By the time Zi Xu got home, the moon had already risen high in the sky. A few crows played noisily on the branches, peering down at the passersby beneath the night with their pale red eyes. A few gusts of wind swept past, stirring up a chorus of caws.
"Change is harder than I imagined. They're already used to the Ninja ruling them. No matter how much they complain, they won't actually resist. Instead, they'll numb themselves and convince themselves that living this way is fine. Simply put, they've been institutionalized."
Zi Xu remembered a movie he'd seen once. These civilians were afraid of change—or rather, they lacked the courage to face the life that would come after it. Getting them to understand that they had to fight for everything themselves and couldn't rely on the Ninja was as difficult as asking feudal subjects who'd lived under a ruler for generations to accept today's democratic society.
"This isn't something that can be done overnight. Making weapons and tools is easy; changing people's minds is the hardest part." Unable to think of a solution, Zi Xu fell asleep, exhausted. In his dream, he was once again adrift alone on the sea. Towering waves blotted out the sky, forming a colossal wall that stretched before him, blocking out the light.
The sea turned a gloomy gray-black, mirroring the darkening sky. It was truly a case of "black clouds press down on the city, threatening to crush it." The water shifted ceaselessly, and as the wall of water closed around him, countless little snakes branched off from within it. Even the smallest were as tall as four-story buildings. A bus wasn't even as big as one of their fangs, and the wall itself was beyond comparison.
Compared to that colossal wall, the little snakes were like earthworms beside the Origin Tree, let alone Zi Xu, who was all alone. A coward might have fainted already—no, would certainly have fainted. This hellish scene could be called a "blessing" for anyone with trypophobia or a fear of giant things.
Though the Zi Xu in the dream was afraid, he hadn't lost the ability to think. Everyone could face fear, but the strong had the courage to act in spite of it. At the time, Zi Xu didn't realize he was dreaming. He began trying to use his abilities to deal with the danger before him.
But Zi Xu was disappointed to find that the only ability he could use was making the space around him fall silent. Of course, he knew this was the Silent Fruit's power, and in his previous life, it had even been ranked among the most useless fruits. Even so, he didn't give up resisting. He struggled to dodge the giant serpents of water surging toward him across the heaving sea while trying to activate his Haki.
Unfortunately, he had only awakened basic Conqueror's Haki and couldn't control it at will. The only way to improve was to fight powerful opponents. And as for the Silent Fruit, which hadn't shown much power in the original story, he had no idea how to develop it. For a while, the odds seemed to be stacked heavily against him.
The black wall of water closed in, further shrinking Zi Xu's already narrow space to maneuver. The giant serpents had brushed past him several times, leaving bloody gashes across his body. As the seawater seeped into the wounds, the burning pain only made his fighting spirit grow stronger.
"Want to kill me? Then come on!" With death staring him in the face, Zi Xu stopped holding back and shed his usual disguise completely. His long-hidden edge burst forth like a sword drawn from its sheath. Given how dangerous the Naruto World was, he'd never let it show before.
He'd always feared that Konoha might notice a slip and uncover him. But perhaps if you wore a mask for too long, you could no longer tell which face was really yours. Now, Zi Xu completely let himself go, unleashing a soaring battle spirit.
As Zi Xu's fighting spirit erupted, his speed and reflexes improved noticeably. He began weaving through the countless water serpents. Several of the enormous creatures collided, sending up huge splashes. Their tremendous force sent Zi Xu stumbling backward again and again.
The scene was utter chaos. In a vision straight out of a disaster movie, a shirtless, red-haired boy, his body covered in wounds, wove among giant serpents. He was riddled with cuts, and his blood had stained his pants red, yet a wild grin never left his face.
The water snakes grew more numerous, as though a rain of serpents were falling from the sky. The giant wall closed in faster and faster. The surroundings seemed to become a hell with no escape. Their bodies gradually swallowed up the faint light in the sky, and the seawater grew darker and darker.
The black water seemed to grow viscous, too. Zi Xu felt it getting harder and harder to move, and his strength steadily draining away. He was like a desert traveler on the verge of dying from thirst.
At death's door, Zi Xu summoned the last of his strength and roared. He poured out every bit of power within him, holding nothing back, and shot toward the sliver of light that hadn't yet been sealed off by the wall of water.
Zi Xu knew it would have no effect. The Silent Fruit's power wasn't inherently destructive; at most, it could make everything here completely silent. He was doing it only because he didn't want to leave any regrets behind.
But then something unexpected happened. An invisible wave seemed to burst out around Zi Xu. The water snakes lunging toward him with their jaws open were struck by some unseen force. In a vast spherical space centered on Zi Xu, every serpent that rushed at him burst into droplets, scattering like rain.
But that wasn't the most important part. When the invisible shock wave met the power Zi Xu had sent flying through the air, it seemed to trigger a violent chemical reaction. A force beyond words spread throughout the entire space.
Everything in that space seemed to have been frozen in place. Even the water snakes that had been falling through the air a moment earlier were suspended mid-descent. In an instant, the whole world fell utterly silent, as though...the entire world itself had gone still.
"Silence... So this is the true power of Silent Power? It doesn't just silence sound—it can even stop energy, movement, and perhaps space and time? The world is too noisy, so the world itself must fall silent... Is this the path to awakening the Silent Fruit...?"
Zi Xu was secretly astonished. This useless fruit, which he'd always thought was only good for espionage, had such incredible potential. This fruit...was no worse than the very best.
There were no useless fruits; every fruit had tremendous potential. It all depended on the user's imagination. Corazon had been too young when he sacrificed himself. If he'd been able to keep developing his power, he might well have surpassed Doflamingo.
Just as Zi Xu was about to take a closer look at the water snakes frozen in silence, another change occurred. Cracks appeared in the surrounding space, like fractures in broken glass. Then it shattered into irregular fragments and scattered. Zi Xu woke from the dream.
"Haah... haah..." Zi Xu gasped for breath, his chest heaving. He greedily gulped down air. After a while, he finally began to calm down. He touched his clothes and hair, damp with sweat, then got up and washed his face.
"Was it a dream...? It felt so real. Maybe it's because I awakened Haki? System, what was that? Was everything just now a dream?" Zi Xu picked up a towel and wiped his face, silently questioning the system in his mind.
[It was a trial of Demon Power in the spiritual world. The host may encounter similar situations while awakening Haki. This is normal.]
After the system confirmed it, Zi Xu felt somewhat reassured. As long as he wasn't going to die inexplicably in a dream, it was fine. He even wanted to go through the experience a few more times. Afterward, he felt as though something inside him had opened up.
In the words of a cultivator, his heart was clear and unobstructed. He also felt his aura had grown a little stronger. If ordinary Zi Xu looked like a venomous snake lying in wait, he now resembled a young dragon with the beginnings of horns, carrying a faint air of a ruler.
Feeling the Demon Fruit power within him, Zi Xu formed hand signs and summoned a Shadow Clone. He transferred the restless Demon Fruit power into the clone's body. It was like a mistreated little wife, oppressed at her mother-in-law's house, finally returning to her parents' home. He could even feel the Demon Power within the Silent Fruit recounting its bitter misfortunes to his clone.
"All right, all right, enough of the drama. Get up and move around. I'm counting on you to master your power someday, so I won't have to do the work myself." Zi Xu patted his somewhat dejected clone. He'd noticed it too: after he infused the clone with Demon Fruit power, its personality increasingly began to resemble the will of the fruit itself.
Still, it remained loyal to him overall. The Demon Fruit merely influenced the clone enough to make people think that the fruit itself was the one speaking.
"Fine, fine." The clone replied lazily, but obediently used its ability.
An invisible barrier enveloped the entire room. In an instant, the rustle of leaves stirred by the wind outside the window, the unpleasant growls of a tomcat on the roof in heat, and even Zi Xu's own agitated breathing all vanished. Everything within the field seemed to have been muted, and the silence grew almost unnerving.
Zi Xu moved his lips, but nothing he said could be heard. He gestured for a long time without getting any results. Just as he was about to punch the clone, it finally released its ability, and Zi Xu's words came through clearly.
"You'd better train properly. This is nowhere near enough. The Silent Fruit can do much more than this. Now you know I wasn't lying to you."
"So you mean you'd been lying to me this whole time?"
"That's not important. What matters is that you train even harder from now on. Before, you had an excuse. But now that we've seen the Silent Fruit's potential, what reason do you have not to work hard?"
Zi Xu patiently lectured the clone. He'd long felt that he wasn't just a Ninja—he was also something like a Pokémon Trainer. He was just training his own clone, or rather, the Demon Power within it. That Demon Power seemed to retain all the memories of its conversations with him.
No matter how a clone acted before, once Demon Power was infused into it, it always became like this. And even though a clone infused with Demon Power acted this way, the results of its training the Demon Fruit's abilities were ultimately fed back to the strange consciousness inside the fruit and to Zi Xu himself.
He'd even started thinking about what kind of Pokémon he should train in the future to fight in his place. Being a Trainer was so much easier than being a Ninja.
Happy May Day!
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