Unknown Sacred Land

While Konoha was busy preparing a team to search for Touma in the Land of Swamps, Touma himself was leisurely soaking in a hot spring!

Previously, in order to evade the Salamander's keen sense of smell, he had deliberately plunged himself into the mud.

Sure enough, once his scent vanished into the air, the Salamander truly could not locate him.

The Salamander even crushed the ship it had been carrying, and the Secret Ninjas inside were ground into bloody foam by its massive jaws, yet it still failed to detect Touma's scent.

Consequently, after a fruitless search, the Salamander abandoned the wreckage of the ship and swam back to its lair.

However, what Touma did not expect was that the Salamander's lair was not beneath the mud pools, but rather inside a natural limestone cave located in the heart of the Land of Swamps.

The interior of this cave was unusually warm and humid; even the spring water dripping from the stalactites above possessed miraculous healing properties.

Driven by curiosity, Touma bypassed the sleeping Salamander and explored deeper into the narrower parts of the cave.

After walking for about ten minutes, he discovered a sealed barrier.

Judging by the strength of the energy on the barrier, at least several hundred years had passed since it was erected, and its defensive function was nearly non-existent. Touma was able to find loopholes in it using his amateur knowledge of sealing techniques and then pass through them.

The world behind the barrier opened Touma's eyes; the endless, dense vegetation was so thick it nearly blocked out the sunlight filtering from above.

These plants possessed far greater vitality than those in the outside world, with tree crowns averaging over a hundred meters in height. Even without being able to use chakra, Touma had to climb for twenty or thirty minutes relying solely on his physical strength.

What surprised him most was that breathing the air in this world was slowly clearing the hidden injuries and toxins from his body, and the soreness in his meridians from overusing chakra was nearly gone.

To put it bluntly, a sense of greed for this world truly rose in Touma's heart.

This was because he had roughly guessed the nature of this world: it was a forgotten Summoning Holy Land.

First, one must clarify a concept: Summoning Holy Lands have nothing to do with the Sage of Six Paths, nor did they appear only after he founded the Ninja Sect; they were secret lands that had been separated since the day the planet was born.

Therefore, the ninja world's Summoning Holy Lands are not limited to the three great ones—Ryūchi Cave, Mount Myoboku, and Shikkotsu Forest. There are dozens more, such as Flower Fruit Mountain, Hollow City, Sky-Scraping Cliff, Shouzaki Palace, and the Star-Chaos Sea. Basically, any ninja beast clan that has reached a certain scale has its own ancestral land and, naturally, its own sage art inheritance.

It is just that not all sage art inheritances are suitable for ninjas to practice; only the three great holy lands actively interact with outside ninjas and have improved their own sage arts to be more suitable for humans.

Take the sage art inheritance of the Ninja Ape clan of Flower Fruit Mountain, for example. Every generation of the Sarutobi clan selects ninjas with good aptitude to go and practice sage arts, but after so many years, no news of the Sarutobi clan mastering Sage Mode has ever leaked out.

Either there have been no successful cases, or the successful cases are too rare and lack practical combat value, so the Sarutobi clan is too embarrassed to publicize it.

This includes the Ninja Cat clan's Sage Mode in Hollow City, which no one has learned either. One must know that the Uchiha are not the only clan to have signed summoning contracts with the Ninja Cats; so many clans have tried without a single success, which surely means the Ninja Cat clan's sage arts are simply not suited for human mastery.

Of course, there are those who refuse to give up. The Izuno clan, who also contracted with the Ninja Cats, were quite clever; unable to master Sage Mode, they created a "youth version" called "Cat Demon Mode," which can also amplify sensory abilities and taijutsu power, even if it doesn't reach the level of true Sage Mode.

There are definitely more undiscovered and unutilized Summoning Holy Lands than just this one before Touma, so as long as he takes precautions, no one will come to claim ownership from him.

Having had the experience of consuming a Sage Chakra Pill, Touma could more or less sense the concentration of natural energy. Following the areas where the natural energy concentration was most prominent, he discovered this hot spring. Without a second thought, he consumed a Sage Chakra Pill and jumped in.

His original intention was to use the sage chakra provided by the pill to resist the erosion of the hot spring, but to his surprise, the natural energy in this spring did not have the violent nature of the outside world; it felt exceptionally gentle.

It slowly entered his body through his pores, bringing with it waves of indescribable warmth and nourishment as it traveled. Under the guidance of this natural energy, Touma unknowingly mastered his own version of "Sage Mode."

His "Sage Mode" was very similar to Senju Hashirama's, a human Sage Mode with purely black facial markings.

The ratio of natural energy to physical and mental energy was not 1:1:1, but rather a 3:1:1 ratio with natural energy in absolute dominance.

Under this energy ratio, Touma could clearly sense his physique undergoing earth-shaking changes; his cell development speed was accelerating, and both his vitality and mental power were growing explosively.

Just by soaking for less than an hour, his height surged from 160 centimeters to 170 centimeters, and his muscle girth and bone density also underwent an order-of-magnitude change.

The increase in cell count indirectly led to a surge in his chakra volume. Using the Chakra Pill as a benchmark, his original chakra volume was equivalent to two pills, but now it had increased fivefold, totaling the equivalent of ten Chakra Pills.

Yet this surge in chakra did not affect his control over it; clearly, this was an internal growth rather than the result of consuming some special drug to squeeze out potential.

Even the duration of his current "Sage Mode" had extended from the original three minutes to as long as fifteen minutes. Such a significant change was enough for his "Sage Mode" to exert its proper tactical value.

Once Touma had completely purged the last trace of toxins from his body, he intended to make some modifications to the defensive barrier of this Summoning Holy Land.

Unfortunately, an amateur is always an amateur. He finally paid the price for his recklessness; while modifying the natural space barrier of this holy land, he triggered something he shouldn't have touched, which instantly teleported him from the holy land to another location.

It was fortunate that he had "Sage Mode" active while tinkering with the space barrier; otherwise, the violent dragging of that spatial teleportation would have been enough to tear his body into pieces.

Slowly waking up from his coma, Touma smelled the fishy scent of the sea and felt the grit of sand beneath his neck. Without needing to ask, he knew he had drifted to some place near the ocean. However, reality dealt him a heavy blow: he had been teleported to the islands of the Land of Islands in the middle of the ocean.

One must know that even by the fastest ship, it takes seven days and seven nights to travel from the Land of Islands to the mainland. Not to mention, the small island he had been teleported to was completely uninhabited. To find a ship, he would either have to swim from here or wait for a passing ship to stop for supplies.

To return as quickly as possible, he could only resort to summoning techniques again. Fortunately, Orochimaru usually kept a white snake responsible for communication by his side; Touma could use Ryūchi Cave as a transit station to return to the main continent.

Just as he was preparing to perform the "Reverse Summoning Technique," a massive wave suddenly rose and crashed toward Touma on the beach!