A Flash of Red Hair

Three years passed in the blink of an eye. Yotsuki Clan Territory.

Inside a small building in the rear courtyard, Dada was reading.

This small building served as the Yotsuki Clan's library. It contained several hundred books of various kinds. Naturally, anything related to ninjutsu or confidential matters was not kept here, so most of them were merely accounts of the Shinobi World, assorted novels, or records of local customs. The high-flying shinobi did not place much value on this place, and hardly anyone came. Dada had spent much of the past few years here.

There was no other reason. He could not go out.

Too young, too weak, and too important—those were the three main reasons Dada had been cooped up at home for years.

Since childhood, he had never even left the gates of Kumogakure. Worse still, whenever he left the Yotsuki Clan Territory, four servants and four shinobi would inevitably follow behind him. It made him look like some spoiled young tyrant heading out to snatch the village beauty. It was no fun at all.

Within the Yotsuki Clan, his importance was second only to Third Raikage A. And since he was far, far, far weaker than his father, he was restrained far, far, far more...

If anything happened to him, the old geezers in the clan would probably have their hearts skip two beats.

After trying a few dull outings, he no longer wanted to leave the Yotsuki Clan Territory. Since then, he had often stayed in the library, reading books and refining Chakra along the way.

Yes, even at six years old, he was still refining Chakra. More precisely, he could only refine Chakra.

He had persisted for three years, yet he still had not filled a soccer field with soccer balls. By his estimate, he had probably filled about a third of it? Maybe even less.

And whenever he refined it, electricity ran through his entire body and his spine glowed. Other than that, nothing happened. No matter how much Chakra he refined, it was all absorbed. His refining speed had become faster and faster. In terms of speed alone, he had already surpassed Yotsuki Ki at the same age by quite a bit, but the problem was that he could not even make a sound.

Yotsuki Ki had already become a genin at six, while Dada could not cast a single jutsu.

The Yotsuki Clan had even considered making Dada give up training and simply live safely until adulthood. By their definition, adulthood meant having reproductive ability.

Then he could leave behind bloodline after bloodline, and that would be that. After all, they still had no idea what exactly was going on with Dada. What if he was a ticking time bomb that became more dangerous the more he trained?

From the clan's perspective, the most important thing was for him to reach adulthood safely, then produce a large number of descendants.

After the clan elders discussed it, they decided that fourteen was a good age—old enough to pass on his bloodline. They had even begun enthusiastically searching everywhere for suitable wives and concubines for Dada.

When Dada heard this news, he was half delighted and half thrilled.

Yes, wives and concubines. They wished Dada could marry ten wives, have ten children a year, become the protagonist of some harem story, create a powerful Kekkei Genkai clan in ten years, unify the Shinobi World in thirty, and have everyone in the Shinobi World possess Yotsuki blood a hundred years later...

Because they had already confirmed that Dada truly possessed a brand-new Kekkei Genkai. It was simply unstable, with a few minor issues...

That could wait for now.

In short, Dada was treated like a little ancestor within the Yotsuki Clan and even Kumogakure. For an actual child, this might truly have meant being spoiled beyond reason. But for an adult soul, it only made Dada feel constrained and inconvenienced.

So he developed the habit of burying himself in books alone.

Dada read the travel journal of the Land of Soup in his hands with great interest.

"Tut, tut, tut. The Shinobi World developed way too fast. Its tech tree is crooked, and its cultural tree is even more crooked. It's simply unbelievable..."

"Just a few decades ago, it was still the low-productivity Warring States Period. Now it already has traces of modernity. All kinds of electrical equipment have appeared one after another, and the tech tree is climbing like it has rockets strapped to it. The social atmosphere is somewhat like the Taisho Era of my original world, with backwardness and modernity coexisting..."

"Most importantly, the Daimyo-Ninja Village System is absurd! A nation's military power turned into a private organization... All I can say is Kishimoto didn't know jack about Hokage. The netizens did all the work patching the plot holes..."

The maid serving beside him, Meizi, watched the Young Master mutter incomprehensible things to himself again, but did not take it to heart. She had long understood that the Young Master was different from ordinary people, both in body and mind...

"I'm bored, Sister Meizi. Has anything interesting happened in the village lately?"

Meizi maintained her formal sitting posture. After thinking for a moment, she said, "Nothing major has happened. But the Orphanage was recently completed, and everyone has been praising Lord A's good deed. Also, Young Master Qi recently became a chunin. He completed quite a few difficult missions and received everyone's praise."

"Damn it, Qi is already a chunin... No wonder I've barely seen him lately. A chunin can already lead a team alone."

Dada angrily clenched his fists. Yotsuki Ki was extremely talented. He was thirteen this year and had long possessed chunin-level strength. But in peacetime, there was no need to rise through the ranks so quickly. As the Raikage's son, he did not really need to care about such evaluations anyway.

But Dada felt that he had already been left far behind.

"Damn it. I've clearly mastered a power like Chakra, yet I can't even use the Three Basic Jutsu. I haven't felt the slightest bit of what it's like to wield supernatural power. I'm basically just some brute..." Dada started grumbling again, and Meizi was used to it.

Afterward, Dada recorded his thoughts on the book in a little notebook. That marked the end of today's reading.

It was not that Dada wanted to become some cultured man in the Shinobi World. Rather, the Shinobi World was like a giant mishmash. The more he learned, the more things appeared that left him utterly baffled. Sometimes, he wanted to figure them out like mathematical problems, so he wrote down notes.

"Sister Meizi, I want to go out for a walk."

Meizi nodded. "I'll make the arrangements right away."

Sneaking out alone was impossible. He had to report it first, then bring a whole crowd with him. Dada hated it, but there was nothing he could do.

Half an hour later, Dada left the Yotsuki Clan residence surrounded by attendants.

With so many people following him, even his walk unconsciously turned pigeon-toed. It was truly strange.

He first went to a famous pastry shop in Kumogakure and bought several boxes of pastries. Dada had always liked this shop's daifuku, giving it his highest praise: "It's surprisingly not that sweet." Normally, servants bought them and brought them back, but today he bought a few boxes himself. Besides eating some himself, he could bring one to his mother.

Of course, the servants paid. It was not that Dada had been waited on to the point that he did not want to touch money; he was simply afraid of electrocuting someone.

Ordinary people were not qualified to know Dada's condition. From an outsider's perspective, such behavior was indeed rather unlikeable. They only thought this young master from who knew what family was truly arrogant.

As he handed the pastry boxes to Sister Meizi behind him, Dada suddenly spotted a flash of crimson hair by the roadside.

"Red hair? No way..."

Dada hurried over and discovered a boy a little older than himself. He was standing beside the street, staring at the snacks inside a shop and drooling.

His fiery red hair was incredibly conspicuous.

The guy did not notice anyone approaching at all. He merely stared at the various snacks and candies behind the display window with a dumbfounded expression.

"Um, hello..." Dada tried to make his voice sound as friendly as possible.

"Ah, hello! Whoa, what's going on?!" The boy turned around, saw the huge group of people, and jumped in fright. This boy one or two years younger than him had so many people following behind him. His status was obviously unusual.

Poor and newly arrived as he was, his presence immediately weakened by three parts.

"Don't be nervous. I'm just curious about your hair. What's your name?" Dada asked.

The boy nervously touched his hair. He was both timid and embarrassed. Being directly asked about his hair was rather strange, but he still answered honestly. "Um... My name is Uzumaki Hirohiko. As for my hair, I inherited it from my dad and mom. Everyone in my family has red hair..."

Holy crap, he really is from the Uzumaki Clan... Dada was deeply shocked. In the original timeline, Kumogakure had not even gotten so much as a hair from the overpowered Uzumaki Clan. Yet now, he had encountered an Uzumaki clansman in Kumogakure...