Chapter 141: Orochimaru

The ambush leader burned Shikyō's advancing insects and ordered the remaining rogues back. They no longer believed their numbers guaranteed victory. The signal flare had changed their objective from killing the escort to surviving until reinforcement arrived.

"Eight combatants," Atsushi reported. "Two preparing Earth Release. Three moving toward the clients' last position."

Tonbo shifted Living Weave farther beneath the forest and sent a pulse through the construct to Ki. The clients remained alive, ventilated, and moving. Tsuyoshi's shoulder wound had stopped bleeding, but Fang Over Fang was no longer safe.

"No prolonged pursuit," Tonbo said. "Disable anyone who blocks the route. Shikyō, keep one colony in reserve. Atsushi, protect Tsuyoshi's injured side."

The rogues attacked without looking toward Tonbo. One stared at reflections in a blade; another fought with eyes nearly closed. Their leader had recognized visual genjutsu and distributed chakra-release signals through the group. He had prepared for the wrong boundary.

The distortions Tonbo planted during the first exchange had not vanished when the rogues released them. Guided Insight had hidden a dormant pattern inside the correction itself. When they gathered chakra for the next techniques, the pattern unfolded through pathways they believed they had cleared.

Two Water Dragons rose from the road. To their caster, both shrank to the size of ropes. He overcorrected, forcing more chakra into a technique already complete. Atsushi crossed the disrupted current and closed the man's shoulder and diaphragm before the water struck anything.

Another rogue perceived Tsuyoshi's kunai as a sword and committed both hands to blocking. Gaku passed below the false weapon, caught the man's ankle, and turned him into Shikyō's approaching insects. The colony consumed enough chakra to end resistance without dispersing toward the protected clients.

The ambush leader saw the pattern and cut his own forearm to replace uncertain perception with pain. He launched Earth Release through the ground rather than trusting visible distance. Tonbo felt the change through the construct, raised a stone layer beneath the team, and displaced the apparent source of his counterattack.

The leader blocked left. The woven blade entered from the right. He fell still holding the seal that should have crushed the road.

The remaining rogues broke. Two fled toward the signal's expected reinforcements. Tonbo allowed one to cross thirty meters before Unseen Presence concealed a woven restraint already hanging between trees. The other reached open ground, where Atsushi's Air Palm stopped his heart.

The last three surrendered only after Shikyō's insects surrounded them.

Tonbo restrained and separated them. Captives carried information that corpses could not clarify, and the S-rank contract did not require execution after resistance ended. He sealed the dead for identification, documented the living prisoners, and sent a clone to recover the clients.

One prisoner tried to bite a poison capsule hidden inside a tooth. Atsushi saw the chakra movement in his jaw; a woven brace stopped it before pressure broke the shell. Tonbo removed the capsule, labeled it, and checked the other two mouths. A captured enemy was not safe merely because weapons had left his hands.

Shikyō counted his returning insects. Nearly a third of the exposed colony had burned or exhausted themselves draining hostile chakra. He sealed the survivors with food and separated injured breeders from workers. Tonbo added the loss to mission costs. Clan techniques used living partners, and success did not make those lives disposable.

Tsuyoshi wanted to help with the bodies. Tonbo ordered him to sit while the wound was cleaned again. The poison sample proved to be a muscle relaxant rather than a fast toxin, but continued movement could spread what remained. Gaku placed both front paws on his partner's leg until he stopped arguing.

Tsuyoshi looked over the ruined road. "That was easier than it should have been."

"Because they had partial intelligence," Tonbo said. "They defended against eye contact and attacked clan habits. Correct information without its limits can make a plan rigid."

"And your limits?"

"You should be asking that after we are inside Konoha's barrier."

The reminder returned everyone to work.

Tonbo set a trap for the reinforcements without remaining to spring it. Woven scouts marked the approaching cells. False tracks led toward an abandoned quarry. Barrier tags would record numbers and chakra signatures, then collapse a section of loose road after the escorts were safely distant. The trap existed to slow and count, not lure his team back into battle.

Kento, Ki, and twelve candidates emerged from Living Weave beyond the kill zone. Ki checked each child before accepting the movement order. Atsushi led south. Shikyō carried the prisoners' restraint lines. Tsuyoshi and Gaku took the rear at a pace that protected the wound.

Tonbo remained behind for one minute. His attention had returned several times to a green snake coiled upon a branch beyond the fighting. It possessed chakra, yet the Byakugan had treated it as an animal and Shikyō's insects avoided its scent without alarm.

"Come out, Orochimaru."

The snake opened its mouth wider than anatomy permitted. A pale hand emerged, followed by an arm, shoulders, and the smiling face of Konoha's former Sannin.

"Impressive," Orochimaru said. "Pain warned us about your perception. I wondered whether the report exaggerated."

Tonbo did not look surprised. Orochimaru's presence explained the distant signature that had appeared after the estate fell and vanished whenever he searched directly.

"You watched an attack against citizens of the Land of Fire."

"I am no longer employed to defend them. You handled the matter elegantly."

"Elegance is not the word for fourteen people leaving a destroyed home."

Orochimaru glanced toward the road. "Fourteen here. More survived through the exits your warning changed. Without you, the result would have been cleaner and far less interesting."

The answer confirmed he had inspected the estate after the attack. It also confirmed that he measured survival as evidence rather than comfort. Tonbo kept both conclusions separate.

"Then the next question is whether you came to help the attackers, observe me, or create an opportunity to leave a message."

Orochimaru's interest sharpened. "You knew the snake was mine, yet your Hyūga did not. How?"

"Opening with a request for classified methods is rude."

"My apologies. Have we met?"

They had crossed paths once near the Memorial Stone after the war. Tonbo also knew far more from older memories than any encounter justified. He offered only the verifiable answer.

"You commanded Konoha forces during the Third War. Everyone in intelligence learned your face, voice, and habits."

"Not everyone recognizes a body emerging from a snake without changing pulse."

"Not everyone spent years studying deception."

Neither explanation satisfied the other. Both understood that pressing would turn curiosity into a fight.

Orochimaru moved one step closer. "Then let us discuss something you may value more than manners."

Tonbo felt no additional signatures nearby. That did not mean Orochimaru lacked bodies, summons, or escape routes. He adjusted Sealed Horizon anchors within his equipment and kept the road behind him clear.

"Speak. My team is moving."

"I want information about the Rinnegan."

The request confirmed that Pain had shared enough to make Tonbo interesting and not enough to make Orochimaru obedient.

"You chose an expensive way to ask."

"The Hagoromo affair was not mine. It merely gave us privacy."

For the moment, Tonbo believed him.

Orochimaru lacked reason to finance Gatō's trade war, and the captured memories showed no snake summons, laboratory agents, or payments connected to him. That did not make his arrival accidental. Someone in his network had noticed Tonbo's mission quickly enough to place him at the estate on the same night.

"Privacy ends when my team leaves perception range," Tonbo said.

"Then we should value the little that remains."