Konoha: Sage Body

"Raikage-sama, are you planning to declare war on Konoha?"

Erui said in surprise after receiving the order from the Sandaime Raikage.

Currently, Kumogakure's plan to declare war on Iwagakure had already been decided. Due to the repeated border conflicts, the ninja in the village had a very high hatred for Iwagakure and a strong desire to fight, and were basically ready to attack Iwagakure at any time.

Therefore, when Sandaime Raikage just told her to gather the ninja troops to attack Iwagakure, she was not at all panicked. As Sandaime Raikage's think tank, she had long since made thorough preparations.

However, at the moment, Sandaime Raikage suddenly turned his attention to Konoha, and her mind was a little short on ideas.

"This old bastard always does things on a whim. He wants to exhaust me, I don't want to work anymore,"

The slender Erui couldn't help but mutter to herself, rolling her beautiful eyes with a slight dark circle around them at Sandaime Raikage.

"Cough, just take a look at this and you'll understand why I made this decision."

Sandaime Raikage coughed as he saw the familiar white eyes of his secretary and handed her the scroll in his hand, explaining.

Erui immediately took the scroll to check it out.

Because this scroll was confidential, she didn't have the right to open it and read it before.

As soon as she saw the content on the scroll, including the part about Danzo being killed by a mysterious Kage-Level powerhouse, her pretty face quickly grew solemn. After a moment of thought, she said slowly, "Raikage-sama, I agree with your decision to attack Konoha, but there are three things that need to be noted."

"Which three? You say."

Sandaime Raikage humbly asked for advice.

He was self-aware of his own strategies and knew that changing the battle plan on the fly would have some negative effects. That was why he asked Erui to read the scroll and give her opinion to help him fill in the gaps.

He himself had only read one message from the intelligence report, and that was that now was a good opportunity to deal with Konoha.

He also sensed something unusual hidden within the signals. His intuition told him that if he did not attack Konoha now, he might regret it in the future.

In order not to regret it, Sandaime Raikage decisively chose to attack Konoha.

"First, this needs to be done in secret, and it is best to send small units in batches to infiltrate Konoha. If we make too much noise, not only will Konoha have time to prepare for our response, but the Iwagakure troops at the border may also take the opportunity to launch a sneak attack on our ninja units.

Second, we need a reason to attack Konoha. The more sufficient the reason, the better. It is best if Konoha feels that they are in the wrong, and it will cause strong dissatisfaction among our people, thus transferring the hatred of our ninja to Konoha and mobilizing their enthusiasm.

Third, we can secretly contact the Sunagakure. If we successfully gain the trust of the Sunagakure, we can join forces with them to attack Konoha. At that time, the Sunagakure will be in the open, while we, the Kumogakure, will be in the shadows, and we can play a huge role in the sneak attack."

Erui pondered for a moment, organizing her thoughts in her mind before slowly and clearly stating the three points she had raised.

When Sandaime Raikage heard the three points Erui had raised, his eyes immediately brightened, and a satisfied smile appeared on his face.

You are indeed a capable secretary that I have carefully selected and trained. This kind of strategy is really high.

"Erui, the precautions you have proposed are very good. If they can all be achieved, they will definitely increase our chances of victory over Konoha. However, the first and second points are easy to achieve, but the third point is a bit difficult. We from Kumogakure have previously ambushed Sunagakure and plundered a lot of their people, so we have a lot of grievances with Sunagakure. It is very difficult to gain their trust."

After Erui finished speaking, Sandaime Raikage scratched his cheek with his finger and sighed.

During a major battle, Kumogakure had coveted Sunagakure's Magnet Release and had once attacked Sunagakure's base camp during a battle between Sunagakure and Konoha, taking many lives. As a result, Kumogakure had obtained the Bloodline Limit of Magnet Release, the best example of which was the Magnet Release ninja named Troy in the village.

Kumogakure's behavior, which disregarded the ethics of war, naturally greatly angered Sunagakure. The two major ninja villages almost broke out in a war. In the end, because Sunagakure was poor and could not afford the transportation of supplies over long distances, the two major ninja villages did not really fight.

However, Sunagakure will definitely remember this blood feud.

"Raikage, don't worry. There are no eternal enemies in this world. Sunagakure's current battle with Konoha is clearly losing ground. I heard that due to the White Fang squad, Sunagakure's frontline supplies are already very tight. If they can't solve the White Fang squad soon, Sunagakure will only have one path: defeat.

If we take the initiative to approach them at this time and cooperate with them to attack Konoha, they will definitely be more than happy. The Land of Fire is large and abundant in resources, enough to satisfy the appetites of both our Kumogakure and Sunagakure without fear of conflict of interest."

Erui analyzed, revealing a confident smile.

"Then who do you think would be suitable to send to negotiate with the people of Sunagakure?"

Sandaime Raikage nodded thoughtfully and asked.

This time, Erui did not manage to respond quickly. She frowned slightly and thought for a moment, before saying with some difficulty, "To express our sincerity in hoping to cooperate with Kumogakure, the most suitable candidate would naturally be your son, Raikage-sama. However, this comes with certain risks."

"Then let the brat go on a secret trip. If he wants to inherit the name Ai, then he must make a sufficient contribution to Kumogakure."

Upon hearing this, Sandaime Raikage did not hesitate to send his son into harm's way.

Erui knew Sandaime Raikage's temper well. He was always firm and decisive, and basically impossible to dissuade once he had made up his mind. She nodded and said, "I understand. So who do you want to go with him?"

"The poison of Sunagakure is very tricky, so we must take an excellent medical ninja with us. Also, the Devil's Desert in the Land of Wind is very dangerous. It is mixed with a terrifying magnetic field that can interfere with a ninja's senses. Anyone who is unfamiliar with the terrain will easily get lost. Let Casaran and Dodai go with him.

Sandaime Raikage made a decision after a little thought.

"Dodai has exceptionally good perception skills, the strange magnetic field of the Devil's Desert will not be able to stop him. He is also calm and collected, so he is indeed a good choice. However, shouldn't Casaran think more seriously about it?"

Erui said hesitantly.

"What do you mean? Is there a problem with Casaran?"

Sandaime Raikage immediately said sternly.

Erui's words instantly reminded him of the incident more than half a year ago when Casaran was controlled by ninjas suspected to be from Konoha using secret mental techniques. At that time, it was fortunate that Erui keenly noticed that Casaran's behavior was a bit strange, and if he had trusted Erui to attack, it might have caused many secrets of Kumogakure to be leaked.

"That's not true. According to the ANBU report, there was nothing unusual about Casaran. It's just that I always felt that after that incident, Casaran became a bit different. As for where it's different, I'm not sure how to explain it. It's just a hunch."

Erui smiled bitterly.

"Hunch, huh? Then let's try another one."

After hearing Erui's explanation, Sandaime Raikage made a decisive new decision.

He is also a person who believes in intuition very much. Erui is an outstanding perception ninja. Since she feels that there is something wrong with Casaran, even if no concrete evidence has been found, it must be taken seriously.

It seems that he needs to put Casaran under stricter and more covert protection.

It is better to be safe than sorry. As one of the top medical ninja in Kumogakure and the former main person in charge of researching and developing physical enhancement drugs, if anything happens to Casaran, it will cause great losses to Kumogakure.

Erui smiled when she saw Sandaime Raikage accept her gut feeling and then named her preferred candidate.

Soon, Sandaime Raikage, Dodai, and a medical ninja named Kabuto secretly set off from Kumogakure.

That night, at the Kumogakure Hospital, after finishing her work for the day, Casaran went off duty to have a late-night snack and drink with some friends.

It was late at night before she returned home, reeking of alcohol, and then lay down to rest with her eyes closed, a hint of worry on her fair face.

After the last incident, her life had changed a lot, and the biggest change was undoubtedly that many medical projects that she had originally taken over were taken over by others, which had a great impact on her status in the hospital.

Because of the stigma of being controlled and almost "assassinating" Raikage-sama, her once-promising ladder of promotion to become the hospital's director was completely destroyed. She will be able to stay in the position of Minister of Medicine for the rest of her life, and in the future, she may even be taken away by her young and outstanding juniors.

Naturally, she feels very unwilling about this, and she hates the person who controls her even more. She has also gradually become dissatisfied with the senior management of Kumogakure, who does not trust her.

However, she usually doesn't show it much because she knows that she must have leaked some important information. Even if she didn't do it on purpose, in the absence of enemies, she is the one who has to pay for the blame. Who let her lack of ability and be controlled by others?

So, she has been working hard at training recently. It just so happens that many of the projects she was in charge of have been taken over by others, and she has more free time.

However, it seems that her talent has been focused on learning medical ninjutsu. She has excellent control of her own chakra and can easily master many difficult medical ninjutsu, but her talent for learning the five elements of ninjutsu is mediocre. So far, she has only learned one Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique.

Fire Release is also the nature of her innate chakra.

As for physical and swordsmanship techniques, Casaran doesn't want to become a tomboy, and she definitely doesn't want her hands, which she uses for surgery, to become inflexible.

Therefore, she abandoned swordsmanship without hesitation, and only practiced legwork for physical techniques.

Kumogakure is good at swordsmanship and boxing-type physical techniques, and has very few kicking-type physical techniques. The people of Casaran had to pull a lot of strings to find a taijutsu-type ninja who was good at kicking-type physical techniques, but the other party only had the strength of a chunin.

Therefore, her strength has improved very slowly, and she is still far from being a jōnin.

But just as she was about to give up on continuing to improve her medical ninjutsu, a voice suddenly appeared in her head, asking if she wanted to become as powerful as Tsunade.

Casaran definitely remembered this voice, because it was the owner of this voice who made her take the blame and lose her hope of becoming the academy's headmistress, leaving her in her current miserable state.

She was scared out of her wits at the time, thinking that the other party would once again use mental secret techniques to control her and take over her body.

However, it turned out to be a false alarm. The other party did not say anything to her again, but just kept harassing her, trying to use her to achieve some ulterior motives.

As a ninja with feelings for the village of Kumogakure, Casaran naturally would not accept the other party's harassment and compromise the interests of Kumogakure. After discovering that the other party seemed unable to control her again, she planned to go seek out Sandaime Raikage and report the matter, but the other party told her that doing so would only make her situation more embarrassing.

After hearing what the other party said, she thought about it carefully and realized that it was very likely to be the case. She hesitated for a moment and ultimately did not choose to report the matter.

Later, she had intermittent and secret exchanges with this mysterious person many times, but they were only about medical ninjutsu. The other party did not ask her anything about the intelligence of Kumogakure, and the other party was highly accomplished in medical ninjutsu. She learned a lot of useful things during the exchanges.

Moreover, the other party also taught her a secret technique called Monster Strength, allowing her to use outstanding chakra control to use yang attribute chakra to amazingly strengthen her limbs and release amazing explosive power, and her strength has improved dramatically.

"Gradually, you lost your guard against me and never reported me, allowing me to successfully complete my parasitism in your soul."

After a while, Casaran, who had fallen asleep, suddenly opened her eyes and revealed a strange smile.

She then closed her eyes again, carefully recalling what had happened today, before slowly opening them again and muttering, "The medicine specially provided to Blue B was suddenly taken early, and a large amount of medical supplies were secretly taken away. Kumogakure is preparing to attack Iwagakure, but why has the plan been brought forward so much?"

At this moment, Casaran was naturally not the real Casaran, but Casaran who had been temporarily controlled by Kirito while Casaran slept.

Spirit Transformation Technique: Soul Seed!

This is a derivative secret technique developed by Kirito after the Spirit Transformation Technique: Soul Search. It involves using one's own soul power, Sage Chakra, Seal Arts, and a little soul fragment to create a soul seed that looks like a needle, which is then inserted into another person's soul in order to parasitize it.

This soul secret technique was developed by Kirito with reference to Orochimaru's curse mark and the Sunagakure seal secret technique, Submerging Sand Brainwashing. It is a soul-type curse mark.

However, unlike Orochimaru's curse mark technique, Kirito's soul curse mark technique only separates a negligible amount of soul fragments. Unlike Orochimaru, who divided his soul into many parts, each part has the ability to allow him to be reborn.

Because there was only a little soul fragment, Kirito's soul curse mark was very weak at first. At most, it could only act as a signal receiver, allowing him to communicate with Casaran over long distances by expending his soul power.

However, over time, the soul seed quietly took root in Casaran's soul, absorbing her soul and growing stronger. After establishing a secret connection with her soul, he was able to temporarily take control of Casaran's body by possessing her soul after she lost consciousness.

If necessary, he can also forcibly take possession of Casaran's soul, at the cost of letting Casaran know that something is wrong with her.

Finally, because this soul curse mark has the ability to infiltrate the mind, it has super-strong stealth capabilities and can seal memories, so that even if Casaran wakes up, she will not be able to know anything about what Kirito has done or thought in her identity.

Because of this, Casaran has always believed that she has not betrayed the interests of Kumogakure, and even if she is taken away for investigation, it will be difficult for anyone to discover traces that she has been controlled.

Casaran was a spy left behind by Kirito in Kumogakure to collect important information about Kumogakure.

Although Casaran made mistakes and was treated coldly, she was not removed from her position as the head of the pharmaceutical department, and she had a very clear understanding of the consumption of various medicines in the hospital and the list of personnel who used the medicines.

This information is actually very important, and those who care can deduce a lot of hidden information from it.

For example, this time, when Kumogakure suddenly secretly transported a large amount of medicine, Kirito was able to deduce that Kumogakure might be preparing for war.

There is also the village flower Casaran, who has extensive connections in Kumogakure. Many of her friends hold important positions in various departments of Kumogakure. When she drinks with these friends, she can often hear secrets from them.

For example, this is how he learned the secret that Sandaime Raikage is preparing to attack Iwagakure next year.

Suddenly, 'Casaran' frowned slightly and wondered, "What's going on? Has ANBU, which is secretly monitoring Casaran, increased in number?"

Because the Spirit Transformation Technique: Soul Seed is a variant of the Kirito school of curse marks, it also has the ability to give the person who has the curse mark planted the potential to sense natural energy. Kirito, as the creator of this curse mark technique, can naturally easily use this soul curse mark to sense natural energy in the outside world.

For a period of time, in order to further gain Casaran's trust, he even secretly strengthened her physical fitness by creating a stable Sage Chakra, which allowed her to make rapid progress in her martial arts abilities.

Casaran was extremely lacking in talent when it came to practicing the martial arts of the Sage, and without the help provided by his curse mark, it would have been impossible for her to perceive natural energy at all.

Similarly, the natural energy he used Casaran's body to cultivate was very slow.

Up to now, Casaran's natural energy perception has only reached two or three hundred meters.

However, this range is sufficient for him to monitor the surrounding movements.

He had just let go of his natural energy perception and surprisingly discovered that within a radius of 100 meters, there were several members of the Kumogakure ANBU secretly monitoring Casaran, one of whom was an elite jōnin.

Since Casaran had been used by him, Kumogakure's surveillance of Casaran had never been eliminated, but over time, the level of surveillance had been decreasing. Usually, only chūnin-level people were monitoring, which even Casaran himself had noticed.

Now, however, it is contrary to normal practice to secretly send an elite ANBU ninja of jōnin rank to spy on Casaran, which really baffles Kirito.

The first thing that comes to Kirito's mind is that he has been discovered by someone from Kumogakure.

Although he is surprised, he doesn't find it strange, because there are many strange ninjutsu and Bloodline Limits in the ninja world, and it is difficult to prevent someone from discovering the manipulations he has made to Casaran's soul.

However, he quickly dismissed this idea.

Because he had always been very cautious, he had never used Casaran's identity to carry out espionage operations. He had always manipulated Casaran's body after Casaran fell asleep and lost consciousness, and stole information by reading Casaran's memories.

In theory, the possibility of him being discovered was extremely slim, to the extent of winning the lottery.

"I should have gone undetected. Otherwise, with Kumogakure's swift and decisive style, Casaran would already be in some dark room undergoing secret investigation. So what would make Kumogakure strengthen its secret surveillance of Casaran?"

Kirito thought to himself after carefully analyzing the situation, then closed his eyes and lurked again.

"That's really suspicious."

At the same time, in the Land of Wind, beneath the ruins of a certain Devil's Desert, Kirito, who was on watch, looked at the campfire in front of him and whispered.

From the intelligence information obtained from Casaran so far, it seems that Kumogakure may make a big move next. It's just not clear who these black-skinned barbarians from Kumogakure will target.

It could be Iwagakure, or it could be Konoha.

At first, he only thought that Kumogakure's target was Iwagakure.

But who caused the abnormal change in the forces monitoring Casaran?

Using the news released by Kumogakure before, which targeted the incident of Casaran being controlled and referred to the action as being done by Konoha ninja, he had to think that Kumogakure's next major move would be targeting Konoha.

If Kumogakure's target is going to be Konoha, then things won't be good for Konoha.

"It seems that after Danzo died, the impact he caused was very great. However, this impact is also related to me, a mysterious Kage-Level powerhouse. The people of the other villages definitely don't want to see the Senju clan complete its revival, and now that Konoha is caught in an 'internal struggle', with people's hearts unstable and uneven, this is indeed a good time to weaken Konoha's power."

Kirito's pupils, which reflected the flames, shrank slightly as he sighed inwardly.

If it wasn't absolutely necessary, he hadn't actually thought about killing Danzo at this time, because Konoha was currently at war with Sunagakure, and if the internal situation became unstable, it would have a significant impact on the frontlines.

Moreover, the Root did indeed occupy a very important part of Konoha's intelligence capabilities.

Unfortunately, Danzo is bent on his own destruction, so he can only get rid of this guy.

Otherwise, given Danzo's previous level of insanity, he would continue to betray Konoha's intelligence to the enemy and take the enemy's hand to get rid of the White Fang squad.

This kind of traitorous scum, if not killed quickly, is it supposed to be kept for the New Year?

"For now, we can only take things one step at a time. After Danzo's death, the original plot has become somewhat unrecognizable, and it is difficult to predict what will happen next. However, one thing remains unchanged: as long as we continue to get stronger and have enough powerful strength, we can suppress all dangers."

Kirito added a new log to the campfire, then casually shot a highly condensed Chakra needle with his finger, killing a bat that was flying silently in the dark. His eyes suddenly became sharp.

Then, with a thought, an attribute panel that only he could see appeared in his eyes.