A few days have passed since Ino gave Ren a scare with her mind control proclivities, and they were very stressful. He almost regretted that Ino told him about her work on Samui because he was so relaxed before it happened.

His biggest worry was contemplating how to get Ino out of her clothes. And considering she would happily jump him after a single word, it wasn’t much of a worry in the first place.

Now?

Now he had to think about how to get rid of Samui. And it was far more complicated than it sounded.

Sure, he could just kill her. But… he felt bad. It was a weird time for his conscience to start knocking. But it did. The woman was there, mind-whammied to kingdom come, and at least partially, it was Ren’s fault even if he didn’t intend for it to go quite that far.

It ate at him.

Funnily enough, not even Ino wanted to kill her. But it was not because of some miraculous awakening of her conscience toward somebody she considered her enemy. No. Ino was still pissed that Samui and her team almost managed to un-alive Ren. She simply thought it would have been a total waste of her monumental effort. If they simply killed Samui and threw her into the ocean, all those hours she spent brainwashing her would have been for naught.

She didn’t do all that to Samui because she was bored. It was her revenge. Taking away her love for Kumo, her love for her brother, and twisting it into something else, something beneficial to them? That was what Ino decided was a good payback for almost succeeding in killing Ren.

That’s what made Ino reluctant to suggest murder. There was not enough suffering for Samui in death.

Ren found that a bit exasperating. It was the first time he noticed that Ino could be downright vicious if given a reason. But that’s what he gets for romancing a kunoichi.

And with the option of killing Samui off the table, the potential workable solutions became increasingly more complex and limited.

Ino suggested returning her to Kumo after making her some sort of sleeper agent if Ren didn’t want her for himself. But Ren just rolled his eyes at her and denied it before explaining the reason.

Kumo would instantly realize that a Yamanaka worked on her if she came back missing memories. And they would have to delete everything that happened to her if they intended to return her.

Not only would her value as a sleeper agent be shot to hell almost instantly because Kumo higher-ups are not stupid enough to trust anything relevant to a kunoichi who was under the tender care of a Yamanaka for a prolonged time and came back not remembering what was done to her, but the Raikage would have totally used it to threaten a war against Konoha.

Now, that could go several different ways. But with Hiruzen at the helm? Ren didn’t want the Yamanaka clan to find itself in the same situation as the Hyugas and be forced to sacrifice somebody.

The chances of that were minuscule. But it was not zero.

Ino instantly paled when she heard the possible consequences of that route. Politics, especially between villages, was not something he had taught his students yet. But now that they were ninjas, and strong ones, they needed to make sure their actions would not spark a war or something.

No. Returning Samui would be direct proof that Konoha had her. And the village could deny it as much as they wanted, the Raikage would be very stubborn about demanding a recompense.

If the Hokage gave in, the village would lose. One way or the other. Even if the Yamanaka clan didn’t come under fire because of it, something else would have to be given to Kumo.

And if the Hokage didn’t give in?

Heh. That was the fun part! It could range from nothing happening to the start of the Fourth Great Ninja War early. And it would all depend on the Raikage’s mood during that particular day.

Ren was not a betting man. Screw that noise.

In the end, Ren decided to have Ino lock most of Samui’s memories behind mental blocks, leaving her only with basic common knowledge, her kunoichi skills, the ability to write and read, and a new name, Sarah.

It was ruthless. But it was better than death. Ren didn’t feel particularly bad about it. Weirdly enough, this was fine in his books. It was mostly the mind control rapey slavery that irked him.

Ino managed to finish it just a day before Asuma decided to take his team on their first C-rank mission, so Ren also decided to go on one and picked up C-rank bandit extermination in the Land of Rivers, the country between the Land of Wind and the Land of Fire.

Of course, it was just a smokescreen.

Ren’s objective was to buy a small house for Sam-, ahem, Sarah. She could live and build herself a completely new life. Ren didn’t care if she found herself a lover, got a job, and had kids. Honestly, he would prefer if she did that and was happy. The less chance of her returning to Kumo, even if they found her that way.

Samui was officially dead. Nobody was looking for her. And nobody would connect some blond chick named Sarah with Samui. It’s why Ren went for such a foreign name. He also insisted on the initial ‘S’ for the name because only an incompetent ninja chooses a cover name with the same initial letter as his real name.

Common sense of ninjas, duh.

It would work against them in this particular situation. Unless somebody who knows Samui personally somehow met her face to face, Kumo would be none the wiser about her continued existence.

Considering that Kumo was thousands of kilometers away from her new residence… yeah, the chances of that were slim to none.

And even if they did find her, Konoha would have plausible deniability. Because why would they let their prisoner live freely in the Land of Rivers? That made no sense!

The Raikage could scream threats until he was purple, but he would just come off as unreasonable at that point. Even if he suspected foul play and realized that Samui’s memories had been heavily tampered with.

Naturally, Ren didn’t intend to leave Sarah without money. He also intended to exploit her existence, because why not?

Samui was given a few mental nudges and a business opportunity where she would be periodically buying a lot of chakra ink from the sources in the Land of Rivers. She would then seal it into a special two-way storage seal where Ren could pick it up at his leisure. And he would then pay her through the seal, too.

Money for a comfortable life would not be an issue for her, and Ren was going to have more chakra ink at his disposal. It was a win-win. One he felt especially good and smug about.

Better yet, nobody would know exactly to whom all that chakra ink would be going, and they would have no way of tracing it either. The ninjas from the Land of Rivers were not exactly top tier. They didn’t even have a proper ninja village. It was mostly just a scattering of random unaffiliated clans here and there.

An elite Jonin like Samui was going to have a very easy time running circles around these genin to low-chunin level mooks.

And if Ren’s enemies don’t know about his supply lines, they can’t cut them. It wasn’t just the chakra ink. Ren could buy anything through her. But for now, he didn’t need anything else that urgently.

The chakra ink he was buying from the village right now? Ren suspected he could easily lose these suppliers. They were regulated and overseen by the village’s officials in the first place. Only the fact that his seals were beneficial to Konoha gave Ren a bit of protection from some Elder dipshit, cough, Danzo, cough, from forcefully persuading his suppliers to not supply him with ink.

But Ren would rather be prepared and have a different supply line readily available rather than pray that nothing would ever go wrong.

He took the opportunity and, under a disguise, he secretly negotiated quite a few deals with the chakra ink suppliers in the Land of Rivers while he was officially on the C-rank mission, making Sarah their new buyer.

They will deliver it to her, and she will deliver it to him. Everybody gets what they want. Everybody is happy.

Really, Ren almost couldn’t believe his genius!

Ino also had an idea and was adamant to at least use Sarah for some spy work. Ren wasn’t very enthusiastic about it, but he did relent in the end and created a special diary for Samui.

Ino gave her even more mental nudges that would make the woman write anything she found worth noting into her diary. And considering she still had her kunoichi skills, she knew exactly what was ‘worth noting’.

Ino also sported a new seal on her back, one connected to the diary and could project and store the information Samui wrote. From there, Ino’s mind could access the stored data through some Yin Chakra bullshit and process it. To be honest, it was just a modified form of the telepathy seal. But instead of thoughts to thoughts, it was written text to thoughts kind of thing.

Ren put it together in thirty minutes of effort once he got the idea. It wasn’t terribly difficult.

Ino was almost adorable, throwing herself at Ren and excitedly hugging him like a koala as she proclaimed that she was going to be his spymaster… or something. She was just joking, and Ren smiled as he remembered that moment. He chuckled and kissed her forehead back then. As long as she was happy, he was fine with it.

But during his travel to the Land of Rivers, he kind of realized the possibilities of that seal and Ino’s techniques were kind of frightening. With her mental techniques, Ino could have thousands of these diaries linked to her modified telepathy seal.

And the writers did not even need to know that everything they wrote would be sent to somebody.

She could sell fancy diaries to nobles. She could sell blank accounting books to merchants. She could even sell them to ninjas. As long as they were not knowledgeable in the sealing arts and could not discover the seal work in the book cover…

The Yamanaka techniques were built to work with a massive influx of information in the first place. Sorting through all that data would be child’s play for Ino.

And Ren wondered if he should push her to lean into this direction. She could really become a scary spymaster, all on her own.

The downside? Ino was dreadful at the sealing arts. Every single connected book or diary would have to be created by Ren. It was almost enough to make him give up on the idea. He couldn’t even make a Secrebo for it! The Secrebo could make a paper tag with a specific seal. It could not print a seal inside a book cover. No. These needed to be made by hand!

The vision of the work in front of him, if he wanted to bring this idea into reality, made Ren feel immense discomfort. And he made a resolution right there and then.

If Ino wanted to become the spy mistress, she was going to learn how to make these seals for the connected books herself. He was not going to do that for her. No amount of crying and pleading was going to persuade him!

She might hate learning the sealing arts. But no, Ren couldn’t spare that much of his time for her. He needed it to create seals for himself and to grow stronger.

He decided to leave the decision in Ino’s hands. It would have been a pity to not turn such potential for spying into reality. But Ren had to prioritize.

He had more pressing matters at hand. Matters that required his undivided attention.

Like the two dudes wearing black coats with red clouds who sat at a table further in front of him in the local restaurant.

Deidara and Sasori.

Now… what would a smart, handsome, and resourceful seal master like him do in a situation like this? Should he ignore them? Or should he do something naughty?

… Oh, who was he kidding? The answer was obvious, wasn’t it?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep