Chapter 606: Otsutsuki Shuichi’s Plan

The fourth battle was between two veteran powerhouses of the ninja world. Although it was still a decent fight, after experiencing the ups and downs of the previous battles, the audience found it rather ordinary.

The fifth battle, however, managed to get quite a few spectators interested again.

"Fifth battle: Kurotsuchi’s father, Kitsuchi, versus Xiaozhunagi."

Kitsuchi was the son of the Third Tsuchikage and one of Iwagakure’s representative ninja, while his opponent, Xiaozhunagi, was another unknown hidden expert who had never made a name for himself before the Martial Arts Tournament.

Such a matchup naturally made the audience look forward to it.

"Xiaozhunagi wins!"

To the surprise of the spectators below, Kitsuchi quickly lost, and he lost cleanly.

"There used to be arguments over who was stronger between Kitsuchi and Mei. Looks like there’s no need to argue anymore."

Some viewers in the comments began mocking Kitsuchi.

What they did not know was that being cleanly defeated was not because Kitsuchi was too weak, but because Xiaozhunagi was too strong—or more precisely, because Zangshi was too strong.

Having previously lost to Itachi, Zangshi was feeling rather displeased, so he decided to personally take over and bully the weaker opponents.

"Don’t you guys think something is wrong? Why do all these people have so many strange tattoos? And they were all unknown before this."

Some spectators also sensed that something was seriously off. Looking at these people, it was obvious that they were somehow connected.

In fact, someone at the venue had already noticed this and reported it to the higher-ups, but they had simply been instructed to maintain the current situation.

"Sigh." Seeing his son getting beaten up, ōnoki helplessly sighed.

"How did these guys suddenly become even stronger?" A trace of concern flashed across the Fourth Raikage’s dark face.

"The next battle is going to be Bee’s..."

Originally, the Raikage had been quite confident in Killer Bee, but this sudden change made him feel that something was wrong.

In the end, the Raikage’s feeling came true.

Zangshi, still dissatisfied, did not stop after one battle. He continued to personally take control and fight in place of his chosen contestants.

Even though Killer Bee was a perfect jinchūriki, and the Eight-Tails had also learned Sage Mode and was willing to continuously refine Senjutsu Chakra for Bee, Bee was ultimately still defeated by Zangshi.

Whether at the venue or among the livestream comments, the audience found the result difficult to accept. It simply did not feel like a proper ninja battle.

Compared to Mei and Kitsuchi, Bee’s strength was on an entirely different level. As a perfect jinchūriki, he could use both Tailed Beast Chakra Mode and Sage Mode simultaneously with the Eight-Tails’ assistance, making him extremely powerful.

If he had been defeated by another renowned powerhouse, that would have been understandable. But his opponent was clearly suspicious.

"These contestants obviously have something wrong with them. I recommend a thorough investigation."

"Even someone like me who isn’t a ninja can tell something is wrong. Are all the people at the venue blind?"

The comments continued pouring in, with everyone feeling that there was something strange about these tattooed ninja.

"How could Lord Bee possibly lose to an unknown nobody?"

"Could these people all be practicing the same secret technique?"

The spectators began discussing among themselves, and the venue gradually became noisy.

"Hehe, Lord Shuichi, these natives seem to have noticed something," Zangshi began communicating with Shuichi through a special method.

"It doesn’t matter. If they couldn’t even discover this, they would be nothing more than uncivilized beasts," Shuichi said calmly, without the slightest hint of panic.

It was within Shuichi’s expectations that the contestants would eventually be discovered. After all, the enhanced natives were mass-produced, and their methods were too uniform, making the problem far too easy to notice.

But this did not affect Shuichi’s plan in the slightest.

So what if they discovered something? Could they possibly discover him, who had been hiding in the shadows all along?

The lives of the natives he had enhanced were entirely in his hands. They had no opportunity to expose any information about him. Even if the opponents managed to learn something through some other method, the information would not include him. At most, it would lead them to Zangshi.

Therefore, Shuichi genuinely did not care whether they discovered something was wrong. Let them discover it.

After all, he had only come here to test their strength. His goal was not to become the champion of the Martial Arts Tournament.

According to Shuichi’s projections, during the initial stage, before they were discovered, the enhanced natives could fight normally, allowing him to estimate the overall strength of the ninja world.

After they were discovered, he would forcibly control the enhanced natives and launch suicidal attacks, further testing the ninja world’s high-level combat power.

After that, he would have Zangshi take action for the final test.

Shuichi would estimate his probability of victory based on the opponent’s strength. If he had a greater than ninety percent chance of winning, he would take action. If not, he would immediately retreat and request reinforcements.

In Shuichi’s mind, everything other than himself was secondary. If Nagasawa displayed strength that was too powerful, he would abandon Zangshi without hesitation and flee.

’However, a planet like this couldn’t possibly give birth to a High-Level God.’ Shuichi thought.

Based on the current average level displayed by the ninja world, a Low-Level God should already be the limit. Taking into account the variables brought by the previous Otsutsuki group, at most, they could have produced a Mid-Level God.

A High-Level God was not something that just any Tom, Dick, or Harry could become.

Even Shuichi, an orthodox Otsutsuki with a powerful bloodline, had cultivated for thousands of years with the assistance of a God Tree fruit before reaching his current level of strength.

The commotion from the comments and the venue did not affect the progress of the tournament.

However, the next battle made many spectators feel somewhat relieved.

"Uchiha Shisui versus Nakahiro Akira!"

Nakahiro Akira was also a wandering ninja who had been enhanced by the Otsutsuki.

However, his powerful strength and explosive power were completely ineffective against Shisui. Until the moment he lost, Nakahiro Akira had not even managed to touch the corner of Shisui’s clothes.

Because from the very beginning, Nakahiro Akira had already fallen under Shisui’s genjutsu.

From his perspective, he was relentlessly beating Shisui, with victory seemingly within reach. But from the audience’s perspective, Nakahiro Akira looked as if he had been possessed, furiously punching the ground while laughing wildly.

It was only after Shisui seriously injured him that Nakahiro Akira finally snapped out of his confusion.

"How is this possible? Why did this happen? Was it genjutsu? Impossible. I don’t remember anything at all." Nakahiro Akira looked at Shisui in disbelief. He could not believe that his powerful senses had failed to detect when he had fallen under the genjutsu.

"When did you get the illusion that you could detect every genjutsu?" Shisui slowly sheathed his sword. His mastery of Katen Kyōkotsu and Sharingan genjutsu was not for show.

Shisui’s victory reassured many spectators.

It was not because they were all fans of Shisui or Bee and therefore cared about who won or lost. What they were truly worried about was the order and peace of the ninja world.

The current peaceful state of the ninja world was the result of the Ninja World Alliance. Now that such a disturbance had appeared during the Martial Arts Tournament, it was difficult not to worry.

If the Ninja World Alliance, which represented order, remained stronger, then the situation would not become too serious. At the very least, the ninja world would not return to the era of constant warfare.

Recently, I’ve been busy because I went home for a while. Things have finally settled down somewhat, so I’ll be returning to a regular update schedule.