An hour later, when Xing Ran appeared before the Hokage Building again, his calm expression finally broke. Extreme panic and irritation nearly made him explode on the spot.
Superman's powers were underdeveloped because of the sun, yet Superman's weaknesses were not. Just how low did his magic resistance have to be for some trash ninja to hypnotize him instantly?
If the Anbu directly under the Hokage had not been unlike Danzo's Root and possessed fairly decent character, they would not have only questioned Xing Ran about the squad's annihilation. If they had asked about anything from a year ago or after his hospitalization, the secret of his reincarnation and awakening Superman's powers would have been exposed immediately. A life as a lab rat would have been unavoidable.
From now on, he had to beware of anyone wearing a mask. It was absolutely necessary to use X-ray Vision to memorize every Anbu face. Otherwise, if Root agents impersonated Anbu someday and came to take him away to assist with an investigation, wouldn't he die an unjust death? In the original story, Haku had even fooled the experienced Kakashi.
An hour earlier, when Xing Ran suddenly felt as if those hollow eyes filled the entire world, his significantly enhanced neural reactions allowed him to form the "Kai" hand seal immediately. Under normal circumstances, he could still break free from something like this. He might have been dead last, but that was due to his limited physical talent. As long as he could react in time and form the "Kai" seal to dispel genjutsu, he could escape it.
But something unexpected happened this time. His consciousness remained intact, yet his body was completely beyond his control. He revealed everything that had happened back then, along with some of his own judgments. No matter how he screamed internally, it had no effect at all.
His Genjutsu Resistance had dropped. More precisely, he had almost no Genjutsu Resistance left. As a member of the Yamanaka Clan, his mental and soul strength had naturally surpassed that of ordinary people. Yet this time, he suddenly discovered that even the mental and soul strength he had relied upon to survive as dead last no longer held any advantage. Now, his Genjutsu Resistance was inferior even to an ordinary person's.
This had to be one of Superman's weaknesses that had emerged alongside the awakening of his powers.
As everyone knew, Superman had always been a super warrior with overwhelming attack power and immense durability. He embodied strength, speed, and toughness to the utmost extreme. Yet even such a being had obvious weaknesses: Kryptonite and low magic resistance.
Kryptonite was easy enough to understand. It was a meteorite found only on Krypton.
Low magic resistance actually referred to low mental resistance, not low resistance to magic itself. Magic could produce lightning and fireballs, but lightning and fireballs were also energetic reactions of physical phenomena. In the comics, Superman was often struck by such attacks, yet he did not suffer any real injuries.
Only when Superman encountered mind-control magic did he often display complete helplessness. He was always easily controlled, even becoming a humanoid weapon in his enemies' hands.
That was what Xing Ran feared now. He had only just gained Superman's abilities, and before his excitement had even faded, he had overlooked the fact that Superman had weaknesses too. Now, not only had he remembered them, but he had remembered them only after personally experiencing one. The lesson had carved itself into his bones.
Did the ninja world have Kryptonite? Perhaps that meteorite in Hoshigakure was a problem. Once he became strong enough, he had to go confirm it.
But the most urgent problem now was his magic resistance.
Where was this place? A world legendary for its eyes.
From Kaguya Otsutsuki to Uchiha Madara, Obito, and Nagato, which one of them did not possess powerful eyes? Genjutsu was already something they had played to death. The most representative victim was Kirigakure's Mizukage, who had been manipulated by the Sharingan until Kirigakure became the Bloody Mist Village. It was absolutely one of the greatest tragedies in the entire Naruto world.
Then there was Konoha. There was the BGU-tier Kotoamatsukami, Itachi's Tsukuyomi, and even that many-eyed freak Danzo was an expert at genjutsu. He enforced absolute enslavement over the Root agents under his command. Xing Ran shuddered at the thought. If Danzo learned about his Superman abilities, he would surely enthusiastically tell the Third Hokage that Xing Ran was excellent spy material, then have him transferred to Root to become a mindless puppet.
No, this world was far too hostile toward Superman. This was not a path to conquer the heavens. I want to go home.
Xing Ran hurried back home and locked himself in his room. Only after a long while did he gradually calm down.
Trembling in fear would not help the current situation. In his previous life, he had lain in a hospital with a terminal illness for over a year and never abandoned hope, even until death. Now that his cheat ability had arrived, working even harder to grow stronger was more in line with his nature.
This was the ninja world, a world where miracles could be created. Even miracles such as resurrection could happen. There should be ninjutsu capable of resolving weak mental and soul power and low magic resistance.
Orochimaru! His Living Corpse Reincarnation involved soul parasitism and transfer. Although, in Xing Ran's opinion, the path he had taken was wrong. A soul should become ever more solid and powerful, yet Orochimaru constantly diluted his soul. As a result, he too had become a little white snake with almost zero genjutsu resistance. The fact that Itachi had killed him instantly was the best proof.
If it could be diluted, then it could be condensed. He did not know whether relative theory had ever mentioned such a concept, but Xing Ran believed it should be possible.
Find Orochimaru, figure out how to learn his secret techniques for the mind and soul, and solve Superman's problem of low magic resistance...
Wait. The Yamanaka Clan was a clan of secret technique users who cultivated the mind and soul. I was a member of the Yamanaka Clan. Thinking about it now, the fact that I had been reincarnated into the Yamanaka Clan in this life seemed almost like fate.
At the same time, in the center of Konoha's power, inside the Hokage's office in the Hokage Building, four elderly people were gathered, including the Hokage himself. Danzo and the Hokage Advisors Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura were all present.
Since the death of the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, two years earlier, the wrinkles on Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi's face had grown deeper and deeper. His hair had become increasingly white, his body had stooped terribly, and he had grown shorter and shorter. He could not help looking toward Shimura Danzō. No matter how old that man became, his height never seemed to change.
"Danzo, we have some leads on the identities of those bandits. Since that old man Ōnoki has already admitted defeat, he would never allow rogue ninja to come to the Land of Fire and cause trouble. I believe we should clarify this matter through diplomatic means. Peace did not come easily."
After exhaling a puff of smoke, Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi clenched his pipe between his teeth and refuted Danzo's proposal for a forceful counterattack. From the battlefield where Yamanaka Xingran had been rescued, it was clear that much of the Iwa ninja equipment had been left behind. Without thinking too deeply, anyone could easily conclude that the people who attacked the Konoha Ninja squad had been Iwa ninja. Whether they were rogue ninja or not did not matter. These days, rogue ninja were essentially the best pawns each nation cast outside its borders for espionage work. The representative example was Uchiha Itachi.
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