"It's just as Mr. Chiyo said..."
"The moment the enemy captures the prey is the best time to launch a sneak attack..."
After a long time, a young man wearing a black ninja suit and with purple facial markings on his face slowly walked to Hideki's head, muttering something.
"It's a pity that a puppeteer like you who comes from a wild background would not know these things, so you lose your life so easily."
Then he pulled a bounty warrant from his pocket, then squatted down and showed it in front of Hideki's head.
"Kimura Hideki, you said you learned a little bit of puppetry, so you can hide from the Sunagakure ninjas in the future, and the village won't make a big fuss to cause trouble for you."
"But you are so reckless that you want to teach puppetry in school. How can the village continue to tolerate your existence?"
"Tsk tsk, a bounty of 30 million ryo, this is a treatment that only the elite among the jonin can possibly get. It seems that the village hates you and your family."
"Whatever. In the end, it's all good for me, Nakamura-sama."
"Let me do the math. A person's head is worth thirty million taels..."
"And although I don't know what the specific function of the shape-shifting black cat puppet is, it should be able to fetch a lot of money just by looking at it..."
"Oh, and here's the last thing this guy found..."
Nakamura carefully looked at Hideki's head, which still had a smile on it.
That piece of wood must be something good, as it could have made Hideki Kimura so excited before his death.
However, Nakamura did not immediately go to the location of Hideki's body. Instead, he controlled his mantis-shaped puppet and began to swing the sickles on his front limbs, dismembering Hideki's body beyond recognition...
Suddenly, blood splashed in the forest again, and the strong smell of blood gradually spread.
The reason why Nakamura did this was not to vent his anger or because he had any special fetish.
In fact, as a puppeteer, he knows that many of his colleagues like to install special devices on their bodies. Once they die, their bodies will turn into deadly traps. Even if they die, they will drag their enemies to hell together.
Of course, normally only the Sand Ninjas who have been living with wind and sand for many years and struggling to survive in a harsh environment would develop such a tough style.
A guy like Kimura Hideki, who is delicate and only learned puppetry through his cleverness, probably doesn't have this realization.
However, Nakamura still remembered the teachings of teacher Chiyo and did not let down his guard.
That's why he would control the puppets to cut the opponent's body into pieces in order to destroy or trigger possible mechanisms and traps.
However, apart from the body's internal organs being spread all over the ground, which attracted many crows to stare at it from the branches, Nakamura did not notice anything unusual about the body.
It seemed that just as he expected, Hideki did not set a death trap on himself.
So Nakamura came to the torn body and began to search for the piece of wood and other useful things.
Soon he found the block of wood because it was still tightly grasped by Hideki's right hand.
"Let me see what makes you so precious."
Nakamura squatted down with a joking look on his face, easily pried open Hideki's palm, and took the block of wood in his hand.
However, the next moment, his expression suddenly changed.
Because after he habitually injected chakra into the wood to investigate, he found that the chakra was completely absorbed into it without any effort!
This also means that the chakra conduction performance of this piece of wood is very excellent.
Even Nakamura, who was born in Sunagakure, rarely saw materials comparable to this, let alone possessed them personally.
Why is there such a rare material here?
Why did Kimura Hideki find this place?
Wait, I remember that this place seems to have entered the Valley of the End...
Could it be...?
In the blink of an eye, countless questions popped up in Nakamura's mind, and it seemed that he was getting closer to the truth.
He even regretted his decision to kill Xiu Shu, and wished Xiu Shu could come back to life and answer all his questions...
However, the next moment, when Nakamura was about to get up and leave, his left foot was suddenly firmly grasped by something, and he could not move!
Caught off guard, Nakamura looked down subconsciously, and was almost frightened to death.
Because at this moment, it was the right hand of the corpse stained with blood that was tightly grasping his calf!
Nani!!!
I was just thinking about it, why did you take it seriously?!
Just when Nakamura was shocked by the situation, a steel needle suddenly popped out from Hideki's right wrist and pierced his captured foot.
Oh no, it's a poison needle!
The stinging pain in his calf and the feeling of being injected with some kind of liquid made Nakamura wake up instantly, and he immediately took correct action like a textbook example.
Hiss!
Along with a flash of cold light, bright red blood spurted out again.
However, this time, Nakamura controlled the puppet to chop off his own injured calf!
The bleeding half of the calf remained in place, while Nakamura and the puppet quickly retreated, as far away from Hideki's body as possible.
During the retreat, Nakamura also took out several antidotes from his ninja tool bag and stuffed them into his mouth to prevent toxins that may have entered his body through the blood.
Then, under the cover of the puppet, he looked back at Hideki's body, his eyes filled with anger, regret and disbelief.
Where is the leisure and joking just now?
"How hateful! How hateful!"
"I didn't expect this unsophisticated puppeteer to be able to create a death trap, and even hide it from me..."
However, before Nakamura could vent his emotions, something unexpected happened again.
The scene was even more bizarre than before, and Nakamura's countless words were stuck in his throat. He could only stare blankly...
On the blood-stained grass, the pieces of Hideki's body that had been cut into pieces actually began to gather in the middle and gradually pieced together their original appearance.
Along with this process, the corpse is gradually lifted vertically like a puppet under the influence of a mysterious force.
Then the head that had originally rolled to the side suddenly flew up and landed squarely on the empty neck of the corpse.
Finally, Hideki held his head with both hands and twisted it left and right to make sure it was not installed crookedly, then he began to stagger towards Nakamura.
Nakamura is going crazy.
The scene before him was truly challenging his worldview and making his sanity level drop sharply.
I just happened to pass through Konoha, happened to receive the village's bounty list, and happened to find the opportunity that Kimura Hideki left the village, so I ended up here.
But could anyone tell him how the guy who had the good fortune to learn puppetry in the wanted order ended up like this!?
Nakamura couldn't even be sure whether the guy in front of him was Hideki Kimura!
Could it be that I was actually under an illusion from the very beginning?
Nakamura quickly performed a technique to dispel the illusion and eliminated this possibility.
Could this be the so-called human puppet?
The strange appearance of Hideki in front of him made Nakamura think of the forbidden technique in the village legend.
Could it be that Hideki Kimura transformed himself into a puppet, so even if he was cut into so many pieces, as long as the core was not damaged, he could be restored to his original state?
However, this idea was quickly rejected by Nakamura.
But this time he did not have a sufficient reason. He just instinctively did not want to believe that the amateur puppeteer whom he despised would master the legendary human puppet technology.
Eliminating these possibilities, there is only one truth left.
That is, this thing is not Kimura Hideki at all!