Yakushi Kabuto suspected Kaede Kitahara was a spy from some village. As for which village, he had no idea.
If he was not a spy, then why hide his strength?
There was definitely something wrong there.
Still, that did not stop Kabuto from taking out the Ninja Info Card that recorded Kaede Kitahara's information.
"Kaede Kitahara. He's three years older than all of you. After completing the last Chunin Exams, he was promoted to Chunin, and he was recently promoted again to Tokubetsu Jonin. His team leader is Akai Akimoto. His teammates are Amakusa Ryuji and Hyuga Keiko, both of whom are also participating in this Chunin Exams.
"As for his mission record, three S-Rank missions, four A-rank missions, three B-rank missions, twenty-three C-rank missions, and fifty-five D-rank missions."
Yakushi Kabuto read Kaede Kitahara's information aloud.
Everyone was shocked. Just now, Gaara having completed a single B-rank mission had already been enough to stun these rookies.
But Kaede Kitahara's record was honestly a little too stacked. If an experienced Jonin in his thirties or forties had this kind of mission record, it would be perfectly normal. But Kaede Kitahara was too young. Anything above B-rank was already an extremely dangerous mission.
If they knew Kaede Kitahara had completed almost all of those high-ranking missions within the past half year or so, they would probably be even more shocked. That kind of speed was ridiculous.
Before obtaining the diary System, the missions Kaede Kitahara had completed were basically concentrated in C-rank and D-rank. After all, back then, he had only just reached the level of a Chunin.
After obtaining the diary, however, Kaede Kitahara's strength had improved by leaps and bounds, and all kinds of missions had started coming at him explosively.
S-Rank missions, in particular, were usually only assigned to Elite Jonin. He had completed several of them. For example, the Land of Waves mission had been upgraded all the way to S-Rank because more important figures became involved, and because an S-Rank Missing-nin had appeared.
Then there was the Land of Snow mission, which Kazahana Koyuki had requested Konoha upgrade to S-Rank.
Of course, many missions had been upgraded after the fact. For example, Kaede Kitahara's earliest bandit-suppression mission would at most have counted as C-rank if no ninja had been involved. No one had expected a wandering ninja to be hidden among them, so after the mission, its rating had been raised to B-rank. That had also been the first B-rank mission of Kaede Kitahara's life.
Even so, it showed just how diligent Kaede Kitahara was when it came to taking missions.
Using real combat to temper themselves was also the reason Kaede Kitahara's squad had improved so quickly. Hyuga Keiko and Amakusa Ryuji, whose natural talents were only average, had both been raised up this way, breaking past the limits of lives that might originally have capped out at Elite Chunin.
"For a newly promoted Tokubetsu Jonin to have a record like this, he really is special," Yakushi Kabuto said, pushing up his glasses.
The others were all stunned by Kaede Kitahara's dazzling mission record. At present, aside from Team 7, none of them had come into contact with missions above B-rank, nor had they truly participated in battles between ninja.
On the path of the ninja, they were still complete beginners. They simply had high starting points because they came from powerful families.
"He's that strong?" Hyuga Neji murmured.
Unlike Uchiha Sasuke, who had known about Kaede Kitahara's strength for a long time and had even witnessed it himself, Neji only knew that Kaede Kitahara had awakened the bloodline of the Uchiha Clan and opened the Sharingan. Even that was something he had learned from Kaede Kitahara's diary.
As for exactly how strong Kaede Kitahara was, Neji did not know. He only knew Kaede was a Jonin, so he probably could not be weak.
But this luxurious mission record, at his age, was already absurd.
Of everyone present, only Uchiha Sasuke knew the specific situation. With Kaede Kitahara's strength, a record like this was perfectly normal.
"That's how it should be. As expected of the man I'm chasing," Uchiha Sasuke said, tightening his grip on the Kusanagi Sword.
Yes. Now that Uchiha Sasuke had listed Uchiha Itachi as the person he had to kill, Kaede Kitahara had become the target he had to catch up to.
After learning the future ceiling of his own strength, he was very confident that he could chase after Kaede Kitahara.
Still, he found something strange. Why did Hyuga Neji know Kaede Kitahara existed? Was it because of Hyuga Keiko, the cousin on Kaede Kitahara's squad?
"Is the goal of the first phase to test their intelligence-gathering ability?"
At that moment, outside the classroom building where the exam was being held, several Jonin team leaders were waiting in a separate lounge.
The other Chunin Leaders were not qualified to stay with them. That was simply how strict the hierarchy was in the Shinobi World.
Sarutobi Asuma was the one who spoke. Based on the information he had received, the first phase appeared on the surface to be testing the examinees' theoretical knowledge, but the content would go far beyond what a Chunin should know. On top of that, many ninja had no brains to speak of and only liked fighting and killing. Faced with questions like these, they could only stare blankly.
"They may not know how to answer the questions, but they should at least know how to cheat," Kurenai said with a slight smile.
She still had quite a bit of confidence in her students' brains.
"Then Naruto might be…" Hatake Kakashi said. The person he was most worried about was none other than Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto's brain was clearly not capable of figuring out such a complicated arrangement.
"Relax. Naruto may not be very bright, but Sasuke isn't that bright either."
Beside them, Kaede Kitahara laughed. Thinking back to the original story, when faced with those insanely difficult questions, none of the three members of Team 7 had actually figured out the true purpose of the first phase.
Uzumaki Naruto had not solved a single thing and had turned in a blank paper, but he had made it to the second phase through sheer refusal to give up. Sakura Haruno might have been the only rookie in the entire room who could genuinely answer the questions. She passed entirely by relying on her own exceptional learning ability.
As for Uchiha Sasuke, he had a very smart-looking face, and he was indeed very fast at learning Ninjutsu. But the thing was, his IQ was not actually that high.
In the end, he chose to cheat. It was not because he had seen through the purpose Morino Ibiki had set for the first phase. It was purely because he did not want to lose here, so he chose to cheat. He activated his Sharingan and copied the movements of the teacher hidden among the examinees.
Hearing this, Hatake Kakashi was completely speechless. But when he thought of how smart Uchiha Sasuke usually seemed, and the fact that Sasuke had always ranked first in his year at the Ninja Academy, he did not believe Kaede Kitahara was telling the truth at all. He only thought Kaede's bad taste was acting up again.
But Kaede Kitahara could swear that really was not the case. This truly was not prejudice. According to the settings from his previous life, Uchiha Sasuke's IQ was only one hundred, just a little higher than Uzumaki Naruto's ninety.
It was just that his usual cold, aloof expression covered up the reality that his IQ was not actually very high.
In other words, Uchiha Sasuke had a smart face, but his actual intelligence was pretty average.
Who could have possibly guessed that?