"How's it going? Shigane, any leads?"
Ao came to the ANBU Black Room and inquired softly.
The Black Room was a special organization within Hidden Mist Village's ANBU, specifically responsible for decrypting enemy intelligence. It didn't have many members—only a few dozen—but each one was a master of intelligence decryption in Hidden Mist Village.
The ninja called "Shigane" silently raised his head. This ninja looked like a walking corpse—gaunt, face covered in grime, hair messy as a bird's nest, wearing glasses thick as bottle bottoms, slovenly dressed, and emanating a sour smell as if he hadn't bathed in months.
"No leads whatsoever."
Shigane gulped, his large Adam's apple bobbing.
"This code system is unlike any ninja village's cipher. It's composed purely of numbers. Look..."
Shigane stood up and walked to the blackboard.
The four walls of the Black Room were covered with blackboards of various sizes, filled with all sorts of complex, obscure calculation formulas.
The others in the Black Room didn't even look up, just silently buried themselves in calculations, including Konoha's Yamanaka Inoji.
"According to our analysis, this string of numbers is grouped in fours, with each group of four representing one character. So each group has 9,999 possibilities—no wait, including 0000, that's 10,000 possibilities total. Ten characters would be 100,000, a hundred characters would be a million, a thousand characters would be..."
"Alright, alright, I get it..."
Ao quickly interrupted Shigane's rambling, sucking his teeth as he looked at the numbers on the blackboard.
"Huh, some of these numbers are identical."
"Yes, exactly. Those could be the same characters. This letter has 843 characters total, so having repeated characters is normal—it just reduces the calculation load somewhat."
Ao pondered for a moment, trying to apply some common letter-writing phrases, but gave up after a while.
No pattern at all!
What cunning!
"If we had several different coded letters to cross-reference, we might get somewhere."
Shigane muttered.
Several letters? This one letter was already a lucky find, and he wants several? Dream on!
But the Mizukage's order was one week, and four days had already passed. At this blind fumbling pace, it would take forever to decrypt.
"Come on! Clear me a desk—I'm joining in!"
Four hours later, Ao felt dizzy and saw nothing but floating numbers.
No good! Continuing like this will drive everyone insane!
"Alright, everyone stop!"
Ao stood up and clapped his hands.
Everyone stared at Ao with bloodshot eyes.
"Now, everyone go home. Take baths, shave, drink, read books, chase girls—do whatever you want, just stop calculating! Everyone change your mindset. Take tomorrow off, and we'll discuss anything the day after!"
"But... what about the mission?"
Shigane asked dumbly.
"If the Mizukage asks questions, I'll take responsibility!"
Ao said firmly.
"I think everyone's fallen into habitual thinking. Maybe our approach is wrong. Stop, change perspective—that might work. Alright, it's decided! Everyone go home! God, you all stink..."
"Splash!"
Yamanaka Inoji emerged from the bathhouse pool, contentedly spitting out water.
"Chief Ao was right—we really needed to wash up. We were all going sour."
He leisurely draped a towel over his forehead, leaned against the pool edge, and stretched comfortably.
Huh, that silhouette looks familiar!
A sturdy figure was pressed against the bathhouse wall, seemingly peering through cracks in the wall at something, occasionally letting out lecherous chuckles.
Oh, it's him.
"Jiraiya-sama, what are you looking at?"
Yamanaka Inoji called out loudly.
"Ah! Peeping tom!"
Screams came from the other side of the wall, followed by wooden basins, towels, and soap boxes flying over the wall.
"Ow! That hurts!"
A wooden basin hit Jiraiya square in the head.
"Yamanaka Inoji! You... you... that's so disloyal."
...
Half an hour later, the two appeared in a tavern.
"I was actually gathering material."
"Sir, you were clearly peeping."
"Really gathering material."
"Sir, you were just peeping. I even saw you drooling."
Yamanaka Inoji had that stubborn bookworm streak.
"Well, I was attracted by the material. Don't believe me? Look, this is my work—decent sales too! The publisher's pressing me, so I'm gathering material for my second novel."
"You actually have published work?"
Yamanaka Inoji looked closely and saw a blue-covered novel on the table with beautiful lettering: Tales of a Gutsy Ninja.
Yamanaka Inoji actually picked up the novel and started reading. Change of pace, right?
The story was clichéd, the writing immature—about a ninja named Naruto in an inspirational tale, the kind you could read without thinking.
This kind of novel actually has sales? Must be that wartime stress makes people need mindless reading material.
Suddenly, Yamanaka Inoji seemed to discover something, frantically flipping through pages.
"Hey, hey, hey, what's gotten into you? Is that any way to read a book?"
Jiraiya said.
"I understand! I understand! I understand!"
Yamanaka Inoji continued frantically flipping pages, muttering under his breath.
"9023... wind."
"8304... shadow."
"7216... great."
"9938... person."
"7558... respectfully."
"0708... respectfully."
"It works! It works! It matches! It's solved!"
Yamanaka Inoji acted like a madman.
"What did you solve?"
Jiraiya asked, puzzled.
"If I hadn't happened to see Jiraiya-sama's work, we might never have figured out that Hidden Sand Village's codebook was actually a novel written by a Konoha ninja, and the encryption method is particularly simple."
Yamanaka Inoji proudly explained at the blackboard.
Everyone in the Black Room below held a copy of Jiraiya'sTales of a Gutsy Ninja.
"The first two digits are the page number, the third digit is the line number, the fourth digit is the character position. Follow this sequence and you get the complete message."
"That simple?"
Shigane adjusted his glasses.
"That simple. I've already translated the content. The text is coherent—if you don't believe me, everyone can translate it themselves."
Ao said nothing and started translating while flipping through the book.
Less than an hour later, the complete translation was done.
"To His Excellency the Kazekage: The Yuexi Peninsula Sun Harbor coastal defense fortifications are now fully completed, additionally equipped with 4,000 ninja from the Fourth Division of the standing army, 3,000 tax police troops, 3,000 security troops... deployed in tiers with segmented interception, we can certainly annihilate any invading enemy on the beaches. Respectfully submitted by Kakuzu."
This was it.
"Someone! Buy up every copy of this book available on the market! Every ANBU ninja needs one!"
Ao commanded loudly.
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