Lost

From the moment he left Minato, Ye Wuji had been training as he made his way toward the Land of Rivers. It had been more than half a month since he left Minato, and he had now been in the Naruto World for a month. He had made astonishing progress during that time. His strength might not amount to much compared with the shinobi of the Shinobi World, but compared with his former self, Ye Wuji felt that if he returned to Earth now, he would be a bona fide superhuman.

Over the past half month, Ye Wuji had learned to walk about five meters up a tree from its base. He could even walk on water now, though he couldn't stay up for even a minute before falling in.

To other people, this was a terrible result. Even Naruto, whose chakra control was so poor, seemed to have needed only a day to climb from the base of a tree to its crown. Trees in the Naruto World were generally over ten meters tall, and the higher you climbed, the finer your chakra control had to be. The higher up you went, the less weight the tree could bear. At the crown, there were only leaves and the thinnest branches. You had to control the chakra beneath your feet precisely while also using it to lighten your weight, or the crown couldn't support you.

Ye Wuji had gradually figured all of this out over the past few days. At first, he practiced at the base of a tree. Later, hoping to save himself some effort, he jumped straight into the tree and climbed close to the crown before trying to stick to it with his feet. Who knew that it would be an entirely different matter from climbing lower down? Fortunately, Ye Wuji's reflexes were decent now, and he hadn't been badly hurt when he fell.

Ye Wuji was all on his own. He couldn't risk training in a way that might get him injured. Naruto and Sasuke trained so hard because Kakashi was there to look after them. Besides, just look at who they were: one had the Nine-Tails inside him and an incredible ability to recover, while the other was the direct heir of the prestigious Uchiha Clan. Who knew what secret techniques he might have learned growing up to strengthen his body?

Ye Wuji had nothing. He was alone in the wilderness. If he got hurt, no one else would have to lift a finger; he could simply wait there until he died.

Still, compared to what he had been capable of before, Ye Wuji could now jump three or four meters into the air and walk on water. Back on Earth, even martial arts on television would have called that mastery of the lightness skill. He couldn't walk without leaving a trace in the snow, but he could certainly skim over water.

But that only showed that the power of this world surpassed that of the martial arts worlds he had known in his previous life. After all, what Chinese person didn't dream of being a martial artist? Even under the difficult circumstances on Earth, there were still people who kept practicing martial arts that didn't seem particularly useful and could, at best, help them stay fit.

So when Ye Wuji realized he could jump three or four meters high and leap from one tree to another, he couldn't have been happier. He could finally scale walls and vault over rooftops.

Unfortunately, Ye Wuji got carried away. Thinking only about how he could finally scale walls and vault over rooftops, he kept leaping around the forest. It could count as practice, and he knew he shouldn't stray from his route, so he kept circling around the same area. But then he spotted an enormous white rabbit. Thinking about how he'd been living on dry rations and the occasional harmless fruit he picked in the forest, his appetite suddenly got the better of him. He decided to catch the rabbit and roast it for a change.

Besides, Ye Wuji thought he'd made enough progress by now that catching a rabbit should be no problem. Back on Earth, there had been stories of people managing to catch them, hadn't there?

Unfortunately, Ye Wuji had completely forgotten that he was in the Naruto World. He chased the rabbit until dark and still couldn't catch it. By the time he came to his senses, he was deep in the forest, and the rabbit had vanished from sight as soon as he stopped.

Ye Wuji wandered around the forest for seven or eight days before he finally spotted a road below another mountain from the top of a hill. But when he compared it with the map Minato had drawn, nothing looked familiar.

By then, Ye Wuji knew he was completely lost. This wasn't like Earth, where you could use GPS. If an ordinary person got lost in the forest here, they might as well wait to die. Who knew how long it would take to find a way out? And the wild animals in the forest were more than an ordinary person could handle.

Ye Wuji was lucky to make it out at all. By then, his clothes were nearly in tatters, torn by the forest's wild animals. Most of them had ended up in his stomach, but they'd left plenty of scratches on him too. His right shoulder was in the worst shape; a bird that looked like an eagle had clawed him there. He had managed to wound its talons, but his shoulder had still been scratched. Worse, the dry rations Minato had prepared for him had been lost during his fight with the bird. Fortunately, the bird seemed to decide Ye Wuji was too much trouble and gave up attacking him.

After that, Ye Wuji walked with extreme caution. Luckily, he didn't run into any more dangerous beasts, and he eventually made it out of the forest.

Ye Wuji had no idea where he was. His only hope of finding out was to reach a place where people lived, so he could only head for the road. Even at his current pace, it took him about half a day to reach it.

Ye Wuji stood in the middle of the road and looked both ways, unable to decide which direction to take. He had no idea which way would bring him closer to a village or town.

In the end, with no other option, Ye Wuji decided to leave it to fate. He took a silver coin from his pocket and tossed it into the air. He was facing one direction. If the coin landed heads-up, he would go that way; if it landed tails-up, he would go the other way.

Fortunately, Ye Wuji had valued money highly in his previous life. After all, he had been an orphan, and every bit of money he had was earned by himself. He had also kept it very carefully, counting it whenever he had free time to see how much he had saved, decide what to buy, or figure out how long it would take to afford something he wanted.

To be honest, Ye Wuji had never lost a single coin by the time he turned twenty in his previous life. Even here, he hadn't shaken the habit. Minato had given him nearly thirty thousand ryo before leaving. Ye Wuji had counted the larger bills and the smaller coins several times. Money in the Naruto World was much like money on Earth: there were both bills and coins, though the coins here were worth much more, while the bills were generally for larger sums. The smallest bill was worth five thousand ryo, so coins were used most often. Their purchasing power was roughly equivalent to the Chinese yuan before Ye Wuji had crossed over. The coins here were silver. As for why Minato had given Ye Wuji so much money, it had actually belonged to the Sannin. Minato might have been powerful, but he wouldn't carry that much money around with him.

At the time, Ye Wuji knew practically nothing about the currency in the Naruto World. Out of habit, he thought of Japanese yen and didn't realize the money he had was actually quite a large sum. If anyone had known how much money Ye Wuji had on him—

Ye Wuji was in luck: the coin landed heads-up, so he didn't need to turn around. After picking it up, he set off, keeping up his training as he walked. By now, he had more or less mastered the Three Basic Techniques. He had spent this stretch of time practicing them: the Clone Technique, the Substitution Technique, and the Transformation Technique.

The Clone Technique created an illusory duplicate, not a Shadow Clone. Shadow Clone Technique created a solid clone that could attack and use ninjutsu and ninja tools. The Clone Technique, by contrast, created a clone that looked real but had no ability to attack; it vanished into smoke at the slightest touch. It was the lowest-level ninjutsu, but used well, it could be no less effective than an A-rank technique. The key was how you used it.

The Substitution Technique instantly switched your place with an animal or plant to evade an attack. Ye Wuji had spent the most time studying this technique. It could be used not only to evade but also to attack. Kakashi seemed to be especially skilled at it. He did it all the time: use a substitute, then appear behind his target. Ye Wuji was most afraid of dying, so he'd practiced this technique the hardest. But he had noticed a problem. It was easy to use plants and other inanimate objects, but when he tried to use animals as substitutes in the forest, he hadn't succeeded once. Still, the technique's description clearly stated that animals could be used. Later, Ye Wuji remembered the snow rabbit Kakashi had used as a substitute when he first encountered Zabuza Momochi. That rabbit had been trained by shinobi for that very purpose. Ye Wuji wondered whether you had to use an animal that had been trained in advance. He couldn't prove it, but it seemed likely, given that he'd failed with so many different animals along the way while succeeding easily with branches, rocks, and tables.

The Transformation Technique let you change into something else, most commonly another person. It was mainly used to infiltrate, gather information, or escape. Used well, it was very effective, but it seemed that someone much stronger could see through it.

The Three Basic Techniques were fundamental ninjutsu, but all powerful shinobi could use them skillfully. Their effectiveness depended on who used them. In the hands of someone at Kage Level, they could be S-rank techniques; in the hands of a Genin, they were low-level ninjutsu.

There was another technique that Ye Wuji had seen people include among the Three Basic Techniques in his previous life: the Body Flicker Technique.

But Ye Wuji later learned from Minato that there was no unified standard for what counted as the Body Flicker Technique. It might not even be a single ninjutsu at all; it depended entirely on the person using it.

Since any technique that could achieve instantaneous movement was called the Body Flicker Technique, it could be divided into two types. One used Taijutsu, relying purely on speed to move at high velocity; the other used Space-Time Ninjutsu to jump directly from one place to another.

In other words, there was no single method for training the Body Flicker Technique. It mainly depended on the individual. Many shinobi couldn't use the Body Flicker Technique at all—or, to put it another way, they could use it against shinobi below their level, but not against those above them. That was why some shinobi could escape in battle while others had no choice but to fight to the death: they couldn't get away.

As for which of the two types of Body Flicker Technique was better, that depended on the person using it.