Bei Yuan Feng glanced at the mission scroll he'd just received. It said a band of mountain bandits had appeared along a trade route somewhere in the Land of Fire. They needed to be taken out as soon as possible. The intel only mentioned a few ronin and ordinary bandits, nothing that posed any real threat to ninja. Clearing them out was simple work, definitely C-rank.
After all, once Chakra spread through the world, samurai had been completely pushed out. This era belonged to shinobi.
"Any issues with taking this mission?" Hiruzen asked, as he always did.
"No, sir. We'll get it done."
Bei Yuan Feng shook his head.
"Good. Take the scroll and head out soon," Hiruzen said.
He didn't spare Bei Yuan Feng another glance. A chunin like him wasn't important enough for the Hokage to pay real attention to.
"Yes!"
Bei Yuan Feng accepted the mission scroll and left the mission hall.
He notified Xiangtian Yuanlong and Hyuga Keiko afterward, telling them to pack up and rest briefly. They would set out that afternoon.
"We'll finish this mission as fast as we can. Then we get three days off."
He spoke casually.
Xiangtian Yuanlong and Hyuga Keiko both nodded. The three of them flickered out of the village and headed toward the outskirts with impressive speed.
Technically, Yuanlong and Keiko were still ranked as genin, but both already had the ability of chunin. The only thing they lacked was the official promotion exam.
Their squad was, for all practical purposes, a chunin team. And with Bei Yuan Feng adding power comparable to a Tokubetsu Jonin, taking on a C-rank mission was absolute overkill.
After traveling at marching speed for most of the day, they reached the mission site. Their target was a small fortress built on a mountain up ahead.
A large road lay not far from the mountain. Under normal circumstances, plenty of merchant caravans would be passing through. But if the mission report was right, traffic had stopped because the bandits had been blocking the route.
Some of these bandits were ronin, and ordinary people had no way of dealing with that. So they requested help from the Leaf.
"We'll rest for an hour, then prepare for battle. We end this tonight." Bei Yuan Feng stood on a tree branch, watching the mountain stronghold in the distance.
"Got it."
"Understood."
The other two didn't say much. They sat under the tree and started eating Food Pills to restore stamina and Chakra.
Bei Yuan Feng stayed on lookout, carrying out his role as squad leader.
When night fell, he stood on the tree branch again and looked into the distance under the moonlight.
He could clearly tell his eyesight had improved. Everything looked sharper than before. He hadn't awakened the Sharingan yet, but his vision was definitely better.
After an hour of rest, all three had recovered enough to strike. They slipped into the stronghold under cover of darkness.
Other than a few scattered lookouts, everyone inside was fast asleep.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
The sharp sound of shuriken cutting through air echoed in the quiet night. A few bandits collapsed without even realizing what hit them, their throats pierced cleanly.
Xiangtian Yuanlong and Hyuga Keiko stared at Bei Yuan Feng in shock. When had his shuriken skills gotten this good?
Especially at night. Hitting their throats with perfect precision in low light wasn't something just anyone could pull off.
Up until now, Keiko had the best shuriken accuracy among the three of them. She had the Byakugan, even if it was the restricted caged bird version. It still put her far above normal people.
In the Hyuga clan her talent was average, but compared to ordinary ninja she was exceptional.
And a dōjutsu Kekkei Genkai naturally enhanced long-range weapons like shuriken.
But after seeing Bei Yuan Feng's throw tonight, she realized his accuracy was already closing in on hers. Maybe even surpassing it. That wasn't something pure training could achieve.
The three of them moved quickly. They might have looked like kids barely in their teens, but ninja were nothing like normal people.
During wartime, children even younger than them fought and killed on the battlefield.
Some gifted youngsters were already famous across the entire shinobi world at their age.
That was the nature of being a ninja.
Suddenly, just as Bei Yuan Feng silently finished off a bandit in one of the courtyards, a scream tore through the night.
It was Xiangtian Yuanlong.
Bei Yuan Feng recognized the voice instantly.
But in a bandit hideout like this, who could possibly hurt someone at chunin level?
Even ordinary genin wouldn't have trouble slaughtering regular bandits as long as they got past the fear of killing. Let alone a chunin who could overwhelm elite genin without effort.
He pushed off the ground and burst forward with a Body Flicker, rushing toward Yuanlong.
When he arrived, he saw Yuanlong huddled in a corner, clutching his shoulder. In front of him, Hyuga Keiko was struggling to block a rapid assault.
The attacker wore ronin clothing, but he had Chakra. His sword strikes were so fast that Keiko could barely keep up.
That level of power was definitely at elite chunin.
No wonder Yuanlong got hurt. And if Keiko didn't have the Byakugan's dynamic vision enhancing her reactions, she would've been injured already.
Bei Yuan Feng understood immediately why these "bandits" had caused so much trouble.
There was a rogue ninja backing them.
Keiko was only seconds away from being overwhelmed. In that instant, Bei Yuan Feng suddenly felt everything slow down around him. His vision sharpened dramatically. A mosquito fluttering in the distance became perfectly clear.
The Sharingan.
The thought came to him instinctively. He must have awakened it. There was no other explanation for such explosive enhancement to his dynamic vision.
Did seeing his teammates in danger trigger it?
Was awakening the Uchiha bloodline the system gave him really this easy?
No tragic deaths of loved ones, none of the legendary conditions.
Those thoughts flashed through his mind for only a heartbeat. His body moved on its own. He snapped a shuriken forward.
The rogue ninja, who had been pressing Keiko relentlessly, noticed the incoming shuriken and immediately spun around, slicing it out of the air.
But the next moment, another shuriken was already flying at his throat.
To be exact, two shuriken had been thrown almost at the same time.
He tried to dodge, but two more shuriken cut off his escape routes from both sides.