Konoha's strongest substitute user

"Lord Orochimaru, our people found a suspicious body in the forest to the south."

The ones who came to report were the ninjas from the Sound Ninja Intelligence Department. Orochimaru's intelligence collection work had always maintained a level that was not inferior to that of the Great Ninja Village. As a ninja scientist, he is in great need of more research materials, information, excellent seedlings, and useful tools.

You can never have too much of these.

Orochimaru, who was sitting in a wheelchair, asked the frightened Oto-nin in a hoarse voice: "Have you brought the body?"

"Bring it here." Oto Nin quickly bowed and lowered his head: "Please allow me to bring the body up."

Orochimaru sat quietly in the wheelchair, not knowing why he had to sit in the wheelchair because his hand was injured.

Seeing that the sound ninja in the reconnaissance team looked like he was afraid to move without Orochimaru speaking, Kabuto saved the nervous sound ninja from the fire and water: "Bring it over here, hurry up."

"Yes"

The sound ninja breathed a sigh of relief and clapped his hands twice.

Hearing clapping, several people waiting outside the door put a statue-like body on a stretcher and carried it into the room.

Orochimaru nodded to Kabuto, and Kabuto immediately understood what Orochimaru meant, and waved to the sound ninja who came in at the beginning and the sound ninja who came in later carrying the body: "Stand aside and wait."

The sound ninja put down the corpse and stepped aside.

Kabuto took out a kunai and approached the body.

The skin of this corpse shows an abnormal khaki color. At first glance, people would think that it is a clay sculpture. The mouth, eye sockets, and ear holes are all filled with soil, and there is fluid soil flowing out. Marks caused by drying out.

There were many bone fragments inserted into the corpse, as well as some larger wounds, which seemed to have been poked with some kind of cylindrical or conical object, but they were not left in the wounds. There was also soil flowing out near these wounds. trace.

Kabuto lowered his body and looked inside from the hollow wound.

None of the puncture wounds showed signs of shrinkage, and the wounds perfectly restored the shape of the weapon that caused them.

He put his fingers into the wound and touched it.

It felt like touching dry soil. When I pulled out my finger, there was no blood on it at all, not even clots or dark red blood residue after the blood had dried.

Kabuto frowned. This method of death was unprecedented. He thought he died from a stabbing with a weapon, and was then affected by Earth Release or buried. But now it seems that this is not the case.

Use kunai to cut open the surface skin of the corpse, and there is a strange sight inside.

The muscle tissue under the skin is mixed with very fine-grained soil. The soil fills the gaps between the muscle tissue that has dried up due to the loss of water, just like water filling the gaps between sand and stones, and continues to split the muscle tissue. This continues down to the skeletal parts of the body.

When the skin and muscles of the corpse are cut open to the bones, it can be clearly seen that the bones are wrapped in a layer of equally fine-grained and very thin soil. When the layer of soil is finally cut open, the bones inside are quite normal, but they are also very dry.

Seeing that Kabuto seemed to have finished checking the body, Orochimaru became slightly more interested: "How is it?"

"It's very interesting. The specific time of death can hardly be seen from the corpse. The body is filled with a lot of soil. The soil seems to have been processed by chakra or other external forces. The particles are very fine. The soil inside the corpse is not large at all. The clods of soil condensed." Kabuto said and then opened the abdomen of the corpse: "Sure enough, after the soil dried, the body's body tissues showed a lack of water, and the internal organs, eyeballs and other things shriveled up, causing the positions they should have occupied. Being replaced and filled with soil is really magical, an artistic way of killing, very creative."

"Wait..." Kabuto discovered something even more magical in the middle of his words. He stretched out his hand to cut off the corpse's wrist, and looked at the cross-section in front of his eyes: "Are blood vessels the same? Arteries and veins. The thicker blood vessels are filled with this soil.”

Orochimaru's snake-like pupils shrank slightly: "Interesting... Do you know the identity of the corpse? Have you found the person who killed him?"

"Report to Lord Orochimaru, there are many similar corpses near the location where this body was found. It should be a gang of robbers." The sound ninja who first came to report replied: "The people who killed them had already left when we found them. Only one footprint was found, it was very shallow, it should be that of a child."

"You have found the child." Orochimaru's tone was cold. His patience was limited, and he was not very satisfied with such an uncertain answer.

A few drops of cold sweat flowed from Oto Ninja's forehead: "The traces left by that person went all the way to a village near the border, and then they were no longer traceable. Judging from the traces, it happened within two days."

"Very well, just you guys, take me to that village."

...................................

Serving a bowl of hot soup, Mother-in-law Murakami asked the girl in front of her, who was so beautiful that she seemed unreal, very attentively: "Miss, what is your name?"

When the girl walked out of the depths of the forest alone, she thought the goddess from the mountain had appeared. Later, looking at her simple clothes without any decoration, I realized that she was an ordinary girl, but she was too beautiful.

"Please call me Ziyue." Ziyue did not refuse the hot soup. Although it was only made with a little grain and wild vegetables, it was much better than eating raw animal meat in the forest.

Mother-in-law Murakami looked more and more satisfied when she saw Ziyue. She could definitely drink such soup calmly, and she was definitely not a person with an outstanding background.

The little girl is too good-looking, so it would be best if she is not a powerful person. She will be raised for a few years and she will be married to her useless grandson.

"Why did you come out of the forest alone?" Mother-in-law Murakami has already fantasized about hiding such a beauty, developing a relationship with her grandson, and then becoming her grandson's wife. Out of caution, she still needs to ask some more questions to confirm. For a moment, if there is something wrong with this child, just treat her and drive her away: "The forest is so dangerous, where are your parents?"

Ziyue's calm expression gradually became sad, and soon strings of tears dripped down her cheeks on the table and into the soup bowl: "Father and mother... they... they all died, and the village was burned down by bandits. , only I escaped..."

After that, Granny Murakami could only hear sobs from Ziyue's mouth, and intermittent words almost calling her parents.

Mother-in-law Murakami walked to Ziyue distressedly and hugged Ziyue's shoulders: "Don't cry, don't cry, damn robbers will always do such things, you are lucky to escape, otherwise such a beautiful person like you The girl doesn't know how much hardship she has to endure. It's okay, it's very close to the city and very safe. You can live with your mother-in-law from now on and learn weaving from her. You won't starve to death."

"Yes." Ziyue buried her head in the arms of Granny Murakami and agreed. Her pupils, as dark as the night at four o'clock in the morning, looked at the bowl of soup on the table, with no trace of tears on her face.