was drawn out very long, unnaturally long, as if the writer's finger had suddenly trembled when writing the last stroke, causing the pen tip to extend beyond the paper, leaving an extra mark.
I stared at that extra mark for three seconds every day.
Then she did something that no one understood: she brought the note to her lips, stuck out her tongue, and gently licked the extra pen mark.
"What are you doing?" Neji frowned.
Tian Tian didn't answer. She retracted her tongue, pursed her lips, and then said something in a low voice, but everyone heard it.
"It's blood."
Everyone fell silent.
"It's not human blood," Tian Tian said, her voice still not loud, but very steady, as if she were stating something very certain. "It's White Zetsu's blood. White Zetsu's blood doesn't smell rusty; it's bitter, like the astringency of persimmons. Last time I was in Iwami Village, Captain Hikaru brought back a small piece of White Zetsu's skin tissue, and I smelled it—that's the smell. The dragging pen marks on the note aren't ink; they're White Zetsu's blood. Someone used White Zetsu's blood as ink to write this note."
Kai took the note from Tian Tian's hand and brought it to his nose to smell it.
"I didn't smell any astringency."
"Because you're not a medical ninja," Tenten said. "Medical ninjas have different noses than others. We've smelled all sorts of human blood, animal blood, and—things that aren't blood but look like blood—in hospitals. White Zetsu's blood is the most special. It's not fishy, not sweet, not sour, not salty; it's bitter. Not the kind of bitterness that medicine has, but the kind of bitterness that plants have. Like the taste left in your mouth after you've chewed a handful of grass."
Kai returned the note to her.
"In other words, the one who kidnapped Li wasn't human, but a White Zetsu. Or perhaps a White Zetsu was working for some human."
Chi Quan walked in from the courtyard gate and stood less than a step away from Kai. Chi Quan was about half a head taller than Kai, but he lowered his head slightly and looked into Kai's eyes.
"Kabuto," Chi Quan said, "Only he knows how to write with White Zetsu's blood. Because there's no other ink in his lab besides White Zetsu's blood. He won't go out of his way to find a bottle of ink just to write a note, and neither will the people around him. To them, White Zetsu's blood is like tap water to us; you just turn on the tap and there it is."
Kai took a deep breath.
"Set off."
The four of them didn't go through the main gate of Konoha. The main gate was too conspicuous; the gatekeepers would register them, and the record would be seen by the Anbu. Izumi wasn't sure if there were people in the Anbu, but he didn't want to take the risk. They exited through a drainage outlet on the north side of the village. The outlet was very narrow, requiring one to bend over to squeeze through. Outside was a dry ditch, its bottom full of fallen leaves and mud, soft and slippery, where one's feet would sink half an inch.
Beyond the irrigation ditch lay a wasteland. The wasteland was overgrown with foxtail grass, withered but not fallen, standing upright like a brown forest. Upon closer inspection, each blade of grass was topped with a tiny tuft of fuzzy seeds. When the wind blew, those seeds would fly up like a flock of tiny, light, almost invisible butterflies, drifting in the air.
It spun around, rose up, and then I don't know where it landed.
Dawn was approaching, but the sun had not yet risen. On the eastern horizon, there was a bright, golden band of light, above which was a light blue sky, above which was dark blue, and above that, inky blue. There were also stars, sparse and scattered, like a few embers about to go out, emitting a faint, fading light in the last darkness.
Chi Quan walked at the front. His strides were neither too long nor too short, his pace neither too fast nor too slow, the intervals between each step almost equal, like a wound-up clock, perfectly precise, without the slightest deviation. His left hand hung at his side, the bandage appearing grayish-white in the morning light, devoid of blood, indicating the wound was nearly healed. However, the bandage remained, not to secure the wound, but to conceal its healing progress from others. This was a habit of his—to prevent anyone from fully understanding his physical condition, whether enemy or comrade.
Kai walked two steps to Chi Quan's right. His strides were longer and faster than Chi Quan's, but he deliberately controlled himself, preventing himself from walking ahead of Chi Quan. He wasn't being polite; he was observing. He was observing Chi Quan's walking posture, the rhythm of Chi Quan's breathing, every turn of Chi Quan's head, every blink, and every slight movement of his fingers.
Kai was a physical expert; to him, a person's gait could reveal more than a medical record. He observed in Chi Quan's walk that the muscles in his left leg were tighter than his right, because he was bearing more weight on his left leg—meaning his right leg was injured, but he was concealing it. It wasn't intentional; he was using his left leg to bear more weight, making his right leg appear normal. But at the very moment he took his right step, there was an extremely subtle pause in his toes, as fast as lightning, so fast most people wouldn't see it. But Kai saw it.