Chapter 67: The Deadly Poison Master

"Stop... what's going on?"
A group of hurriedly fleeing shinobi suddenly realized the rain of arrows had ceased. Bewildered, they looked up at the trembling tower's summit, utterly clueless about what had just happened.
"Don't just stand there! Lie, blow up the tower for me!" Bai Mu shouted urgently; he had no idea how long A Fei could hold out.
"Captain, only two explosive clay charges left," Explosion Release Lie said, scratching his bald head.
"Damn it, why didn't you save some!" Bai Mu cursed. The tower's body was extraordinarily sturdy; it hardly looked like two charges could bring it down.
"Hey! How can you blame me for that? Didn't you just tell me to blow up the trees?" Lie protested.
"How was I supposed to know you'd burn through two whole crates of clay?"
"My hands just got itchy! It's all gone now, what do you want me to do?" Those who wielded Explosion Release all had fiery tempers.
"Heh heh... Lie, don't be angry. Come up with something—blast a hole in the tower. If you manage it, I'll reward you with half a pound of sweet potato spirits when we get back!" Bai Mu grinned, trying to coax him.
Lie shot Bai Mu a sidelong glance, clutching the last two clay charges and spent a while tapping and probing the tower's base.
"Hurry up!" Bai Mu watched the commotion atop the tower gradually die down, sweating profusely with anxiety.
"I'm not worried—why are you?" Lie replied leisurely, using a stick to tap and measure the wall, calculating something.
"Your mother isn't up there, that's why you're not worried!" Bai Mu roared.
"The shorty actually knows this stuff?" Xiang Ji exclaimed, watching Lie scribble out complicated mathematical formulas.
It was hard to imagine a beggar-like dwarf jumping up and writing out such a mess of equations. Bai Mu certainly didn't understand any of it; since that summer in middle school when he'd bent down to pick up a pen, math had never been his friend.
"Of course. What, you think Iwagakure builds houses like three-year-olds playing with mud, just pinching them however they like? Those of us who studied civil engineering are earthy and wooden, but don't judge a book by its cover. Back in ninja school, I was famous for my math skills—precision blasting, clay mixing, architectural design, all top notch." Lie rolled his eyes.
"So what are you calculating?" Xiang Ji asked again.
"The Hooke’s blind spot. No matter how strong the force, there's always a weakest point. I'm looking for that." Lie declared.
"Alright, alright, we know you're brilliant. Hurry up, shorty!" Bai Mu couldn’t take it anymore.
"Got it. Here!" Lie finally finished his calculations, marked two spots with big crosses, stuck the clay charges on, infused chakra, and retreated a hundred meters.
Boom!
A cloud of smoke erupted, scattering countless fragments of brick and stone. Before them appeared a hole just large enough for one person to pass through.
"Quick, inside! The crossbows can’t reach us here," Bai Mu waved everyone in.
The whole watchtower was like a giant mushroom—the stalk below held nothing but a ladder leading upward. The people of Konoha all lived on the cap, and climbing up one by one was practically suicide.

Inside the tower, the chaotic sounds of battle could already be heard from above.
"Pull that thing off his body!"
"Can Toyano wake him?"
"Don’t attack! He’s only being controlled!"
"The tower’s breached—someone guard the ladder!"
...
"They actually designed it so easy to defend, so hard to attack..." Bai Mu looked up at the ladder. As long as someone adept at Fire Release stood at the exit, no hundred men could charge through.
"Think... think... you can do this..." Bai Mu massaged his temples, straining his mind.
His gaze swept over his subordinates; he didn't know most of their abilities, but there was one he knew well: the timid, cowering apothecary, Liao, lurking at the very back. He’d been dragged out most unwillingly, preferring to tinker with recipes in the shadowy corners of Godless Town.
Bai Mu had tricked and tied him up to bring him along—just as every pirate ship needs a doctor, he counted as a half-decent medical ninja.
On his first day, Bai Mu tossed him in the river and scrubbed him with steel wool, peeling off a layer of skin—yet even that couldn’t erase the stench of years spent brewing medicines.
"Master Apothecary, hurry, brew me a pot that'll knock out everyone upstairs!" Bai Mu hauled Liao out of the crowd.
"N-no, Captain, I’m an apothecary, not a poisoner. My life’s work is medicine for healing, not toxins. I can't make poison!" Liao protested, distressed.
"Master Apothecary, no need to be modest. I believe in you. You don’t know how much wisdom is hidden in your brilliant mind. Just brew as you normally do—bring out your finest concoction!" Bai Mu patted Liao’s shoulder with conviction.
Liao, hunched and frail, stroked the three wisps of hair atop his head, his eyes full of gratitude. "Thank you, Captain, for recognizing me. At last, my talents and beauty find a kindred spirit. Today, I’ll make an exception and prepare a special brew."
"No need to thank me. It’s an honor to witness your limitless potential as a poisoner awakened. Get to work!" Bai Mu gave him a look of trust.
Liao glanced around, carefully removed his trousers, and from his inner thigh undid a roll of sealing scrolls, forming hand signs and summoning a complete set of apothecary tools.
"Oh hell, the quack actually has a sealing scroll!"
"Oh! The legendary sealing scroll! To be honest, I once had the fortune to see one eight hundred miles away."
"Oh, Goddess of Mao, we must bow before it."
...
A chorus of exclamations from the unworldly rabble.
Ever since the destruction of the Uzumaki clan—the masters of sealing scrolls in the Land of Whirlpools—the technique had been lost, and prices soared, with all major ninja villages treating them as strategic resources never seen in the market.
Now, aside from Konoha, who once allied with the Land of Whirlpools, hardly any village had the skill to craft sealing scrolls.

The brewing began; a large cauldron was placed at the tower's center. Water Release users added water, Fire Release users tended the flames, Wind Release users blew smoke up toward the top, and those with no skills hauled wood outside. Without exception, everyone tore strips of cloth and stuffed them in their nostrils—they all knew the quack’s reputation.
Lizard saliva, centipede dung, rat tail juice, octopus eyeballs... a jumble of bizarre ingredients were thrown into the cauldron. As chakra flames licked the brew, wisps of blue smoke drifted up to the tower’s summit.
"Damn mercenary ninjas—poison gas!"
"Turn on the ventilation now!"
"Captain, the ventilation’s been destroyed!"
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
(deep breath)
"Ugh, it stinks... urgh..."
"Smash the glass..."
"Eight Trigrams Air Palm... urgh..."
"Don't breathe..."
...
Waves of retching, mingled with the chaos of Meatball Tank’s wild rolling, continued for over twenty minutes before finally falling silent.
"Stop the fire!" Bai Mu ordered, listening to the sounds above.
"Come up, kids! They’re all down—we can do whatever we want now!" A Fei’s voice floated down.
"Break the glass first, or we can’t get up," Bai Mu replied.
"Oh!"
Crash! After several loud bangs, the sound of glass shattering echoed.
Only then did Bai Mu lead his men up to the top of the watchtower—a round structure of several hundred square meters, now in utter disarray. Thirty-odd Konoha shinobi lay sprawled everywhere, all foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back, unconscious.
A Fei had also detached from Akimichi's body, reverting to a cat and hanging onto Bai Mu.
"A Fei, don’t you lack a sense of smell?" Bai Mu asked, seeing A Fei’s tears.
"I don’t know why, it just stings my eyes a bit," A Fei replied, rubbing his eyes.