Chapter 41: Human Puppet
For Qifeng, the whole Mist ninja incident was about as memorable as Tuesday's lunch—slightly annoying, quickly forgotten, and ultimately just another entry in his mental catalog of "workplace hazards that didn't kill me."
For the higher-ups watching from their comfortable surveillance room, however, it was the kind of diplomatic incident that could reshape international relations and determine how enthusiastically various hidden villages would participate in the upcoming global murder festival they called war.
When Nara Shikaku and the Fuguki Suikazan learned the outcome of their little test, both men found themselves in the awkward position of having more questions than answers.
No fight? No bodies? No international incident requiring emergency diplomatic damage control?
Shikaku felt a cautious relief wash over him. While "nothing happened" wasn't exactly the decisive victory he'd hoped for, it was infinitely preferable to explaining to the Hokage why they'd accidentally triggered World War Three during a standardized exam.
The Fuguki Suikazan, on the other hand, was experiencing the particular frustration of a chess player whose carefully planned opening gambit had somehow resulted in all the pieces politely declining to participate. He knew Kisame well enough to be certain the boy would prioritize mission completion over personal safety. This radio silence was... unusual.
When Kisame finally reappeared on the surveillance monitors—alone, uninjured, and conspicuously missing his two teammates—the confusion in the monitoring room became its all time high.
Both men exchanged glances that clearly conveyed their shared bewilderment. Where exactly had two trained ninja vanished to in a forest under total surveillance?
But the exam continued, because bureaucracy waits for no one—not even missing ninja of questionable fate.
---
Back in the morgue, Qifeng went about his duties with the methodical precision of someone who'd found his calling in the most morbid profession imaginable. He arranged the collected bodies with almost tender care, adjusting their clothing and ensuring they looked as presentable as possible.
The sheer number of casualties was honestly impressive in a depressing sort of way. For an exam supposedly featuring genin-level participants, there were an awful lot of chunin-strength fighters littering the forest floor. The international participants were particularly well-represented in his collection—Mist, Cloud, and Sand ninja seemed to have a significantly higher mortality rate than their Konoha counterparts.
Whether this was due to Konoha's home field advantage, superior training, or just dumb luck was anyone's guess.
As he surveyed his handiwork—rows of neatly arranged corpses looking almost peaceful in their final rest—Qifeng nodded with the satisfaction of someone who took pride in his craft, no matter how macabre it might be.
He'd noticed his perfectionist tendencies becoming more pronounced lately. It wasn't just about maintaining a clean work environment anymore; he'd developed an almost obsessive need to ensure each corpse was properly arranged, dignified in death if not in the manner of their dying.
"Getting a bit too attached to the job," he muttered, shaking his head with dark amusement.
Time for the traditional post-mortem prize drawing—his favorite part of corpse collection, though he'd never admit it out loud.
Honestly, he hadn't expected much from this batch. These were supposed to be genin, after all, even if they'd been packing chunin-level heat. What kind of valuable gear could students possibly be carrying?
Apparently, the answer was "more than you'd think."
**[Success! Obtained Special Puppetry Scroll (Part 1)!]**
The notification appeared as he finished examining a Sand ninja whose official paperwork had definitely lied about his experience level.
"Well, that's... unexpected."
Qifeng unrolled the scroll with the curiosity of someone opening a particularly intriguing piece of mail, then immediately wished he'd remained ignorant.
The contents detailed, in disturbingly comprehensive fashion, the process of creating human puppets.
"Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick."
Human puppetry was the kind of technique that made regular ninja look at each other and say, "Maybe we should have some professional standards." It was officially banned in the Sand Village for reasons that became immediately obvious to anyone with a functioning moral compass.
The Sand Village had built their reputation on puppetry—it was their signature technique, developed by the Second Kazekage himself. Most puppet masters used wood, metal, and other conventional materials to create their mechanical warriors. It was an elegant art form that allowed skilled practitioners to fight from a safe distance while controlling elaborate mechanical constructs.
Human puppetry took that concept and dragged it kicking and screaming into a psychological horror movie.
Instead of carving wood and forging metal, human puppetry involved taking an actual human corpse, scooping out the squishy internal bits, and converting the remaining shell into a combat puppet that retained the original person's chakra pathways and abilities. It was like taxidermy, but with more existential nightmare fuel and significantly higher combat applications.
The technique was banned because it was horrifically effective and absolutely revolting—a combination that made even hardened ninja squirm uncomfortably.
Qifeng knew exactly where this was heading. In a few years, the Sand Village's own Scorpion—grandson of the respected elder Chiyo Sasori—would perfect human puppetry to the point where he'd transform himself into one. The same Scorpion who would assassinate the Third Kazekage and kickstart the Third Great Ninja War.
"Wonder if this poor bastard was working with Sasori," he mused, studying the scroll. "Or just another closet puppet enthusiast with questionable hobby choices."
The scroll was only the first part of what was clearly a multi-volume collection, which meant he had the theoretical knowledge to create human puppets but lacked the practical control techniques to actually use them. It was like owning a Ferrari without knowing how to drive—impressive on paper, useless in practice.
Still, understanding puppet construction might reveal weaknesses in conventional puppet techniques that could prove useful in future encounters.
As for the moral implications of human puppetry... well, Qifeng had been collecting and arranging corpses for months now. His threshold for disturbing content had been systematically desensitized to the point where reading about advanced corpse modification felt more like continuing education than horror literature.
"Great. Another book for the reading pile."
He'd been desperately seeking alternatives to the ninja world's literary offerings, which had all the narrative sophistication of instruction manuals written by people who'd never seen an instruction manual. Compared to those brain-numbing exercises in functional illiteracy, even forbidden puppet techniques counted as an improvement.
Plus, the scroll contained detailed anatomical information that might prove useful for completely unrelated medical applications. Knowledge was knowledge, regardless of its original intended purpose.
A ridiculous mental image flashed through his mind: himself controlling a human puppet while remaining safely hidden, essentially creating the ultimate decoy system. He could make the puppet do all the dangerous, public-facing work while he remained comfortably anonymous in the background.
"You handle the social interaction, I'll handle not dying," he imagined telling his hypothetical puppet assistant.
The absurdity of the concept made him chuckle and immediately dismiss it as sleep-deprivation-induced nonsense.
Though he did wonder what people would think if they knew he was considering using forbidden human experimentation techniques as bedtime reading material. Probably nothing good.
The scroll's appearance also served as an unwelcome reminder of what was coming. Sasori's eventual assassination of the Third Kazekage would be the catalyst that transformed simmering international tensions into full-scale warfare.
"War's coming," he said quietly, rolling up the scroll and tucking it away.
The rest of his corpse examination yielded nothing particularly interesting—just a modest attribute boost that would gradually improve his overall capabilities. Steady progress was better than no progress, even if it lacked the dramatic flair of discovering forbidden techniques.
He pulled up his mental character sheet, a habit he'd developed for tracking his gradually improving abilities.
[Character: Maruyama Qifeng]
Age: 13
Attributes: Fire, Earth
Strength: Elite Chunin
Bloodline Limits: Dead Bone Pulse (Medium), Sharingan (Single Tomoe)
Taijustu: 52
Chakra: 32
Ninjustu: 26
Genjustu: 24
Control: 29
Hand Seals: 29
Physical Skills: Flowing Sword Technique
Ninjutsu:[Various basic and intermediate techniques]
Items:[Including the newly acquired Special Puppetry Scroll (Part 1)]
The system still classified him as an elite chunin, despite his recent performance improvements. He estimated that reaching special jonin ranking would require significant advancement across all categories—a goal that felt both achievable and frustratingly distant.
"Just need to hit special jonin before the war starts," he muttered, reviewing his stats with the critical eye of someone planning their professional development around survival odds.
Special jonin might include the word "special," but it was still a jonin ranking. The gap between chunin and jonin was substantially larger than the gap between genin and chunin—it represented a fundamental shift in combat capability and strategic thinking.
If he could achieve jonin-level strength before international relations completely collapsed, his chances of surviving the upcoming clusterfuck would improve dramatically. More importantly, it would make his corpse collection duties significantly easier and safer.
Once he survived the war, he'd have at least a decade of relative peace to look forward to—a golden age of sleeping in, minimal responsibility, and reading books that weren't written by people who'd clearly never read a book themselves.
The thought of post-war relaxation filled him with renewed determination. Every effort he made now was an investment in his future ability to be completely, utterly, magnificently lazy.
Coming to the ninja world seemed to have awakened some deep-seated commitment to recreational indolence that he'd never known he possessed. He was determined to elevate sloth to an art form, assuming he lived long enough to master it.
After all, what was the point of surviving deadly international conflicts if you couldn't spend the aftermath doing absolutely nothing with supreme dedication?
****************
Additional chapters on Patr*n
35 Advanced chapters & 5 Bonus chapters of Corpse Picker of Konoha
20 Chapters of Naruto : Blazing Legend
patren*com/IchigoTL