Chapter 270: Jashin Cult
The Land of Hot Water, a seemingly powerful organization capable of allowing people to see the deceased, and also luring young girls. Connecting these keywords, Ino sighed inwardly; the probability of a battle ensuing was over ninety percent.
Originally, she thought she only had one "pig teammate" (a humorous term for a burdensome teammate, referring to Tonton). Now she found two more pigs.
"Stick close to me later, don't run off."
Sakura, Tonton, and Pakkun all nodded obediently.
After waiting for a while, once the number of people reached twenty, a rather friendly-looking fat man gestured for the young girls to follow him.
The other party wasn't hiding very deeply. Ino could tell at a glance; this was a ninja who could use chakra.
"Sigh," she sighed softly.
Tonton looked at her strangely.
Ino said softly, "I just feel that Lady Tsunade will most likely be disappointed again this time. No, she doesn't even know about this. This is just me and Shizune-neechan messing around. It's really troublesome. These people look problematic. Do you think it's appropriate for me to call Shizune over now?"
Tonton's intelligence was comparable to that of a seven or eight-year-old child; it couldn't understand overly complex things and looked at Ino with confusion.
Ino didn't explain further. Forget it. Big white-legged senior apprentice's medical ninjutsu is top-notch in the world, but her combat ability? It can only be described as so-so.
It's better for me, a medical-nin with outstanding sensory abilities, to eradicate this evil cult!
She pretended not to know Sakura, held her pet pig, and chatted with the other young girls.
The girls didn't talk much, but she still managed to gather a lot of information. Many of these girls were not from the Land of Hot Water.
The Kaminarimon train factory hadn't even been built yet. Nowadays, Daimyo traveled by ox-cart, and commoners wanting to travel far basically had to rely on walking. Information spread extremely slowly. Many places were in a state where "the sounds of chickens and dogs are heard by each other, but people die of old age without ever having visited one another." Spreading news of the Revival Hot Spring to "foreign countries" by word of mouth was very difficult.
For these people to let "foreign girls" know about the Revival Hot Spring without alerting the local ninja, the difficulty of spreading the information had risen another level.
This organization was larger and more secretive than expected.
Twenty young girls entered an underground cavern. The temperature here was relatively high, and steam occasionally billowed from cracks in the walls.
The girls showed obvious signs of panic. The middle-aged fat man leading the group was very experienced. In the tone of someone who had been through it all, he recounted what he had seen and heard at the Revival Hot Spring, and the joy and excitement of many young girls upon seeing their relatives. In the blink of an eye, he told three stories, all particularly warm and touching anecdotes, a veritable walking storybook.
The girls' emotions were appeased.
The further Ino went in, the more uneasy she became. Something inside seemed to be watching her through some physically inexplicable perspective. This was the first time she had encountered such a situation; even when she met Sasori and Deidara before, her sensory abilities hadn't issued such warning signals.
This place was more dangerous than she had anticipated.
Everyone entered a passage shrouded in white mist. Ino gave Sakura a look, signaling her to bring up the rear.
Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the deepest part of the underground cavern. There was a football-field-sized open space, fan-shaped, where over a hundred black-robed figures stood.
It was impossible to tell their gender. They were kowtowing and worshipping a huge rock inscribed with several bizarre lines.
At first glance, the lines on the boulder seemed to form a triangle. But upon closer inspection, the edges of this triangle's lines were extremely rough. If one stared for two more seconds, it seemed to change into other shapes – sometimes circular, sometimes rectangular, but mostly irregular figures.
Ino took two steps closer, wanting a clearer look, but was stopped by a black-robed person.
A figure who appeared to be a leader emerged from the black-robed people. He shouted loudly, telling the young girls to praise the true god with him. Only the true god had the power to break the boundary between life and death, allowing them to see the deceased.
True god? More like an evil god!
Ino believed these people were part of the Jashin cult that Hidan followed. The difference was that Hidan had "graduated," while these people seemed to be trying to create a second Hidan through blood sacrifices.
She really disliked this place. This evil god was different from the Reaper Death God. Although the Reaper Death God "bro" also sold himself to work for the Uzumaki clan, He still maintained a basic level of dignity and looked like a big shot. This one here? Ino could only feel an omnipresent madness. Was this thing scattered by the Otsutsuki clan and then re-condensed?
"The true god is omnipotent! The true god..." The cult leader recited prayers in a fanatical tone. He had just begun when Ino interrupted him.
"I'm sorry, Uncle! I want to see my deceased older brother. Oh, and it would be great if I could see my father. Can you do that? Can you?" She spoke incoherently, firing off a barrage of questions, but her actual attention was on the huge rock.
The cult leader looked at his subordinates. How do you people do things? Is this girl holding a pig an idiot? She hasn't sensed our strong evil cult atmosphere at all, and she's not scared in the slightest?
Hidan paid great attention to rituals. For this Jashin cult, rituals were the source of their power; the ritual absolutely could not go wrong.
Noticing all the girls were looking at him, the cult leader could only brush it off casually.
"Huh? Ah, ah... Yes, yes, as long as you believe with all your heart and soul..."
Before he could finish, Ino interrupted again: "Really? Can you let me see my dad, can I see my grandpa? My grandpa used to grow tea trees in the mountains, he was the best to me!"
You'll see your ancestors! I'll send you down for a reunion in a moment! The cult leader glared at her viciously.
Ino took out a letter and waved it in front of the cult leader: "I have a friend, she's from the Zagrama clan. Her grandfather died at the age of five due to a clan curse, a really miserable death."
Cult leader: "..."
Sakura: "..."
There was too much information in Ino's words. The cult leader was still trying to figure out the connection between her grandfather, the curse, and his church, so he didn't reply immediately.
Ino took two more steps forward, muttering something about "Mojin pearl" and "ghost cave in imaginary space."
These words indeed piqued the cult leader's interest, and he couldn't help but listen to a few more sentences.
This Mojin pearl thing sounds like good stuff. If I could snatch it...
As Ino approached step by step, saying, "She has a friend who is a divinely gifted songstress, and with a membership card, you can listen to the songstress narrate ancient legends," the cult leader realized she was too close to their sacred object. He quickly told her to step back. Ino rapidly formed hand seals, her chakra gathered to its peak, a vast amount of chakra concentrated in her chest and abdomen. Then, applying pressure, she spewed a line of water at the huge rock inscribed with strange patterns.
"Water Release: Water Severing Wave!"
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