Hurrying over to him, I pulled a mask over my face, which blocked out the foul smell, and carefully examined the remains. The cause of death was obvious at first glance—a skull driven into the chest—but that wasn't what caught the copy's attention.
His flesh had literally decomposed and almost completely melted away from the bones, which does not happen with ordinary corpses, even if they lie for a year, let alone a little over a month. The density of a shinobi's muscles is too great for that.
And the unpleasant feeling from the remains was much stronger than on the ashes, as if they were traces of some vile chakra, although that was doubtful — even the chakra of the strongest bijuu dissipates in about three weeks, as can be seen in the Forest of Death, but here...
Shaking my head, I poked around in the remains and pulled out a piece of metal with an unfamiliar mark. Well, at least now I know who to kill.
Getting up from my knees, I threw a scroll to the nearest kage bunshin to seal the remains of the Konohagakure ninja and walked a little further, where the third clone had disappeared.
"Boss, it looks like they didn't kill everyone here," one of the shadow clones stated the obvious, looking at the two charred bodies and the obvious effects of the doton technique.
Behind the upturned earth was another area with broken branches, scattered throwing weapons, and traces of a kibakufu (explosive seal) explosion. It looked like someone had retreated in this direction after a fight.
My gaze caught on something white covered with dirt, and I pulled out a piece of damp paper, recognizing it almost immediately. Ha, part of the barrier seal.
"Spread out and form a chain in that direction," I gave the order.
I doubt we'll be able to catch up with the survivor after such a long time, but that's no reason to give up the search.
***
Acting in unison, the clones scattered in a wide circle and soon disappeared from view, but not from the edge of my sensory perception, staying at the very limit. The resulting chain of clones covered more than forty kilometers, moving forward and significantly increasing the chance of tracking not only the movements of the local ninja, but also finding the last jonin, if he was still alive, of course.
Racing forward, I veered from side to side, receiving messages from my clones who were discovering traces of new skirmishes and battles. Unfortunately, these were false leads — the owners of this disgusting chakra were fighting the swamp shinobi, and in two-thirds of the cases, the battlefield remained in the hands of the former.
Only once did I come across some very strange traces — huge footprints of identical feet, clearly left not by humans, but by someone very heavy, on the road to the place of the clash, and then just a lot of stone debris, with the bodies of shinobi also nearby in a dead state, but there was no nasty chakra coming from them, and the corpses were not decomposing quickly.
This puzzled me greatly, but even after searching the entire area, I found only a few signs that they had died not on their own, but with little resistance, which was very strange, considering the more than destructive battle sites earlier. And I had no idea who it could be.
Ninjas from the Land of Swamps were ruled out immediately — if they had the opportunity to take out the enemy without consequences, they would have done so long ago, rather than wasting people for nothing. So it must be someone else. It would be unpleasant to find someone from Kumo or Kiri here.
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