Chapter 54 New Ideas
The Sand Ninja reconnaissance teams were truly unlucky to encounter Hyuga Mirai and his group.
Even before meeting, they were clearly seen by the Byakugan, and even their remaining Chakra could be roughly estimated, meaning that before the fight, 30% of their intelligence was already leaked.
When Bai Yunduan Ye arranged the enemy-clearing teams, he specifically considered the combat power distribution of the six teams, placing these individuals in the first round to clear out Sand Ninja Village spies, which was absolutely effective.
The Konoha's surprise attack needed to be covert and swift, so the Sand Ninja within the Land of Rivers had to be eliminated within a day; otherwise, if Chiyo of Baosha Town noticed, the surprise attack would already be half a failure.
Sarutobi Hisashi and his ten men perfectly executed this enemy-clearing mission. His route almost guaranteed that there were no Sand Ninja spies in one direction of the assault force.
Boom!
After the sound of an Exploding Tag explosion, the last puppeteer among the four Sand Ninja was also killed by Hyuga Mirai, who seized the opportunity to use an Exploding Tag.
This time, they didn't encounter a Sand Ninja reconnaissance team, but a regular Sand Ninja squad preparing to ambush and kill Konoha Ninja. However, under the Byakugan's ability, their ambush seemed somewhat ridiculous.
After successfully eliminating the last enemy, Hyuga Mirai quickly used his Byakugan to inspect the traps inside the ninja tool pouches of two Sand Ninja corpses. After disarming them, he pocketed the ninja tool pouches.
This was an unexpected gain; it only required a little effort. Before this mission, Hyuga Mirai had instructed Kurenai Yuhi and Hyuga Kiyomi to keep an eye on the puppeteers, so Hyuga Mirai could openly take the spoils of war that belonged to their team.
The Genin from the other two teams, upon seeing Hyuga Mirai's actions, were envious. Subsequently, one of Sarutobi Hisashi's subordinates also wanted to learn from Hyuga Mirai and collect the Sand Ninja's ninja tool pouches.
However, this suicidal act was immediately stopped by Sarutobi Hisashi. Who knew if these Sand Ninja had left traps in their ninja tool pouches? Hyuga Mirai could always find the traps in the ninja tool pouches, but without the Byakugan Cell Lineage, it would take them some time just to disarm the traps.
Without the Byakugan's x-ray vision, it would take a lot of time just to disarm the traps.
They were currently on an enemy-clearing mission, and not a single moment could be wasted. If others had Hyuga Mirai's ability to quickly disarm traps, Sarutobi Hisashi wouldn't have stopped them, but they clearly didn't. Rashly taking the Sand Ninja's ninja tool pouches would likely lead to them being killed by traps.
This was the convenience brought by the Cell Lineage; these civilian ninja couldn't learn it even if they wanted to.
From Kikyō Castle all the way to the border between the Land of Rivers and the Land of Wind, Hyuga Mirai's team encountered a total of five teams, seventeen Sand Ninja, all of whom were discovered in advance by their Byakugan and then killed.
Upon reaching the border between the Land of Rivers and the Land of Wind, Sarutobi Hisashi immediately used communication methods to report the news to the assault force; then, he cautiously hurried to the mission location near Baosha Town.
Their next mission was to ambush the Sand Ninja at the designated location. If they didn't encounter any, they would remain on standby; if they did, they would try their best to kill all the Sand Ninja they encountered, leaving no one alive.
After entering the Land of Wind, Sarutobi Hisashi changed formations and separated Hyuga Mirai and Hyuga Kiyomi into two directions; they now needed to be covert. As long as they successfully reached the mission location, 80% of their mission would be completed.
Fortunately, they arrived at the mission location smoothly, without encountering any Sand Ninja patrol units. The Sand Ninja in Baosha Town seemed to be unaware of Konoha's surprise attack.
This was also related to Orochimaru's daring plan. Even if Chiyo knew that Konoha had sent reinforcements to Kikyō Castle, she wouldn't have guessed that Konoha's reinforcements would cross the Land of Rivers and launch a surprise attack on Baosha Town a few days later.
However, Hyuga Mirai wouldn't be able to see the large-scale battle involving hundreds or thousands of people in Baosha Town. After reaching the mission location, the ten of them set up a series of interconnected traps. If a Sand Ninja accidentally triggered one, it would activate many traps simultaneously.
This was arranged by Sarutobi Hisashi; the Nin school didn't teach such advanced trap-setting, which was an eye-opener for Hyuga Mirai.
After setting up the traps, everyone found a place to rest covertly.
After several battles and forced marches, even with military rations, a few Genin were almost at their limit.
While resting, Hyuga Mirai sorted his gains. He planned to collect more puppets from Sand Ninja Village during this war.
"Are you going to sell all these puppets?"
Hyuga Kiyomi asked with a slight frown, a little puzzled. Was he really short on money?
As a Medical Ninja, even if Hyuga Mirai was unavailable for team missions, she and Kurenai Yuhi would still set aside the captain's share of the mission reward for him. Additionally, although the Hyuga Clan had stopped Hyuga Mirai's allowance, as her bodyguard, her grandfather would still give Hyuga Mirai an allowance.
Currently, Hyuga Mirai's income, while not comparable to a Jonin, definitely exceeded that of all Chunin in Konoha.
"Not necessarily. I'll study them first. Maybe I can repurpose them."
Hyuga Mirai took out the puppets he had collected one by one and examined them. Under his Byakugan and powerful memory, he memorized the structure and mechanisms of all these puppets in just a few minutes.
This was an idea Hyuga Mirai had during his battle with the Sand Ninja puppeteers: he wanted to create a bio-mechanical weapon.
Dr. Kinnos's initial research direction was bio-plus-mechanical. The mechanical gorilla of the House of Evolution was a product of this idea, and only later did he develop into genetic fusion.
That was also because there were too many monsters in the One-Punch Man world; basically, every few days, Dr. Kinnos could obtain a batch of cells from powerful monsters.
However, the Ninja World lacked these conditions. In the end, it was essentially internal strife within one family, and there were too few cells available for Hyuga Mirai to research. Although subordinates created through genetic fusion were powerful, the current conditions did not allow for it.
However, bio-mechanics had great potential for development in the Ninja World. There were many special metals in the Ninja World, as well as Tailed Beasts and hashirama cells.
During his fight with the puppeteers, Hyuga Mirai suddenly thought of using the Eight-Tails' horns, combined with hashirama cells and mechanical metal limbs, to create a bio-mechanical assistant.
If successful, this assistant could help him with research normally and also help him fight in times of crisis.
It's just that programming the intelligent brain is a bit troublesome; the Ninja World's computer technology isn't that advanced yet. If he were to directly perform biological modifications like Kinnos, he would need to choose a creature loyal to him.
'I'll choose a summoned snake from Ryuchi Cave and prepare for both. I'll start working on it once I get back.'
Hyuga Mirai thought as he put away the puppets. The puppeteers among these Sand Ninja weren't too poor; many of their puppets had Chakra metal, which Hyuga Mirai could repurpose.
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