Chapter 134: News

Chapter 134: Chapter 134: News

Faced with Kakuzu’s question, the black-market boss smiled and explained, "You must have heard about it too, right? Recently, a man going by the name ’Yama’ appeared. He’s been taking quite a few of the bounty missions."

Kakuzu’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Yama!?"

The black-market boss smiled. "That’s right. He’s quite the formidable figure. In just a few short months, he’s already completed seven or eight particularly troublesome missions!"

"Hmph!"

Hearing the admiration in the black-market boss’s voice, Kakuzu gave a cold snort.

As far as he was concerned, every fellow bounty hunter was a competitor—and an exceptional bounty hunter was an enemy among enemies.

After all, the bounty missions available on the black market weren’t endless.

Once a batch of rogue shinobi and bandits was wiped out, their territories would be left vacant. Given enough time, a new batch would naturally emerge to fill the void, but that process took time.

And even after new rogue shinobi and bandits appeared, someone still had to wait for them to commit enough crimes and cause enough trouble to thoroughly enrage the local nobles and wealthy merchants before anyone would finally put up the money to place bounties on their heads through the black market.

Thus, there were only so many missions to go around. If one bounty hunter swept through all the available missions in a short period of time, then naturally, the other bounty hunters would have no work to do for a while.

Seeing that Kakuzu seemed to have taken a dislike to Yama, the black-market boss wisely shut his mouth and stopped bringing him up.

Kakuzu, meanwhile, held the bounty ledger in his hand and fell into thought.

There was no doubt about it—the speed at which this Yama was clearing bounty missions was simply absurd.

Take Kakuzu himself, for example. If he set his sights on a particular group of rogue shinobi, putting aside whether he could defeat them or not, simply finding them would often take one or two months.

If his luck was bad, it could even take several months.

Yet this Yama had completed seven or eight bounty missions in the span of only a few months.

That meant Yama wasn’t merely powerful—his ability to gather intelligence was extraordinary as well.

Kakuzu came to a firm conclusion.

"There must be an organization behind this guy!"

Turning back to the black-market boss, Kakuzu asked, "Any results on the matter I told you to keep an eye on?"

The black-market boss shook his head and said apologetically, "Lord Kakuzu, we’ve been asking around everywhere as you requested, but so far, we haven’t received any information."

Kakuzu gave a slight nod.

"Keep looking."

In truth, even Kakuzu didn’t quite understand why the organization’s godlike and overwhelmingly powerful leader had suddenly ordered them to search for a mysterious individual connected to Konoha.

Moreover, the description of this mysterious person’s characteristics was extremely vague.

From Kakuzu’s experience, finding someone with information this unclear was exceedingly difficult, so he hadn’t placed much hope in the black market turning up anything either.

......

Meanwhile, on Hyuga Kagami’s side.

Sitting atop a cliff, Kagami ate a rice ball while counting up his latest haul.

Just moments ago, he had dealt with a rogue shinobi who specialized in kidnapping the concubines of wealthy merchants and demanding ransom in exchange for their release.

"Tch. This guy was only around chunin-level, yet he managed to stash away this much money. How the hell did he do it? Is kidnapping rich merchants’ concubines really that profitable?"

Kagami muttered to himself.

He had originally thought it was nothing more than an insignificant little job. But after a brief interrogation, the rogue shinobi had unexpectedly offered money in exchange for his life.

Kagami had pretended to agree.

Then, following the clues the man provided, he tracked down the rogue shinobi’s hidden stash.

What Kagami hadn’t expected was that the stash contained more than ten million ryō!

After thinking it over for a moment, Kagami quickly understood why this rogue shinobi had managed to succeed time and time again.

Kidnapping a wealthy merchant himself—or one of his children—was difficult for two reasons.

First, they were usually heavily guarded, making them difficult targets.

Second, even if the kidnapping succeeded, the merchant’s family would be willing to spend a fortune hiring one of the major shinobi villages to intervene.

But kidnapping one of a wealthy merchant’s concubines?

That was an entirely different story.

For the sake of saving face, wealthy merchants would often rather pay the ransom and quietly settle the matter than let news of their concubines being abducted spread everywhere.

That was why, despite possessing only chunin-level strength, this rogue shinobi had succeeded time and time again. Over more than a decade, he had accumulated a considerable fortune.

After his initial delight faded, Kagami began thinking things over.

The reason he had been able to clear bounty missions so efficiently actually wasn’t primarily because of his overwhelming strength.

Looking at it more carefully, the biggest reason was that he had taken advantage of his identity as a member of the Hokage’s direct Anbu and made use of Konoha’s enormous intelligence network—the intelligence network of the strongest of the Five Great Shinobi Villages.

That was what allowed him to locate his targets with such incredible efficiency.

Secondly, the unparalleled flight speed granted by Tenseigan Chakra Mode was another major reason he could complete bounty missions so quickly.

Without those two advantages, no matter how powerful he was, he would still have to obediently do things the way Kakuzu did—spending one or two months painstakingly searching across the shinobi world for each target.

But ultimately, the number of bounty missions was limited.

By now, Kagami had practically swept clean all the easy bounty missions. The ones remaining either required far too much time or involved one of the Five Great Shinobi Villages.

So he needed to find a new way to make money.

And this rogue shinobi who specialized in kidnapping the concubines of wealthy merchants had given Kagami an idea.

In the shinobi world, some wealthy merchants were genuinely rich enough to rival entire nations.

In the original timeline, after Zabuza’s failed coup in Kirigakure, he had been hired by the wealthy merchant Gato, who controlled the Land of Waves, ultimately leading to his life-and-death battle against Kakashi’s team.

Zabuza, after all, was an elite shinobi who had once launched a coup in Kirigakure, one of the Five Great Shinobi Villages.

Not only that, he was one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist and the wielder of the Kubikiribocho.

A shinobi of that caliber would rank among the notable experts even if you expanded the scope to the entire shinobi world.

Yet when Zabuza had fallen on hard times, even someone like him had been forced to work for Gato.

From that alone, it was easy to see just how absurd the wealth and influence of merchants like Gato truly were.

Poof...

Suddenly, a cloud of white smoke erupted beside Kagami.

When the smoke dispersed, an orange cat appeared in front of him.

The orange cat immediately stretched out a paw toward Kagami and said,

"Meow. One thousand ryō, please!"

Kagami’s face darkened.

He handed the orange cat a thousand ryō, then took a scroll from its paw.

This orange cat wasn’t some ordinary house cat. It was a ninja cat named Shōzaimaru, Uchiha Shinichi’s summoned beast.

To ensure that they could exchange information safely, Kagami had also signed a summoning contract with it. As a result, Shōzaimaru had become the intermediary through which Shinichi and Kagami secretly exchanged intelligence.

The only problem was that this damn cat was obsessed with money.

It charged a fee every single time it delivered a message, leaving Kagami unable to resist complaining that Shinichi was such a useless bastard that he couldn’t even keep his own summoned beast under control.

Kagami opened the scroll Shinichi had sent him.

Line after line of writing entered his sight.

"That bastard actually told me he’s Uchiha Madara! Does he seriously think I’m an idiot!?"

"I told you already, didn’t I? Not a single damn word that comes out of that bastard’s mouth is true!"

"Oh, right. The organization assigned me a partner. He’s a rogue shinobi from Kirigakure named Jūzō Biwa."

"The organization’s been going all out recently trying to find some mysterious person connected to Konoha. Hey... that person wouldn’t happen to be you, would it?"