Kakashi's gaze swept across the group, Obito and the others were all stunned into silence. Finally, his eyes settled on the tent not far away.
"If he wasn't that kind of ninja," Kakashi said quietly, "then he wouldn't have forced Kaede to use a forbidden jutsu… and suffer such severe aftereffects."
Silence fell once again.
No one responded.
Even Shizune didn't know that Kaede had been seriously injured because he used a forbidden technique to kill Elder Chiyo of the Sand.
On this battlefield, Chiyo's name was one that every Konoha ninja knew. She was a pillar of Sunagakure, a powerful ninja whose strength was on par with a Kage!
And such a ninja… had been defeated and killed by Kaede!
This news hit harder than all the previous reports of him killing dozens of enemy ninjas. It left Kurenai and the others in a daze, unable to fully process it.
"Kaede… killed Chiyo…"
Shizune murmured, her mind momentarily adrift.
Kaede had been a student from the same generation as them.
Chiyo, on the other hand, was a renowned and formidable shinobi in the ninja world!
No matter how you looked at it, this kind of event felt unreal, like something from a distant fantasy. It was hard to believe it had truly happened.
Kaede…
Has it really come this far?
…
Inside the tent.
Tsunade continued treating Kaede without pause.
Healing internal chakra network injuries was completely different from healing broken bones or torn muscles. It was more like performing surgery, requiring extreme precision in chakra control, threading it like fine needles to carefully mend each minute detail.
When it came to chakra control on such a microscopic level, only puppet masters and medical-nin could compare. One had to manipulate chakra threads with absolute dexterity, and the other had to refine chakra to perform ultra-precise operations.
The treatment continued from noon all the way until dusk.
Finally—
Tsunade exhaled and slowly raised her hands.
Kaede's chakra network was fully healed, and she had also repaired his torn muscles. Now, he just needed some time to rest and he would recover completely.
Only after completing the treatment did she realize, with some surprise, that she hadn't felt any fear of blood at all. Her full attention had been focused on healing his chakra network, and her hemophobia hadn't affected her in the slightest.
If she had been even slightly affected… the process might not have gone so smoothly.
"You little brat…"
Tsunade looked at Kaede, lying there peacefully with closed eyes, his breathing calm and even, fast asleep. She couldn't help but chuckle and shake her head.
"You actually cured my condition…"
She gazed at the sleeping Kaede, momentarily dazed. Memories of her younger brother Nawaki, who had died in the Second Great Ninja War, surfaced in her mind. After a moment, she snapped out of it, gently closed Kaede's robe, and pulled a blanket over him.
"Shizune!"
Tsunade stood up and called toward the outside of the tent.
Shizune, who had been standing guard outside, immediately entered, looking a little anxious.
"Lady Tsunade! I'm here! How is Kaede?"
"He's fine now."
Tsunade, looking a bit tired, shook her head and said, "Go get me something to eat, and some water."
Hearing that Kaede was safe, Shizune finally breathed a full sigh of relief and quickly responded, "Yes! I've already prepared everything!"
…
Outside the tent.
Obito had left early. Kakashi had also gone to eat. Only Kurenai and Rin were still keeping vigil nearby.
After hearing from Shizune that Kaede was alright, the two of them finally relaxed, their tense nerves easing.
Shizune carried in the prepared food and water and said to them, "Kaede seems to be asleep already. Don't disturb him tonight. You should go rest, too."
Kurenai and Rin both wanted to check in on Kaede, but upon hearing Shizune's words, they looked at each other, hesitated briefly, and then quietly left.
Now that they knew he was safe, they could finally rest at ease.
…
In a hazy dream—
Kaede slowly opened his eyes, feeling dazed. In front of him appeared the illusion of a golden clock.
"…What's this…"
The illusory clock wasn't still, it gave a sudden click, and its hands began to rotate in reverse. His body began to regress rapidly, he turned from a teenager into a child, and then into a baby.
Then, the hands stopped and abruptly spun forward again. His body grew rapidly, infant to child, child to teen, to young man, adult, and finally old age.
Clack!
Suddenly, the clock hands clicked again and everything froze. The entire world seemed to enter a state of complete stillness. Nothing moved, except for his consciousness.
Then, the illusory clock shimmered, and his vision shifted bizarrely. He saw countless shadowy versions of himself overlapping in his view.
These shadows stretched from nearby all the way to the distant sky. The closest ones looked almost identical to him. As the distance increased, the shadows grew smaller, at the farthest edge, one appeared to be an infant.
Click!
The illusion shifted again. The strange vision vanished, and the clock hands resumed a normal clockwise motion. But when they reached the center point, the hands abruptly skipped an entire notch, vanishing momentarily.
The whole world seemed to shake slightly, as if a portion of it had been erased.
Then the dream became increasingly blurry.
Finally, everything faded into darkness.
Kaede slowly opened his eyes. His awareness returned, and he realized nothing about his body had changed.
"…Was that… a dream?"
He glanced around. This clearly wasn't the tent he had been resting in before. Then he noticed someone lying about half a meter to his left, Tsunade, sound asleep.
Further away was another figure, no doubt Shizune. This must be Tsunade's tent.
"Looks like they didn't send me back to my own tent…"
Kaede tried to sit up, but even a slight movement made his body ache with soreness. He winced slightly.
His eyes moved toward the tent's edge. Through a small gap, he could see a few stars in the night sky. It seemed to be the middle of the night now, he must have fallen asleep during the treatment and slept straight through.
Come to think of it—
That dream just now…
Trying to recall the images, Kaede could faintly identify several abilities: time acceleration, time reversal, time stop…
As for the rest, they were a bit too blurry and abstract, not intuitive enough to clearly interpret. He could only make some vague guesses.
Time clones?
Time jump?
Time deletion?
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