With the help of intelligence reports and the Byakugan users’ tracking, Chiyo and her group quickly intercepted a red-haired Sasori in front of a mountain village.
When they found Sasori, he had just finished a battle and was collecting the bodies scattered across the battlefield. Seeing them arrive, he appeared somewhat surprised.
"So it’s Granny Chiyo," Sasori murmured, gazing at her face with a trace of daze in his eyes.
"It’s time to return to the village, Sasori," Chiyo said, her heart swelling with complicated emotions as she looked at her grandson’s cold, emotionless face.
If possible, she didn’t want to fight him.
At least not in front of Tsunade... and the Konoha shinobi.
"No. I feel much more at ease out here," Sasori rejected her offer without hesitation.
His calm eyes swept across Tsunade and the other shinobi as he continued, "So you’ve finally noticed the disappearance of the Third Kazekage? I can sense your wariness and hostility."
"Besides, I hate Konoha’s shinobi."
"Sasori..." Chiyo took a step forward, still trying to persuade him.
"Elder Chiyo," Baki said seriously, "based on what Sasori just said, can we consider that an admission? That he’s involved in the Third Kazekage’s disappearance?"
"So you really did come for the Third Kazekage, huh?" Sasori wasn’t surprised. Or perhaps, the moment he saw Chiyo, he’d already decided not to hide anything.
In fact, a strange excitement stirred deep inside him—an urge to show these people his ultimate masterpiece.
And then, turn their corpses into puppets.
After all, the materials he’d gathered from the previous battle didn’t satisfy him at all.
The few shinobi standing before him were far more valuable than the mediocrity lying at his feet.
"What did you do to the Third Kazekage?"
As the matter of the missing Kage from Sunagakure was brought up, Chiyo felt a deep shadow swelling in her heart—like the ominous calm before a storm.
"What did I do?" Sasori replied with a twisted pride. "I turned him into the greatest work of art this world has ever seen!"
A scroll slipped down from Sasori’s wide sleeve into his palm. He held it out flat and unfurled it in front of everyone’s eyes.
The name "Third Kazekage" was written clearly on the scroll. As Sasori channeled his chakra into the seals on the paper, a puff of white smoke erupted.
And from within it—emerged a lifelike puppet.
"The Third Kazekage!"
Chiyo and Baki gasped in unison, shock washing over their faces.
Even though they had mentally prepared themselves for the worst, witnessing this scene firsthand hit them harder than they had imagined.
They had considered the possibility that the Third Kazekage had fallen at Sasori’s hands—but to think he had turned him into a puppet!
This technique went beyond ordinary puppet creation. Even among puppet masters, it was a forbidden art.
A technique so taboo, it had been dismissed the moment it was proposed.
Yet now, here it was—outside the borders of Sunagakure, in real life.
Something they once believed was only theoretical... was now reality.
And the one who had been made into a human puppet—was none other than their missing Third Kazekage!
"You’re all excellent material," Sasori said calmly, his chakra threads now linked to the puppet’s limbs.
"Once I kill you all, I’ll preserve you too—as puppets. Everything you are... will live on through my art."
Baki raised his palm, a burst of violent wind surging into existence. Forming a seal with his other hand, he launched it straight toward Sasori.
A swirling vortex of countless tiny wind blades tore across the battlefield, slicing through the air on its path to Sasori.
"Wind Release ninja?" Sasori’s eyes brightened slightly when he saw Maki’s move.
From the scale and power of that whirlwind, and the almost single-handed hand seal, it was clear Baki was skilled in Wind Release.
This would at least be an excellent puppet material, specializing in Wind Release!
Sasori’s fingers moved a few times, and the Third Kazekage puppet floated out following his actions, blocking in front of him.
As the puppet’s mouth opened wide, dense black mist formed from the fine fragments of iron sand stored inside the puppet’s seals, quickly solidifying into a strong iron wall before the puppet’s body, colliding with the Wind Blade.
On the rectangular black iron wall, the Wind Blade exploded upon impact, cutting messy marks into the smooth, flat surface.
"That is the Third Kazekage’s iron sand!" Baki’s face turned very unpleasant when he saw this.
Iron sand was the Third Kazekage’s signature Magnet Release kekkei genkai, possessing incredible power.
In terms of destructive force, although the Fourth Kazekage also had Magnet Release, the Third’s iron sand was more dangerous than the Fourth’s golden sand.
What surprised Baki even more was that Sasori could preserve the power of a deceased ninja’s kekkei genkai and use it through the puppet body.
This was already more perfected than the village’s sealed puppet forbidden techniques, surpassing them and reaching an ideal stage of perfection!
No wonder the Sand Village was famous for having only a few geniuses with puppet-making talent, able to found their own schools!
"This is trouble!" Tsunade frowned when she saw this, but showed no shock at Sasori’s technique.
In fact, if you often interact with Orochimaru and Kagetsu, the master and disciple, and participate in their research, seeing their technological achievements raises your psychological threshold very high.
Simply put, it’s very hard to shock them anymore.
Sure, turning a corpse into a puppet while preserving the kekkei genkai is shocking technology, but the technology department had already been able to stably produce hearts with kekkei genkai power, allowing a ninja to awaken certain kekkei genkai from nothing.
Also, compared to their research on techniques that bring the dead back to life, Sasori’s technique was less shocking and impactful. The most update n0vels are published on novel·fıre·net
But after all, he was still the Third Kazekage, known as the strongest Kazekage, so he deserved some respect in her mind.
Although Tsunade thought that these "strongest" titles were often exaggerated, just like her teacher was once called the strongest Hokage.
The previous Kazekage was already dead, and since most ninja didn’t live long enough, very few had actually seen the true power of the former Kazekage.
So there were even fewer who could argue against it.
When Tsunade heard this, she didn’t bother to argue.
After all, her teacher was indeed the strongest in some ways—especially in knowledge and understanding of jutsu—among the first three Hokage.
The first two Hokage were already dead, so there was no chance to learn more for them. But her teacher could study all the secret jutsu collected in Konoha.
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