News of His Mother

"Come with me, Hui. I'll take you somewhere."

[Summoning Technique]

Chuanhe summoned a metal cube resembling a Magic Cube. He pulled out one of its blocks, then released the Summoning Technique.

The two of them then vanished in a cloud of smoke.

It was [Reverse Summoning Technique].

They appeared inside a brightly lit cave, surrounded by light sources Hui didn't recognize.

The ground had a glassy sheen, and through it, Hui could clearly see a "lump of flesh" throbbing beneath the surface. He felt sick.

"Hui, I'll take you to see the three of them. The thing on the ground is what summoned us here. Don't worry. For long-distance travel, Summoning Technique is more convenient."

Hui looked away and headed toward the cave's exit.

The crescent moon still hung in the sky. Below it lay a brightly lit town. Though it was nighttime, the town was bustling.

With his own eyes, Hui could see that most of the people there were teenagers under fifteen.

"Yuki and I killed a lot of people in our lives, but she once told me how much she hated it," Chuanhe said, gazing at the town as he reminisced.

Hui felt his body trembling.

"So I asked her, 'How about we settle down in the mountains and live ordinary lives from now on? No more fighting.'" Chuanhe continued speaking to himself.

"She agreed. We used the time between missions to slowly build a new home here. After that, we both did our best to avoid taking lives," Chuanhe said gently.

Hui looked farther into the distance. Even at night, he could still make out what seemed to be a stretch of lush green grass. This place seemed strangely familiar.

"Then one day, she became pregnant with you. I was so happy that I carefully examined her, but I suddenly realized how severe the hidden injuries were from all those years of fighting on the front lines. As a medical ninja, I should have noticed much sooner." Chuanhe's voice grew unsteady.

"If things had continued like that, all of you would have... died. I even begged Tsunade, but she couldn't do anything." Chuanhe's voice slowly sank.

"The coward in me died that day. I went mad with research. If her body couldn't go on, I'd give her another one! And if that didn't work, I'd go steal the Rinnegan!" Chuanhe's voice softened, but turned bone-chillingly cold.

"I went straight to Orochimaru, blew up his base, and forced him to hand over [Living Corpse Reincarnation]. In the end, I got the technique through a deal. Unfortunately, Orochimaru hadn't successfully completed [Living Corpse Reincarnation] yet, but that unfinished technique gave me an idea."

"If it wasn't necessary, I didn't want Yuki to go to the Pure Land. I had no idea whether that place was as beautiful as the old man described, or whether it was a hell."

"Even transferring a soul was so difficult for Orochimaru, let alone Yuki. So I invented a technique to seal souls: [Soul Sealing Technique]. Along the way, I broke my promise to Yuki. I'm a kind person, but before that, I was an extremely selfish one. I don't even know how many souls vanished from my hands in the six months it took to complete the technique."

"But time didn't wait for me... The technique was still incomplete."

"Yuki... She told me to go ahead and try. The worst that could happen was death. So, at the very last moment, I used the unfinished [Soul Sealing Technique] on her."

"That's right, it worked! But it also failed. Heh, I really was an idiot. I only thought about preserving her soul, never considering that the powerful seal would leave her asleep." Chuanhe laughed at himself.

"F-Father, so Mother is still alive, right? Is that true? Is she the thing on my back?" Hui asked urgently.

"She's alive. She really is. But she isn't the thing on your back. That's a [Reverse Memory Well]." Chuanhe's voice was grave.

Hui was clearly confused. What was a [Reverse Memory Well]? But his heart gradually eased. His father had said this was good news.

Chuanhe didn't explain. He took Hui's hand and said, "This is why I brought you here. Come with me."

That familiar feeling—was this [Space Leap]? But there hadn't been a [Shortcut] just now. When they reached their destination, Hui saw a stone pillar engraved with incantations. A Sealing Technique? He understood now.

Ever since Chuanhe had explained dimensions to Hui, he had realized that Sealing Techniques could be broadly divided into two kinds: those that sealed things in three dimensions, and those that sealed them in four.

If you imagined the world as a sheet of paper, then sealing something into the fourth dimension would be like this, with two pages of a book. Storage scrolls were an example. If you changed the direction of the axis passing through the fourth dimension, connecting two destinations like a line and drawing them closer together...

It was like folding a sheet of paper: the shortest route became a direct passage through both sheets. That created an artificial [Shortcut]. So this was how [Flying Thunder God Technique] worked. He understood now. Even the fact that farther distances required more chakra made sense.

Hui now had an idea of how to use the advanced technique [Flying Thunder God Guiding Thunder], which had originally been developed from [Flying Thunder God Technique].

That technique had required an extremely strong sense of "space," but Hui's Four-Dimensional Perception made that no problem.

As Hui walked, he thought he might have figured out the principle behind this incredibly mysterious Space-Time Ninjutsu.

"Hui, look. Those three over there are the ones who tried to assassinate us today." Chuanhe pointed to three people nearby, being lectured by a boy of about fifteen or sixteen.

The boy was named Toshio. He was a civilian. His family had once made a living by fishing, but after a battle between ninjas caught them in the crossfire, they had been forced to wander. When Chuanhe and Yuki found him, he was leading more than a dozen orphans with similar stories.

The two of them brought the orphans here, and they became the town's first administrators.

Toshio spotted Chuanhe and called out excitedly, "Boss, Boss! It's been ages since you came by. I missed you so much. Is this one joining the village too? Perfect timing—the big kitty just brought three more."

Chuanhe smiled. "No, no. This is my son, Hui. Hui, this is Toshio. Say hello."

"Oh! So you're the young boss." Toshio greeted Hui in a friendly manner.

"H-Hello, Toshio." Hui felt awkward. His attention was entirely fixed on the three people nearby.

Their eyes, once vacant and lifeless, had completely changed. They now seemed to shine with a clear, foolish innocence. They imitated Toshio and called out, "Hello, Boss! Hello, Young Boss!"

After exchanging a few more pleasantries with Toshio, Chuanhe watched them walk away and said, "This is the [Memory Well], part of the [Soul Sealing Technique]. I'm not eloquent enough to twist the truth. If I wanted them to have a new life, this was the best way I could think of."

"Put a memory into the [Memory Well], and similar memories will seep into it. That's also part of how that genjutsu works."

"The [Reverse Memory Well] does the opposite. It releases the memories contained within. But just like the [Memory Well], it needs corresponding memories to guide it."

"For ninjas like them, all you need to do is put their painful memories related to chakra into the [Memory Well] and seal them away. They haven't forgotten the bonds they once had, but they've still been given a new life."

"As for their strength? That might be debatable for other ninjas, but for Root shinobi, this is already a good outcome."

"What's on your back is both Yuki's blessing and a kind of shackle. The [Reverse Memory Well] contains all the happy memories and battle memories of her life. She hoped you wouldn't fall into the same cycle of hatred as us, but she also didn't want you to die without knowing why."

Hui's eyes grew damp. So that was why he felt guilty. His rapid progress in learning ninjutsu wasn't entirely because of his father's scrolls. Had his mother not wanted him to become a ninja?

Choking up a little, Hui asked, "Is Mother here right now?"

"That's right. Come with me."

Hui felt [Space Leap] once more. The delay seemed wrong. His father had described [Flying Thunder God Technique] as nearly instantaneous, but this technique seemed to have a delay. Were they different techniques?

There was another stone pillar, engraved with the same incantations.

"It looks like this is inside an underground facility," Hui thought to himself.

They came to a huge cylindrical glass tank. A "baby boy" floated in the middle.

Hui stared at the "baby boy" in confusion. For some reason, the child seemed familiar and dear to him, as though... as though he were looking at himself.

Chuanhe stood to the side, his expression complicated. "Hui, your body was very weak at first. Just as I'd predicted, you were born sickly. This was your original body."

"Three months after you were born, I perfected the [Soul Sealing Technique]. Then I transferred you into a new body. It took many adjustments before you became who you are now."

All the questions Hui had about himself were answered in that moment.

"Come, this way."

They descended a long flight of stairs and reached another cylindrical glass tank.

A young woman floated in the water. She had long, smooth, jet-black hair and was a classic Uchiha beauty.

Chuanhe gently stroked the glass before him, as if he were caressing Yuki.

"Yuki, you've slept for too long. Wake up soon. Hui's here to see you," Chuanhe murmured.

Hui looked at the person beside him, the one who should have been so familiar, and tears streamed down his face.

With a slight sob, he asked, "F-Father, if she's asleep because the seal was too strong, why can't you undo it and seal her again?"

Chuanhe fell silent. It wasn't because he had miscalculated. This was the last safeguard he had left for Hui.

"If I undo the technique, her soul will drift toward her original body. Without that body, the Pure Land will absorb her at an astonishing speed."

That was the answer he had confirmed through countless tests.

"Now that things have come this far, I don't dare take the risk. I'd rather Yuki sleep a little longer than lose her forever because of another mistake of mine," Chuanhe said, his voice trembling slightly.

If he hadn't been unable to find the Pure Land, he would have loved to drag the Sage of Six Paths out and beat him up, then kick him out of the Pure Land. But there were no ifs.

"Hui, don't worry. At this rate, Yuki will fully wake up within five years at most. She should be able to communicate with us in less than half a year," Chuanhe told Hui, a little excitedly.

"Yuki left behind a special Shadow Clone before she died. I sealed it in the [Reverse Memory Well]."

"Would you like to see it?" Chuanhe asked hesitantly.

It was Yuki's safeguard for Hui, and using it this way felt like a waste.

It was also through the state of that Shadow Clone that Chuanhe had realized Yuki might wake up soon. Yuki had been too indulgent toward Hui, wanting to take even that level of pain upon herself. But how could anyone see the rainbow without weathering the storm?

"No, Father. I've made it through six years like this. I can wait a few more months." Hui shook his head gently.

Smart as he was, he understood what his mother wanted. It was only half a year. He could wait.