Chapter 51: The Sword of Heaven's Descent
Holy shit.
The thought hit Qifeng like a brick to the face as he stared down at Tuhe's corpse. A red-tier body—quasi-Kage level—just lying there like a discarded toy. It was like finding a winning lottery ticket in a trash can.
His hands actually trembled a little as he processed what this meant. Yellow corpses were valuable, sure, but they were also getting more common as the war escalated. Every major battle left behind a handful of skilled jounin who'd rolled the dice and lost. But this? This was different.
Red corpses were legendary. The kind of thing that made corpse collectors retire early and live like kings. Even Orochimaru, one of the Sannin—hadn't been able to put this guy down cleanly. It had taken injury, exhaustion, and Qifeng's psychological warfare to finally tip the scales.
"Free money," he muttered, then immediately felt like an ass for thinking it. The man had a name, probably a family, definitely friends who'd mourn him. But war had a way of turning people into resources, and Qifeng had learned to compartmentalize that particular horror.
The sound of shifting rock made him freeze mid-thought.
He turned slowly, every instinct screaming danger, and watched a snake emerge from a crack in the stone. Not just any snake—this one had eyes that held too much intelligence, too much *purpose*. Its jaw unhinged with a wet, organic sound that made Qifeng's skin crawl.
The figure that slithered out was exactly what he'd expected and desperately hoped he wouldn't see.
Orochimaru.
The Sannin emerged from his serpentine taxi covered in a sheen of mucus that caught the light like oil on water. Qifeng's first instinct was to drop to one knee and stammer out some variation of "Orochimaru-sama," but his brain caught up just in time. He wasn't wearing his usual face, and the sounds of battle still echoed from the main engagement.
Clone. Has to be a clone.
The realization was like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. He could work with a clone. Clones were dangerous, but they weren't 'Orochimaru' dangerous.
They stared at each other across the bloodstained battlefield, two predators sizing each other up. Orochimaru cleaned himself with the casual efficiency of someone who'd done this a thousand times before, his tongue darting out to wet his lips in that trademark gesture that had traumatized a generation of shinobi.
"Qifeng-kun?" The voice was exactly as Qifeng remembered—soft, cultured, and somehow more terrifying than any scream.
Qifeng's response was carefully modulated, pitched lower than his natural voice. "Orochimaru."
He could see the wheels turning behind those golden eyes. Orochimaru was cataloging details, cross-referencing possibilities, probably running through a mental database of every dangerous missing-nin in the known world. The fact that he couldn't place Qifeng was both a blessing and a curse.
"You killed him?" Orochimaru's gaze flicked to Tuhe's pincushioned corpse.
The question was simple, but the subtext was loaded. Who are you? What village? What's your angle? Should I be concerned?
"What else?" Qifeng let some of his natural snark bleed through, partly because he was tired of being intimidated and partly because he suspected Orochimaru would respect confidence more than cowering.
He was right about the first part, wrong about the second. Orochimaru's eyes narrowed, and Qifeng suddenly felt like a laboratory rat being studied by a particularly hungry scientist. The Sannin's gaze lingered on the bone spurs jutting from Qifeng's arms, the single tomoe spinning lazily in his hijacked Sharingan.
Kaguya bloodline. Uchiha eye. Impossible combination.
Qifeng could practically see the hypothesis forming in Orochimaru's mind, could see the exact moment when scientific curiosity overrode tactical assessment. That look—part predator, part researcher, all kinds of wrong—made his stomach turn.
"You should go," Qifeng said, letting chakra flow through his system again. His reserves were shot, but he had enough left for one more jutsu. Maybe. "Genjutsu: Sword of Heaven's Descent !"
The technique was pure desperation wrapped in bravado. He drove his spiritual energy like a spike directly into Orochimaru's consciousness, not trying to craft an elaborate illusion but simply attacking. It was the difference between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.
Orochimaru's expression went blank for a split second—just long enough for the clone to destabilize. His form wavered like a heat mirage, then dissolved entirely.
But that last look—hungry, fascinated, intrigued—lingered in the air like smoke.
Qifeng waited until he was absolutely certain the clone was gone before letting his knees buckle. "Oh, fuck me sideways with a rusty kunai."
The adrenaline crash hit him like a physical blow. He'd just—successfully—told one of the most dangerous men in the world to piss off. And it had worked. The thought was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.
"Note to self," he gasped, wiping cold sweat from his forehead, "never do that again. Also, maybe invest in some anxiety medication."
But beneath the terror was something else. Pride. Satisfaction. The kind of rush that came from facing down a nightmare and walking away intact. He was starting to understand why his fellow transmigrators seemed so addicted to grandstanding.
Dangerous thinking. That way lies protagonism, and protagonism leads to suffering.
The distant sounds of battle were fading, replaced by the quieter noises of aftermath—groans, curses, the wet sounds of field medicine. Qifeng forced himself to his feet and got to work, collecting bodies with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this before.
Tuhe first, then the other Iwa-nin from earlier. He paused at the edge of the forest, staring back at the battlefield one last time as his current appearance. When he emerged from the treeline, he was back to his original face, clothes torn and dirty enough to sell the story of a hard-fought victory.
The real battlefield was worse than he'd expected.
Intellectually, he'd known war was hell. He'd read the statistics, seen the aftermath in movies and books. But seeing it in person—smelling the copper reek of blood, hearing the quiet sobs of the dying—was different. This was just an advance skirmish. When the real war kicked off, the carnage would be exponentially worse.
A young Konoha-nin was trying to hold his intestines inside his body with shaking hands. An Iwa-nin lay nearby, his face a ruin of bone and flesh. Everywhere Qifeng looked, there were bodies—some still moving, some very much not.
This is what I'm profiting from.
The thought made him nauseous, but he pushed it aside. Philosophical crises were a luxury he couldn't afford. The wounded needed help, and he had medical training.
He dropped to his knees beside the nearest casualty—a Konoha jounin with a gaping chest wound that was painting the ground red. Qifeng's hands moved automatically, green chakra flowing from his palms as he activated his healing jutsu.
It wasn't much. Basic medical ninjutsu was like trying to repair a dam with duct tape. But it was enough to stabilize the worst of the bleeding, enough to buy time for real medical attention.
One down. Dozen to go.
He moved to the next casualty, then the next. His chakra reserves were already running on fumes, but he pushed through the exhaustion. Each life saved was a small victory against the senseless waste of war.
It was also, he had to admit, good PR. Nothing built trust like saving lives, and trust was a currency he'd need in the days to come.
Pragmatic altruism. The best kind.
But as he worked, moving from one broken body to the next, Qifeng found that the pragmatism was taking a backseat to something more basic. Compassion, maybe. Or just the stubborn human refusal to let death win without a fight.
Either way, he kept working until his hands stopped shaking and his chakra ran dry. It wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it was something.
And sometimes, something was enough.
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