Takigakure (Part 1)

Ye Wuji sat in the carriage, watching the trees along the road slide past. It was already the second day. Yesterday, the uncle named Ken who was driving behind them had buried everyone by the roadside, then brought the three survivors into the carriage and continued on ahead.

After they introduced themselves, Ye Wuji learned that the White-Clad Samurai was named Ukyo, the girl was Rei, and the girl's mother—who was also one of Ukyo's pawns—was named Kei. The coachman outside was Ken, Mouri Ken. As for the surviving woman and boy, they were siblings. The older sister was named Tomomi, and her younger brother was Yuta. They had no relatives among the people in the attacked caravan; it was a group of merchants who had banded together, and the siblings had joined them temporarily, thinking that traveling in a group would be safer. They hadn't expected things to end this way.

The siblings were orphans, too. Their parents had died as a result of the war, so they had left their hometown to find somewhere to stay for a while, planning to return once the war was over. They hadn't expected to run into something like this.

Ye Wuji didn't know much about the samurai family before him, not even the coachman, who was clearly a skilled samurai. In truth, even if he had known more about them, it wouldn't have helped. Aside from Mifune, Ye Wuji didn't know any of the samurai in Naruto. What he knew was all related to the shinobi.

Still, Ye Wuji really wanted to learn something from the samurai named Ukyo, especially his secret technique—Swallow Reversal. It would be even better if he could learn it. So Ye Wuji decided to follow them for the time being. There was no point in going to the Land of Fire right now. While his strength was still low, Ye Wuji wouldn't go to Konoha on his own. What if Orochimaru captured him to use in some Cursed Seal experiment? That would be the end of him. The Cursed Seal had a low success rate—very low, in fact. Orochimaru had experimented on so many people, but fewer than ten had survived. Ye Wuji didn't think he had what it took to withstand the Cursed Seal's corrosive effects.

Now that he'd decided to follow the samurai family, there was one thing to consider: Yuta was already ten years old, six years older than Ye Wuji. After going through such a disaster, he seemed to have grown up a little. He was no longer the child who clung to his sister and cried.

Three days later, after they passed through a town, Ukyo and Ken intended to leave the three of them there. After all, that wasn't their destination, and they had their own business to attend to. Just as they were about to part ways, Yuta was the first to kneel and beg Ukyo to take him as his apprentice.

When Ukyo asked why he wanted to become his student, Yuta lifted his face and said, "I want to protect my sister so no one will bully her again, and I want to make sure no one else in the world becomes an orphan like me." His face was filled with resolve, and his eyes were firm.

Ye Wuji sighed inwardly. If only there had been as many orphans in his previous life as there were in this world. At least then, they might have had some kind of goal in life. Just then, Ye Wuji thought of Naruto Uzumaki. Only after coming to this world could he understand how precious Naruto's personality was. Since arriving here, Ye Wuji had sometimes wondered if things might have been different in his previous life. Because of his hair, people had shunned him, and because they kept their distance, he had distanced himself from them, too. If he'd had a personality like Naruto's, maybe things would've been different. They definitely would've been different.

The orphans in this world all seemed to wish for a world without war, a peaceful world. The orphans in his previous life didn't seem to have any ideals. They just lived one day at a time.

Among those Ye Wuji had met in this Naruto World were Nagato, Yahiko, Konan, and now Yuta. There were also others he'd never met. Even Kabuto, who had started the Fourth Shinobi World War, had ultimately wanted nothing more than to be with his friends from the orphanage.

In his previous life, he'd felt sorry for himself because his hair was white. But in the Naruto World, there were countless people worse off than him. And even in his previous life, plenty of people had it worse. People really were strange. They only reflected on themselves after meeting someone worse off.

For Naruto's sake, he had to make sure he had a better life. And for Naruto to have a better life, he needed to be with his parents. It seemed that no matter what, he had to save the Fourth Hokage and Kushina. Even if he had to trade his own life for theirs. Looking at Yuta's resolute face, Ye Wuji thought to himself, This world needs more people like Naruto.

Hearing Yuta's answer, Ukyo fell silent for a moment before saying, "I'll be staying somewhere for two years. I'll give you two years to prove yourself. We'll discuss this again in two years." After that, Ukyo returned to the carriage.

Yuta looked at his older sister in confusion. He was still young and couldn't understand what Ukyo meant, but his sister did. She hurriedly said, "Thank you. Thank you." Then, smiling, she led Yuta into the carriage.

Ye Wuji stood to one side, unsure what to do. Just then, Rei climbed down and patted him on the head. "What are you standing around for? Get in. We're leaving."

Ye Wuji was confused. Even with the mind of an adult, he couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on.

"All right, Rei. Stop teasing Ye," Rei's mother said. Then she turned to Ye Wuji. "Ye, you're so young. We can't just leave you here; we'd worry about you. Come with us. You'll have food and clothes, at the very least. We'll talk about what you'll do when you're older."

Only then did Ye Wuji understand. They thought he was too young. After all, how old could a six-year-old child be? It would be very difficult for him to survive on his own. They knew he'd practiced some chakra, but they hadn't thought much of it. There were plenty of orphans like him during wartime. Most learned about cultivation from corpses or from what other people told them, but almost none of them ever made anything of it.

"Wow, it's so beautiful! What an amazing sight!" A week later, Ye Wuji stood on a hillside, looking at the view before him and exclaiming in wonder.

"What would a little brat like you know about beauty?" Rei tapped Ye Wuji on the head, then took a few deep breaths of the fresh air outside and said, intoxicated, "It's so beautiful!"

"Why are you allowed to say that, but I can't?" Ye Wuji asked, at a loss for words.

"Hahahaha!" The others all laughed happily.

"Don't you know I'm the one who calls the shots?" Rei tapped Ye Wuji on the head again.

The others didn't pay any attention to their bickering. After finishing his meal, Yuta happily began training. He held a wooden sword and swung it over and over.

Ye Wuji glanced at him, then turned back to the scenery in front of him. After spending a few days with them, Ye Wuji had given up on samurai training. Samurai started by training with swords; everything revolved around the sword. Although samurai drew their power from chakra, Ye Wuji still didn't really understand how they worked. At this stage, they didn't train their chakra, focusing instead on conditioning their bodies and practicing swordsmanship. That reminded Ye Wuji of Zoro from One Piece. Zoro was also a master swordsman who used three swords, but if he didn't have a weapon in his hands, he could only take a beating.

Besides, Ye Wuji was short on time. He couldn't afford to start training in another martial arts style. It seemed he would have to stick to the shinobi path.

As for the scenery before him, it stretched into the distance, where dozens of enormous waterfalls cascaded down. The green of the forest framed them beautifully. Ye Wuji didn't know how to describe what he was seeing.

This was a world of waterfalls. Wherever he looked, another waterfall appeared before him. The largest one in the distance was especially impressive. From here, Ye Wuji couldn't see its source, only the water pouring down. When he looked toward the top, a veil of mist hid its source from view.

"This is our destination," Rei told Ye Wuji.

"Where is this?" Ye Wuji looked at everything in front of him, still unable to believe it. He didn't remember any place this unusual in Naruto. If there really was one, he would have known about it.

"This is the Land of Waterfalls. My father was invited here to attend the new Daimyo's enthronement ceremony. The Daimyo's son seems to want to learn swordsmanship from my father, too," Rei said with a smile.

"Is that so?" Ye Wuji nodded, wondering what kind of place the Land of Waterfalls was. Looking at this scenery, it was hard to believe he'd never heard of it, yet Naruto hadn't mentioned it. How strange. After he failed to remember anything else, Ye Wuji stopped trying. If samurai this powerful existed, it wasn't surprising for there to be other things he hadn't heard of. After all, Naruto mainly focused on Konoha. It was only natural that it didn't cover the entire world.

Ye Wuji had mainly watched the Naruto anime. He'd only looked at the manga from time to time, and he'd learned about its details from the Naruto message boards.

He'd also learned about Black Zetsu and Kaguya Otsutsuki from those message boards, but he didn't know the specifics. Ye Wuji wasn't fond of reading manga; he couldn't get used to the panel layout. If he'd known he was going to be transported to this world, he should've finished reading the manga. And because of the long gaps between episodes of the Naruto anime, he only remembered the main plot points.

"Let's go," Ukyo said when everyone had rested.

They rode in the carriage toward the largest waterfall. After riding in a carriage for the past few days, Ye Wuji finally understood why the shinobi in Naruto didn't take carriages or ride horses. The roads were just too rough. The roads in towns might be decent, but those in the wilderness were completely unsuitable for long-distance travel by horse. The terrain was irregular and hard to navigate. For ordinary people, riding a horse or taking a carriage was fine, but for shinobi, it could waste a great deal of time. Shinobi had a strong sense of time, especially when they were on a mission.

The carriage didn't jostle too much when it moved slowly, but it was a different story once it picked up speed. Ye Wuji sometimes wondered why they didn't use all those Earth Release shinobi to build roads. It would take manpower and chakra, and might be overkill, but wouldn't it make things so much more convenient once the roads were built?

Of course, carriages weren't actually that slow. The horses here were much sturdier than the ones on Earth. Still, the difference was obvious: shinobi were much faster.

Ye Wuji didn't understand why until he saw an enormous bear appear by the roadside. Roads here were often damaged. The damage wasn't always extensive, but they couldn't call an Earth Release shinobi to fix the road every time. The bear Ye Wuji encountered could use Earth Release. Perhaps the bear itself didn't understand the technique, but it had wrecked nearly ten meters of road in a single move. In the end, the bear wound up in the bellies of the people in the carriage. The damaged road was only roughly leveled afterward.

The biggest problem was the size of this world—or perhaps that there were too few people. It had far fewer people than Earth. Back on Earth, it was already rare to see large forests, and large animals could only be found in zoos or in the wilderness.

But in the Naruto World, this was all commonplace. Forests were everywhere, both large and small, and there was no shortage of wild animals. Wolves, tigers, wild boars, even dogs were all over the place. The roads between towns were much easier to travel because people were concentrated in the towns.

But once you got far from civilization, you were in the domain of wild beasts. No matter how well you built a road, you couldn't stop animals from damaging it, and you couldn't keep people stationed there to protect it.

Of course, ordinary wild animals were manageable. Summoning beasts were another matter. Summoning beasts were wild animals with chakra, and they had always been favorites of shinobi. After all, shinobi usually got their summoning beasts from among them. Some were strong, some were weak. The weaker ones were easy enough to handle; a few people could take care of them. But the powerful ones were a different story. The strongest summoning beasts were at least as strong as an elite jonin, and there might even be some at Kage Level.

The Nine Tailed Beasts weren't the only powerful creatures in this world. Some of the Nine Tailed Beasts were strong, but others were weak, and the weaker ones might not even be able to beat powerful summoning beasts. The Tailed Beasts' greatest trait was that they couldn't die for good. You could only seal them. Even if you painstakingly killed a Tailed Beast, it would be reborn after some time. That was the difference between Tailed Beasts and wild summoning beasts.

One problem with wild summoning beasts was that you never knew when one might appear. Even if you captured every wild summoning beast in a forest, you could never tell when an ordinary animal might turn into one.

This was also why it was so difficult to build roads in Naruto. Now Ye Wuji understood why the various countries valued shinobi's reputations. Just like in Naruto, the stronger your shinobi village was, the more missions you'd receive, and the more money you'd make. If the shinobi of your country weren't strong, you'd receive fewer missions, earn less money, and have a harder time developing.

During the past few days in the carriage, Ye Wuji had seen some other caravans. Almost all of them had hired shinobi for protection. Some had samurai, and some had a mix of samurai and shinobi.

From his observations over the past few days, Ye Wuji also understood why Naruto and the others had so many D-rank missions. There was a need for them, and where there was a need, there was a market.

Most merchant caravans hired shinobi for protection because the roads weren't safe. Even when there was a road, you never knew when a wild animal might appear. Without anyone to protect them, ordinary people might be able to deal with ordinary beasts, but chakra made the animals in the Naruto World stronger and faster. Ordinary people who hadn't trained had no chance against them.

This also explained why the major countries all had Ninja Academies and trained so many low-level shinobi. It wasn't just to identify those who could advance to higher ranks. Even low-level missions required a great number of low-level shinobi. The reason they used shinobi rather than samurai was clear from the difference between them. Samurai had their own code, while shinobi only needed to complete the mission and rarely interfered in their clients' personal affairs.

Shinobi in the Naruto World were more like professionals, like elite workers on Earth. They never had to worry about finding work. That was what shinobi were like: they could work as bodyguards, assassins, or construction workers. They could even be cooks, and they'd get the job done faster and better than anyone else. Of course, the profession also had a high mortality rate.

Not everyone knew what shinobi were, either. Although this was a world of shinobi, information traveled too slowly. Many people might have heard the word, but they didn't know what shinobi actually did.

When Ye Wuji first started traveling with them, he wanted to hide the fact that he was training in chakra. But later, when he saw that everyone in Ukyo's family practiced chakra, and saw how casually they reacted to the subject of shinobi, without any hostility, Ye Wuji felt a little embarrassed about having assumed that samurai and shinobi were enemies.

As the carriage went on, they encountered more and more people. Ye Wuji realized that the Land of Waterfalls was quite interesting. There was basically a town beside every waterfall they passed, and each town had a river running through it from the waterfalls, like a moat. The scenery was beautiful.

"This country is really interesting," Ye Wuji said as he looked out the window.

"That's right. This country is quite nice. It's been peaceful for a long time. Even when there's fighting elsewhere, this place is rarely affected." This time it was Rei's mother, Lady Kei, who replied.

"But there are a lot of mountains here, and the roads are dangerous. Otherwise, it would be a good place for people fleeing the war to settle. Ye, if you stay here, you won't have to worry about the wars outside."

"Why isn't there any war here?" Tomomi, Yuta's older sister, asked.

"It's simple. You've seen the scenery here. Aside from the waterfalls, there are mountains, and not much else. It's also in a remote location and has no special resources. Although it's at the junction of four countries, one of them is the Land of Iron, which is permanently neutral. So the major powers aren't interested in this place, and there isn't much fighting. Life here is a little difficult, but at least there's plenty of seafood, so people can get by." Lady Kei explained.

"Mom forgot one thing: this country also has a shinobi village. It's small, but it's still quite strong. People have tried to take this place before, but it wasn't worth the trouble, so they eventually gave up. After a while, no one wanted to make a move on it anymore," Rei added with a smile.

"The Land of Waterfalls? Then this must be Takigakure," Ye Wuji said. He thought to himself, I've heard of Takigakure, haven't I? Why can't I remember?

Ye Wuji thought about it for a long time but couldn't remember. Still, since the name sounded familiar, even if only faintly, it must be a country. It was probably a weak one. There were many small countries in Naruto. But even if a country was weak, there was a reason it existed. If someone tried to target one of these countries, the major powers wouldn't be pleased. In that way, the two worlds were quite similar.

Three days later, the carriage had just passed through a small village and hadn't gone far when it entered a mountain valley. Ye Wuji couldn't see the largest waterfall anymore, so he had no idea how far away it was.

While Ye Wuji was lost in thought, the carriage suddenly stopped. Then someone outside said respectfully, "Are you Lord Ukyo?"

Hearing the voice outside, Kei smiled at Ukyo. "Looks like someone's gotten impatient waiting for you. They even sent someone to meet you. Look at you, dawdling so long on the way."

"That guy's still as impatient as ever. Didn't I say I was almost there? And he still sent someone to meet me." Ukyo lifted the flap at the front of the carriage. Ye Wuji could now see what the people outside looked like.

Six people stood outside. The one at the front wore a formal brocade robe and looked like an official. A samurai stood behind him, and at the very back were four shinobi dressed in shinobi garb. As soon as Ye Wuji saw the shinobi, he looked straight at their foreheads, ready to check their Forehead Protectors and see what the shinobi from this village wore.

After all, most people wore their Forehead Protectors on their heads. Only a few wore them elsewhere. Temari wore hers around her neck, and Hinata might have done the same. Ye Wuji couldn't quite remember.

The symbol on the Forehead Protector looked like an arrow, but only the rear half of the arrow was there; the front part was missing. The symbol looked familiar. He felt like he'd seen it before.

"Ah, I remember now! Isn't this the shinobi village from that movie? I remember it was supposed to be Hidden Waterfall Village. Why is it called Takigakure?" Ye Wuji finally remembered what kind of shinobi village this was.