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GSiN: Ch. 109
🕑 Added 2025-05-29 16:41:04 +0000 UTC---Third POV---
"Tomoko! Tomoko!" A young woman was walking along the street, calling out a name and occasionally gesturing to the passersby as she asked around.
"Have you seen a little girl about this tall with brown hair?"
"Don't bother me, I'm looking for my own son!"
The man she stopped seemed to be searching for his own child as well. Annoyed, he shoved the woman aside and shouted loudly around him.
"Genji! Get out here right now, I'm really mad!"
Not far from them, a couple dressed in traditional attire from the Land of Hot Water were yelling in front of a stall selling takoyaki, drawing the attention of many people.
"My kid disappeared right here at your stall!"
"I swear, I didn't do anything!"
The stall owner had an expression of being wrongly accused as he shouted back in protest.
"Don't give me that! Both of my kids were just right here, and then in the blink of an eye, they were gone!"
The man's voice grew more agitated, until he was practically shouting in the stall owner's face.
Next to him, his wife was silently wiping away tears. However, before the tense atmosphere could last much longer, a few ninja from the Land of Hot Water arrived. No one knew exactly what they did, but they managed to calm the situation down.
The fireworks festival, which had been briefly interrupted, once again filled the air with joy and festivity.
Snap.
With the breakage of a paper scooper, the goldfish scooping contest between the group finally came to an end.
In the end, Shiori clinched first place among the four of them thanks to her sheer skill. Wearing a mysterious smile, she stood proudly and declared triumphantly. "Heh, you still have a long way to go."
A true post-victory proclamation.
Obito looked as if he'd been shot in the knee with an arrow, collapsing to the ground.
"I… lost?"
---
And now, the live rankings:
1st place – Shiori
2nd place – Ryouma
3rd place – Kakashi
4th place – Obito
---
"It was just a game, Obito," Ryouma said casually, helping him up. "Oh, by the way, I'm leaving the stuff we bought to you."
Kakashi sighed lightly. He hadn't even tried very hard, yet he still ended up catching more goldfish than Obito. He really had no idea where that idiot got the confidence to call himself the "Goldfish Scooping Sage" at the start.
"We're ready to pay for all four of us."
"Huh?" The goldfish stall owner looked at Kakashi in surprise and asked, "Didn't you get a booklet at the village entrance?"
"A booklet?" Kakashi shook his head. "No, do we need one?"
"Not necessarily. It's not required for adults, but those booklets were specially distributed for kids like you."
As he spoke, the old man pulled out a black stamp from behind him.
"Kids with a booklet can get stamps at every stall and play for free, you know."
Kakashi looked awkwardly at Ryouma, who glanced at the stamp in the stall owner's hand and said, "We'll check into the booklet situation later. For now, just charge us like you would for adults who don't have the booklet."
"Hmm..." The stall owner seemed a bit troubled.
Just then, a squinty-eyed Yu ninja happened to be patrolling nearby and walked over to ask, "Is something going on here?"
The stall owner quickly replied, "These kids didn't receive the booklet."
Obito was a bit annoyed and spoke up loudly, "So what if we didn't get it? It's not like we're refusing to pay!"
The squinty-eyed ninja just smiled gently and wasn't bothered by Obito's attitude.
"No need to get upset. He just wants to make sure you all have fun. The booklet system is a new addition for this fireworks festival, so it's totally normal for some kids to miss it. I happen to have extras, why don't you take one?" As he spoke, the ninja pulled out a few small scrolls from behind him and handed one to Obito.
After being bombarded with such kindness, Obito started to feel he may have overreacted. When he unrolled the scroll, it had a single vertical line with a series of blank boxes, likely spaces for collecting stamps.
"You all should get yours too," the ninja said as he handed scrolls to Ryouma and the others.
Just then, a woman in a kimono came over and grabbed the ninja's arm as she cried. "My daughter is missing, could you help me find her?"
The ninja frowned slightly, disturbed by the interruption, but quickly returned to his gentle tone to comfort her.
"Your child may have just wandered off while playing. Don't worry."
"No, that's not possible. Tomoko is always well-behaved… she would never run off on her own."
"Well then, I'll take you to meet the patrol captain in charge of security. You can describe your daughter to him, and we'll dispatch ninja to look for her."
Hearing this, the woman could only nod in agreement.
After that short incident was settled, the ninja handed the three scrolls to Ryouma and the others, then left with the worried mother in tow.
As the two walked away, Ryouma silently formed a few hand seals. Using the Shadow Seal Manipulation Jutsu, he sent a Flying Thunder God mark flying to land stealthily on the sole of the ninja's shoe.
"This Yu ninja isn't too bad," Obito said, scratching his nose. Then he turned to the stall owner, "Alright, now that we've got our booklets, can we get stamped?"
"Haha, of course!" The stall owner handed the stamp to Obito and explained, noticing the confused look on his face, "For better memories, we let the kids stamp it themselves."
Obito laughed heartily as he took the stamp. "Haha, that's pretty clever!"
Just as he was about to press the stamp onto the scroll, Ryouma suddenly snatched it away with lightning speed.
Obito blinked in surprise when he saw the stamp was gone but didn't get angry. He just chuckled.
"Come on, Ryouma, you've got a childish side too, huh? Fine, you go first, but I'm next, got it?"
Kakashi, meanwhile, had picked up on something odd. Ryouma seemed to have noticed something.
"Hey there," the stall owner said, rubbing his hands nervously as he stepped closer. "That stamp isn't very sturdy, so don't go snatching it from each other, alright?"
Ryouma ignored him and signaled to Shiori with his eyes. She immediately understood. Her black eyes vanished, replaced by the crimson glow of the Mangekyō Sharingan. Without holding back in the slightest, she used a full-strength genjutsu at the stall owner.
In an instant, the man was hit. He stood there dazed, completely under her control.
Obito, still confused, frowned. "Why are we suddenly using genjutsu on a normal person? Could it be…"
A realization seemed to dawn on him. He hesitated and said, "Ryouma? Skipping out on the bill like this… that's not right, is it?"
"Idiot." Kakashi chopped Obito on the head with a knife-hand strike, causing the latter to cry out in pain.
"Why'd you hit me again? Are you looking for a fight?"
He ignored Obito and instead took out the scroll given to him by the Yu ninja, examining it. But no matter how he looked, it seemed like a normal scroll.
Shiori leaned in next to Ryouma and asked, "Did you notice something?"
"Yeah, that woman's situation just now... it didn't seem like a coincidence."
Under the full activation of his Rikugan, Ryouma observed many parents who had lost their children, but here came the strange part: inside the entire village, not a single lost child could be found.
That clearly wasn't a normal phenomenon.
He flipped over the stamp from the stall owner, and the firework pattern on its base looked particularly strange under the moonlight.
"That stamp carries a sinister aura," Shukaku said, pointing to the base of the stamp.
The pattern itself was fine, and the stamp was just an ordinary wooden one. The only thing that could be off was the ink used on it. With that in mind, Ryouma decisively asked Shiori, "Can you interrogate him? Find out who gave him this stamp."
"Got it."
Shiori swiftly switched into ninja mode, using genjutsu to extract information. The stall owner was just an ordinary person and couldn't withstand the Mangekyō's interrogation. His eyes glazed over as he revealed everything he knew.
"This stamp and scroll were distributed to us by a Yu ninja. What was their goal?"
"I don't know."
"What happens when you use the stamp?"
"I don't know."
She asked several more questions from different angles, but still couldn't extract any additional intel. It seemed the stall owner was just a regular person who got dragged into things and used.
Kakashi felt stuck. "What should we do? It seems something's wrong inside Yu."
Konoha had a good international reputation, and the Land of Hot Water was an ally of the Land of Fire. It wouldn't look good if they were seen interfering with internal affairs of an allied village.
Ryouma held up the seemingly ordinary scroll, pondering the current situation. From the stall owner's responses, it seemed most of the stall owners at the fireworks festival were promoting this stamp booklet activity. That meant this was definitely known at least within the village itself. The question was whether the issue with the stamps was something orchestrated by the village leadership, or if they were being used by someone else.
That was as far as he could analyze. This kind of intel assessment was more suited to Minato.
Thinking of that, he decided to use the Flying Thunder God Technique to bring Kakashi and the others straight back to camp. But two Yu ninjas noticed that something was off and slowly approached from opposite directions, subtly blocking both ends of the street.
"Is something going on here?"
One of them patted the stall owner on the shoulder. Naturally, the stall owner, still under genjutsu, didn't react at all.
The other ninja reached behind his back, apparently about to pull something out.
Ryouma frowned and quickly formed a seal with one hand. In less than a second, the jutsu was complete.
Tapping the ground lightly with his toe, two barely visible currents of electricity shot out and struck both ninjas, paralyzing them on the spot.
Shiori activated her Mangekyō Sharingan again and used genjutsu to neutralize the two ninjas.
---
With the two Yu ninjas leading the way, Ryouma and the others entered the alley without attracting any attention.
Shiori then began interrogating these two ninjas and began with the one on the left, the ninja with thin eyebrows.
"You're a Yi ninja, right?"
"Yes."
"What's the purpose of this stamp? Why are the stall owners asking children to collect stamps?"
"This stamp is... is evil... ugh... ugh..."
Just as the thin-browed ninja was speaking clearly, he suddenly began retching uncontrollably, as if struck by a violent illness. His stomach began to swell abnormally. Yellow bile flowed from his mouth, followed by bright red blood. Then something shocking happened, a thick black tentacle extended from his mouth, writhed a few times, and then vanished into smoke.
The thin-browed ninja then collapsed stiffly to the ground, lifeless.
From Ryouma's Rikugan perspective, the man's internal organs had been crushed by the tentacle moments earlier, he likely died from internal bleeding.
The scene was quite horrifying. Obito turned pale and looked like he was about to throw up, but when he remembered the disturbing motions the man made before dying, he quickly forced himself to swallow down the sour taste in his mouth.
"A silencing failsafe?"
It wasn't entirely unexpected, many shadowy organizations in the shinobi world employed such measures.
However, the man's brain remained intact. They could bring him and the other ninja back for Inoichi to examine their memories.
"Gather around. I'm teleporting us."
---
After returning to the Konoha encampment, Ryouma left the three suspicious individuals with the Extraction Team, then took Kakashi and the others to the command center.
As expected, Minato and the others were still working late. After carefully listening to Ryouma's report, the people in the room were left scratching their heads.
The information Ryouma brought back was limited, and the connections between clues were unclear—it was difficult to draw any solid conclusions from guesses alone.
Minato closed his eyes in thought for a moment. "Inoichi, go try scanning the brains of those two Yu ninjas."
"Understood. I'll get on it right away." Inoichi nodded and quickly left the command center.
Minato then asked Ryouma to hand over the stamp and the scroll.
Ryouma couldn't figure out anything unusual from the strange-looking stamp, but it was the seemingly ordinary scroll that revealed the real problem.
Spreading the scroll out on the table, Minato rapidly formed a complex sequence of hand seals. When the seals were completed, he touched the scroll with his finger. A wave of chakra pulsed outward, followed by a crisp, bell-like sound.
The once-simple scroll, marked only by a few blocky symbols, suddenly revealed densely packed black sealing formulas.
"This is… a summoning technique formula?" Though Ryouma hadn't studied sealing arts as deeply as Minato, this classic structure was still recognizable to him at a glance.
"That's right," Minato nodded. "This scroll has a dual-layered seal. A preset summoning technique is hidden within. Once certain conditions are met, it activates immediately."
"So the stamp acts as the trigger medium for the technique? But even then, it still doesn't explain why the children suddenly disappeared. The reverse summoning conditions shouldn't have been met yet."
