Pupet Master in Konoha

The camera returns to the ground.

At that moment, Nakamura lost his balance due to a sudden dizziness and fell to the ground with a thud.

The dizziness didn't fade from the fall's pain; in fact, it worsened, making it difficult for Nakamura to maintain his chakra thread.

The mantis puppet, not far away, immediately stopped moving and stood still.

Then dark red blood began to flow from the corner of Nakamura's mouth.

As he felt his life slipping away, Nakamura's previously hysterical eyes began to gradually clear, and he realized what was happening...

Ah, it was the poison needle from the start...

Unexpectedly, after immediately cutting his calf and taking so many special antidotes from Chiyo-sama, he still couldn't survive...

Kimura Hideki, how many secrets do you have?

But this had nothing to do with Nakamura anymore.

As he agonized, his eyes, now beginning to lose focus, caught sight of a small piece of wood on the ground not far away, which must have fallen from his arms when he collapsed.

Nakamura forced a self-deprecating smile.

At least I laughed at Kimura Hideki for losing his life over this piece of wood.

It turns out I was the fool who let my guard down because of this piece of wood and died so easily.

"When the enemy captures the prey, that's the best time to launch a sneak attack..."

"The only person who really didn't understand that phrase was me..."

At this point, Nakamura's dazed mind could no longer bear the weight of his thoughts, and his eyelids grew so heavy that they finally closed...

The last scene he saw in his life was the corpse puppet, resembling Kimura Hideki, staggering toward him, releasing chakra threads from the tips of its ten fingers, slowly approaching him...

---

After winning the battle, of course, came the part Hideki loved most—touching the corpse.

However, Hideki was still sitting in the cave, not intending to emerge.

To be honest, he had special skills for touching corpses...

Under Hideki's control, a small passage formed above the crypt, and several objects began to fall in front of Hideki through the passage, drawn by chakra threads.

A standard Sunagakure ninja tool pouch, a puppet master's toolkit, about 50,000 taels of money, a notebook, a bounty order, and some miscellaneous items...

Clearly, these were the trophies Hideki was gathering from the enemy using chakra threads.

Using chakra threads to touch corpses was a good habit Hideki had developed over the years.

With his powerful chakra control, Hideki could use chakra threads to find all useful items on a corpse without missing a thing.

The second reason was that Hideki also worried about the possibility of the enemy being so insane as to turn their body into a deadly trap.

After all, he did the same thing himself, albeit using a simulated puppet...

In summary, as long as the chakra threads were controlled, the possibility of traps or poison in the objects and corpses could basically be ruled out.

Still, Hideki had no intention of directly touching these things. He continued to use chakra threads for a more thorough examination.

The ninja pouch, the toolkit, the money, and miscellaneous items were nothing significant—just small rewards.

As Hideki had expected, the notebook didn't contain much useful information. It only recorded some daily expenses and travel experiences.

Aside from finally learning that the man he had killed was named Nakamura, Hideki didn't gain much.

But this was very normal.

It probably only happens in novels where a villain carries a secret book everywhere.

So, Hideki wasn't disappointed. After all, there was still a puppet on the ground to recover, so he came out ahead regardless.

Then Hideki's attention quickly focused on the bounty notice.

His name, Kimura Hideki, was clearly written on it.

---

"A reward of 30 million taels, and it doesn't matter if I live or die. Looks like Sunagakure really hates me..."

Although Hideki had a feeling this day would come, he hadn't expected it to happen so soon.

After all, he hadn't even finished his probationary period as a teacher yet.

And it wasn't hard to imagine that murders like this would continue to happen in the future.

But Hideki wasn't too worried yet.

Because if Sunagakure truly considered him a serious threat, they wouldn't issue a bounty but would send an elite team to decapitate him.

Since Hideki was so focused on hiding, Sunagakure probably didn't see his puppet skills as a major threat to the point of needing to eradicate him.

Of course, with Hideki's teachings and the establishment of his workshop, the evaluation Sunagakure made of him would likely increase to the point where it became intolerable.

So Hideki needed to accumulate enough strength before that, to face the increasingly severe challenges in the future...

---

After using the Earth Dragon Hidden Technique to bury Nakamura's corpse underground, and then using the storage scroll to recover the two puppets, Hideki completed his first exploration of the Valley of the End and returned to the Hidden Leaf Village.

Although he carried a 30-million-tael bounty, Hideki's life didn't change much after that, and he still did what he had to do.

After all, he rarely left the village now.

Even the most powerful bounty hunters wouldn't dare to openly attack Konoha ninjas within the village.

Otherwise, even if they obtained the bounty, they might not have a chance to enjoy it.

The only risk was that Hideki still needed to go to the Konoha Forest from time to time to gather useful materials for chakra transmission.

Whether for the workshop or to strengthen his puppet, materials were indispensable to Hideki, and he couldn't afford to ignore the danger.

Moreover, with the triple guarantee of his radar perception technique, the simulated puppet, and the Earth Dragon Hidden Technique, Hideki still had plenty of confidence in protecting himself.

But Hideki didn't have much time to gather materials these days.

Because with the help of Dean Kemp, the workshop plan had progressed very quickly and was now in the countdown to its official opening.

Although the actual workshop hadn't been established yet, Kemp had opened several rooms on the first floor of the orphanage as temporary workshops, which were enough for simple production tasks.

The materials and tools acquired by Hideki's Ninja Mandiantang were also arriving one by one and could be put into production at any time.

Now only the apprentices responsible for the main production steps remained in their posts.

But it didn't matter, because the weekend visit Hideki had invited the students to the workshop had quietly arrived...

---

Saturday morning, in the open space in front of the orphanage.

Many children were chasing and playing in the open space, laughing nonstop.

And amidst the laughter, there were two figures who also appeared to be children, but out of place, looking confused at the other kids.

"Rin, are you sure this is the right direction?"

Yuhi Kurenai, wearing a red dress, asked hesitantly.

Rin, standing beside her, looked just as usual but said a bit unsure:

"I... I also followed the direction given by the teacher. There shouldn't be anything wrong..."

Today was the day Mr. Kimura invited the students with the best chakra control to visit the workshop.

Both Yuhi Kurenai and Nohara Rin were invited, so they came together.

But the scene in front of them truly confused the two girls.

After all, they were clearly heading to a workshop.

But no matter how they looked at the building in front of them, it was unmistakably an orphanage!

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