Naruto: Chronicles of a Fire Ninja - Chapter 341

Chapter 341: Chapter 337: Chaos in Kusagakure
After leaving, Kaida waited until almost midnight. At 11:00 PM, the security of the mansion was as tight as ever, but movement in the streets was now minimal.

Kaida moved into action, sliding silently through the shadows toward the elder’s mansion. His Sharingan activated, scanning for guards and security seals. After monitoring the compound all day, he knew exactly when the guard rotation would leave a brief opening. This was also one of the reasons he chose this timing.

‘Perfect timing,’ he thought, slipping through the gap in security. The elder would be in his bedroom at this hour—being old comes with an early bedtime, both for civilians as well as ninja—a routine Kaida had found through his clone’s surveillance.

Inside the mansion, Kaida detected two chakra signatures: the elder in his bedroom and his son in the training grounds behind the house. ‘Better deal with the son also. He is following the same steps as his father and knows too much. If he’s alive, I can’t point toward Iwa after doing this.’

He created a shadow clone to keep watch while he approached the training grounds. The son was practicing advanced earth techniques which were honestly way above the level a Kusagakure ninja could afford, completely focused on his training.

‘Looks like Iwagakure gave some “gifts” to the elder for his support,’ Kaida thought but then went into action. He opened the gate of the training area. The son thought it was some servant there to deliver news, so he turned to find why someone decided to interrupt his training when he had specifically ordered not to be disturbed.

But as soon as he turned, his movement froze, because two red eyes with three tomoe rotating in them were looking straight at him.

In the battlefield, ninja would naturally guard against genjutsu all the time, but in his own house, not many would do the same. In his last few milliseconds, the elder’s son cursed his luck.

Aside from death, the most regretful thing for him was not reaching his full potential. After getting the technique from Iwagakure, he was seeing rapid progress in his stagnated strength, and if he had time, he would have most likely reached the level of his father and Kage of the village.

But alas, his life came to an end then and there—a stone spear pierced him, leaving him standing even after his death.

‘This feels wrong, but there is nothing that could have been done otherwise. Now for the main target.’

The elder was sleeping on his bed when he suddenly heard a sound from the balcony. The sound was very soft, but being an elite Jonin level ninja, he was sensitive toward everything in his surroundings. He swiftly woke up but didn’t leave the bed for the next 10 minutes, waiting to see if it was just some animal or an assassin.

When even after waiting for long no one entered his room, he went to the balcony to do a last check. As soon as he opened the door, he also saw two red eyes, glowing beautifully in the darkness of the night.

“Konoha—” was all he managed before falling into the most powerful genjutsu Kaida could muster. With the elder being an elite Jonin rank ninja, it would be impossible for Kaida to eliminate him silently if he was given even a little bit of fighting chance.

That’s why Kaida didn’t take any chances and used all the senbon in his arsenal to block the Tenketsu and acupuncture points, leaving him unable to use any chakra or even his body, paralyzing him in a sense.

“I’m sorry, but your actions forced this outcome,” Kaida said respectfully.

The elder, who was already out of the genjutsu, could only sigh internally. In all of his 54 years of life, the only thing he wanted was the betterment of his village. He had fought in countless wars and missions, suffered through many injuries, all for his village.

Though he didn’t want to betray Konoha, there was just too good an offer given to them from Iwagakure. Not only would they win the war and get the territory of Takigakure, they would have also gotten support from Iwa to teach their new generation—a win-win scenario which they would not get from Konoha in any case.

Though he knew Iwa wanted to make them an outpost against Konoha, they always were in this position anyway. Either from Konoha’s side or from Iwa’s side would not change the fact. With Danzo dead, he had thought that Konoha would go a little soft and would not react like this, especially since they were already busy with so many things.

But how wrong was he. In front of him was a boy in his teens who would kill him for sure, and for some reason, he was not doing it swiftly. Then a dread spread in his soul. ‘Is he going to torture me?’

But thankfully, Kaida had no such plan. He just used his Sharingan to find out all of the secret places in his house and then swiftly killed him, using earth chakra in his kunai, leaving a rougher cut mark on the neck of the elder—a classic sign of Iwa ninja attacks.

‘The fake messenger’s note should be found by morning,’ he thought, placing the final piece of evidence suggesting Iwa’s alliance with Takigakure and the elder’s anger over that, suggesting he would leak Iwa’s secrets to Konoha. Everything was positioned to create maximum diplomatic chaos while directing suspicion away from Konoha.

Even though the news was true, there was no actual note since the message was in oral format, but Kusagakure didn’t know that. Kaida hid the note in a location which was known by some of the trustworthy aids of the elder—hard to find but not impossible, especially after Kusagakure went into full alert after finding about the elder’s death.

With everything done, Kaida knew that time had started ticking against him now. The death of the elder would be revealed in the morning, or if the smell of blood spread faster, even before that. So he swiftly went to the Uzumaki residence.

By the time he returned to the Uzumaki residence, Reina and Karin were ready. “It’s done,” he said simply. “We should leave immediately.”

They moved swiftly through the village’s eastern sector, Kaida’s Sharingan guiding them past patrol routes he had memorized. And the few guards who were in between and couldn’t be avoided suddenly found themselves very tired and wanting to catch a quick nap. Within minutes, they were beyond the village walls, racing through the darkness toward Fire Country.

“We’ll travel through the night,” Kaida explained as they leaped through the trees. “By dawn, we should be far enough that pursuit won’t be a concern.” If he was on his own, reaching Konoha in one day wouldn’t be a problem, but the ladies with him were not ninjas and would need more time, especially since Reina was still not recovered from sharing so much of her life force and Karin was all but a child.

Even though they tried to run the best they could, it was clear that they would not be able to match his speed, so he created two shadow clones and asked, “We can’t leave traces behind, so for some distance let me carry you guys.”

“Okay,” Reina said.

With Kaida’s shadow clones carrying Reina and Karin, they reached 430 km away from Kusagakure in just 6 hours—a distance enough to evade any pursuit.

…

Dawn broke over Kusagakure with screams.

“Elder-sama! Elder-sama!” A servant’s panicked voice echoed through the mansion. The guard captain arrived moments later, his face paling at the scene before him.

“Send the message to Lord Kage immediately,” he ordered. “And find Ryoshi-san’s son!”

The village erupted into controlled chaos as word spread. The Kage arrived within minutes, his experienced eyes taking in every detail of the crime scene. He quickly noticed the earth spear going through the body of Ryoshi’s son and the wide cut in Ryoshi’s neck, clearly the use of earth chakra.