Chapter 225: Aftermath
The door was locked from the inside. There was no key, but that was no challenge for Haruno Sakura. She directly smashed the door to pieces with a single punch, and the two of them walked in.
After passing through a dark corridor, there was another door. This girl, who was used to using violence, once again mindlessly smashed it open with a punch.
Yūichi somewhat curiously picked up the fragments on the ground. The lock was still intact. He twisted it, and a muscle in his face twitched.
"Hn, actually... this door wasn't locked," he said, his face full of black lines as he stated the fact.
Haruno Sakura, who was fumbling on the wall for the light switch, immediately froze.
"Well, uh, ahem, I did it out of habit, just broke it. It's all the door's fault for being placed so squarely. I couldn't help but smash it."
She said, laughing awkwardly.
On the other side, Yūichi was speechless.
The pink-haired girl fumbled on the wall for a while, found the switch, and with a click, she turned on the lights. Under the dim yellow lamps, the morgue appeared quiet and gloomy, full of shadows, and permeated with the faint stench of corpses, giving people a horrifying sense of dread.
Could this place be recommended to Director Asama to shoot a horror or thriller film? Sakura wondered if she should tell him the story of The Ring or Saw. She also didn't know what a Naruto-style ghost movie would be like. After all, things like souls were real in the Naruto world...
Ninjutsu like the Reanimation Jutsu and the Reaper Death Seal could prove this point, but she had never seen, let alone learned, these two jutsu.
While she was letting her thoughts run wild, she casually opened the refrigerated compartments where the corpses were stored. Next to the compartments were sealing scrolls that could temporarily preserve the corpses. Sakura then put the corpses into the scrolls, intending to take them back to Konoha.
A ninja's corpse was an important source of intelligence. Even just being used for new doctors to dissect to learn ninjutsu was a good practice.
Yūichi also came over to help. He worked in the personnel department and recognized a lot of ninja data, including a lot of ninja from other villages.
So as he was opening the compartments, one could hear his startled voice: "Maruyama Masako, I never thought she was already dead!" "Saeki Toshio, to think his body is being preserved here!"...
It took two or three scrolls to fill up the hundred or so corpses. When they left, Sakura directly smashed the wall, avoiding the awkwardness of going around through the toilet.
Coming out of the morgue, outside the wall was a drizzling rain and fresh air. The sky had already almost completely darkened, and the lights inside and outside the houses had been lit.
The two of them, no longer having to smell that stench, both let out a sigh of relief. They looked at each other, and Yūichi suddenly asked, "Haruno Sakura... when you saw all that money just now, weren't you tempted?"
From the looks of him, this question seemed to have been bottled up for a long time.
"Anyone would be tempted, right?" Sakura said with a smile. She reached out and condensed a conical hat, handing it to Yūichi to wear. "But what's more important to us ninja is our own strength. Otherwise, no matter how much money you have, it's useless."
"When I was on my first mission outside the village, I met Gatō. He was one of the richest men in the world," she said, shrugging and walking ahead. "But in the end, he was killed by a ninja."
"Is that so? But to be honest, if we're talking about strength, you're already close to the pinnacle of a ninja, right?" Yūichi said, following the girl's light steps closely. "Besides strength, do you have any other pursuits?"
"Pursuits other than strength?" Haruno Sakura turned her head and met Yūichi's gaze under the transparent conical hat. "That would be even greater strength."
She squinted her eyes and smiled like a little fox.
"Alright, what I pursue is to live like a 'person,' and to live freely, without being wronged, and with dignity. It's that simple," Sakura said, knowing that he was not satisfied with that cunning answer.
This was basically what was in her heart. The only difference was how it was expressed.
Just like pursuing money and pursuing a career, sometimes the two are talking about the same thing, just expressed differently...
As for that tempting money just now... this was a mission seizure, not her spoils of war. It needed to be handed over.
Of course, even if she secretly pocketed a part of it, it wouldn't be a big problem. As long as the amount wasn't large, no one would notice at all.
However, there was really no point in doing that. As a ninja, money didn't mean much to her, although she had been quite poor recently.
After a few sentences of idle chat, the two of them circled around to the entrance of the brightly lit bounty station hall.
Ibiki was a little surprised to see the two of them appear from another path, but he still went forward without hesitation to report the progress of the review work to Sakura. "We've basically finished the interrogation. These thugs and samurai are all soft-boned cowards. They confessed everything before we even used any means."
From his tone, it seemed that he was a little unsatisfied that the interrogation subjects had been too cooperative and he hadn't had the chance to use his means...
Sakura complained silently in her heart and asked, "Did you get any valuable intelligence?"
"Nothing at all," Ibiki said, shaking his head with regret and explaining, "These low-level thugs don't know anything. It seems this bounty station has done a very good job of protecting its intelligence. I'm afraid we'll only be able to get some results when we interrogate the mid-level cadres."
"It's fine. We can continue the interrogation tonight and tomorrow. We'll set up camp here today. For now, we'll use this trading company as a camp. You can all have a good night's rest."
It was just that this would require Sakura to stand watch at night and watch these prisoners.
The scale of this bounty station had exceeded Konoha's imagination. There were too many personnel to deal with, and the follow-up matters were too complex and numerous. It was already not something that a small Chunin like her and a few interrogation ninja could handle.
Just look at the nine-figure sum of seized money, those few top-secret pieces of intelligence of great value, and the over one hundred corpses of various ninja. It was more than enough for Tsunade to dispatch two Anbu squads numbered within the top twenty to escort them back.
As for how this underground organization had been lurking here for several years without being discovered, it was unknown. One could only suspect that there was a problem with the town government here, and even the entire district government.
In fact, using genjutsu to confuse ordinary people was not a big problem for a ninja skilled in it. Even a Kage of a village had been controlled by genjutsu before.
When Haruno Sakura thought of this, she only then realized that the most difficult part of this mission was not that Tokujō-level thug, but the possible existence of a powerful genjutsu-type ninja. Unfortunately, just like the shadow clone, ordinary genjutsu didn't work on her ice clone. She estimated that some ice clone had probably dealt with him as an ordinary mob... She had killed too many people this time, and she had forgotten who was who.
In short, the problems of government officials and jurisdiction were no longer her business.
She wrote up the mission brief, sent the information back through a nearby Anbu outpost using a reverse summon, and requested support overnight.
A night passed without a word.
The next day, at the first light of dawn.
The girl, who had been silently guarding here for a night, walked out of the hall, yawning. She stretched, and did some morning exercises.
And not long after, she found that Konoha's Anbu had rushed here overnight.
"Yo, Kakashi-sensei! Long time no see!" Her eyes lit up. She waved at the distance and said, "And the rookie, hello!"
The Anbu ninja with the monkey-face mask walking behind Kakashi paused in his steps, looked at Sakura, and said faintly, "In the Anbu, just call me by my codename, 'Kuda-gitsune'."
"Haha!" The girl laughed heartily and pointed at his monkey-face mask. "You're clearly a monkey. How are you like a fox, Sasuke!"
Sasuke's face darkened, and he retorted, "Idiot, a Kuda-gitsune is a legendary spirit beast... and aren't you also wearing a cat-face mask and calling yourself 'Tobi'!"
"Masks and codenames don't have to correspond... Sakura's title is a common type of hawk. But your codename, Sasuke, is that of a spirit beast, which is rather rare," Kakashi, who was walking at the very front, quickly intervened to smooth things over. He walked to Sakura's side, patted her on the shoulder, and said, "You've worked hard. Leave the rest to us!"
The arrival of the Anbu squad led by Kakashi also announced the end of Haruno Sakura's assessment mission.
She could finally get a good night's sleep... After handing over the matters here to Kakashi, she took a shower, found a clean room for herself, and fell into a deep sleep.
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