Moonflower

Kikyo City!

A black-haired middle-aged man, his body half-wrapped in bandages and looking to be in his forties or fifties, slowly sat up. He seemed to have a splitting headache and pressed his left hand to his temple.

As he awoke on the tatami, more than a dozen dark, obscure presences appeared beyond the door, each detected by his keen senses.

His eyes opened, and a strange visual pattern appeared in his mind.

"Is this right eye the Sharingan?"

Guo Wang had just awakened from a long slumber. After looking through the memories of the body he had taken over, he murmured to himself.

But then he discovered something that left him speechless.

Although there was only one bed on the tatami, he wasn't alone. A purple-haired girl with her snow-white body exposed was curled up in one corner, sleeping deeply after suffering immense physical and emotional trauma.

This guy really is a despicable piece of work.

Guo Wang was a rare cultivator among the unorthodox schools to have condensed a Primordial Spirit. He had perished in a calamity that swept across the entire Dao Realm, but a Five-Colored Stone he had been carrying brought him to this world.

He had no idea how this guy named Danzo had gotten so lucky. As a young man, he'd found the Five-Colored Stone in a river and discovered that it could help him refine Chakra. He'd kept it close ever since. After twenty years of constant nourishment from Chakra, Guo Wang had finally gained enough Primordial Spirit power today to completely devour his host's consciousness.

Of course, after going through his host's memories, Guo Wang couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

As it turned out, just yesterday, "Kinoe"—the subordinate Danzo had painstakingly groomed for ten years and valued above all others—had betrayed Root and openly defied him, utterly trampling Root's principles.

Given Danzo's temperament, even though he regarded this subordinate as his chosen successor, anyone who violated Root's principles was doomed to die. But just as he was about to strike ruthlessly, someone stopped him.

His good buddy, lifelong nemesis, the Third, Sarutobi Hiruzen.

If it had been anyone else—even his own parents—Danzo would've drawn his blade without batting an eye. But he had to give this man some leeway.

The reason was simple: he was the only person in the village with more power and greater strength than Danzo.

Simply put, Danzo couldn't beat him.

So he had no choice but to back down.

And so, thanks to that damn Kakashi's tattling and the purple-haired girl in bed sending word, his good buddy had caught "Kinoe"—the Wood Release ninja he had hidden for nearly ten years—red-handed.

Danzo had once sent Kinoe to assassinate his good buddy, exposing the existence of Wood Release in the process. But with his shamelessness, as long as no one caught him in the act, he could deny everything outright and keep this Wood Release Kekkei Genkai—one that could someday control the Nine-Tails—firmly in his grasp.

After his good buddy took Kinoe away, Danzo thought it over. The more he considered it, the more he felt he'd been lured into a trap. Hiruzen had used his desire to eliminate Kakashi against him. And with Root short on capable fighters after Orochimaru had left the village the previous year, Danzo had been forced to send Kinoe.

They used Kakashi to bait me into revealing Wood Release. How did I not see it?

Danzo was consumed by fury and regret. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. Petty as he was, he wanted revenge, but he couldn't beat Sarutobi Hiruzen. After being taken away, Kinoe had been assigned to Kakashi's Anbu team, a squad directly under the Hokage. If Danzo killed someone right under his good buddy's nose, even the most easygoing person would fly into a rage.

Danzo was furious, but he hadn't lost his reason.

After turning it over in his mind, he remembered the purple-haired girl who had tipped off his good buddy while he was hunting down Kakashi and Kinoe.

He'd used Root's channels to look into her. She had little background, had only recently graduated from the Ninja Academy, and was still a Genin undergoing Anbu screening.

Seeing the pretty, delicate face in her ninja registration booklet, Danzo had vented his pent-up rage in the way men did.

That kind of activity was bound to take a lot out of him, especially since Danzo was a fifty-seven-year-old man.

The whole encounter had left him more exhausted than a fight with his good buddy would have.

And so, worn out in body and mind, he'd become easy pickings for Guo Wang, who swallowed all his consciousness in one gulp while he slept.

After successfully taking over the body, the first thing Guo Wang did was examine it. Then he cursed his bad luck.

A body belonging to a man who was nearly sixty was naturally far from an ideal vessel.

Years of training to cultivate an energy called Chakra had left his physical condition passable, but the right side of his body had been nearly crippled during the Shinobi World War after he foolishly challenged the Third Raikage. His right eye had already been blind, but fortunately, he'd thought to replace it with a Three-Tomoe Sharingan, sparing himself the look of a one-eyed man.

His body was aging, and a spiritual inspection revealed no Spirit Root. He was still half-crippled, too. If not for the decent Spiritual Power in his Dantian Qi Sea, Guo Wang might have been so desperate that he'd killed himself again, hoping to enter the cycle of reincarnation and be reborn.

At least his energy is decent. And in this unfamiliar Middle Thousand World, there's a supreme method for cultivating Space-Time. Perhaps, once I've accumulated enough energy, I can return to the Dao Realm.

Comforting himself with this thought, Guo Wang began to examine his right eye in earnest.

From Danzo's memories, he knew it was one of the most powerful abilities in Konoha—or even the entire Shinobi World—second only to the Wood Release that his good buddy had just taken from him.

They called this power... a Kekkei Genkai!

Not a bad name.

"From One Tomoe to Three Tomoe, and then finally the Mangekyo. It can even turn the deepest desires of one's heart into reality. This power has already touched the 'laws of the world.' It's part of the Dao."

Guo Wang slowly unwound the bandages around his right eye. A blood-red iris came into view, its three black tomoe evenly spaced. Then his Primordial Spirit power transformed into wisps of cool, spiritual energy. Carrying the various negative emotions he had experienced while overcoming his Inner Demon, they descended from his Sea of Consciousness and flowed into the eyeball.

Then the three black tomoe began to spin. After a brief blur, they transformed into a strange pattern.

Mangekyo!

"Mm!"

At that moment, a faint moan sounded beside him, sharp as thunder. The pattern in Guo Wang's right eye vanished, leaving only a black pupil.

"Awake?"

The purple-haired girl frowned and slowly opened her swollen, beautiful eyes. When she saw a pair of unusually dark, fathomless eyes quietly watching her from beside the bed, she jumped in fright. She sprang up to bow, only to feel a chill all over and remember the painful scenes from before she'd passed out.

"Danzo!"

The two words, filled with resentment and fear, escaped the girl's still-youthful lips. Guo Wang couldn't help feeling a headache coming on.

"What's your name?"

Hearing the demon before her question her, the girl clutched the edge of the bedding and pulled it over herself. Her hands tightened as she suppressed the urge to strike, then lowered her head and whispered,

"Yugao!"

Guo Wang searched through the memories and realized what this name meant in the Shinobi World. He glanced at the moon outside, bright yet crimson, and his Primordial Spirit shivered.

"Moonflower. Your parents chose a nice name."