Chapter 191: The Land of Hot Water

Tonbo removed his bandages the morning after receiving Hiruzen's mission.

The wrapped face had become part of his public identity. Every major village possessed reports about the bandaged genjutsu specialist from Konoha. Traveling with his actual face gave him a better disguise than adding another mask.

He folded the bandages into his pouch. Sealing formulas covered the cloth, preserving the tools and defenses hidden within it if he needed them later.

Tonbo left Konoha under stealth. Only after clearing the gate and every nearby observer did he use the Eye-Opening Hand to form a hawk and take the air toward the Land of Hot Water.

He had spent the previous night at home, enjoying the ordinary comfort that preceded a mission whose length he could not predict. By morning, the supplies were sealed, the public explanation prepared, and every trace of the famous traveling disguise stored rather than worn.

The hawk was not a summoned animal. Tonbo shaped it through his technique, gave it enough structure to carry him, and connected its senses to his own network. From high above Fire Country, he could watch roads and patrols without exposing the chakra pattern associated with his usual movement.

White hair streamed behind him. Without the familiar wrappings, mist-blue eyes and an uncovered face replaced the figure recorded in foreign intelligence files.

On the road to the Land of Waves, two explosive tags detonated beside the Demon Brothers.

Gōzu and Meizu raised their gauntlets too late. The blast threw them apart.

Sakura moved in front of Tazuna with a kunai ready.

"Naruto!"

Naruto appeared behind the falling attackers and drove forward. Chains snapped from their metal claws, caught him across the arm, and drew blood before he forced them aside.

Sasuke descended above both brothers. One hand struck each neck. They hit the road and did not rise.

The Demon Brothers had hidden in a puddle that should not have survived the dry road. Kakashi noticed the contradiction before the attack and allowed the genin to respond. Sakura protected the client instead of chasing both enemies. Sasuke used the opening created by Naruto's reckless entry. Naruto accepted the wound and kept the chains away from Tazuna.

No single response had been perfect. Together they ended the ambush before the missing-nin could recover from Sakura's explosive tags.

Kakashi stepped from concealment and applauded.

"Good response. Naruto, you still entered the second attack without checking their weapons."

The three genin had met their first hostile shinobi outside Konoha and coordinated without freezing. Tonbo's simulation training had forced them to think while environments changed around them. Direct experience remained different, as the blood on Naruto's arm demonstrated, but they had not begun from ignorance.

Kakashi identified the missing-nin and turned to Tazuna. A C-rank escort should not have attracted trained killers. Their client had concealed the danger.

Naruto objected to abandoning the mission before Kakashi proposed it. The scratch on his arm and the poison risk did not alter his refusal. Sasuke's calm made the outburst look larger, but he too wanted to continue. Sakura waited for the client to explain why a bridge builder had drawn enemies from Mist.

While Team Seven confronted that lie, Tonbo reached Hot Water.

Three days of searching produced no sign of Itachi.

Tonbo used the Eye-Opening Hand to create small birds wherever he stopped. They crossed towns, ports, and roads, then returned fragments of memory when they landed upon his hand. His expanded chakra reserves allowed a wide search, but birds noticed movement rather than meaning. He still had to visit the places they revealed.

At Koizumi Town, he allowed himself the country's most famous resource.

The mission did not require discomfort. Tonbo had always rejected the idea that a capable shinobi proved dedication by refusing food, rest, or pleasure when none endangered the objective. A hot bath could coexist with surveillance, especially when his artificial birds continued searching above the roofs.

The hot spring rose from water heated beneath the sea and carried inland through channels that supported an entire local industry. Travel, bathing, fashion, and entertainment had given the Land of Hot Water enough prosperity to withdraw from frequent war. Its hidden village had earned the title of the village that forgot conflict.

That prosperity changed the streets. Inns competed through gardens instead of armed walls. Tailors published seasonal designs. Restaurants expected visitors from countries whose shinobi had once crossed the same roads as enemies. The hidden village still trained fighters, but fewer families built their lives around the next border raid.

Tonbo listened to the newest bird memories while soaking.

No Itachi. No Kisame. No reliable Akatsuki sighting.

He dressed in a local tailcoat after the bath and added gold-rimmed glasses. The style pleased him. Years spent wrapped like an injured shinobi had made the simple act of appearing elegant feel like another completed ambition.

The tailcoat also separated him further from foreign descriptions. Reports expected a bandaged Konoha operative in practical field clothing, not a white-haired traveler dressed for an evening district. Tonbo admired the effect in the mirror longer than the disguise required.

Since the contact had not appeared, Tonbo turned toward Hidden Hot Water Village and a second objective.

The Shinigami Cult operated somewhere in the country.

Its followers worshipped a destructive god, accepted assassination work, and performed experiments upon human bodies. Most governments treated them as criminals; certain nobles still found their indifference to death useful.

Tonbo first found their trail years earlier when Gatō and a Hot Water company fought over the Wave port. Cult members appeared among the hired forces and vanished again once their work drew attention.

Their common technique resembled the Reaper Death Seal. Blood from a target established a curse, but the harm inflicted upon the victim had to be suffered by the user first. Without immortality it was a mutual-destruction method, powerful only for someone willing to die.

Cult doctrine treated death as proof of devotion, so volunteers existed even before the experiments. A follower could injure his own body after standing within the ritual pattern and force the same wound upon the person whose blood completed it. The technique offered assassination at the cost of the assassin.

For ordinary clients, that cost made the cult disposable. For Tonbo, it revealed a method of linking consequences through blood, symbols, and Yin Release.

Hidan changed that equation.

The information Tonbo carried suggested that the cult had already produced its first immortal subject. If one experiment succeeded, lesser versions might exist as well. Even an incomplete result could teach him how the body resisted death and how the blood curse joined two people.

Hidan's immortality did not necessarily mean perfect regeneration. A body that remained alive after dismemberment created different questions from a body that restored every missing part. Tonbo wanted to know whether the cult preserved the soul, prevented cellular death, or bound the subject to an external source.

Immortality and reflected harm belonged to the same future problem Tonbo and Keigo had begun studying. Hot Water might give him the biological half of an answer while Itachi supplied the intelligence Hiruzen wanted.

Tonbo walked through the town considering both goals.

"You. Handsome man. Stop."

He turned.

A young woman with a ponytail and green eyes stood beside a female guard carrying a sword. She wore the confidence of a trained shinobi and the embarrassment of someone who had decided upon a strange conversation before beginning it.

"Were you speaking to me?"

"My name is Nadeshiko Shizuka. I challenge you."

Tonbo studied her stance. She possessed real strength, though not enough to threaten him.

Her weight remained ready upon both feet, and the guard kept a hand near her sword without treating him as an immediate enemy. The challenge therefore belonged to custom rather than an ambush. That did not make it less bewildering.

"We do not know one another. Is someone paying you to test me?"

"No. I lead Nadeshiko Village. Our tradition requires us to defeat strong outsiders and bring them into the village through marriage. You look strong, so I chose you."

Shizuka spoke formally despite the color rising in her face. Nadeshiko's leadership passed through women trained to preserve the village's strength. Her teacher had sent her beyond its borders to find an opponent capable of defeating or being defeated by her under that custom.

Tonbo's search for Akatsuki had produced an unexpected marriage challenge.

Shizuka's guard watched his reaction. Neither woman recognized the unbandaged Konoha shinobi before them.

Tonbo pushed the glasses higher on his nose.

"Then we should discuss one important complication. I already have a wife and children."