Chapter 194: Two Moving North

Tonbo remained in the underground arena through several more matches.

The fighters confirmed his first impression. Most relied upon one specialized ability refined through survival rather than a hidden village's formal curriculum. Bloodline limits appeared often enough to explain why Orochimaru maintained a presence here.

One shinobi hardened hair into needles. Another exhaled a vapor that reacted with metal. A third used a sensory organ formed beneath the tongue and could follow movement without sight. Their techniques lacked the breadth of village training and possessed details no public archive recorded.

Spectators said arenas like this operated in several countries. Wealthy employers used them to recruit guards, hunters, and private shinobi. For competitors, a stable salary promised less uncertainty than village missions. For patrons, every death displayed an ability they might purchase from the survivor.

Yashiro En stood near the center of that system.

Tonbo followed Orochimaru's chakra away from the seats.

Inside a private room, Orochimaru sat opposite a middle-aged man with gray-brown hair and a trimmed beard. Yashiro En lounged across the sofa as if the missing-nin before him were another contractor.

"Your support made the new base possible," Orochimaru said.

"Cooperating with you is easier than explaining research to fools," Yashiro En replied. "Keep the arrangement profitable."

For years the merchant had supplied test subjects from Hot Water's underground. Orochimaru provided techniques, medicines, and services no lawful laboratory would offer. Familiarity removed the fear his name produced elsewhere.

Arena deaths solved several problems at once. Yashiro En disposed of defeated fighters, Orochimaru received uncommon bodies, and both men could deny that anyone had been killed for research. The combat itself produced the corpses before the transfer began.

"Mutual benefit is my favorite arrangement," Orochimaru said.

Yashiro En's gaze shifted toward the empty place where Tonbo stood concealed.

"Then the uninvited guest belongs to you. I prefer avoiding a fight that earns nothing."

His body vanished in smoke.

Orochimaru looked directly at Tonbo.

"Captain Tonbo. Your genjutsu continues to improve. How is Sarutobi's health?"

Tonbo released Body Concealment.

Neither man in the room had brought his true body. Orochimaru's reduced chakra revealed a clone. Yashiro En had used one as well, even in a protected arena among his own employees.

"I intended to ask why your business partner fled," Tonbo said. "Apparently he noticed me before I noticed the clone."

Orochimaru laughed.

"I maintain several hiding places. Yashiro En maintains fifteen. Caution is the talent that made him rich."

Tonbo admired the breadth of Orochimaru's network. Konoha officials, small-country merchants, gangs, laboratories, and criminals all appeared within it when useful.

That network explained how a missing-nin maintained multiple laboratories after years of pursuit. Villages searched for hidden bases. Merchants hid them inside businesses already protected by money and local influence.

"What brings you to Hot Water?"

"Experiments," Orochimaru said. "Nothing I intend to discuss with you today. We may have a better conversation later."

The answer carried a second meaning Tonbo could not resolve. A clone gave Orochimaru little reason to fear direct contact, yet he refused to remain close enough for Tonbo to plant a nerve.

He smiled and dispersed.

Tonbo stood alone in the room.

"Cautious to the end."

He had wanted Orochimaru's physical information. A clone would provide only an incomplete reflection shaped by the chakra used to make it. Pursuit offered less value than the bodies accumulating below.

Tonbo returned to the arena under concealment.

Dead competitors passed through holding rooms before disposal. He placed nerves into them, read final memories, and collected the physical information behind their techniques. Living fighters received the same contact when he could reach them without breaking disguise.

The corpses could no longer resist or reveal his presence. Their final memories showed how each technique felt from inside, while the nerves mapped the structures that produced it. Tonbo compared intention, chakra movement, and physical result before preserving the useful relationships within Contact Evolution.

Mad Wolf's body revealed the mechanism of the transformation. Other matches supplied rare chakra natures, altered organs, sensory structures, and secret methods that never entered a village archive. Tonbo copied no technique merely because it existed; he preserved the information Contact Evolution might later use.

Only a few competitors came from Hidden Hot Water. Most were missing-nin, unaffiliated shinobi, or former retainers who fled nobles they could no longer endure. Possessing chakra gave them force without guaranteeing a country, salary, or protection. Ordinary people and wealthy patrons still controlled most of the world in which that force had to survive.

Some had left villages after crimes. Others had been born beyond any hidden-village system and learned one family art without the credentials needed for ordinary missions. A few escaped the same patrons who now recruited replacements in the pit. Their lives supplied information the great villages rarely counted.

Yashiro En completed his recruitment, and the quality of later matches declined. Tonbo nevertheless remained five days.

The arena was an information archive that renewed itself through violence. If a minor country gathered this many rare bodies, comparable sites in the five great nations might offer even more.

He left reluctantly.

One of the concentrated medicines supporting his evolution replaced the food he had ignored during the last round of observation. Tonbo then traveled north toward the border nearest Mist.

His Eye-Opening Hand creatures had found two unusual men moving toward the Land of Exchange. They had shown their faces recently enough for the birds to preserve useful images.

Itachi and Kisame.

The birds preserved black cloaks, the outline of Samehada, and faces that matched Hiruzen's intelligence. One carried a dead bounty target. Their direction and pace pointed toward the exchange market rather than a jinchūriki hunt.

Tonbo opened his map while moving.

The Land of Exchange served as a marketplace where missions, corpses, stolen goods, and rewards changed hands. Akatsuki had not yet begun the full campaign against the tailed beasts. Its members still needed money to maintain bases, travel, and prepare the larger operation.

North of him, Kisame carried a corpse over Samehada.

"Akatsuki works us harder than Mist ever did," he complained. "A grand dream should require less accounting."

The complaint did not weaken his loyalty. Pain's vision of destroying the false order between villages appealed to everything Kisame had come to believe about a world built from lies.

Itachi continued toward the Land of Exchange.

"Remain alert."

Missing-nin often waited beyond the marketplace to rob people carrying newly received bounties or purchases. Kisame welcomed the possibility of a stronger opponent; the dead man hanging from Samehada had barely required effort.

The market itself forbade fighting strongly enough to protect its business. The roads beyond that protection were another matter. Hunters could collect a bounty, lose the payment minutes later, and end as the next body sold through the same network.

A flock of small birds crossed the sky.

Itachi's Sharingan turned.

The birds flew naturally, but their chakra did not.

"Stop," he said. "We may have company."

Far behind them, Tonbo felt the flock enter the range of Itachi's gaze.

The secret meeting was about to begin as a fight.