Given the strength Bai Sui had displayed at Hongan-ji Temple, the Feudal Lord had wanted him to stay, but didn't dare force him.
When he realized Bai Sui had made up his mind to leave, he didn't dare stop him. He even gave Bai Sui a generous sum of money for the journey.
The reason Bai Sui had stayed in the capital of the Land of Iron for three months was that he had discovered the Exchange Shop.
During those three months, Bai Sui had learned nearly everything there was to know about the Exchange Shop.
It had originally been founded by the Feudal Lords of various countries, and later joined by other nobles and factions. At first, it had been an organization devoted to studying ninjas and chakra.
Over time, it had developed into the Exchange Shop as it was now. The Feudal Lords had gone from hunting ninjas themselves to paying ninjas to fight one another.
To keep ninjas from discovering the Exchange Shop's true purpose, they had also posted bounties on targets who weren't ninjas.
Having learned what he wanted to know, Bai Sui set off north and arrived in the Land of Frost.
Unlike the Land of Iron, which had snow for three seasons of the year, the Land of Frost was almost always in winter. Temperatures rose above freezing only briefly.
After taking in the local customs, Bai Sui found a small boat and moved everything from his carriage onto it. Then he sailed across the sea to the Land of Earth.
After that, he traveled through the Land of Snow, the Land of Demons, the Land of Ghosts, the Land of Bears, the Land of Wind, the Land of Rivers, the Land of Honey, the Land of Tea, the Land of the Sea, the Land of Rainbows, the Land of Water, the Land of Lightning, the Land of the Moon, and the Land of Hot Springs.
He had made a full counterclockwise circuit of the Ninja World before finally reaching the Land of Fire.
By then, Bai Sui was over forty, yet his face still looked sixteen.
Of course, looking around sixteen was relative to this world. Everyone here aged quickly unless they were nobles spared from manual labor, so in truth, Bai Sui's appearance was closer to that of a man in his twenties.
Bai Sui was strolling alone through the forest, without any luggage.
It wasn't that he had spent all his money during his travels. Rather, he had finally managed to develop some useful runes.
Since they resembled swimming dragons, Bai Sui called them Dragon Talismans.
After years of research, Bai Sui had discovered that Dragon Talismans weren't flat. They were three-dimensional, which was why he had kept failing before.
That didn't mean they were sculptures that couldn't be written on a flat surface.
It meant they had an extra dimension. They weren't ordinary two-dimensional characters; energy was another dimension of their structure.
In other words, they could still be written on paper like ordinary writing, but doing so was much harder. To make them work, he had to maintain the flow of energy as he wrote. Bai Sui had only begun to understand how, and still hadn't succeeded.
They simply couldn't be written directly on paper, but there were other ways to use them.
For example, this jade pendant hanging at Bai Sui's waist contained Dragon Talismans he had formed. They had created a space of roughly twenty-seven cubic meters inside it, the limit of what he could manage for now.
Some of the Dragon Talismans stabilized the space, some drew in qi, and others stored it.
As long as the pendant wasn't damaged, it could be left in nature and continue working indefinitely. The space inside would only vanish when the Dragon Talismans gradually broke down over time.
Bai Sui didn't yet know how long that would take. He had been using the jade pendant at his waist for several years, and it showed no sign of damage.
The space was now packed with the things Bai Sui had collected over the years, mainly books, jade, Chakra Metal, and gold. He had no interest in antiques, paintings, or calligraphy.
So he had traded the valuable things he'd collected before for books and money. Later, when he had accumulated so much money that there was barely room for it all, he bought a great deal of Chakra Metal.
As for why Bai Sui didn't make more Storage Jade Pendants, he had discovered that multiple pendants interfered with one another when kept in the same area.
The longer they were kept together, and the more there were, the stronger the interference became.
In Bai Sui's tests, two Storage Jade Pendants kept close together would cause one of them to break completely within two months at most, while the other would also suffer some damage.
To avoid unnecessary losses, it was best for Bai Sui to use just one Storage Jade Pendant for now.
Of course, that pendant wasn't the only thing Bai Sui had made. He had also fashioned a string of jade beads, mainly to store qi of different natures for his convenience.
While searching for materials to contain Dragon Talismans, Bai Sui had found that jade and Chakra Metal worked extremely well, and that higher-quality materials worked better still.
So Bai Sui had abandoned his original sword, which was now stored in the Storage Jade Pendant.
He had collected plenty of Chakra Metal, so he had extravagantly forged a sword made entirely of it and carved a complete set of Dragon Talismans into it.
The most Bai Sui could manage was to construct nine Dragon Talismans at once. Any more and their structure would collapse.
With nine Dragon Talismans working together, the sword had become a treasure. Not only could it absorb qi, it could also store a considerable amount. When qi was inside it, the sword could fly and endure damage.
In other words, even outside Bai Sui's Divine Sense Domain, the sword could still fly through the air, greatly increasing the reach and flexibility of his attacks.
A faint glow surrounded it. The glow was not to be underestimated: it made the sword sharper and strengthened its defense. It wouldn't fade until its qi ran out, and while the glow remained, the blade within would not be harmed.
Bai Sui had even tested the sword by putting it in molten rock. The glow had held out for more than two minutes without going out.
The qi nourishing the sword also made it tougher, though Bai Sui had never properly tested how much tougher it had become, since the glow protected it.
The Land of Fire was more or less the last stop on Bai Sui's travels. There were still some countries and unclaimed lands in the Ninja World he hadn't visited, but he had experienced most of its regions, fulfilling a wish he had long held.
Now Bai Sui had one wish left: to find his blood relatives and help them as best he could.