The nine mist ninjas were not traveling as fast as expected in the banyan forest.

Firstly, it is because when ninjas are chasing enemies, they also follow the rule of "don't enter the forest" to prevent accidentally triggering the enemy's trap, so they cannot move forward at full speed.

Secondly, due to the perception ability of their guide, Special Jounin, it started to work sometimes. But this was not the first time.

"what happened?"

Seeing Yi frowning and closing her eyes, looking constipated, Yuan Zhen immediately felt something was wrong and waved everyone to stop.

"Could it be that they have escaped your range of perception?"

Yi's perception range is not very large, but it is still a full 800 meters.

A person without chakra dragging an injured burden shouldn't run away so fast.

"No, it's still due to the environment. There's really something wrong with this banyan tree..."

"Environment?" Hearing this, the youngest swordsman boy raised his head and glanced at the banyan tree branches above his head that were intertwined like capillaries, as well as the overlapping branches that were so airtight that even the sun was shielded from the outermost layer.

Wavy leaves.

Coupled with the brightness that barely allowed him to see, he suddenly felt as if he had accidentally entered the belly of a giant creature and had become a meal on his plate.

The young man swallowed his saliva, then lowered his head and looked straight. As he looked, he saw thousands of dark green aerial roots, hanging down like the beards of giant whales under the canopy like the roof of the palace, as if they might entangle them at any time.

These people's necks have their cervical vertebrae broken.

The sword-slinging boy felt a chill pass through his body, and couldn't help but think of what the old man in the village often said - the banyan tree is an evil tree.

In the process of expansion, the banyan tree will use the aerial roots hanging from the branches to strangle other trees to snatch nutrients and territory. Once the rattan-like aerial roots take root, a new trunk will be formed, just like the ones in a chain fast food restaurant.

The branch is general, and be prepared to continue to strangle other peers further away.

The plants in the ninja world have always been much larger than those on Earth. So the current canopy coverage of this banyan tree is at least the size of ten football fields, or one hundred and seventy basketball courts. It is just solid wood and turned into a tree trunk.

The entangled aerial roots are as thick as a three-person hug. One can imagine how many other types of trees have been deprived of life here.

Under this moist shade of trees, I am afraid that it has long been the most suitable battlefield for the brutal fighting of life.

Let’s talk about the perceptual ninja who thinks there is something wrong with the banyan tree.

Yuan Zhenyi, who was leading the team, urged: "What's wrong?"

"Let's not talk about how many creatures in this forest are interfering with my judgment..."

Yi did not open his eyes. While maintaining his hand seals, he explained bitterly: "My technique relies on airflow as a medium to sense chakra, but this banyan forest is too dense, and the aerial roots are also absorbing it from the air.

Nutrients cause the gas flow rate inside to be too slow. In this case, even if I can sense their position through the air flow, I am afraid it is already information from twenty or thirty seconds ago."

In other words, his detection ability experienced an extremely high delay under the banyan tree. A delay of twenty seconds was enough for the opponent to change his escape direction several times.

Yuan Zhenyi rubbed his eyebrows: "Is it the same as at the waterfall yesterday?"

Yesterday, four fugitives from the Taketori clan were hiding in a cave behind a waterfall. Since the waterfall itself prevented the connection between the air inside and outside the cave, Yi's perception was interrupted once. But there are only so many places to hide in that area.

There were only a few of them, and the group easily found Kimimaro and the other four.

But it's different now. This forest is bigger than all the training grounds in Mist Ninja Village combined, and there might be someone hiding behind every tree trunk, so Yuan Zhen feels a headache just thinking about it.

"In that case..."

Yuan Zhenyi pondered for two or three seconds before making a decision.

"If you have difficulty sensing the air, you don't have to probe too accurately. Just indicate the approximate area and direction they passed. You probe every ten seconds. If the direction of their movement changes, correct our route.

.”

"It's okay." Yi nodded approvingly, thinking it was a solution, so he pointed out, "Let's go this way first."

"Action, in spread formation."

Yuan Zhenyi commanded, "Increase the search coverage area to prevent them from suddenly turning."

"Yes." Everyone lined up, each walking in a straight line with a distance of seven or eight meters apart, neither fast nor slow.

About half a minute and a second later, Yi made a new discovery: "Two consecutive detections found that they are in an area, directly in front, about thirty meters away."

"Have they stopped?" Yuan Zhen narrowed his eyes and reminded everyone, "The other party may be hiding, but it may also be a trap. We acted silently and carefully searched all possible hiding places."

Everyone said nothing, responded with gestures, and disappeared into the forest one by one.

But except for the ninja boy who was the only genin, most others didn't take it seriously.

It's just an ordinary person plus a kid with his hands removed. It's a problem whether he can even use the blood inheritance limit, so the search is inevitably a bit careless.

In particular, Jonin is not good at fighting, so he follows Genshenichi.

He silently counted down the time in his mind, and when ten seconds were up, he immediately planned to start the next investigation.

But at this moment, an extremely shrill scream came from not far away, interrupting his seal.

"What's the noise?"

Even though Genshinichi was a veteran Jonin who had participated in three battles, he was still frightened by this heart-rending sound, as if he had returned to the time when he was fighting with the Konoha Uchiha clan in the fog. He was stunned for two seconds.

After three seconds, he ran towards the place where the sound came from with a calm expression and followed closely behind.

[Despite my warning, has any waste fallen into the trap? 】

[Why did the screams suddenly stop? Is the person dead? 】

When the two arrived with questions, there were already three chuunin waiting there.

They lowered their heads and crouched down, with fear and anger in their eyes at the same time.

The fourth chuunin, surrounded by three people, was sitting under the tree leaning on the bloody tree trunk, waving his blood-covered hands indiscriminately, as if he had countless pains that he wanted to express, but he couldn't say anything.

No words came out, only some messy and sharp breaths kept pouring out of his throat, his face was extremely wild and pale, and his chest was rising and falling violently and irregularly like a bellows.

"What's going on?" As soon as Yuan Zhen walked one meter in front of the injured person, he found that the other person did not look like he had been caught in a trap.

"It was like this when we arrived." One of the three people replied, "If you ask him, he just calls like this and can't say anything."

"Look at the situation." Yuan Zhen raised his chin and understood immediately.

It turns out that this special jounin is not only a sensory ninja, but also a medical ninja.

The three chuunin stood up silently, made space, started to fumble around, and checked the injured person.

"The situation is very bad. Judging from the fact that he didn't even take out his weapon, he must have been attacked by a sneak attack."

A few seconds later, Yi shook his head gloomily, "The other party first used some kind of extremely slender weapon to pierce his abdomen and palms at the same time; after he screamed, the other party used a kunai to destroy his trachea and

Lungs, making him unable to speak. The two wounds on the torso were fatal injuries, and the organs were severely damaged."

He opened the injured man's clothes and pointed at the wound on the latter's stomach, which was no bigger than the nail of his little finger.

"Whoever did it must know the human body better than ordinary ninjas. Otherwise, it would be impossible to use such a thin weapon to cause such precise fatal injuries while allowing him to survive until now."

Yuan Zhenyi squeezed his lips hard, "You three were closer to him. Didn't you see anything when you rushed over?"

The three chunin looked at each other and shook their heads sadly.

【What a waste!】

Yuan Zhenyi was annoyed. Even at the risk of his own life, he couldn't even find out the enemy's intelligence.

"Can you cure him and let him talk?" This sentence was thrown at Xiangyi. Although Yuan Zhenyi also knew that there was little hope.

Yi shook his head: "Unless Konoha's Tsunade-hime comes in person, I may not be able to save him with my medical ninjutsu."

When the injured person heard the doctor's verdict, his eyes filled with intense despair, and he screamed almost silently. He stretched out his hand as if to pull him, but could not bend his fingers. At the same time, his face was gradually deteriorating due to lack of oxygen.

His eyes were purple, and there were already spots of blood staining the sclera in his eyes. In other words, he had a dead look on his face.

"Wait a minute," Yi noticed this scene and immediately grabbed the wounded man's blood-stained hands, and added as if he suddenly lost his blood: "And here..."

At this time, the other people finally rushed over, and happened to see a scene that made people feel chills all over——

Every finger on the injured man's hands was twisted like a twist. The joints connecting the palms, the finger pads and the palms were actually pointing in completely opposite directions. No wonder he even bent his fingers to grab other people's clothes.

Not even there!

As the saying goes, ten fingers are connected to the heart. Onlookers don't have to experience it personally. They can already feel the unspeakable pain just by looking at the experience of the chuunin. However, this injured man howled loudly to vent because of the damage to his lungs and trachea.

He couldn't do it, so he acted so frantic and desperate.

The youngest ninja boy among them looked away and tensed his chin.

He found that even though he was in a humid forest, his mouth felt unexpectedly dry.

His hands hung on both sides of his body, tapping his thighs constantly to soothe his uneasy emotions.

I don't know if it was a coincidence or something, but he still remembered that when these seniors had a heated discussion on how to torture the two children under Bai's care, the unlucky man in front of him said that he would break their fingers one by one. The result is the same now.

It happened to him.

The young genin was the only one who didn't participate in the discussion at that time, so he remembered it very clearly.

[Is there really no connection between what this man said and the torture he suffered?]

Unfortunately, his naturally cautious character prevented him from expressing his thoughts in front of everyone.

"Give him a good time."
To be continued...