Uchiha Naro

"...Sharingan!?"

The people inside the Bounty Exchange stared at the blood-red eyes revealed beneath the cloak, too shocked to speak.

At that moment, more than a dozen people had gathered in the hall: wandering shinobi, bandit leaders, down-on-their-luck samurai, and several mysterious figures of unknown identity.

They all watched the woman in the black cloak standing at the door.

She was tall, and her cloak covered most of her face, revealing only her eyes.

Blood-red eyes.

A strange pattern of Sharingan.

"Another Uchiha survivor?" A bald brute stood up, his hand on the hilt of his sword and greed in his eyes. "Konoha's bounty for Uchiha clan members is pretty high these days..."

The woman glanced at him and said nothing.

But that single look doused the bald brute like a bucket of cold water, chilling him from head to toe.

What kind of look was that?

Cold and indifferent, as if she were looking at a dead man.

The bald brute's hand froze on the hilt. He didn't dare move.

The woman looked away, pulled a cloth bag from beneath her cloak, and tossed it onto the counter. It struck with a dull thud. The bag was full of scrolls.

"I have a commission." Her voice was cold, devoid of emotion. "Deliver these intelligence scrolls to the various clans in the Five Great Shinobi Villages, as well as Amegakure and some other villages."

The owner behind the counter was a thin old man with one blind eye and a scar running from his forehead to his chin.

He opened the bag and took out a scroll without unrolling it. He knew the rules. If he read certain things himself, he could lose his life.

"How will you pay?"

"I trust your Bounty Exchange can verify whether the commission is completed." The woman tossed him another scroll. "The money inside is the payment. You can handle the details."

The owner was silent for a few seconds, then nodded. "We'll take the commission."

The woman turned to leave, but suddenly stopped. With her back to everyone, she said, "Anyone who follows me will die."

Then she headed outside, releasing an overwhelming aura that left everyone in the hall struggling to breathe. It carried killing intent, the stench of blood, and an oppressive force.

No one dared move. The aura faded only after she had walked out the door.

The bald brute slumped into his chair, his back soaked with cold sweat.

"Damn... What kind of monster was that..."

"At least a Jonin. No, she's stronger than a Jonin," someone beside him said.

"What did she say just now? That we'd die if we followed her?"

"You can try it if you don't believe her."

The bald brute shook his head. "I'm not ready to die."

Still, a few people refused to heed the warning. Two wandering shinobi and a bandit leader quietly followed her out. The others exchanged glances but stayed put.

The Bounty Exchange never saw those men again...

A lavish aristocratic mansion stood in the Capital of the Land of Fire. It belonged to a noble close to the Daimyo of the Land of Fire and sprawled across a vast estate of deep, secluded courtyards.

Several "guests" lived in a remote courtyard at the very back of the mansion.

After their host had welcomed the "guests" and settled them in, everyone in the noble's household seemed to fall under a spell. They completely forgot about that part of the estate. Even when they passed nearby, they instinctively overlooked it, as though their minds were telling them there was nothing there—as if the area were "blank."

At that moment, Uchiha Naro sat cross-legged on a cushion beneath the veranda, a black banner floating before him.

The Ghost Bone Banner.

The banner was pitch-black from top to bottom, embroidered with densely packed white runes that looked like bones pieced together.

Twelve spirits floated around the banner. They were all the wronged souls of the Uchiha Clan, and they had formed a circle with their hands clasped together, chanting an indistinct incantation. Wisps of black energy drifted from their bodies and were absorbed by the banner.

The banner's white runes glimmered faintly as they absorbed the black energy, flickering on and off as if breathing.

Naro had his eyes closed and his hands formed into a strange seal as he murmured an incantation.

Refining the Ghost Bone Banner usually took little effort, but he had gathered too many wronged souls on the night of the Uchiha massacre. Even with Uchiha Shisui bearing the backlash, Naro still needed twelve of those souls to help him refine it.

Naro had to bear the repeated deaths they endured every moment they assisted in the refinement.

But he had no choice. The Ghost Bone Banner was one of the most suitable magical treasures he could refine at present, and one of the tools he would use in the future. After all, the Ninja World had very few materials suitable for crafting magical treasures.

"Master."

A woman's voice came from the courtyard entrance.

Naro didn't open his eyes. "Come in."

The woman in the black cloak entered the courtyard and lowered her hood, revealing a gentle but resolute face—Uchiha Mikoto.

She was Itachi and Sasuke's mother, and Uchiha Fugaku's wife. Konoha's Anbu were searching everywhere for her, believing she had died on the night of the massacre, but she was alive.

Naro had taken her away, along with her son, Uchiha Sasuke.

"Did you complete the mission?" Naro asked.

"I did." Mikoto knelt beneath the veranda and reported respectfully. "The commission has been posted at the Bounty Exchange. Dozens of intelligence scrolls will be delivered to the various clans in the Five Great Shinobi Villages. They include the Hyuga, Ino-Shika-Cho, the Yotsuki Clan of Kumogakure, the Two-Scale Clan of Iwagakure, and others."

"Were you followed?"

"A few people tried. I dealt with them."

"You're getting more skilled with your Sharingan." Naro opened his eyes and looked at Mikoto.

Mikoto lowered her head. "That's thanks to your guidance, Master."

"How is Sasuke?" Naro stood up, drew the twelve wronged souls back into the banner, then stored the Ghost Bone Banner in his Purple Mansion. He walked over to the stone table in the courtyard, sat down, and poured himself a cup of tea.

"He's practicing Shurikenjutsu."

"How is he doing?"

"He's working very hard," Mikoto said. "But he's too young, only six. He can't learn many ninjutsu techniques yet."

"There's no rush. Take it slowly." Naro took a sip of tea. "Your son has good talent. And with that ancient power within him, he won't be inferior to Itachi in the future if he's properly trained."

At the mention of Itachi, a trace of pain flashed through Mikoto's eyes.

"Master, Itachi..."

"He's fine." Naro cut her off. "He's currently undercover in an organization called Akatsuki. He's doing well. You don't need to worry."

Mikoto lowered her head and asked no more.

"All right, go get some rest." Naro waved for Mikoto to leave. "You can also teach Sasuke a few new techniques. The Uchiha's Fire Release can't be allowed to die out."

"Yes." Mikoto stood up, then hesitated. "Master, could you spare Sasuke from having to execute Itachi? I can do it instead. I'm an Uchiha too..."

"That's their fate," Naro said. "Even without my interference, Uchiha Itachi would still leave Sasuke as the sole survivor."

He took a small sip of tea.

"I showed you the stone tablet in the underground chamber of Naka Shrine. No matter what, one of them has to give everything for the other... Otherwise, in the end, neither of them will... This is the price of the power the Uchiha ancestors left to the Uchiha Clan. You could choose to pay that price in place of one of them."

He turned and looked at Mikoto.

"But would that really help Sasuke? You know there's an Uchiha ancestor's soul inside him. Your role is to seal away the evil that has manipulated the Uchiha Clan for generations and give Sasuke a real future—not a life controlled from the shadows..."

Mikoto nodded dispiritedly. After awakening her Mangekyō Sharingan, she had gone to see the stone tablet passed down through the Uchiha Clan and learned about the Mangekyō Sharingan's drawbacks. With Naro's help, she had also sensed the peculiar aura hidden deep within Sasuke's soul. What she needed to do most was help Sasuke resolve the threat posed by that aura...

Mikoto bowed, then turned to leave.

She left the courtyard, followed the corridor, and arrived at another small courtyard.

A boy stood in the middle of it, kunai in hand, practicing against a target in front of him. He had black hair and dark eyes, delicate features, and a focused gaze.

It was Uchiha Sasuke.

He was only six years old, yet he had been forced to face the fact that his older brother had led others in slaughtering his clan. He was still a child, but his heart was already filled with hatred.

The kunai flew from his hand and struck the bull's-eye.

"Not bad." Mikoto walked in. "Again."

Sasuke turned around. When he saw his mother, a long-missed smile appeared on his face. "Mother!"

"Don't smile. Focus on your practice." Mikoto put on a stern face, but her eyes were full of tenderness. "An Uchiha shinobi can't rely on kunai alone. Today, Mom will teach you a new Fire Release technique."

"What technique?" Sasuke's eyes, bearing two tomoe, were full of anticipation.

"The Great Fireball Technique," Mikoto said. "It's the Uchiha Clan's signature technique."

"Really? That's great!"

Sasuke nodded excitedly. He knew he was still young and couldn't learn high-level techniques yet, but he also carried the Uchiha Clan's hatred. He needed to grow as quickly as possible.

As long as the life of the person who had wiped out the Uchiha Clan remained unavenged, he couldn't rest.

Every night, when he slept alone, Sasuke's mind replayed the sight of the Uchiha clan members' deaths in the long banner Naro carried. He remembered the children younger than him, especially the babies... He would never forgive those people, not even his own older brother...

"Mother, teach me."

Mikoto looked at her son, her heart aching.

"Watch carefully." Mikoto formed hand seals. "Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"

She took a deep breath and exhaled.

A huge fireball burst from her mouth and hurtled toward the target across the courtyard.

"Boom—"

The target was blown to pieces, and the wall was scorched black.

Mikoto ended the technique and patted her son's head. "First, practice the hand seals. Then I'll teach you the chakra flow."

"I'll learn it as quickly as I can!" Sasuke clenched his fists.

Mikoto smiled but said nothing.

Back in his courtyard, Naro sat on the cushion again and resumed refining the Ghost Bone Banner.

He closed his eyes and divided his attention. As he refined the banner, he began recalling his earlier experiences.

Or rather, the origins of his three souls—Naro's soul was formed from three parts—

The largest, and strongest, was the demonic cultivator Zhang Hongchen.

He came from a great world among the myriad heavens. That world had reached its end, and the Immeasurable Calamity of Annihilation was about to descend.

The Immeasurable Calamity of Annihilation meant the complete destruction of the entire world, its transformation into nothingness. All living beings, no matter how strong or weak, good or evil, would be wiped out in the calamity.

To find a way to survive and overcome the calamity, the great powers of that world made a desperate decision: they revealed the cultivation arts, divine abilities, and secret techniques of every faction, whether orthodox or demonic, respectable sects or evil heretics.

They made everything public.

They would draw on the wisdom of the entire world to search for a single chance at survival.

Zhang Hongchen rose to prominence in this era. He had once been a moderately renowned demonic cultivator, talented but not exceptional. But he seized his chance in the wave of "cultivation for all."

He gathered the wisdom of countless schools, studied innumerable cultivation arts and divine abilities, and combined them with one unique quality of his own—his soul naturally possessed a trace of "space-time." From this, he created a forbidden cultivation art.

The Supreme Scripture of Causality and Deliverance.

This cultivation art gathered the wisdom of his great world and encompassed everything, profound and unfathomable.

At its core was the opposite side of the "space-time" quality: "causality." A cause gave rise to an effect, an effect became a cause, like an ouroboros endlessly consuming itself—a cycle of cause and effect.

Through the reversal of cause and effect, its practitioner could alter fate, reverse life and death, and even cross through time and space.

Zhang Hongchen spent countless years creating the first half of this cultivation art. But just as he was preparing to continue developing and perfecting what came next, there was no time left.

The Immeasurable Calamity of Annihilation began. First came the Five Decays of Heaven and Man, aimed at cultivators, followed by the exhaustion of spiritual energy, the mutation of living beings, and the shattering of reincarnation. Then the Heavenly Dao collapsed and the laws fell into chaos... Countless great powers fell from the firmament, their corpses strewn everywhere...

Zhang Hongchen had no choice. Before the final force of annihilation arrived, he made one desperate attempt—he tried to travel through time and space.

He succeeded.

He twisted cause and effect, reversed time and space, and crossed over from a world on the verge of destruction into another world.

But he had also failed. During the crossing, his physical body was reduced to ashes in the turbulence of space and time, leaving only his soul behind.

He had considered these problems beforehand. Before his desperate attempt, he had even forcibly sealed the blood essence of several innate great powers inside his soul. Even so, he exhausted all his preparations during the crossing, and his soul was gravely wounded. If he couldn't find a suitable body, it would soon dissipate.

Just as his situation turned dire, he inexplicably sensed another soul.

Its owner was named Zhang Hongchen.

An orphan with no parents, suffering from terminal cancer. Before he died, he didn't want to lie in a hospital room and wait for death. He wanted to see the world and go "home"—the orphanage where he had grown up.

He pulled out his tubes and dragged his ailing body out of the hospital. He took a bus, looked at the streets, ate at a roadside stall, and bought an ice cream.

He was just like a normal person, but he wasn't normal anymore. The cancer had spread throughout his body. Every breath tasted of blood, and every step felt like walking on the edge of a blade.

Through gritted teeth, he endured the pain. When he finally reached the orphanage, he collapsed.

The elderly gatekeeper recognized him and wanted to call an ambulance.

But he refused.

"Let me... sit for a while." He leaned against the wall by the orphanage entrance, gasping for breath. "Just for a while..."

Sitting there, watching the children playing in the orphanage, he smiled.

"Being alive... is wonderful..."

Then he closed his eyes.

At the instant his soul left his body, Zhang Hongchen sensed him.

Drawn by an inexplicable force, the two souls met amid the turbulence of space and time. Zhang Hongchen wanted to possess Zhang Hongchen's body, seize his soul, and recover from his injuries.

But though Zhang Hongchen's soul was weak, it held something difficult to explain. He was now half a transmigrator; his soul came from another world and carried that world's "information."

The two souls became entangled, devouring and merging with each other.

At that moment, the remnants of Zhang Hongchen's crossing power were activated.

Zhang Hongchen was also enduring the unending pain of dying—a kind of pain the demonic cultivator Zhang Hongchen had never experienced. He had always inflicted pain on others; no one had ever been able to make him suffer...

Now the pain reached his very soul.

This suffering activated the crossing power, carrying the two souls through countless worlds and across countless spans of time and space. At last, the power was exhausted, and the two souls fell into the world of Naruto.

They entered the body of an infant who had been born only recently.

Uchiha Naro.

The infant was quiet, lying in his cradle without crying or fussing.

The three souls—the demonic cultivator Zhang Hongchen, the mortal Zhang Hongchen, and the infant Naro—began to merge under the combined influence of the residual power of space-time and the innate energy the baby still carried from birth.

As the three souls merged, the soul power and emotions of Zhang Hongchen and Zhang Hongchen awakened the deepest power of Naro's Uchiha body—the Sharingan.

The infant body had barely been born when its Sharingan awakened, and in an instant it advanced from One-Tomoe... to Two-Tomoe... to Three Tomoe... to Mangekyō... before finally settling into the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.

Zhang Hongchen's consciousness was the most resilient. He had lived for an unknown number of years, experienced the terror of the Immeasurable Calamity of Annihilation, the madness of creating the Supreme Scripture of Causality and Deliverance, and the dangers of crossing through time and space.

His will was as hard as steel.

So he became the dominant consciousness.

Zhang Hongchen's consciousness was weak, but he had experienced the pain of life and death, the loneliness of having no parents, his longing for the world before he died, and the despair of having his soul possessed after death.

His emotions burned as fiercely as flames.

Zhang Hongchen's consciousness entered the right eye of the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan—Heavenly Eternal Presence.

The infant Naro's consciousness was utterly pure, without hatred or desire, guided only by instinct.

His purity was as clear as water.

His consciousness entered the left eye of the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan—Heavenly Amenominakanushi.

Three souls, three wills, fused into a new being.

Uchiha Naro.

He retained Zhang Hongchen's memories, cultivation techniques, and demonic cultivator's temperament—decisive and merciless, detached from worldly passions.

He retained Zhang Hongchen's emotions, pain, and attachment to life. These feelings kept his "detachment from worldly passions" from being entirely cold, leaving it with a touch of human warmth.

He also retained the infant Naro's fresh start and the Uchiha Clan's bloodline. This gave him the chance to forge an entirely new destiny, rather than merely live a borrowed life grafted onto another through transmigration and possession.

Left eye: Heavenly Amenominakanushi.

Right eye: Heavenly Eternal Presence.

These were two forbidden eyes.