Naruto: I, the villain template, was hailed as a savior.

Chapter 221 Those are Konoha ninjas?

"My home is right there!"

Xiao Shi pointed to the village ahead and looked excitedly at the crowd behind him.

However, upon entering this mountainous area, the scene before him caused Hu Ping's expression to change slightly.

Most of the farmhouses scattered on the hillsides are dilapidated, with weeds growing over the eaves and no one cleaning them; all that can be seen is desolation.

"Little Stone".

Ye stood behind Xiao Shi, letting the others disperse and hide. Looking at the abandoned fields, he frowned and asked, "What happened to those farmhouses? Why are so many neglected?"

"Hmm, it must be that everyone in the family has either left or died." Xiao Shi scratched his head. "With years of heavy rain and a lot of grain to pay, people either fled to the capital or to the north. After the farmhouses were abandoned, not many people wanted them."

Hu Ping's eyes flickered as he muttered to himself, "I never imagined that after being away for so long, things would turn out like this..."

He was also a child born in this village, but at that time there were at least several hundred people living here.

Now, after enduring war, plague, famine, and plunder, many have died or fled, and there are probably fewer than a hundred left.

Compared to the north, which is in dire need of reconstruction, this place is truly desolate.

"We should have come sooner." Hu Ping's tone was somewhat remorseful. "We haven't been back all these years... If we had noticed sooner, many people could have starved to death."

The houses along the riverbank were empty, and so was his heart.

A dilapidated farmhouse means the entire family has died.

"Grandpa! I'm home!"

"Woof! Woof!"

Before they knew it, they had arrived at Xiao Shi's house.

In front of that dilapidated house stood an old man with a hunched back. Hearing the sound, he subconsciously looked up and saw Xiao Shi running towards him. A smile appeared on his deeply lined face.

Xiao Shi whispered something in the old man's ear, and the old man looked at Ye and the others with a surprised expression.

"Old man," Hu Ping walked over with a grin, "it seems you're still in pretty good health."

"You're... Skinny Monkey? You actually know how to come back?"

The old man smiled and squeezed his arm, saying with admiration, "Not bad, not bad, you've gotten much stronger. You're the only one who went out and came back alive. You must have suffered a lot."

As if recalling some unpleasant experience, Hu Ping's smile faded considerably, but he quickly explained with a grin, "Actually, a few people survived, they just weren't with me this time. You should be able to see them return in a while."

"Good, good, it's good that you're back." The old man smiled and nodded, looking up at the approaching night.

The once imposing Ye had returned to his normal human form. He walked up to the old man, clasped his hands in a respectful manner, and said, "I apologize for disturbing you."

"It's alright, it's alright, Little Stone told me everything."

The old man smiled and waved his hand, then patted Hu Ping's head: "I also want to thank you for taking care of Skinny Monkey. This kid has no parents and used to survive entirely on the help of the village. I watched him grow up, so I'm practically his grandfather."

"Grandpa, I'm not called Skinny Monkey anymore." Hu Ping rubbed his head and muttered, "I have a name now, I'm called Hu Ping."

"Hu Ping, a good name, much better than Skinny Monkey." The old man laughed and looked at Ye Xiao, saying, "It's almost dawn. The weather has been unusually good lately. I need to hurry to the fields, so I'll have Little Stone take care of you for now."

"We can't delay our farm work, so please don't mind us. We're just taking a short break and will leave tonight," Ye said politely. "I happen to have nothing to do, so if you don't mind, I'll go help out."

"help?"

The old man's cloudy eyes swept over Ye, and when he saw the neat black robe, he shook his head and said, "You must be a samurai or a ninja. There's no need for you to force yourself to do such a lowly thing."

"How can farming be considered a lowly job?"

Ye instinctively retorted, then softened her tone and explained, "Please don't misunderstand, we are not ninjas or samurai. We were once ordinary people, and now we are just trying to make a living."

The old man's smile vanished, and he asked in surprise, "Not samurai and ninjas? Then you are..."

Although he was not very knowledgeable, he knew and had seen samurai and ninjas. In his eyes, samurai, ninjas and commoners were not in the same social class at all.

Samurai were the personal guards of nobles, and ninjas were a group of people who did not engage in productive labor.

The old man didn't have a good impression of either of these types of people. He had only been trying not to offend them, since it was obvious they weren't easy to deal with. He hadn't expected they weren't samurai or ninjas after all...

Hu Ping couldn't help but speak up, "Grandpa, Uncle Ye... Uncle Ye was once just a refugee. He witnessed refugees exchanging children to eat and almost starved to death. How could he think farming is a lowly job?"

"...For a refugee to achieve such a feat, it seems something extraordinary has happened in the north."

The old man remained silent for a long time, then sighed deeply, his smile becoming much more genuine: "Even so, there's no reason to make guests do the work."

A few words made Ye reluctantly give up the idea of ​​helping. The old man then called Xiao Shi aside and whispered, "I hid a sweet potato under the table. When you cook porridge for them later, don't just put in sweet potato leaves, put in a sweet potato too."

Xiao Shi subconsciously licked his lips and nodded repeatedly, saying, "I understand, Grandpa."

The old man turned to look at Ye and Huping and said with a smile, "Then you two chat, I'll be going now."

Ye watched the old man turn and leave, his gaze gradually becoming deep and thoughtful.

With his keen hearing, he naturally overheard the old man's secret conversation with Xiao Shi, and couldn't help but feel touched and saddened.

Just then, Ye's clothes were tugged, and he subconsciously looked down and saw a small stone carefully holding a black cube.

"What is this?" Ye was stunned for a moment.

"Oh." Huping recognized the black blob and said nostalgically, "It's black bread. I haven't seen it in a long time."

After saying that, under Xiao Shi's expectant gaze, he picked up the piece of black bread, stuffed it into his mouth, and crunched it as he gave Xiao Shi a thumbs up, mumbling, "A familiar taste."

"Pooh!"

He spat out two pebbles, rubbed his stomach, and said, "Bread made from wheat flour and bran, mixed with sawdust and small pebbles, was the kind of garbage that nobles gave to their servants or used for disaster relief."

"Back then, I couldn't get any even if I wanted to eat it. It was only when I left the village that an old woman gave me a piece."

"I thought it tasted really good at the time, but now that I think about it, it wasn't that I liked it, it was just that I had no choice because I was hungry, so hungry, and it could be stored for a long time, so other people wouldn't want it and it wouldn't be stolen."

Hu Ping knew very well that if he swallowed just one piece of this black bread and gulped down a few mouthfuls of water, he could last for two more days; he had experience with this.

Thinking of this, he couldn't help but sigh, "Back then, I never imagined that I would one day have enough to eat and wear, not only gaining power but also managing over a hundred people. My fate has truly been extraordinary."

"I hope Lord Yunchuan can win this war and bring the south into the Dawn's territory as well, so that they can also eat real bread."

Hu Ping muttered to himself, but Ye remained silent.

He simply placed his hand on Xiao Shi's head, took out a piece of candy from his pocket, and handed it to him: "Thank you for the bread. This is the candy my wife left for me. Here you go, Xiao Shi."

Xiao Shi was initially a little disappointed for giving up the black bread, but upon hearing this, he immediately looked up at the candy wrapped in paper and realized that it was a candy that had been hidden in his pocket for who knows how long.

He had never eaten candy.

"Thank you, Uncle." Xiao Shi smiled, feeling a hand patting his head from above. The hand was large and had a long-lost warmth.

He's starting to like this older man he just met.

He just seemed a bit cold, and he almost never smiled.

"Hmm." Xiao Shi unwrapped the candy, put it in his mouth, and squinted slightly as he tasted the sweetness, saying in a muffled voice, "Uncle, can I really have the candy you saved for yourself?"

"You've already eaten it." Ye couldn't help but chuckle, gently rubbing his head, and whispered, "It's alright, even if she were still alive, she wouldn't object."

Looking at the sun gradually rising in the distance, Ye felt a strange sense of déjà vu.

That day seemed to be a winter day, and as the sun rose in the distance, the footsteps of those guys came from afar, bringing with them inextinguishable flames and death.

Finally, the wooden door of the last room was kicked open violently, and three people rushed in, only to find a stove that had been extinguished for a long time and was now just a few embers.

They trampled the fallen picture frame, took the few remaining food items, but just as they were about to leave, they saw the trembling cabinet and a corner of a skirt peeking out from it…

In the evening, the lean man returned from his hunt, bringing back two rabbits with thick fur. He also stopped by to buy some candy that his wife liked.

But as he crossed the last hill, the distant firelight illuminated his eyes, and flames ignited in his deep-set eye sockets.

He dropped his prey and ran home until he saw the kunai that had pierced the cabinet and the blood flowing from it.

They may have done it unintentionally, simply throwing out kunai after noticing someone was there; or they may have done it intentionally, killing the person to ensure they wouldn't be discovered.

The man didn't know; he just stood there, frozen solid, as if he were dead.

Then a man who called himself Tsukimi Kumokawa came over, threw the heads of two dead Konoha ninjas and a Konoha ninja in front of him, and told him that these three people were the ones who killed his wife.

Then, with red eyes, he pounced on it. He never imagined that his frail body, a body that could only hunt and lure rabbits, would actually possess such power.

He raised his fist and brought it down, smashing the Konoha ninja's face beyond recognition. In the end, even the villagers who had miraculously survived couldn't stop this small, seemingly weak man.

Brains were spilled all over the ground; it was a disgusting scene, yet it seemed to be the most beautiful sight the man had ever seen in his life.

"Look," Yun Chuan said, pointing to his blood-stained hands, "Can you tell whose blood that is? Your blood is all the same color."

"Whether it's the blood of a nobleman, the blood of a samurai, the blood of a ninja, or your blood, it's all the same bright red. So, you clearly saw them just now, so why didn't you chase after them? Was it fear, or weakness?"

"Do you want my 'blood'?" he said with a smile.

Later, the man followed them back to the city called "Dawn." There was no one drinking and making merry, no one wearing gold and silver; they simply huddled together, embracing each other for warmth.

But as he followed Yun Chuan, he heard countless greetings along the way.

He had seen nobles go out and be greeted by countless people, but they all acted very humbly, with endless flattery and fawning, bowing and scraping like dogs wagging their tails on the street.

But the greeting he received at that moment seemed so natural and sincere, a genuine expression of respect.

He could sense it, so he liked it there and stayed.

This is him, this is the origin of "Night". He thought he had forgotten all of this, after all, he had even abandoned his name.

But to his surprise, even after learning that he had been sent to ambush Konoha, he still brought this candy with him, and just now he subconsciously took it out of his pocket...

"Uncle?"

When Ye heard Xiao Shi's voice, she snapped out of her daze, met his questioning gaze, shook her head slightly, and smiled, "It's nothing. Go help your grandfather. You don't need to trouble yourself to look after us."

He knew that he wasn't as calm and rational as he appeared. He wanted to win, as long as it was Konoha, no matter who his opponent was, even if it was Jiraiya or the Third Hokage's disciple.

He didn't want this already dilapidated place to become the ruins he had once seen.

Hearing Ye's words, Xiao Shi scratched his head and hesitated, "Then, shall I go help Grandpa first?"

"Go."

"oh."

After Xiao Shi left with the black dog, Ye turned to Hu Ping and said indifferently, "Tell the others to be prepared. We'll continue our journey after dark, without disturbing the villagers."

"Yes." Tiger Ping, his earlier playfulness completely gone, nodded with a serious expression.

The only flaw of a "ghost" is its fear and aversion to light.

While it won't kill you just by being exposed to light, your regenerative abilities will be significantly weakened.

Therefore, this is the only route that Jiraiya's troops will take, and they plan to wait here until dark before continuing their advance.

While he was preparing, Xiao Shi had already climbed the nearest hillside, and sat down on a rock to rest, panting heavily. He then took out the paper he used to wrap the candy and licked it.

But at that moment, the big black dog beside him, who was munching on grass, suddenly looked up and started barking wildly as if it had seen something.

"Little Black, what's wrong?"

Xiao Shi was stunned for a moment, and subconsciously followed his gaze. He squinted and saw that in the distance, down the mountain, more than a dozen figures wearing green vests were constantly appearing from three directions.

Xiao Shi instantly recognized the people's identities, and the candy wrapper in his hand fell to the ground in a daze.

Those are Konoha ninjas?

(End of this chapter)