Secrets of the Shinobi World

Although Hidan reluctantly submitted, Simu had still overestimated him.

"I haven't read a single book in over a decade, and I don't know a single character. How could I possibly know where some archive room is?" Hidan, beaten until his face was swollen and bruised, said with a grievance.

"If you ask me, instead of looking at those tadpole-like things, it's better to kill a few more people as an offering to Lord Jashin!"

"Shut up."

Simu had nothing left to say to this illiterate brute.

Fortunately, although the members of the Jashin Cult didn't like to read, they were at least aware of the knowledge stored in the archive room.

Soon, a cultist led Simu and Hidan to the front of the archive room.

"Um, Lord Simu, Lord Hidan, this is the archive room," the cultist who led the way said with extreme respect.

This wasn't because he wanted to curry favor with these two "sons of god," but simply because he was terrified that his head might be chopped off for no reason.

Although it had only been a day, the fearsome reputations of Simu and Hidan had already spread throughout the entire Jashin Cult.

Simu was known as the Head-Chopping Maniac, while Hidan was known as the Immortal Demon.

In truth, people would have preferred to call Hidan the Immortal Moron, but they lacked the guts to do so; even if Hidan was frequently decapitated by Simu, his strength was not something they could provoke.

"Thanks."

Simu nodded slightly at the cultist, then walked toward the archive room while carrying Hidan's head.

The cultist let out a heavy sigh of relief, grateful to have survived another day.

When Simu walked into the archive room, he realized that he hadn't just overestimated Hidan; he had overestimated the entire Jashin Cult.

Good grief, this archive room was practically a ruin.

The bookshelves were toppled over at random and covered in spiderwebs, and the books were piled in heaps, having clearly not been tended to in ages.

Simu rubbed the space between his brows and said listlessly, "It's no wonder this place could produce a talent like you, Hidan. It really is a land of outstanding people."

Hearing Simu praise him as an outstanding person, Hidan immediately lifted his chin in pride: "That's right."

Clearly, with our Lord Hidan's IQ, he couldn't understand the secondary meaning behind Simu's words at all.

Simu looked at the proud Hidan and sighed.

That a guy like this could obtain such a broken ability from Jashin could only be attributed to the idea that fools have their own luck.

He used the ability of [Koukaku: Spider] to spit out silk and hang Hidan's head from the ceiling.

Hidan naturally refused to accept such a humiliating arrangement, but just as he was about to speak, his mouth was plugged by a glob of sticky spider silk from Simu, leaving him only able to make "woo-woo" sounds.

Having eliminated Hidan's interference, Simu could finally study the books inside in peace.

It had to be said that although these Jashin Cultists were ignorant, due to the cult's long history, the books they had collected were quite valuable, antique texts.

"It seems there were some normal people among the ancestors of the Jashin Cult," Simu muttered.

Otherwise, the Jashin Cult wouldn't have been able to survive until now.

Soon, Simu was drawn to a book titled Ancient Deities.

Rather than a book, it was more of a collection of stories.

It recorded many gods that had once existed in the Shinobi World.

The first, and the one the author claimed to be the strongest, was naturally the Jashin whom the Jashin Cult worshipped.

This deity, who mastered immortality and curses, was described in the book with wild, flowery praise.

Beyond that, there was a deity known as the God of Death, who held dominion over death and the Pure Land.

There were also the God of Nature, and various legendary mythical figures like the Animal Sages.

Simu slowly closed the book, a question surfacing in his mind.

"With so many deities, why are they all gone?"

The book depicted so many gods, and he had personally seen Jashin and felt the power of Jashin firsthand.

Even if he thought the Jashin he encountered wasn't as powerful as the book described, it at least proved that the entity had truly existed.

Since Jashin existed, Simu could boldly speculate that the God of Death, the Animal Sages, and the other deities recorded in the book were also real.

So, why did these sages and gods disappear?

Moreover, in the descriptions of these deities, there seemed to be no mention of the power system known as Chakra.

With this doubt, Simu began to flip through the books continuously.

He read for an entire day, and it wasn't until the sun set and the world was plunged into darkness that he finally gained a general understanding of this world.

First, this world was known as the Shinobi World.

In the Shinobi World, there were many nations.

Similar to his previous life, this world was dominated by five of the most powerful nations.

They were the Land of Fire, the Land of Lightning, the Land of Water, the Land of Earth, and the Land of Wind.

These five nations were known as the Five Great Nations.

Every major nation possesses a powerful armed organization known as a hidden village.

Hidden villages are the concentration of a nation's strongest military forces, churning out powerful weapons of war—that is, ninja—year after year.

The person nominally recognized as the strongest in each hidden village is crowned with the title of Kage.

For instance, the Kage of the Land of Fire is the Hokage, the Kage of the Land of Water is the Mizukage, and so on.

In name, these Kage are even considered equals to the leaders of their nations, the Daimyo.

The Kage hold the nation's armed forces, which is to say, military power.

Meanwhile, the Daimyo hold the nation's political authority and the right to collect taxes.

To Simu, this system is completely incomprehensible; after all, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and he finds it hard to understand how a Daimyo who does not control the armed forces can remain firmly seated on the throne of a head of state.

Of course, considering that this world has only transitioned from a chaotic tribal society to the formal establishment of national regimes for a few decades, it is not difficult to understand the loopholes in these systems.

After all, they are all crossing the river by feeling the stones, with no ready-made systems to reference, so it is normal to have some flaws.

Unfortunately, Simu did not find any information in the archives regarding the period between the Age of Gods and the Warring States Period.

Let alone the gap between those two eras, even the records of the Warring States Period itself are few and far between.

Given the passage of time, it is quite normal for records to be damaged or for them to have never been recorded at all.

Many books only vaguely mention that the Sage of Six Paths created Chakra, and that is all.

The majority of the content focuses on how the God of Shinobi Senju Hashirama ended the Warring States Period and established the first hidden village.

It has only been fifty or sixty years since the era of Senju Hashirama, and the prestige of the God of Shinobi, who suppressed an entire era, is still being passed down by word of mouth.

Setting down the book in his hand, Simu tapped his fingers lightly against his thigh.

"Jashin, the God of Death, the Otsutsuki, the Sage of Six Paths, the God of Shinobi, the Senju Clan, the Uchiha Clan."

"The secrets hidden within all of this are truly itching to be uncovered."

At this moment, Simu is like a player obsessed with a puzzle game, filled with curiosity about the things hidden behind the Shinobi World.