BOOM—!!!
The deafening roar and explosions made Ling Xuan, swaddled in his blankets, suddenly "open" his eyes.
No, perhaps not open them, because he felt wrapped in warm darkness.
But an indescribable sense of danger and chaotic energy fluctuations clearly reached his feeble consciousness.
"What... is going on?" Ling Xuan's mind was hazy.
His last memory was of being hit by a runaway truck and sent flying when he tried to save a little girl crossing the street. Then everything had gone dark.
By all rights, he should have died.
"Waaah—waaah—"
A baby's cries escaped uncontrollably from his own mouth.
Wait, a baby?!
Ling Xuan was jolted with alarm. He tried to control his body, only to find his limbs weak and limp. Even turning his head was extraordinarily difficult.
He tried hard to "see" his surroundings, but his vision remained blurry.
He could only vaguely sense that he was lying in a small basket. Wooden supports surrounded him, shaking violently as if they might fall apart at any moment.
"The Nine-Tails... it's that beast!"
"Quick! Protect Lord Hokage!"
"Minato-sensei!"
Faint cries filled with panic and fear pierced through the wooden boards and reached Ling Xuan's ears.
Nine-Tails? Minato?
Ling Xuan's mind cleared considerably.
To any Naruto fan, those two words represented one particular night.
One of the most devastating disasters in Konoha's history—the Night of the Nine-Tails!
I... I've been reincarnated? As a baby in the Naruto world? And right in the middle of the Nine-Tails' rampage?!
The realization left Ling Xuan both horrified and at a loss for words.
Other people who got reincarnated either had a system or were descendants of some powerful clan. At the very least, they were healthy teenagers.
But not him. He'd become a helpless baby, dropped straight into a hellish start!
Just then, a chakra fluctuation far more terrifying than any before erupted, carrying a ferocious aura that seemed to destroy everything.
Even through the wooden house, Ling Xuan could "feel" how frightening that power was.
ROAR—!!!
The Nine-Tails' roar! This time, it was right beside him!
The roof seemed to have been torn away. Turbulent air rushed in, bringing with it the heavy stench of blood and burning.
The arms holding him seemed to vanish, and his cradle rolled away before coming to a stop at the edge of a field of rubble.
At that very moment, his vision miraculously cleared for an instant.
He saw it!
Beneath the night sky, outside the village, stood an orange-red demon fox so enormous it blotted out the sky.
Its nine massive tails lashed wildly, each strike bringing a crash like a mountain collapsing.
Destruction and hatred filled its crimson eyes.
Before the demon fox stood a blond man in a white Hokage cloak, his back resolute and commanding.
The Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato!
"No... I can't let it destroy the village any further!" Minato's voice was weary, but more than anything, it was filled with unshakable determination.
His hands formed seals at lightning speed.
"Sealing Jutsu: Dead Demon Consuming Seal!"
A menacing phantom of the Death God appeared behind Minato, radiating a chilling aura that made the soul tremble.
Almost the instant the Death God appeared, Ling Xuan felt an unbearable burning pain in his eyes, as if two balls of fire were blazing in their sockets.
After the agony passed, a cool current flowed from his eyes toward his brain.
His vision underwent a complete transformation!
Through his left eye, the rampaging Nine-Tails was no longer simply a demon fox. It was made up of countless dense red chakra particles, packed together so tightly they seemed to melt into one another.
The particles intertwined and combined in a mysterious pattern, forming the Tailed Beast's living shape.
He could even "see" the flow of negative emotional energy within the Nine-Tails' chakra.
Through his right eye, the flow of chakra inside Namikaze Minato, the structure of the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, and the energy at the core of the Death God's phantom—
All of it appeared clearly in his "mind" like a three-dimensional diagram.
The meaning of every hand seal and the movement of every stream of chakra seemed to have slowed countless times, letting him see each detail clearly.
[Target: Nine-Tails Demon Fox] [Status: Rampaging, (analysis in progress... suspected traces of ocular genjutsu)] [Energy composition: High-density Tailed Beast Chakra, containing large amounts of negative emotions... decoding in progress...] [Weakness analysis: Unstable mental connection... soul...] [Target: Namikaze Minato] [Status: Life force rapidly diminishing, soul being sacrificed...] [Technique analysis: Dead Demon Consuming Seal (S-rank forbidden jutsu)—Principle: Sacrifice one's own soul to summon the Death God and seal the target... Structural analysis 15% complete...] [Special skill analysis: Flying Thunder God Technique (Space-Time Ninjutsu)—Principle: Use a jutsu mark to leap through space... Structural analysis 5% complete...]
Streams of mysterious information poured into Ling Xuan's mind like a waterfall, corroborating what his eyes "saw."
This was... my cheat?!
The Eye of Truth?!
Ling Xuan was both astonished and delighted. He was still a baby, unable to move.
But his eyes and brain were working with unprecedented efficiency.
He "saw" Minato struggle to divide the Nine-Tails' chakra in two, sealing one half inside the newborn Naruto and forming the Four Symbols Seal and Eight Trigrams Seal.
Every detail—the chakra patterns of the sealing formulas and the way the energy was guided—was recorded and analyzed by his Eye of Truth.
[Technique analysis: Four Symbols Seal—Principle... Analysis 30% complete...] [Technique analysis: Eight Trigrams Seal—Principle... Analysis 28% complete...]
Although Ling Xuan's infant brain still couldn't fully comprehend this information, which surpassed even S-rank, the Eye of Truth had already etched it deep into his soul, where it would wait for him to understand it in time.
The Nine-Tails' roars gradually subsided, and the raging chakra storm slowly dissipated.
Minato and Kushina fell, having given their lives to protect the village and their child.
Silence settled over the area, broken only by the flames and distant cries.
Ling Xuan lay in his battered cradle, his tiny body trembling slightly from the "information overload."
He closed his "eyes," but his mind was still filled with the earth-shattering sealing scene and countless intricate patterns of jutsu and energy flows.
"The Night of the Nine-Tails... Namikaze Minato... Kushina Uzumaki... and Naruto Uzumaki..."
"I not only survived, but got to witness the entire Nine-Tails sealing process right from the start. I even analyzed a little of the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, Flying Thunder God, and the Four Symbols and Eight Trigrams Seals..."
An indescribable excitement surged in his heart.
His start might have been hellishly difficult, but with the Eye of Truth...
Perhaps he could still carve out a path to greatness for himself in this cruel Shinobi World!
"This world... Ling Xuan has arrived!"
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