The sky was already dark.
The dense, dark clouds covered the entire night sky, shrouding the moon and stars and keeping even a trickle of light from reaching the ground.
Wind blew slowly, making the leaves of the surrounding trees rustle. The grass on the ground swayed. However, the environment was just too dark and eerie for people to enjoy the view.
Not to mention, howls of distant beasts echoed in the air ever so frequently, sending chills down the people listening to them.
Fortunately…
Snap! Crackle…Pop!
Sizzle!
Several campfires, with their vigorous flames, the loud pop of burning wood, and the sizzle of the roasted meats, brightened the atmosphere at the camp and swept away the fear and gloom of the night.
Ninjas, samurai, and men hired by Genzo were either sitting at the campfire, patrolling the perimeter, inspecting the caravans, organizing camps, or roasting meat.
Several people chatted happily. Meanwhile, others wore heavy, solemn expressions.
Around one of those isolated campfires, two young girls, each about twelve years old, sat quietly.
They were none other than Uchiha Reina and Hyuga Natsumi.
Their tent and campfire were located at least thirty meters away from the other people's camps.
Tap, tap, tap, tap…
Suddenly, Reina and Natsumi heard someone coming.
They raised their heads to the source of the sound, only to find their other teammate, Seimei, coming closer.
Seeing him, Reina shifted her gaze back to the campfire and asked, "Are you done patrolling the perimeters?"
Seimei nodded. "Yes."
Then he stopped a few feet away from the dancing flames of the campfire and sat down on the ground beside Reina, just a foot away from her.
The flames illuminated his features in an orange-red hue. His snow-white hair glowed with the color of a setting sun.
After sitting down, he continued, "They have secured the perimeters of the camp pretty well. Those ninjas, whichever clan they are from, are quite competent, indeed."
"They are patrolling the perimeter in an orderly and efficient manner."
"Unless an A-rank chakra beast pops up out of nowhere, these men are fully capable of eliminating most wild threats within a short time. You will not even notice any disturbance."
Reina nodded. Her eyes were unreadable as she replied, "I see. Who our client hires is his matter. We will just focus on our job."
She looked at Seimei. "But before anything else…Seimei, set it up."
Natsumi raised an eyebrow, clearly not understanding what Reina was talking about.
But Seimei gave Reina a look of understanding.
And soon, before Natsumi's eyes, Seimei injected a slight amount of chakra into the two specific tenketsu of his right palm and pressed his hand to the ground.
His chakra, incredibly controlled, flowed smoothly around the ground.
Several pitch-black runes and markings spread around the ground before melting into the ground.
They came into existence and vanished silently.
If Natsumi didn't see the distinct Fuinjutsu markings and sensed the brief fluctuation of chakra due to her innate sensitivity to the chakra granted by her Kekkei Genkai (Byakugan's passive effects), she would have thought that she had just seen a brief illusion.
Seimei calmly removed his palm from the ground, dusted off his hands, and said, "Done."
Then he looked at Natsumi's slightly bewildered face and said, "I have set up the Sound-Locking Barrier and the Concealment Seal as usual. Now, no matter how loud we talk or shout, no one can hear a thing, except for us. However, we can hear every bit of sound coming from the outside of the barrier"
He smiled slyly and added, "It's just a clever trick to ensure privacy without raising suspicion. With the trick of the additional Concealment Seal, none of them can see or sense the faint chakra fluctuation of the barrier."
"Of course, if you activate Byakugan, you can probably still see the barrier. After all, your eyes can directly see chakra and its flow."
A look of realization suddenly appeared in Natsumi's featureless pupils.
Seeing her reaction, Reina smiled slightly and said, "You will get used to it. Seimei knows all kinds of Fuinjutsu seals. If you need to solve something that brute force or regular Jutsu can't, you can always look for this guy."
"Whether you need to reliably knock out powerful ninjas with restrictive seals to make them unable to use chakra, create Fuinjutsu traps to set up a death zone, need extra explosive tags on the fly, or just want some convenience, Seimei can always help."
Seimei couldn't help but twitch his lips and look at Reina in sheer exasperation. He lost count of how many times Reina made him use sacred sealing techniques to do utterly unserious things.
He remembered being nagged into developing a seal with one and only one ridiculous function. It made sitting on hard or uncomfortable surfaces feel like sitting on a soft cushion.
Still, he had to admit, this seal was indeed useful.
Who the hell would want to rest their but on hard, uncomfortable, prickly surfaces when you could sit on a soft, cushiony surface?
Although from the point of view of a ninja, this Cushioning Seal was utterly impractical, unnecessary, and ridiculous, it indeed had its merits, especially during long missions when you sometimes had to spend your time in who knew what kind of environment.
As his thoughts kept wandering, Reina suddenly turned her head to him and asked, "And…did you add protection around our tent?"
Hearing this, Seimei snapped out of his random thoughts, waved his hand casually, and said, "You don't need to worry about that. I already did. I set up an invisible barrier that could endure several rounds of A-rank destructive Jutsu, both AoE and single-target type, from an S-rank ninja for at least a minute."
"That's enough time for those who are sleeping to wake up and respond in kind."
Unless a Kage-level ninja decides to smash our tent with a full-powered, top-tier A-rank ninjutsu, we are absolutely safe from sudden ambushes while sleeping. Then again, capable ninjas with top-tier survival instincts and sensory capabilities like ours would wake up and act as soon as we sense danger to our lives.
Seimei mused inwardly.
Meanwhile, hearing Seimei's response, Reina said, "Very good." She continued, "Now, let's talk about what we should be doing after entering the Land of Hot Water. Although the mission scroll has mapped the optimal, safer travel route, we can't be too careful, especially in these chaotic times…"
With that, Reina, Seimei, and Natsumi started discussing their mission and their future actions after crossing the Fire Country's border.
They spent over twenty minutes discussing it.
What kind of chakra beasts should they be aware of?
Did they need to prepare for an ambush from other ninjas or samurai?
Would ninjas from other major elemental nations attack them?
If they were attacked or ambushed, how should they respond to ensure the client's safety while ending the battle quickly and most efficiently?
They created plans for every possible unfavorable situation and developed several other plans should their initial response fail.
After Reina finished discussing the plans, she took a deep breath and asked Natsumi, "By the way…"
"What about the strange caravan? Are they still guarding it closely?"
"Let me check," said Natsumi before quickly activating her Byakugan.
She checked for a full minute before deactivating the Byakugan.
Her expression couldn't help but become a little strange.
Still, she replied in the same ethereal, soul-soothing voice, "They are not just guarding it closely; they have even increased the overall manpower around it."
"There are twice as many people as before guarding it now."
Reina looked at the crackling campfire and fell into deep thought.
As a relatively loud popping sound of burning wood echoed in the air, Reina opened her mouth and said, "Strange."
Natsumi couldn't agree more. "Exactly. If it's something so precious that requires this amount of manpower to guard it, it would be better to hide it somewhere to keep it safe instead of carrying it."
"It's a waste of manpower and money. And he has to keep worrying about it."
"This merchant, Shiraishi Genzo, isn't stupid. So, why would he carry it? On a journey to a different country, it's nothing but baggage."
Reina's eyes were deep as she muttered, "It doesn't make sense, unless…whatever he's hiding in that caravan is something he intends to trade or needs in the Land of Frost."
Seimei frowned and added, "As for the sudden increase in guards around that caravan…I probably know the reason for that."
Natsumi immediately asked, "You do? What is it?"
"Well…" said Seimei. "About 40 minutes ago, there was a sudden chakra flare-up around that caravan all of a sudden. However, the chakra remained incredibly contained, so it didn't cause much of a commotion."
"Strangely enough, unless you stay within ten meters of the caravan or actively spread your chakra field to sense it, you won't notice a thing. Otherwise, you would have already noticed it the moment the chakra flared up."
"And the ninjas working for Genzo were quick to act. There are several sealing experts among them. They quickly deployed several Fuinjutsu barriers and seals to contain the chakra. Now, everything looks peaceful, as if nothing out of the ordinary happened."
Reina immediately raised her eyebrow and said, "Good guy. He has even hired sealing experts. He's definitely up to no good."
She paused for a moment, as if to think of something, before asking Natsumi, "Despite such a thing, you still didn't detect or see anything just now?"
Natsumi shook her head. "Nothing at all."
She was helpless as well. She had to say, whoever the sealing experts were, they were damn good at their jobs, at least when it came to hiding things in plain sight.
Reina sighed and said, "Whatever. Let's leave it at that. As long as that thing doesn't interfere with our mission, it's none of our business."
Unless she went ahead and tore the seal of the caravan apart to see what was inside, there was no other way to find out what was there.
But for ninjas, invading their client's privacy without a good reason was taboo.
So, she really wasn't willing to do that.
She could only drop the topic for now.
Meanwhile, Seimei was feeling a bit uneasy, especially after what he had witnessed while spying on Genzo and the mysterious caravan.
That thing, whatever it was, didn't flare up with chakra out of thin air.
It strangely resonated with Seimei's chakra when he secretly spread his chakra field.
The moment Seimei's chakra touched the caravan, that thing inside the caravan seemed to go berserk. Seimei also felt a strange resonance with that thing's chakra, as if something hidden within his blood interacted with it.
But according to the intel I have uncovered so far, it should react to chakra at all.
As he thought that, his mind couldn't help but wander to the incident that happened 40 minutes ago.
❇️Flashback❇️
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