"By the way, does the Land of Waves have a Daimyo?"
Shirozumi suddenly thought of a question.
But Tazuna had already gone off to handle business, so Shirozumi simply asked one of the villagers Tazuna had left behind to look after them.
"I think there used to be one."
The elderly villager paused to think.
"So there isn't one now?"
"There's not."
"That saves us a lot of trouble."
Shirozumi had just been thinking that if the Land of Waves had a Daimyo, he would have to take care of this useless waste before heading to the Land of Water.
As it turned out, the Land of Waves didn't have a Daimyo at all.
No wonder a black-market businessman like Gato could nearly control the lifeblood of the entire country.
It wasn't all that unusual for a small country to lose its Daimyo.
Take the Land of Rice Fields, home to Orochimaru's Otogakure, for example. It was a small country too.
One of Orochimaru's later charges was especially amusing: "Bribing the Daimyo of the Land of Rice Fields to establish Otogakure, then seizing control of the country."
The charge of "bribing the Daimyo" showed just how pitifully insignificant the Daimyo of the Land of Rice Fields was.
Two days later.
Shirozumi and the others arrived in the Land of Water by boat.
"Kirigakure, Kirigakure. I thought this place was supposed to be shrouded in thick fog, like Pandaria.
The scenery's actually pretty nice. Sunshine, beaches, and sea breezes—this would make a great tourist destination in peacetime."
Shirozumi stretched after getting off the boat.
Of course, he was joking.
Who would dare visit Kirigakure as it was now? They might get killed as spies by a Blood Mist shinobi.
Even Kirigakure during the Boruto era had only settled down after Mei Terumi and Chojuro spent more than a decade spilling blood and gunning down the Blood Mist diehards stirring up trouble.
"Hm? What a coincidence."
Shirozumi suddenly looked toward the woods in the distance.
Itachi, Kisame, and Zabuza had just gotten off a boat.
"Are they shinobi from Kirigakure?"
Itachi followed Shirozumi's gaze. Only after a moment did he sense something.
His belief that Shirozumi practiced Senjutsu grew stronger. --Superhuman perception! √
"Yes, and they're one of our targets this time."
Shirozumi hadn't sensed them, of course.
His senses were better than an ordinary person's, but nowhere near the level of the Byakugan or Senrigan.
He had simply seen what would happen two minutes in the future.
That's right.
Shirozumi's time-deletion ability had grown from lasting just a few dozen seconds to two minutes.
He had deliberately cultivated this growth as part of an experiment.
First of all, Itachi's guess about Shirozumi had always been wrong.
Shirozumi couldn't use Sage Mode.
As a transmigrator, Shirozumi hadn't transmigrated into someone else's body while leaving his own behind. He had brought his body with him. Though his body had reverted to a child's age, he really had transmigrated in his own body.
As Shirozumi had explained to the Akatsuki Organization before, Chakra only came into existence after Kaguya Otsutsuki brought the God Tree, the Ten-Tails, to this world.
Shirozumi, having come from another world, had no Chakra.
That was different from Might Guy and Rock Lee.
They simply couldn't use ninjutsu, but they still had Chakra.
Even ordinary civilians had Chakra; they just hadn't learned to extract it.
But Shirozumi had none. Truly none.
After Shirozumi arrived in Konoha, he found the orphanage director, Kabuto Yakushi.
He planned to have Kabuto take in some orphans from Amegakure.
While he was at it, he asked Kabuto to examine his body and see if there was any way for him to train.
--After Kabuto's personality had been corrected by Izanami, Shirozumi trusted him completely.
And Kabuto, with his corrected personality, didn't disappoint. Taking in orphans was part of his job, so he sent people to fetch them right away.
As for Shirozumi's condition, Kabuto studied him for only a day before giving him an answer.
Kabuto showed Shirozumi how to absorb Natural Energy and told him to use it in place of Chakra to train.
He didn't say much else.
Shirozumi understood why Kabuto hadn't explained everything.
Everything had its pros and cons.
After Izanami corrected Kabuto's personality, he was extremely loyal to Konoha. Even when he was strictly forbidden from conducting any more experiments, he didn't mind and focused on his work as the orphanage director.
He had promised Konoha not to conduct that kind of experiment again. Even if he had discovered something, he wouldn't casually tell Shirozumi, an unfamiliar outsider whose identity, character, and everything else were unknown.
So Shirozumi hadn't worried about it at the time. He took the method of absorbing Natural Energy and started training.
In the Shinobi World, extracting Chakra meant bringing one's body and spirit into balance.
Sage Mode's Senjutsu Chakra required balancing the body, spirit, and Natural Energy.
By rearranging the equation, it could also be seen as a combination of one's own Chakra and Natural Energy.
Too little Natural Energy, and one couldn't enter Sage Mode.
Too much, and one would gradually be assimilated by it—a fate worse than death.
But Shirozumi had no Chakra. He was absorbing Natural Energy alone.
And—
Absorbing Natural Energy had caused no abnormal effects in Shirozumi. It seemed that was because he didn't need to maintain a balance at all. The most stable state was when only one thing existed.
Why did he say "seemed"?
Because Shirozumi didn't know exactly how it worked either.
For now, Shirozumi thought he needed to find a chance to bring Orochimaru back into the fold. Only then could he figure out what was going on with his body.
Otherwise, he could only guess.
For example, Shirozumi guessed that he had gained his time-deletion ability after coming into contact with a powerful technique of the Otsutsuki Clan.
But later, he realized there had been another variable at the time.
As he gained the ability, the Natural Energy stored inside him had rapidly dwindled, falling by at least four-fifths.
So lately, after automatically absorbing Natural Energy, Shirozumi had been trying to channel it in the same way it had been consumed and depleted before.
And sure enough, his time-deletion ability had grown stronger.
"Kisame, Zabuza, head off in that direction. Once you've dealt with the Daimyo, leave the Land of Water by boat right away. Don't wait for us."
Shirozumi pointed in another direction.
"Understood."
"Then we'll leave those people to you."
Kisame and Zabuza went on their way.
"Let's go help the people who just arrived in a bit."
After a brief silence, Shirozumi suddenly spoke to Itachi.
Shirozumi knew that one of the major upheavals in Kirigakure—the discovery that the Fourth Mizukage, Yagura, was under Genjutsu, and Ao's breaking the control—had taken place around this time the previous year.
He just hadn't expected it to happen so conveniently.
Right in front of them.
In Kirigakure, Mei Terumi had discovered something strange about the Fourth Mizukage, Karatachi Yagura. Suspecting that Yagura was under Genjutsu, she had Ao, who possessed the Byakugan, secretly investigate.
Using his Byakugan, Ao saw that Yagura's brain Chakra was in disarray. It was clear he was under the control of a powerful Genjutsu.
So they told the Kirigakure shinobi who shared their ideals, and decided to help the Fourth Mizukage break free of the Genjutsu.
But if Yagura was under someone's control, he obviously wasn't going to surrender and patiently wait for them to dispel the Genjutsu.
And so the battle in Kirigakure began.
Before you continue