How to Survive as an Uchiha

137 – The Kazekage’s Interrupted Mining Day

The yellow sand shifted as something small pushed up from below. Sand slid away, revealing what was hiding underneath.

It was a hunched man with an ugly appearance and disheveled clothing. A slovenly brute.

No, "brute" might be excessive—after all, you couldn't even see his feet.

This was not his true body.

He was once known as the Sasori of the Red Sand.

Through Hiruko, he gazed coldly at the familiar desert before him. Perhaps, just perhaps, a faint ripple stirred in his icy heart.

That was all.

"That old hag... her defenses are truly tight."

Sasori, the most infamous traitor of Suna—now in his thirties—was in no good mood.

Born into a family of puppet masters, he had been hailed as the best of Suna's puppet arts, the likes of which had never been seen before and would never be seen again. After his departure, Suna's puppet techniques had dimmed and paled in comparison.

But such praise? To Sasori, it wasn't worth a fart.

A fart at least made a sound.

His demands for his life were minimal—just two things.

One: don't make him wait.

Two: don't stop him from pursuing the eternal beauty.

It wasn't because of the human puppet technique that he pursued eternal beauty. It was the other way around: it was in his pursuit of eternal beauty that he incidentally developed the human puppet technique.

In this sense, he and Orochimaru were kindred spirits.

The Snake Sannin also dabbled in ninjutsu as a side pursuit of his quest for truth.

But Sasori and Orochimaru didn't get along.

To this day, Sasori couldn't understand why Pain had recruited such an eyesore.

Granted, Orochimaru had his skills, and they both shared a fascination with eternity. But sometimes, dislike was just dislike.

He sought eternal beauty—not eternal ugliness.

Having an eternal grotesque flitting about in front of him? It was infuriating, to say the least.

It was an affront to his art.

"So many good materials... I can't let this go to waste."

With this thought, he began to maneuver Hiruko forward at a leisurely pace.

When he left Suna, he had taken with him most of the masterful puppets he had painstakingly crafted—except for that pair he made as a child.

Art allowed no place for sentimentality or hesitation.

He had to sever meaningless bonds.

Yet severing those bonds was far from easy. To accomplish it, he replaced his body with a puppet. But even in his puppet body, a small piece of flesh remained—his imperfect past still trying to haunt him.

Without cutting it off, his mind would never be at peace.

And so, he returned—not just to collect materials, but to sever everything once and for all.

To make them his enemies was the cleanest way to regain silence.

Sasori had already chosen his first "material."

Kiri was a goldmine of excellent resources. One day, he would make time to visit the Land of Water.

Hiruko's movements left faint tracks on the ground, which were quickly buried by the desert winds.

The desert was Suna's battlefield.

It was also Sasori's domain. Here, his puppets could achieve their greatest potential. The wind and sand were his allies.

If there was one weakness to his human puppet transformation, it was probably his reduced chakra reserves due to the lack of flesh and blood.

But freed from the limitations of a physical body, his control had reached unprecedented heights. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to counter that Konoha ninja's technique.

It wasn't easy; the other ninja's skill was extraordinary. Among the people he had encountered, that technique stood out as exceptional.

Hidden in the wind and sand, Sasori slowly approached his target.

It was a squad from Kiri.

When Hiruko's unique silhouette began to emerge from the storm, it immediately drew the attention of the Kiri ninja.

A shuriken flew straight for its face. The sound of metal clashing rang out as Hiruko's iron tail swatted the shuriken into the sand.

The Kiri ninja finally saw their opponent clearly.

"Not bad…"

Sasori was quite pleased. The abilities of these three individuals could be added to his Hundred Puppets.

Human puppets had the limitation of not fully replicating their original strength. But that was irrelevant for Sasori. His goal wasn't to recreate their power but to extract and preserve their unique abilities.

And bloodline users? They were the best materials.

Poisoned needles scattered in the wind and sand. The Kiri genin fell one by one, unable to resist.

"Excellent... simply excellent…"

Sasori moved closer, his gaze staying on the fallen bodies with the intensity of an artist admiring a masterpiece.

The key to crafting human puppets lay in preserving chakra.

The longer the body had been dead, the less chakra remained—until there was none.

Conversely, if the puppet was crafted while the subject was still alive, their abilities could be preserved at full capacity.

Just as Sasori had done with himself.

Was the human puppet technique cruel? Inhumane?

Was it an act of violence? A means of torment?

He didn't think so. When he turned himself into a human puppet, yes, it hurt—but the pleasure outweighed the pain.

That was the difference between someone who pursued art and someone who didn't.

As an artist, he respected all other artists—even his enemies.

But Orochimaru? He wasn't an artist. To him, eternity was merely a tool.

And that, ultimately, was why Sasori despised Orochimaru.

Controlling Hiruko, he extended a hand, pulled out a scroll, and prepared to seal the bodies.

His poison was a special concoction. It wouldn't kill immediately but would strip the victim of all sensation.

Then he heard the faint sound of something slicing through the air.

It was Suna ninjas—scouts patrolling the desert who had noticed the disturbance.

Hiruko's tail twitched nimbly, deflecting kunai and shuriken with ease.

A puppet charged through the sandstorm—his opponent was also a puppet master.

But the gulf between puppet masters was vast.

The puppet and mechanisms of his foe were crude and laughable to Sasori.

Back when he was still a ninja of Suna, he had crafted countless puppets for the village—mass-produced and mediocre by his standards.

Not because he couldn't do better, but because the village needed tools for average puppet masters. His masterpieces would have been wasted in their hands.

It's like expecting someone who can drive a basic car to handle a high-performance machine—it just wasn't going to happen.

In a single clash, Hiruko reduced the attacking puppet to scrap.

Meanwhile, Sasori sealed the three Kiri ninja into his scroll.

Hiruko then slowly turned, facing the surrounding Suna ninja.

"Who are you?" the Suna ninja demanded. They had realized this wasn't an ordinary enemy when their comrades' puppets had been destroyed so easily.

But these were chunin—not high-ranking enough to recognize Hiruko or deduce Sasori's identity.

Sasori didn't care.

"I have no interest in you. If you don't interfere, I won't harm Suna ninja."

He already had all the valuable materials from Suna. The rest weren't worth his attention.

Oh, wait—there was one exception. But that person was no longer a Suna ninja.

"What arrogance!" the Suna ninja shouted. "Don't think you can do as you please just because you've got some fancy equipment!"

The success of puppet techniques had spurred re

This unremarkable pond would hardly draw a second glance in Konoha.

At the very least, they'd spruce it up with a garden.

But in Suna, this was a privilege reserved for the elite.

"Rasa." At sixty years old, Chiyo was considered elderly by ninja standards.

She was renowned for developing antidotes that neutralized the poisons of Hanzō of the Salamander during the Second Great Ninja War.

Unfortunately, Konoha had produced someone even more extraordinary during the same era.

"Chiyo," Rasa greeted, stopping a few paces from the pond. "Are you in good health?"

The surrounding Suna ninja had retreated once he arrived.

None of them were foolish enough to stay and "get in the way" with the Kazekage present.

"Thank you for your concern. I'm still alive," Chiyo replied, turning to face him.

Rasa noticed a faintly dazed look on her face—something uncharacteristic for the usually strong-willed elder.

"What has happened?"

"My grandson has returned. The incident at the exam site was his doing."

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