Corpse Collector of Konoha

Chapter 53: System Bug

Qifeng stumbled back to his tent like a man walking to his own execution. The bodies scattered across the ground no longer filled him with the grim satisfaction they once had. Instead, they looked like accusatory fingers pointing straight at his future grave.

Orochimaru's subordinate.

The words tasted like ash in his mouth. He'd spent months playing an elaborate game of ninja hide-and-seek, tiptoeing around political landmines and trying to find the safest path through this shinobi soap opera. And where had all that careful maneuvering gotten him? Right into the snake pit, apparently.

If he were a jonin, he could probably laugh this off over sake and war stories. But as a chunin—a forgettable, middle-tier ninja who most people couldn't pick out of a lineup—being singled out by one of the legendary Sannin was like being personally blessed by the Grim Reaper himself.

The worst part? People were already connecting dots that didn't exist, weaving conspiracy theories faster than his grandmother used to knit scarves. Why else would Orochimaru's usual lackeys be conspicuously absent from that crucial meeting while he, a glorified messenger boy, got invited to the big kids' table? And why would the Snake Sage actually ask for his opinion, as if his thoughts mattered more than the weather forecast?

Orochimaru's disciple.

The title carried weight in Konoha—the kind of weight that could either launch you to the Hokage's office or crush you into a very thin paste. Having one of the Three Ninjas as your sensei was like winning the shinobi lottery, complete with political connections, advanced jutsu, and a direct line to the old man's ear. Hell, even the prestigious Uchiha and Hyuga clans would probably sacrifice a few cousins for that kind of access to power.

But Qifeng knew something they didn't—something that made his stomach churn like he'd eaten week-old military rations. Orochimaru and Konoha were headed for the messiest divorce in ninja history, and when that happened, anyone caught in the crossfire would be lucky to end up as a missing-nin rather than a very dead one.

The only thing keeping him from complete despair was thinking about Mitarashi Anko, Orochimaru's canonical disciple who somehow managed to survive the purge with her head still attached to her shoulders. If that dango-obsessed maniac could make it through, maybe there was hope for the rest of them.

Frantically, he began dissecting Anko's survival strategy like a medical exam he'd forgotten to study for:

First, she'd been blissfully ignorant of her teacher's hobby of playing mad scientist with human test subjects. Sometimes being clueless was the ultimate defense.

Second, she was pure in that special way that made hardened killers want to pat her head and give her candy. Qifeng had glimpsed her from afar a few times, and she radiated the kind of innocent energy that could probably blind surveillance jutsu.

Third—and this was the kicker—she had connections. Her father might have been six feet under, but his reputation still opened doors in Konoha's upper echelons. Word was that Yuhi Shinku, Kurenai's old man, had served under Anko's father back in their ANBU days, which explained why the two girls were practically joined at the hip.

The pieces clicked together in Qifeng's mind like a particularly grisly puzzle.

His survival plan was surprisingly straightforward: First, avoid Orochimaru's underground science experiments like they were laced with explosive tags. Second, keep playing the role of the harmless, bumbling chunin who couldn't hurt a fly without written instructions. Third, start networking like his life depended on it—because it absolutely did.

The chunin exams had already introduced him to the Nara clan, and this whole Iwagakure mess had let him play hero to Nara Chuuichi. The Nara patriarch was practically glued to the Hokage's hip as an advisor, and where the Nara went, the Yamanaka and Akimichi followed like a well-trained formation.

Qifeng rubbed his temples, feeling a headache building. "Great," he muttered to the empty tent, "I'm going to become Konoha's most reluctant social butterfly."

The thought of actually having to talk to people—on purpose, for extended periods—made his introvert soul want to crawl into a cave and hibernate until the next century. But the alternative was becoming a very stylish corpse, so small talk it was.

"Maybe Orochimaru won't defect," he told himself, clinging to that hope like a drowning man clutching driftwood. "Maybe he'll suddenly develop a healthy respect for Konoha's laws and decide to take up gardening instead of human experimentation."

Even he didn't believe that lie.

Exhaustion hit him like a physical weight. The fight with the Iwagakure jonin, the desperate battle against the quasi-kage Tuhe, the chakra drain from healing half the battlefield, and then that mental chess match with Orochimaru—it all crashed down on him at once.

He collapsed into his camp chair and sat there for several minutes, staring at nothing and feeling like his brain had been put through a blender. Finally, he pulled out a cigarette with the mechanical movements of a man going through the motions of living.

One cigarette became two. Two became five. Time lost all meaning as smoke filled the tent and cigarette butts accumulated around his feet. He'd given up on his usual cleanliness standards—war had a way of making such concerns seem laughably trivial.

The moon crept across the sky while the camp finally settled into something resembling peace. His daily corpse-touching limit had been reached hours ago, and now he was just... waiting. Waiting for midnight to reset his grotesque little power, waiting for some sign that he might actually survive this mess, waiting for his life to make sense again.

The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd chosen the path of least resistance specifically to avoid the grinding effort of getting stronger, and now here he was, desperate for power because being weak was going to get him killed.

"What a joke," he laughed bitterly, the sound harsh in the smoke-filled air. "I became a slacker to avoid training, and now I want to train to avoid being a corpse. My life has officially become a comedy sketch written by someone with a very dark sense of humor."

But when your continued existence was hanging by a thread, philosophical consistency became a luxury he couldn't afford. Survival trumped everything else, including his carefully cultivated image as a professional underachiever.

Finally, mercifully, midnight arrived.

His system cheerfully informed him that he could resume his hobby of rifling through dead people's belongings. Looking around the tent, he had to admit the selection was impressive—at least twenty bodies, both Konoha and Iwagakure, including several high-ranking ninja whose corpses practically glowed with potential rewards.

He activated his Sharingan, the tomoe spinning as he scanned for any unwanted observers. No chakra signatures, no lurking snake-themed mentors, no signs of surveillance. Just him, the bodies, and the kind of moral dilemma that made philosophy professors weep.

After retrieving the scrolls containing Tuhe and the other Iwagakure jonin, he found himself staring at the quasi-kage's corpse with the intensity of a man trying to solve the universe's greatest mystery.

The internal debate raged for several minutes. On one side: basic human decency, respect for the dead, and the remnants of his moral code. On the other: the very real possibility of being murdered by his own village if he couldn't prove his worth without revealing his true abilities.

In the end, pragmatism won. It always did when the alternative was death.

"I'm sorry," he said to Tuhe's still form, and he meant it. "You were the enemy, but you deserved better than this. I'd give you a proper burial if I could, but apparently the universe has decided that my survival takes precedence over common decency."

He pulled out "Houshi's Obsession," the human skin mask that had fooled even Orochimaru's legendary senses. The plan was simple, if morally questionable: transform the corpse into his mysterious alter ego, then turn it into a puppet. It was like identity theft, but with more necromancy and significantly higher stakes.

As he watched Tuhe's features shift and change, becoming the face he'd worn during his deception, a grim smile tugged at his lips.

"Well, well," he murmured, noting that the system didn't count usage on corpses against his daily limit. "Looks like I found a system bug. About time something went my way."

The red corpse indicator glowed before him, taunting him with its 15% success rate.

[Red corpse detected. Success rate: 15%. Would you like to loot the corpse? (Current usage: 3/3, Daily total: 6/9)]

He reached out, fingers hovering over the corpse, and couldn't help but appreciate the cosmic irony. Here he was, a man who'd spent his entire second life trying to avoid the spotlight, about to grave-rob his way to survival using a glitched game system.

"If you can't beat life," he muttered, channeling his past-life wisdom, "then you might as well exploit its bugs."

[YES]