Corpse Collector of Konoha

Chapter 54: Weighted Rock Technique

[FAIL!]

Qifeng didn't even flinch. Honestly, he'd been expecting this cosmic middle finger from the universe. After deciding to turn Tsuchikawa into his personal marionette, he'd mentally prepared himself for the karmic backlash.

Yeah, that's fair, he thought grimly. Kill a guy, desecrate his corpse, and then act surprised when luck decides to take a vacation. I'm lucky he's not climbing out of that body bag to file a formal complaint.

This was his first time approaching corpse-looting with zero expectations—a surprisingly liberating experience. Usually, even the most pathetic yellow corpse got his curiosity going. What treasures awaited? What mysterious jutsu? What completely useless undergarments that somehow counted as "valuable loot"?

Seriously, who designed this system? A perverted teenager with abandonment issues?

[FAIL!]

Second verse, same as the first. Qifeng's expression remained as blank as his bank account after a night of gambling.

[FAIL!]

Three strikes, and he was starting to feel genuinely bad about wasting such a promising red corpse. A quasi-kage reduced to cosmic disappointment—there was probably a lesson about hubris in there somewhere, but he was too tired to dig for it.

Then, just as he was mentally composing Tuhe's posthumous apology letter...

[SUCCESS! Obtained Earth Release - Weighted Rock Technique (A-rank)!]

(Doton: Chōkeijūgan no Jutsu)

Qi Feng blinked. Then blinked again. Then checked to make sure he wasn't hallucinating from smoke inhalation.

"Well, I'll be damned," he muttered, staring at the notification like it might vanish if he looked away. "Tuhe, you magnificent bastard, you actually came through."

And what a technique it was! The Weighted Rock Technique was practically legendary—one of the Third Tsuchikage Ōnoki's signature moves that had made grown ninja wet themselves in terror across multiple wars. This wasn't just any jutsu; this was the kind of technique that made people write epic poems and tragic ballads.

The applications were mind-boggling. Increase gravity on an enemy? Watch them face-plant into the dirt like a sack of particularly dense potatoes. Add weight to your own attacks? Suddenly your punches hit like meteor strikes. The technique was so versatile it was practically cheating.

Hell, there was that one legendary moment when Ōnoki had used it to amp up the Fourth Raikage's punch, and together they'd shattered Uchiha Madara's Susanoo like it was made of particularly expensive glass. Uchiha Madara. The guy who made "overpowered" seem like an understatement.

"Though I bet they only classified this as A-rank because it's missing its dance partner," Qi Feng mused, already planning ahead. The Weighted Rock Technique was only half the equation—somewhere out there was the Light-Weight Rock Technique(Doton: Keijūgan no Jutsu), and that was the real prize.

Flying. Actual, honest-to-kami flying.

In a world where most ninja were limited to running really fast and jumping really high, flight was like bringing a gundam to a kunai fight. The strategic advantages were obscene—superior positioning, escape routes, the ability to rain death from above while your enemies stood around looking constipated.

It's why Minato Namikaze had been so terrifying. Flying Thunder God wasn't just teleportation; it was three-dimensional combat freedom that made traditional tactics look like cave paintings.

"But hey," he told himself, practicing the fine art of talking to corpses, "at least now I can make things really, really heavy. Orochimaru tries to get grabby? Boom, suddenly he weighs as much as a small mountain. Problem solved."

The mental image of the legendary Sannin face-planting under his own impossible weight was almost enough to make up for the moral compromises of the evening.

Since his red corpse had delivered the goods against all expectations, Qifeng found himself feeling oddly generous toward the remaining yellow corpses. They were just regular jonin, after all—practically participation prizes at this point.

"When did I become such a corpse snob?" he wondered aloud, genuinely disturbed by his own casual dismissal of dead jonin. "Six months ago, finding a chunin's lunch money would've made my week. Now I'm here turning my nose up at elite ninja like some kind of morbid food critic."

Success had made him complacent. Or maybe it was the shell shock. Either way, his standards had definitely shifted somewhere between "grateful for scraps" and "red corpses or bust."

The remaining loot lived down to his lowered expectations: a +3 attribute card and some forgettable earth jutsu.

[Fuinjustu +3!]

He slapped the upgrade card onto his stats without ceremony. At least sealing was useful—better locks for his scroll storage, stronger binding techniques, maybe eventually something that could actually contain his growing list of moral compromises.

The real prize had been that earlier jonin experience card. Half an hour of borrowed power that had let him punch way above his weight class, defeat a jonin, assassinate a quasi-kage, and somehow impress one of the legendary Sannin without getting immediately murdered.

[Active learning bonus achieved: Genjutsu +4; Chakra +2; Learned Darkness GenjustuTechnique, Genjutsu - Hell Viewing Technique!]

The system's evaluation was surprisingly generous, probably because he'd actually paid attention during his temporary power trip instead of just swinging around borrowed strength like a drunken gorilla.

Experience cards were incredible teaching tools, but they came with a psychological price tag. It was way too easy to get addicted to that feeling of competence, to start making plans based on power you didn't actually possess. Like a gambling addict with access to house money—eventually, reality came calling, and the bill was always brutal.

"Just go with the flow," he muttered, shelving his worries for later. He had more immediate concerns, like the small matter of crafting his first human puppet.

The "Special Puppetry Scroll (Part 1)" spread across his workspace like a particularly bizarre instruction manual. Every detail was meticulously illustrated—anatomical diagrams, chakra pathway maps, pressure point locations. It read less like a crafting guide and more like something a serial killer might keep as a hobby journal.

The complexity was staggering. Creating a human puppet wasn't just sewing some strings onto a corpse and calling it a day. You had to preserve the original's abilities, maintain their chakra pathways, keep their muscle memory intact. It was like performing surgery, taxidermy, and engineering all at the same time.

And according to the scroll, the best results came from using living subjects.

Qifeng's stomach twisted. That was a line he'd never cross, no matter how desperate things got. There were practical limits to his moral flexibility, and torturing people to death for the sake of better puppets was definitely past them.

"Dead guys it is," he told Tuhe's still form. "Sorry, but you're going to have to settle for being a budget model."

The first step was draining the blood—letting chakra flow through empty veins instead. Fortunately, Tuhe had already handled most of that during his dramatic self-destruction routine. Sometimes other people's poor life choices worked out in your favor.

The real advantage came with bone replacement. Where most puppeteers had to settle for metal reinforcements, Qifeng could use his Shikotsumyaku to craft custom bone structures. Stronger, more flexible, perfectly adapted to the puppet's needs. It was like having access to military-grade materials while everyone else was working with craft store supplies.

The whole process would take days, maybe weeks. But Qifeng wasn't in any particular hurry. The political situation was entering one of those delicate phases where everyone was too busy plotting to actually start shooting.

Three hidden villages had declared war on Konoha, but nobody wanted to be the first one through the meat grinder. Let someone else bleed themselves dry conquering the Fire Country—there'd be plenty of opportunities to stab the winner in the back afterward.

Ōnoki was particularly fond of that strategy. The old Tsuchikage had been playing political chess since before most ninja were born, and he didn't survive this long by charging headfirst into obvious traps.

Which meant Qifeng had time. Time to build his puppet, time to plan his next moves, time to figure out how to survive being Orochimaru's "disciple" without actually becoming one of his test subjects.

"Small victories," he reminded himself, settling in for a long night of anatomically questionable crafting. "Focus on the small victories."

After all, if you couldn't take pride in successfully desecrating corpses for fun and profit, what was even the point of being a ninja?

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