Dragon Vein

Leaving Richard and the others behind, Kumogakure was thrown into absolute chaos.

For the remainder of the time, Richard traveled all across the Ninja World without any fixed destination. Or rather, his ultimate and clearest objective was Ōtsutsuki Isshiki, whose consciousness currently resided within the body of a monk named Jigen.

That bastard was far too good at hiding, however, and Richard had failed to discover his whereabouts for so long. Unwilling to use spiritual power and alert the enemy, he could only wander around and try his luck.

Along the way, he also collected other interesting things from the Ninja World, such as Iwagakure's Light-Weight Rock Technique and Dust Release, Sunagakure's Puppet Technique, Kusagakure's Box of Ultimate Bliss, and monsters like Moryo from the Land of Demons that survived by feeding on human negative emotions.

Richard had studied the latter two items. They required special world rules to support them, and in the Coiling Dragon World, no matter how one messed with negative emotions, it was impossible to breed monsters like Moryo. At best, negative energy like the Darkness Element would gather slightly denser.

He also wondered where the Pure Land of that Sage of Six Paths fellow was hidden. He wanted to have a face-to-face chat with him. Aside from everything else, that guy used Yin-Yang Release quite well and had a real knack for creation.

Once he was almost done looting the Ninja World, perhaps he could use Impure World Reincarnation to give it a try—he refused to believe he couldn't pinpoint the Pure Land.

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For now, though, there was still one most important destination he hadn't visited.

Richard headed deep into the desert of the Land of Wind.

Tsunade and her student followed closely behind, wandering around the Ninja World for another month or so. Through it all, nothing had appeared during this past month that exceeded her understanding. The Senju Clan actually had records of things like the Box of Ultimate Bliss and Moryo, so she wasn't completely in the dark.

"Where are we going this time?" Tsunade asked.

"Rōran, to check out the Dragon Vein," Richard replied. This was one of the few things in the Ninja World tied to time. The Ninja World possessed quite a few spatial ninjutsu and treasures, but temporal ones were exceedingly rare.

Although the Ninja World collectively referred to time and space as space-time—treating them as the eighth category of attributes beyond Yin, Yang, Water, Fire, Earth, Wind, and Thunder—time and space still bore a massive difference.

"The Dragon Vein? That Dragon Vein supposedly connected to natural energy? But doesn't Shikkotsu Forest already possess extremely dense natural energy? Why bother seeking out the Dragon Vein?" Tsunade questioned, confused.

"That's naturally because the Dragon Vein isn't just natural energy; it's also connected to time and parallel worlds," Richard said.

"Time? Parallel worlds?" Tsunade didn't quite understand.

"You'll know when we get there." Explaining it was too troublesome, so she could just see for herself when the time came.

Spending another two days, the trio finally arrived at Rōran, the country within a desert.

It was a country within a country; Rōran was actually situated inside the Land of Wind and maintained no external connections with other nations outside.

One could say that if the Land of Wind wished, it could annex Rōran at any moment. But Rōran was poor—poorer even than the Land of Wind—so the Land of Wind didn't want it.

A small nation with a sparse population, the so-called Queen of Roran actually managed fewer people than could be found in a single village.

As for Richard and his group, they walked straight up to the Dragon Vein.

Expanding his perception, he could sense a massive accumulation of natural energy converging together, intertwined with certain peculiar, strange forces. That should be the space-time power capable of piercing through parallel space-time.

He had no idea how such a bizarre formation had come to be.

Richard attempted to use his spiritual power to approach the Dragon Vein, but before he even drew close, the Dragon Vein showed signs of agitation. With that, Richard had no choice but to stop. It made sense; if the Dragon Vein were so easily exploited, the people of the Ninja World would have harnessed it long ago. Wasn't their Yin Release related to the application of spiritual power, after all?

Subsequently, he tried using divine power to approach, and this time, the Dragon Vein wasn't quite as repulsed.

Then he had Katsuyu test it separately with chakra and Sage Chakra. The Dragon Vein reacted violently, especially to chakra, which was essentially no different from meeting a mortal enemy.

Richard rubbed his chin. Such a reaction? Could it truly be that the planet's collective consciousness had integrated into the natural energy? That was why it felt such "hostility" toward chakra, rejecting even Sage Chakra infused with natural energy.

Generally speaking, it was still the mischief wrought by the Otsutsuki clan. This power was either something akin to a planetary consciousness or the remnants left behind by past resisters, such as those deities, shrine maidens, and onmyoji.

Richard cautiously approached using divine power, as he didn't wish to waste too much of it; after all, recovering divine power in this world was extremely slow.

Connection, synchronization. The moment he achieved a fleeting, subtle resonance with that bizarre energy within the Dragon Vein, Richard felt a massive surge of space-time force wash over him, instantly swallowing the group whole.

Then Richard felt as though he had been tossed into a washing machine, churned back and forth by the power of space-time. It was a remarkably strange sensation.

It was also right here that Richard felt his perception of space-time become exceptionally clear, and in an instant, a vast amount of comprehension surged into his mind.

Unfortunately, he was quickly spat back out, returning to the Ninja World. Judging by the surrounding traces, it should still have been Rōran, though it was a destroyed Rōran.

It appeared that time travel had been a success, though he had no idea what timeline's parallel world this was.

"What is going on? Where is this?" Tsunade felt rather dizzy, thoroughly disoriented by the turbulence of the space-time tunnel. At the moment, she hadn't reacted to what had just happened at all. Shizune, whose strength was even inferior to hers, was doubly so.

Even Katsuyu on Tsunade's shoulder got so dizzy she tumbled right down.

Richard quickly explained the current situation.

"You're saying we've arrived at a parallel world? And a parallel world situated after the timeline of our world?" Tsunade was stunned.

"That's right, didn't you notice? This is still Rōran, Rōran a long time into the future," Richard pointed around them as he spoke.

Although it was nighttime, moonlight illuminated the area, preventing it from being too dark to clearly see the surrounding environment.

After careful observation, Tsunade realized it truly was Rōran, except it had presumably turned into the Rōran Ruins by now.

"Incredible." Even Tsunade, who considered herself well-versed in numerous secrets of the Ninja World after following Richard and Katsuyu and believed nothing else could shock her, couldn't help but be astounded once more.

Even parallel worlds had surfaced—was this still the Ninja World she knew?

How was it that the more she understood the Ninja World, the more unfamiliar it felt? Could this world get any more absurd?

"Calm down. Look at Shizune—she's being very calm. You're not even as composed as your student," Richard remarked.

"Ah, I..." Shizune felt that Lord Richard thought far too highly of her; she merely hadn't recovered her wits yet and was still blanking out.

"So this is a parallel world," Katsuyu sighed from the side.

"Back then, the White Snake Sage and I used to guess how that old toad's prophetic ability came to be. At the time, we speculated that it possessed the ability to glimpse certain fragments of the future.

"But Lin Feng offered another hypothesis: he guessed that the old toad's prophecy ability actually observed a parallel world whose timeline existed after ours.

"After all, in our Ninja World, the power of time is far too mysterious, whereas parallel worlds genuinely exist." Katsuyu voiced Lin Feng's past hypothesis.

"Heh, that's actually quite possible," Richard rubbed his chin.

"However, this doesn't concern us much right now. Our top priority is to determine the timeline as quickly as possible," he stated once more.