Outside the town, a team of figures arrived... One Ninja, wearing a dog mask, was accompanied by a huge black dog.
The black dog sniffed the ground, then nodded to his master. The dog-masked Ninja bent down and communicated with his beloved dog, then took out a withered severed arm and offered it again.
The black dog sniffed and let out a low growl towards the town.
The Ninja with the dog mask stood up and whispered to the team leader, "Captain, it's confirmed, the target is in the town..."
The team leader, wearing a cat mask, nodded and unraveled his bandaged purple arm.
At night, the desert's starry sky was exceptionally bright, with many stars and a full moon... Uchiha Nagi always felt a bit uneasy, but after sensing with Beast Breathing, he found no enemies. Still worried, he used a Shadow Clone to stand guard.
But to his surprise, the entire night passed peacefully... The next day, a group of merchants and porters, who had rested for a night, began to eat breakfast. After eating, the merchants started packing their luggage, some on carriages, some on camels, and then went their separate ways.
"Saburo, Saburo, hurry up, it's time to leave..." The Old Guide called to his grandson.
"Ah, Grandpa, wait for me, I have diarrhea..." A voice came, and after a short while, Saburo, a little boy clutching his stomach, slowly walked over.
"Strange, I didn't eat anything last night, so why do I have diarrhea?"
The Old Guide's grandson, named Hirano Saburo, was slowly walking towards the caravan, clutching his stomach.
"Alright, let's go then~" Uchiha Nagi looked around, frowned slightly, but still didn't sense anything.
Uchiha Nagi's merchandise filled two large carriages. They were traveling with a merchant caravan to Hidden Sand Village, which provided some mutual support along the way.
This was a time of peace, but peace meant an increase in population, and an increase in population in agricultural countries without industrialization meant not enough food.
Naturally, many people turned to banditry... More than ten years had passed since the last great war in the Ninja World, and now there were faint signs of land scarcity.
Besides the Land of Fire, the Land of Wind was the most difficult... The merchant caravan, along with small merchants like Uchiha Nagi, totaled twenty carriages, slowly moving across the Gobi Desert.
Sunagakure has some areas that are desert and some that are Gobi Desert. There is a difference between the two; the desert is all sand, and when the wind blows, sand flies everywhere, often hiding deadly traps like quicksand.
The Gobi Desert, on the other hand, is a kind of wind-dried land, a rocky desert constantly battered by wind, full of bizarre stones, and occasionally one can see some withered wild grasses.
These wild grasses might only get rain once a year, and it is during that rainfall that they rapidly reproduce, then wait for the next year's rainy season.
The wheels of the carriages rumbled over the incredibly hard Gobi Desert. Carriages carrying goods certainly preferred this Gobi Desert terrain over sandy ground, as at least the wheels didn't have to worry about getting stuck in the sand.
Rumble... rumble... "Grandpa, I have to go to the bathroom again~" Little Saburo, pale-faced and clutching his stomach, looked uncomfortable.
"Ah, this... Esteemed Sir, please see." The Old Guide looked at Uchiha Nagi with difficulty.
Clearly, if they stopped to wait for his grandson to finish, they would not be able to catch up with the large caravan, and traveling alone would be much more dangerous.
Uchiha Nagi smiled, "It's alright, let the child go. We'll wait. We can just speed up a bit later to catch up anyway."
Everyone has urgent needs; you can't make a child hold it in while traveling, and I'm not that despicable... The Old Guide gratefully said, "Ah, thank you. Saburo, hurry back."
Little Saburo nodded, "Okay, Grandpa."
Then he clutched his stomach and ran towards the nearby Gobi rocks. To prevent the smell from bothering the young boss who hired them, little Saburo even ran a bit farther away.
The guide warned, "Be careful, watch out for venomous snakes and scorpions..."
"I know, Grandpa..."
After waiting for a while, the guide suddenly said to Uchiha Nagi apologetically, "Sir, I'll go check on that boy. It's been so long; I don't know if he's been bitten by a snake. There are many venomous snakes in the Land of Wind's desert."
Uchiha Nagi nodded, "Go ahead..."
Little Kimimaro looked ahead, then behind, appearing a bit restless.
Uchiha Nagi asked, "What's wrong, Kimimaro?"
Kimimaro replied, "Nagi-sensei, I don't know if it's my imagination, but ever since I woke up this morning, I've felt unwell, and now I'm also feeling uneasy..."
Upon hearing this, Uchiha Nagi's face darkened, "You also have this feeling? It seems I was right, it's not imagination, I have it too..."
Just then, a tragic cry came from the Old Guide in the distance: "Ah... Saburo..."
As soon as Kimimaro heard this, he instinctively picked up his bone sword and tried to rush over, but Uchiha Nagi firmly pressed down on his shoulder.
"No need to go. It's too late. If you go now, it might be a trap waiting for you..."
Boom ~ Rumble!!
Before Uchiha Nagi could finish speaking, a series of large explosions occurred in the distance. Judging by the scene, it would take at least a thousand Exploding Tags to achieve that.
Kimimaro looked in horror at the smoke and flames rising into the sky, muttering, "Is that... the caravan's direction?" "Yes." Uchiha Nagi silently took out an antidote and handed it to Kimimaro.
"It seems someone set a trap ahead, but they didn't expect us to stop midway and separate from the caravan. If I'm not mistaken, the other party also poisoned us this morning or last night, and the poison was very slight, or colorless and odorless, which is why I didn't detect it."
While handing it to Kimimaro, Uchiha Nagi also drank an antidote himself. Although he didn't know what kind of poison it was, it was always right to drink it first.
"And as an ordinary person without Chakra, and a child at that, Saburo's body was the first to feel unwell, which is why he started having diarrhea early in the morning. Kimimaro, your constitution is more sensitive, so you also felt unwell."
"Am I right? Gentlemen in ambush, or rather, gentlemen from Konoha?"
After Uchiha Nagi finished speaking, several figures appeared around them. The leader was a person with both hands wrapped in bandages and his entire body tightly covered.
Similarly, several other masked individuals also revealed themselves... As soon as the two sides met, they simultaneously used the most common probing method among Ninja—
They threw Kunai and Exploding Tags at each other...
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