Land of Hot Springs, some organization that seems to have a lot of power, can see the dead, and wants to abduct girls—connecting these keywords, Ino sighed inwardly, knowing there was a ninety percent chance of a fight breaking out.
She had originally thought she only had one pig teammate on her side, but now she found two more pigs.
"Stick close to me later, don't run off."
Sakura, Tonton, and Pakkun all nodded obediently.
After waiting a while, once the number of people reached twenty, a seemingly kind-looking Fat Man motioned for the girls to follow him.
The other party wasn't hiding too deeply; Ino could tell at a glance that this was a Ninja who could use Chakra.
"Oh," she sighed softly.
Tonton looked at her strangely.
Ino whispered, "I just feel that Tsunade-sensei will most likely be disappointed again this time. No, she doesn't even know about this; this is all Shizune-nee and I messing around. It's really troublesome. These people look problematic, don't they? Do you think it's appropriate for me to call Shizune over now?"
Tonton's intelligence was similar to that of a seven or eight-year-old child, and it couldn't understand overly complex things, so it looked at Ino in confusion.
Ino didn't explain further. Forget it, Big-legged Senior Sister's Medical Ninjutsu was top-notch in the world, but her combat ability? One could only say it was so-so.
It was better for her, a Medical Ninja with outstanding sensory abilities, to eradicate the cult!
She pretended not to know Sakura, holding her pet pig, and chatted with the other young girls.
The girls didn't talk much, but she still gathered a lot of information; many of these girls were not from the Land of Hot Springs.
The Raikiri Train factory hadn't been built yet, so Daimyos traveled by ox cart, and ordinary people who wanted to travel far mostly had to walk. Information spread extremely slowly, and many places were in a state where "the sounds of chickens and dogs could be heard, but people grew old and died without interacting." Spreading the news of the Revival Hot Spring through word of mouth to "foreign countries" was very difficult.
The fact that these people could make "foreign girls" aware of the Revival Hot Spring without alarming the local Ninja meant that the difficulty of spreading the information had increased by another level.
The scale of this organization was even larger than expected, and its activities were even more secretive.
Twenty girls entered an underground grotto where the temperature was higher, and steam occasionally emerged from cracks in the walls.
The girls showed clear signs of panic, but the middle-aged Fat Man leading them was very experienced. He spoke in the tone of someone who had been through it, recounting his experiences at the Revival Hot Spring and the joy and excitement many girls felt upon seeing their loved ones. In the blink of an eye, he told three stories, all particularly heartwarming and touching anecdotes, making him a walking storyteller.
The girls' emotions were calmed.
The further Ino walked, the more uneasy she became. There seemed to be something inside, looking at her through a perspective that couldn't be explained by physics. This was the first time she had encountered such a situation; even when she met Sasori and Deidara before, her sensory abilities hadn't issued such a warning signal.
This place was even more dangerous than she had imagined.
Everyone entered a passage shrouded in white mist. Ino gave Sakura a look, signaling her to take up the rear.
Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the deepest part of the underground grotto. Here, there was an open space the size of a football field, shaped like a fan, where over a hundred black-robed figures stood.
Their gender was indistinguishable. They were bowing and worshipping a giant stone inscribed with several bizarre lines.
At first glance, the lines on the giant stone seemed to form a triangle, but upon closer inspection, the edges of this triangular shape were extremely rough. If one stared for two more seconds, it seemed to transform into other shapes—sometimes a circle, sometimes a rectangle, but most of the time, an irregular figure.
Ino took two steps closer, wanting to see more clearly, but was stopped by a black-robed figure.
A person who appeared to be the leader emerged from among the black-robed figures. He shouted loudly, urging the girls to praise the true god with him, stating that only the true god had the power to break the boundaries of life and death, allowing them to see the deceased.
True god? It must be the Evil God!
Ino believed these guys were the Evil God Sect that Hidan worshipped. The difference was that Hidan had graduated, while these guys seemed to want to create a second Hidan through blood sacrifice.
She really disliked this place. This Evil God was different from the Shinigami. Although Shinigami Old Iron also sold his body to work for the Uzumaki Clan, he still maintained his basic dignity and looked like a big shot. As for this one? Ino could only feel that omnipresent madness. Was this guy shattered by the Otsutsuki Clan and then reassembled?
"The true god is omnipotent! The true god…" The cult leader recited prayers with a fanatical tone, but just as he started, Ino interrupted him.
"Excuse me, Uncle! I want to see my deceased brother. Oh, and it would be great if I could see my father. Can you do that? Can you make it happen?" She spoke incoherently, asking a barrage of questions, but her actual attention was on the giant stone.
The cult leader looked at his subordinates. How are you guys doing your job? Is this girl holding a pig an idiot? She hasn't sensed any of our strong cult atmosphere at all, isn't she afraid at all?
Hidan was very particular about rituals. For this Evil God Sect, rituals were the source of their power, and the rituals must not go wrong.
Noticing that all the girls were looking at him, the cult leader could only give a perfunctory reply.
"Huh? Ah, ah… Yes, all of it is possible, as long as you sincerely believe…"
Before he could finish, Ino interrupted again: "Really? Can I see my dad? Can I see my grandpa? My grandpa used to plant tea trees in the mountains, and he was the kindest to me!"
You'll see your ancestors! I'll send you down to reunite with them in a bit! The cult leader glared at her fiercely.
Ino pulled out a letter and waved it in front of the cult leader: "I have a friend who is from the Zagrama Clan. Her grandfather died at the age of five due to a clan curse. He died a really miserable death."
Cult leader: "…"
Sakura: "…"
There was too much information in Ino's words, and the cult leader was still pondering the relationship between her grandfather, the curse, and his own church, so he didn't respond for a moment.
Ino took two more steps forward, continuously muttering about "Muchen Orb" and "the Ghost Cave of Imaginary Space."
These words indeed intrigued the cult leader, and he couldn't help but listen for a couple more sentences.
This Muchen Orb thing, it sounds like a good item. If he could snatch it…
As Ino approached step by step, and mentioned, "She has a friend who is a divinely gifted bard. If you get a card, you can listen to the bard tell ancient legends," the cult leader realized she was too close to their sacred object and quickly told her to step back. Ino quickly formed hand seals, gathering her Chakra to the extreme, concentrating a massive amount of Chakra in her chest and abdomen, then applying pressure to unleash a stream of water at the giant stone with the strange patterns.
"Water Release: Water Severing Wave!"
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