First Mission and Initial Karma Trial

Following Izuna's squad on missions was far more grueling and dangerous than any training.

Their operational range primarily covered patrols and reconnaissance on the outskirts of the Uchiha clan lands, occasionally pushing out into the buffer zones bordering Senju territory. There were no large-scale battles here, but small skirmishes, traps, and probes were everywhere.

Uchiha Sou kept his guard at an absolute maximum, maintaining his one-tomoe Sharingan at all times. The boost to his dynamic vision and insight allowed him to spot hidden explosive tag traps or the fleeting shadows of enemies in the distant woods ahead of time, preventing losses.

Izuna was quite satisfied with this, occasionally offering pointers on reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance techniques.

"The Sharingan is not omnipotent, Tsang," Izuna said during one break. "Relying too much on your eyes will dull your other senses. A true powerhouse must trust all their senses, even including... intuition."

Uchiha Sou was lost in thought. He did feel that his mental energy had been draining rapidly lately; maintaining the Sharingan was no small burden for him at his current level.

That day, the squad received an urgent mission: an Uchiha supply transport team in the northwest was suspected to have been attacked, their signal cut off, and they needed immediate reconnaissance and support.

Izuna led the squad out immediately, moving at high speed.

Uchiha Sou followed closely behind, his heart beating uncontrollably. Another attack... it was so similar to the one the original owner of this body had encountered.

Soon, they arrived at the area where the last signal had been transmitted. The air was filled with a faint smell of burning and blood, but the scene contained only the corpses of a few Uchiha ninja and a handful of unfamiliar shinobi, along with the wreckage of destroyed wagons. The main force was nowhere to be seen.

"Spread out and search, two to a team, stay alert! Signal immediately if you find anything!" Izuna ordered swiftly, his expression grave.

Uchiha Sou paired up with a young branch-family member named Uchiha Hi, heading toward the woods to the east.

The woods were dense and the light dim. Uchiha Sou focused his mind, striving to mobilize all his senses. The vision provided by the Sharingan allowed him to see details in the dim environment, while his ears caught any sound beyond the rustling of the wind.

Suddenly, Uchiha Hi, walking beside him, paused and let out a very faint grunt.

Uchiha Sou whipped his head around, only to see Uchiha Hi's calf snagged by an extremely well-hidden, dark-colored tripwire! Although he wasn't injured, the mechanism connected to the wire had already been triggered!

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Several poisoned crossbow bolts shot out from the bushes to the side, aimed directly at the two of them!

"Watch out!" Uchiha Sou's pupils constricted as his Sharingan instantly captured the trajectory of the bolts. He shoved the still-dazed Uchiha Hi aside while throwing himself backward!

Clang! Clang!

Two bolts grazed his cheek and arm, drawing a thin line of blood. The others embedded themselves into the ground where they had been standing just a moment before.

That was close!

Uchiha Hi broke into a cold sweat. "Thanks, Tsang! Damn it, that's a classic tactic of those Senju bastards!"

The two immediately stood back-to-back, alert, but there was no further movement in the bushes; the attackers seemed to have fled after the failed ambush.

"Looks like just a little trick to slow us down," Uchiha Hi spat.

Uchiha Sou, however, furrowed his brows. Was that really it? He felt something was off. This trap didn't seem intended for killing; it felt more like it was... forcing them to change direction? Or perhaps, providing cover for another operation?

His gaze involuntarily drifted toward the patch of seemingly calm grass in front of where Uchiha Hi had been about to step before the trap was triggered. The keen insight of his Sharingan made it seem as though the blades of grass there were bent in an extremely unnatural way.

"Hi-ge, wait a second." He pulled back Uchiha Hi, who was about to continue forward.

"What is it?"

Uchiha Sou didn't answer, instead carefully picking up a stone and, putting his strength into it, throwing it toward the suspicious patch of grass.

Thud!

The stone landed in the grass, and there was no reaction.

Uchiha Hi looked at him, puzzled.

Uchiha Sou didn't give up; he picked up another stone, this time throwing it toward another patch of ground nearby that appeared completely normal.

Just as the stone was about to hit the ground—

BOOM!!

A violent explosion erupted! Soil and shredded grass flew everywhere, and a charred crater nearly two meters in diameter appeared on the spot! The intense shockwave even made the two of them, standing not far away, feel a tightness in their chests.

If Uchiha Hi had walked directly over that just now...

Uchiha Hi's face turned deathly pale, his lips trembling as he looked at Uchiha Sou with eyes full of lingering fear and gratitude. "Tsang... how... how did you know..."

Uchiha Sou was startled himself, his heart pounding wildly. He hadn't actually been sure; it was just a strong suspicion based on the subtle traces observed by his Sharingan and his own intuition.

"Just lucky... maybe the Sharingan caught a slight inconsistency," he managed to explain, suppressing the agitation in his heart.

Is this what the battlefield is? A pervasive threat of death, coming not just from enemies in front of you, but from these insidious setups.

At the same time, a thought emerged that he couldn't suppress: Was that tripwire trap really a coincidence? Or... did the person who set the trap calculate that after discovering the first layer, a person's subconscious reaction would be to move forward to stay alert or pursue, thereby ignoring the more lethal second trap under their feet?

If that were true, then the person who set the trap had a terrifyingly precise grasp of human psychology and behavior.

The subsequent search yielded no more enemies. They found the transport team; they had merely been forced to change their route and were otherwise unharmed. The attackers' goal seemed to be nothing more than harassment and sabotage.

On the way back to the clan lands, Uchiha Sou remained silent.

He was reflecting on the experience. That "premonition," born from subtle observation and logical deduction, had saved his life and his companion's.

This gave him a deeper understanding of his eyes' capabilities. Insight wasn't just about seeing clearly; perhaps it also included... seeing further? Seeing through things?

That night, he went alone to a secluded corner of the training grounds.

He tried to focus his mind, replaying every detail of the trap he had encountered during the day—the position of the tripwire, the angle of the crossbow bolts, the hidden point of the second explosive tag...

Then, he picked up several shuriken and cast his gaze toward a target in the distance.

Instead of throwing it directly as usual, he tried to immerse his spirit into a strange state. He imagined the trajectory of the shuriken, imagined the potential interference of a breeze, and imagined the minute differences that might arise from throwing at different angles...

At the same time, he carefully mobilized a trace of imperceptible chakra, not to enhance strength or speed, but to carry a... peculiar "intent" attached to the shuriken.

The feeling was profound and mysterious, as if he were not throwing, but rather "setting" an initial cause.

"Left eye... Yomotsu Okami..." he muttered subconsciously, and the tomoe in his eye seemed to glow slightly.

Whoosh!

The shuriken left his hand, carving an arc through the air.

Thud!

It struck the target precisely... but not the bullseye; it hit an inconspicuous spot on the edge.

Uchiha Sou frowned slightly and walked forward to inspect it.

He saw that where the shuriken had struck, the wood fibers showed an extremely subtle, spiral-shaped crack, and the angle of the shuriken itself looked slightly strange, as if it hadn't been nailed in directly, but had changed direction slightly after an extremely minor, illogical collision before hitting the target.

This collision was so small it was almost negligible.

"A failure?" Uchiha Sou felt a bit disappointed. He had wanted to try "setting" the "cause" that the shuriken would inevitably hit the bullseye, but the result seemed to be nothing more than an insignificant deviation.

He shook his head; it seemed he had overthought it. How could such power be mastered so easily?

However, he did not notice that not far ahead of the shuriken's original flight path, an extremely thin, almost invisible spider silk trembled slightly in the cold night air.

If it had followed its original trajectory, the shuriken would have grazed past that spider silk.

But because of the subtle "intent" attached to it and the highly accidental angular deviation, the tip of the shuriken had brushed against the tough spider silk ever so slightly.

This minuscule graze, which carried almost no force, caused the spider silk to vibrate.

The other end of the spider silk was connected to a withered leaf. The leaf swayed gently and drifted down from a low branch.

The withered leaf spun, falling slowly.

Below, a squad of ninjas wearing the crest of the Hagoromo Clan was marching secretly through the night.

The withered leaf fell silently, landing right on the helmet of a young ninja at the back of the team, obscuring his vision for a split second.

The ninja subconsciously reached up to brush the leaf away, causing his pace to falter for half a beat, and he happened to step on a highly concealed tripwire that his companions in front had carefully avoided.

Jingle!

A crisp bell sound rang out abruptly in the silent night sky, echoing far into the distance.

"Not good!" The face of the jonin leading the Hagoromo Clan squad changed drastically.

In the distance, an Uchiha squad currently executing a reconnaissance mission nearby came to a sudden halt.

"Movement! Northwest direction! Alert!"

The gears of history seemed, at this moment, to have been bumped ever so slightly by an insignificant pebble.

No one knew.

Uchiha Sou put away his shuriken, yawned, and turned to leave the training ground. He only felt his eyes were a bit tired, assuming it was due to over-training.

He needed rest; tomorrow's mission would be even heavier.

And in the distant northwest, a small-scale skirmish, triggered prematurely by a falling leaf and one that should never have happened, quietly began.