Outside the small town, a team of figures arrived…
One of the ninja, wearing a dog mask, was accompanied by a massive black hound.
The black dog sniffed at the ground, then nodded to its master. The dog-masked ninja exchanged a few words with his canine partner before producing a withered, severed arm and holding it out again.
The hound sniffed it, then let out a low growl in the direction of the town.
The dog-masked ninja stood up and spoke in a low voice to his squad leader. "Captain, it's confirmed. The target is in the town."
The squad leader, who wore a cat mask, nodded and unwrapped the bandages from his purple-tinged arm…
At night, the desert sky was exceptionally bright, filled with countless stars and a very round moon.
Uchiha Nagi felt a persistent sense of unease. He used Beast Breathing to scan his surroundings but detected no enemies. Still unsettled, he created a Shadow Clone to stand watch for the night.
To his surprise, the entire night passed peacefully.
The next day, the group of merchants and porters, having rested for the night, all began to eat breakfast. Afterward, the merchants started packing their luggage, some loading it onto horse-drawn carts, others onto camels, preparing to go their separate ways.
"Saburo, Saburo, hurry up, we're about to leave!" the old guide called out to his grandson.
"Ah, Grandpa, wait for me, I have diarrhea!" a voice called back. A short while later, the young boy, Saburo, slowly walked over, clutching his stomach.
"Strange, I didn't eat anything weird last night. Why would I have diarrhea?"
The guide's grandson, Hirano Saburo, clutched his stomach as he slowly made his way to the convoy.
"Alright, let's head out," Uchiha Nagi said, glancing around and frowning slightly. He still couldn't sense anything.
The goods Uchiha Nagi was transporting filled two large carts. They joined a merchant caravan heading towards Sunagakure for safety in numbers.
It was an era of peace, but peace meant an increase in population. And for an agricultural nation without industrialization, a larger population meant there wasn't enough food to go around.
Naturally, many people turned to banditry.
It had been over a decade since the last Great War, and the signs of land scarcity were already beginning to emerge.
Apart from the Land of Fire, the Land of Wind faced the greatest difficulties.
The caravan, including small-time merchants like Uchiha Nagi, consisted of about twenty carts in total, moving slowly across the Gobi Desert.
Sunagakure had some areas of sandy desert and some areas of rocky, Gobi-style desert. The two were different. The sandy desert was all sand, which flew everywhere when the wind blew, and it often concealed deadly traps like quicksand.
The Gobi Desert, on the other hand, was an arid landscape of wind-eroded earth and rock formations. It was a barren wasteland of bizarrely shaped stones, with the occasional patch of withered wild grass. This grass might only see rain once a year, and it was only during that rainfall that it would rapidly reproduce before waiting for the next year's rain.
The wheels of the carts rumbled along the hard-packed ground of the Gobi Desert. For a cargo-laden cart, traveling on this terrain was certainly more comfortable than on sand; at the very least, they didn't have to worry about the wheels getting stuck.
Rumble… Rumble…
"Grandpa, I have to go again…" the child, Saburo, said, his face pale as he clutched his stomach, looking clearly uncomfortable.
"Ah, this… Sir, you see," the old guide said, looking at Uchiha Nagi with a troubled expression.
Obviously, if they stopped to wait for his grandson, they would fall behind the main caravan. Traveling alone would be significantly more dangerous.
Uchiha Nagi smiled. "It's fine. Let the boy go. We'll wait. We can just speed up a bit later to catch up."
Nature calls. He couldn't force a child to hold it in just to keep moving. He wasn't that much of a scoundrel.
The old guide was grateful. "Ah, thank you, sir. Saburo, go quickly and come right back."
Little Saburo nodded. "Okay, Grandpa."
He then clutched his stomach and ran towards the nearby Gobi rocks. To avoid having the smell bother the young boss who had hired them, little Saburo intentionally ran a little farther away.
The guide called out a warning, "Be careful! Watch out for poisonous snakes and scorpions…"
"I know, Grandpa…"
After a short wait, the guide suddenly turned to Uchiha Nagi with an embarrassed look. "Sir, I'm going to check on the boy. He's been gone for a while; I hope he hasn't been bitten by a snake. There are many venomous snakes in the deserts of the Land of Wind."
Uchiha Nagi nodded. "Go ahead."
Little Kimimaro looked ahead, then looked back, appearing somewhat restless.
Uchiha Nagi asked, "What's wrong, Kimimaro?"
Kimimaro replied, "Nagi-sensei, I don't know if it's my imagination, but I've felt unwell since this morning, and now I have this sense of unease…"
Hearing this, Uchiha Nagi's expression darkened. "You feel it too? It seems I was right. It's not an illusion. I feel it as well…"
Just then, a tragic scream came from the old guide in the distance. "Agh… Saburo!"
The moment Kimimaro heard it, he instinctively grabbed his bone sword and started to rush over, but Uchiha Nagi held him firmly by the shoulder.
"Don't go. It's too late. If you go now, you might be walking into a trap."
BOOM—BOOM!
Before Nagi could finish his sentence, a series of massive explosions erupted in the distance. Judging by the scale, it was the work of no less than a thousand exploding tags.
Kimimaro stared in horror at the soaring smoke and fire. "Is that… the direction of the caravan?" he murmured.
"Yes." Uchiha Nagi silently took out an antidote and handed it to Kimimaro.
"It seems someone set a trap up ahead. They just didn't expect us to stop and separate from the caravan. If I'm not mistaken, they poisoned us this morning or last night. The poison must be very mild, or colorless and odorless, which is why I couldn't detect it."
As he handed one to Kimimaro, Uchiha Nagi drank an antidote himself. Although he didn't know what kind of poison it was, it was better to be safe.
"As an ordinary person without chakra, and a child at that, Saburo's body was the first to react, which is why he's had an upset stomach all morning. Your constitution is more sensitive, Kimimaro, so you also felt unwell."
"Am I right, gentlemen in hiding? Or should I say, gentlemen from Konoha?"
As soon as Uchiha Nagi finished speaking, several figures appeared in the surroundings. The one in the lead was a person completely wrapped in bandages, his hands included.
Several others wearing masks also revealed themselves.
The moment the two sides met, they simultaneously resorted to the most common probing method among ninja—
They threw kunai laced with exploding tags at each other.