The next morning, the sun shone on the residence.
Shintaro and the others were ready, with Kosuke carrying an iron pot on his back, as they might have to sleep in the open for the next few days.
Shintaro straightened his forehead protector and led the group to officially depart.
Heading west, crossing mountains and ridges.
The farther west they went, the sparser the vegetation in the mountains became, changing from dense forests to low shrubs.
Along the way, some of them pretended to look for traces of the rebellious ninja from Tanigakure Village and asked for directions in several villages.
Finally, they heard from a woodcutter that he saw two people dressed like those in the intelligence map walking west.
This was precisely the direction Shintaro and the others were headed, so he stopped wasting time on the road and continued westward.
However, this made him consider a possibility, which was that Sunagakure Village might not be aware of the movements of the two rebellious ninja, but they just didn't dare look west for fear of provoking the ninja from Sunagakure Village.
But this didn't matter. Even if the two traitorous ninja were in the territory of the Sunagakure ninja, Shintaro had a reason to destroy them and could also openly gather information about Sunagakure Village.
Walking until dusk, Shintaro signaled to the group to stop and said, "We will camp near here tonight and continue our journey tomorrow. Otherwise, we will enter the territory of the Sunagakure ninja the day after tomorrow after receiving the mission."
Hayama thought this made perfect sense, so he stopped and began looking for a suitable place to stay.
Kosuke took out the iron pot and said, "Then I'll remain responsible for tonight's dinner."
"I happened to buy some ingredients from the village along the way today."
Duy took the initiative to help by making a simple stone stove on the ground.
Shintaro touched his chin and said, "The ingredients don't include meat, so it's useless. Leave the meat to me tonight."
After saying that, he turned and ran towards the mountain.
It was getting dark.
Hayama found a sheltered cave as a place to stay.
Duy set up the stone stove and grill outside the cave.
Kosuke used the knife on his waist to carve out four pairs of wooden bowls and chopsticks, and prepared the pot to boil water and put the other processed ingredients into the pot to cook.
At this moment, the three of them looked ahead.
"Captain Shintaro, you..." Hayama was a little surprised, because at this moment, Shintaro was carrying a large prey on his back.
With dark fur, a fat and strong body, and a long snout, it looked like a wild boar weighing two to three hundred pounds.
A kunai was stuck in one of the wild boar's eyes, deeply embedded.
Shintaro had just finished hunting and was in a good mood. He put the wild boar on the ground and said, "Tonight is a feast."
Kosuke raised his knife and stepped forward to inspect it. While holding the wild boar, he praised, "This hunting technique is amazing. There's not even a single wound on the surface of the wild boar. Just this intact wild boar skin can be sold for quite a bit of money."
Shintaro responded matter-of-factly, "It seems my skills are nothing new."
Kosuke skillfully performed a series of actions, bleeding, gutting, dividing, and cutting the meat all at once.
Soon, the pieces of meat were put into the pot to boil together with the ingredients in the pot.
The other parts were skewered and grilled on the barbecue, and the four pig legs were marinated with seasoning and then roasted.
For a moment, the strong aroma of food filled the entire area.
At this moment, Shintaro said, "Hayama, there are some uninvited guests at six o'clock. Go handle them."
Upon hearing this, Hayama immediately held the long sword at his waist with the back of his hand.
He stood up and carefully examined the movements in that direction. Sure enough, he noticed something unusual and admired Shintaro even more in his heart.
At this moment, in the bushes tens of meters behind Shintaro, several men were crouching and peeking at Shintaro and the others.
"Damn, it smells so good!"
"Aniki, let's rob them. I'm starving!"
The man called Aniki said with a serious face, "Ordinary people wouldn't stay in the mountains at night. Be careful; if there are other ninja, you'll be in trouble!"
"Aniki, look! That guy is standing up!"
"Not good, let's quickly—" Aniki was about to tell his brothers to flee.
At this moment, along with a burst of falling leaves from the sky, a voice was heard: "Now that you're here, don't leave."
Hayama suddenly appeared beside them.
Several people were frightened and drew their weapons to slash at Hayama.
A cold light flashed in Hayama's eyes, and he dodged and struck with several sword movements. Bloody mouths appeared on several people's hands, severing their tendons.
Hayama then dragged several people over to Shintaro.
Shintaro said lightly, "Just leave two of them alive."
He was fully aware that the people in front of him were all evildoers, so he felt no psychological burden when killing them.
Several people wailed and begged for mercy, but they were executed by Hayama until only two were left.
Kosuke looked normal and kept cooking as if nothing had happened, but Duy seemed a bit uncomfortable but said nothing.
This showed the difference between them. Although Shintaro and Hayama were young, they were both elites in the village, whereas Kosuke was an old-school ninja who could perform tasks alongside the Hokage.
Only Duy had been involved in low-level Genin missions, so he might not be familiar with such things.
The two surviving people were frightened, and Shintaro revealed all the information with just ordinary questioning.
It turned out that these people were bandits from around the area. They usually hung out in the village and relied on robbery to meet the daily needs of the bandit village.
However, a few days ago, a group of ninja from Sunagakure Village came and forcibly occupied their cabin.
The bandits fought back but were slaughtered until only a few escaped.
They had just seen Shintaro and the others cooking on the mountain and approached because of the aroma of the food.
When they were about to take action, Hayama took care of everything by himself.
The information from the two people could basically be confirmed as true by comparing their stories with each other.
Shintaro then asked specific questions about the specific location of the bandits' camp, the characteristics, and the number of those ninja, and then signaled Hayama to deal with the two people as well.
After Hayama neatly handled them, he dug a big hole in the ground, threw all the bandits' bodies in, and buried them.
After finishing all this, Kosuke's cooking was almost done, but the grill beside him was still roasting the pig legs.
The four of them sat around and enjoyed the meal.
Kosuke could always use simple ingredients and seasonings to make delicious dishes, which was indeed a great skill.
Shintaro was drinking pork and vegetable soup and eating barbecue when Kosuke said, "From the description of these two bandits, the two Tanigakure Village rebels should have defected to Sunagakure Village. How do we proceed?"
Shintaro smiled and replied, "Isn't this exactly what we wanted?"