Chapter 46: The Corpse Must Not Be Desecrated
In a shitstorm this brutal, there was absolutely no reason for Qifeng—just another chunin with the battlefield experience of a houseplant—to go looking for a heroic death.
What was he supposed to do, march up to Orochimaru and ask if he wanted to watch him get turned into chunin-flavored paste?
On battlefields like this, corpse collectors had their own sacred duty. While their comrades were busy converting each other into statistics on the front lines, the collectors worked silently in the back, gathering up what remained of people who'd had much better mornings.
Nobody gave them shit for it. Nobody called the corpse collectors cowards for avoiding the meat grinder up front.
Hell, everyone understood the division of labor.
Look, nobody wanted to charge headfirst into a blender made of kunai and explosive tags. But the real tragedy wasn't just dying for your village—it was dying for your village and then having your corpse picked over by enemy intelligence teams looking for village secrets, or worse, left to rot in some godforsaken field like discarded garbage.
So not only did Konoha tolerate their corpse collectors, they actively supported them. It was practically a public service.
But honestly? Qifeng's heart felt like it was being slowly crushed in a vice every time he picked up another dead Konoha ninja.
For a moment, he actually felt the suicidal urge to charge the Iwa forces and go down swinging like some kind of heroic idiot.
Fortunately, his brain kicked his emotions in the teeth before he could do anything terminally stupid.
Are you fucking kidding? What could a chunin accomplish in a clusterfuck like this besides adding one more body to his own collection?
If he were Kage-level, hell, even if he were just an elite jonin, maybe charging in would accomplish something meaningful.
But chunin? Chunin were basically just mobile target practice with delusions of grandeur.
Even if he played every trump card he had—the Dead Bone Pulse bloodline, the Sharingan, the whole dramatic reveal—maybe he could save a few people.
But the moment this battle wrapped up, the Uchiha clan and Konoha's leadership would be lining up to have some very pointed conversations with him about where exactly he'd acquired those particular genetic gifts.
And then there was Orochimaru.
Who would probably want to dissect him for science.
With his current power level, facing Orochimaru was about as appealing as French-kissing a rattlesnake.
Fuck that noise.
Qi Feng muttered complaints under his breath and slipped into some aggressive self-hypnosis.
*I am dead fish. I am dead fish. I am dead fish.*
There was absolutely nothing wrong with being an honest corpse collector.
Let the heroes of Konoha handle the front-line heroics.
"Someone has to handle the dirty work," he told himself, finding a conveniently noble excuse for his cowardice. "I'll become the darkness and embrace all the corpses."
Time to collect bodies with a clear conscience.
Yellow glow, green glow, blue glow, green glow, yellow glow...
The different colored light orbs floating over the corpses were like a fucked-up rainbow, dazzling him with their morbid beauty.
If you ignored little details like identity, circumstances, and basic human emotions, it was exactly like farming loot drops in some twisted RPG.
It felt like being power-leveled by some overpowered guild leader. The big boss was up front tanking damage and dealing DPS while he, the scrub account, was frantically hoovering up all the sweet, sweet drops.
It was almost fun.
Almost.
But such a good thing couldn't last forever.
Konoha had corpse collectors like him, and naturally Iwagakure had their own body-snatching entrepreneurs doing the same job.
As the old saying went: when corpse collector meets corpse collector, someone's about to have a really bad day.
Business competition was a bitch.
Qifeng spotted an Iwagakure ninja crouched and scuttling across the battlefield like some kind of murderous crab. Both their eyes locked onto the same target: a Konoha jonin's corpse lying equidistant between them.
The corpse was glowing yellow, but the light was unusually bright and intense.
No doubt about it—this had been a Konoha elite jonin, but his luck had finally run out.
This was also the first elite jonin casualty in the Konoha-Iwagakure slugfest. But the man had gone down swinging, taking three Iwa jonin with him before finally succumbing to exhaustion and a cowardly ambush.
Jonin were middle-to-upper management in any village hierarchy, and elite jonin were basically assistant executives. Their heads were stuffed with enough village secrets to make intelligence officers weep with joy.
The Rock ninja corpse collector seemed to recognize the strategic value of this particular corpse and stared Qifeng down with the intensity of a man defending his favorite parking spot.
It wasn't just the elite jonin's body, either. Three Iwagakure jonin corpses were scattered nearby like some kind of deluxe bonus package.
These were the most valuable corpses on the entire battlefield!
Qifeng was determined to claim them. So was his competition.
*Clang!*
Qi Feng slowly drew his sword, running a finger lightly along the blade. The metal caught the light and threw back a cold gleam that promised unpleasant things.
He really didn't want to fight.
But if this asshole wanted to steal his corpses, well, that crossed a line that shouldn't be crossed.
He took a step forward, then another. The silver blade seemed to shimmer and distort like water, and a bright white aura began to envelope his body. With each step, the light grew more intense, more otherworldly.
When the Iwa ninja saw the changes in Qi Feng, his expression shifted from confident to concerned to something approaching genuine fear.
But after one more glance at that elite jonin corpse, he gritted his teeth and lunged forward.
His strategy was simple: grab the body and run like hell.
But while his speed was impressive, Qifeng's was better.
*Flowing Water Sword Technique!*
His figure began to shift and twist in ways that hurt to look at, like turbulent water that somehow maintained perfect fluidity, ignoring obstacles and reaching the corpse before the Rock ninja could blink.
Facing the Iwagakure ninja charging at him with desperate determination, Qifeng's movements changed again.
*Dance of the Willow!*
The Kaguya clan's signature taijutsu. After months of developing his understanding of the Dead Bone Pulse/Shikotsumyaku bloodline, combined with his analysis of Kaguya Thousand Blades' technique from their previous battle, plus the fluid, deceptive movements of the Flowing Water style, Qifeng had finally mastered this killing art.
Sure, he only had one sword instead of the traditional bone weapons, but that hardly mattered.
In the next heartbeat, the Rock ninja's eyes went wide as Qi Feng seemed to transform into something that wasn't quite human—a slender willow branch dancing in an impossible wind, or an endless stream of silver-white water that moved in ways that made geometry weep.
A flash of silver light passed across the ninja's throat, followed by a thin line of blood that gradually widened into a dark crimson smile.
His vision began to spin as he watched his own body standing there, headless, and one final thought flickered through his dying brain:
'Am I dead?'
Yes. Very much so.
With taijutsu skills that made most chunin look like academy students, and the devastating combination of Flowing Water technique and Dance of the Willow, Qifeng had decapitated the Rock ninja in a single exchange.
The man who seemed afraid of his own shadow showed absolutely no mercy when it came to the sacred matter of corpse collection.
He looked down at the gradually dimming eyes of the severed head with complete indifference. "The corpse must not be desecrated."
Well, shit. He'd gotten himself another free corpse in the process.
When the enemy gave him a body as a going-away present, it also came with all the Iwagakure corpses the dead collector had been hoarding.
What a windfall!
The reason Qifeng had been willing to kill this Rock ninja without hesitation was simple: he knew no village was stupid enough to send actual jonin to collect corpses.
Jonin were the primary fighting force. Using them for body collection would be like using a Ferrari to deliver pizza—technically possible, but criminally wasteful.
The corners of his mouth crept upward in a smile he couldn't quite suppress.
He cheerfully collected the bodies of the elite jonin and three Iwagakure jonin from the ground, plus the corpse of the Iwagakure collector and the sealing scroll from his body.
No time to admire his haul, though.
The battle between Konoha and Iwagakure had reached a fever pitch, with Orochimaru going full throttle. For the moment, it was impossible to tell which side would come out on top.
Iwagakure had the numbers. Konoha had Orochimaru, whose combat power exceeded everyone else on the field combined.
Since he couldn't predict the winner, he needed to collect corpses faster.
If Konoha lost, he'd have no chance to return these fallen heroes to their home village. Worse, he might have to abandon some of his comrades' bodies during the retreat.
But Iwagakure's numerical advantage was becoming increasingly obvious.
Someone had noticed that Qifeng had eliminated their corpse collector and made off with several Iwagakure bodies.
This had touched a nerve with quite a few Rock ninjas.
So a senior ninja from Iwagakure, his face twisted with hatred, disengaged from his current opponent and charged toward Qifeng like a man with a very personal grudge.
Konoha valued returning their dead to home soil, and Iwagakure felt exactly the same way.
More importantly, some of these Iwagakure jonin had known details about combat deployments and strategic information.
If their bodies were captured, Konoha's intelligence department would extract personnel arrangements and supply line data that could fuck Iwagakure's entire operation.
So this senior ninja made the tactical decision to act.
After all, how long could it take to squash one chunin?
Qi Feng felt the killing intent wash over him like ice water and shuddered. He immediately dropped his collection work and sprinted toward the forest like his ass was on fire.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck, I'm going to die.
He'd been marked for death!
So yeah, turns out being a corpse collector on the battlefield was its own kind of dangerous.