Bai Sui had performed several divinations using his own flesh and blood as a guide. In the end, they all pointed to the Land of Fire.
In other words, his blood relatives were very likely somewhere in the Land of Fire.
That made sense. The Uzumaki Clan lived in the Land of Fire, and Bai Sui's blood relatives were ordinary people. Even if they had fled, they wouldn't have gone very far. They were probably still somewhere in the Land of Fire.
But even with a general direction, Bai Sui still couldn't find them. The Land of Fire was simply too vast.
Besides, in his previous life, Bai Sui had focused more on studying Ziwei Doushu, which was useless in this world. As for other forms of divination, he only knew Small Liuyao and Coin Divination, and wasn't proficient in either. He only had a rough understanding of them.
Although Bai Sui's keen instincts now complemented the two methods and made his readings more precise, he often still couldn't interpret them fully.
At that moment, Bai Sui was wandering through the woods, guided by Coin Divination. With no destination in mind, he simply let his body lead the way, trusting his instincts.
Before long, Bai Sui noticed something unusual about the area.
It wasn't that there was anything strange about the forest itself. Rather, the people in it were extraordinary.
The trees blocked Bai Sui's direct view of what was happening, but his spiritual sense had already transmitted what he saw into his mind.
A winding river ran through the dense forest. Two boys, around ten years old, stood on its bank, skipping stones across the water.
Seeing the conspicuous spiky hair and mushroom-shaped haircut, along with this scene that was practically iconic, Bai Sui knew what he had stumbled upon.
To be honest, he had watched this scene many times while revisiting his memories of his previous life. But seeing it unfold right before his eyes made him feel as if he could barely keep his composure.
After all, they were the first familiar faces he had seen since arriving in this world—even if they were only characters from an anime.
Bai Sui watched the two interact through his spiritual sense without rashly approaching them.
After all, two little kids were bonding. What business did an adult have barging in?
Having made this discovery, Bai Sui chose a place nearby to settle for a while and watched them from afar.
Day after day passed, and the two grew closer. They never explicitly revealed their surnames to each other, but through their interactions, they had more or less figured them out.
Meanwhile, Bai Sui, who had been observing everything from a distance, was deeply troubled. He had a chance to put an end to the first person in the Uchiha Clan to awaken the Mangekyo Sharingan.
As far as Bai Sui knew, the Uchiha Clan hadn't even had the concept of the Mangekyo before this. The Three Tomoe had been the limit.
If he could eliminate Madara now, before the Mangekyo ever appeared, then there would be no Rinnegan, and nothing involving Otsutsuki Kaguya.
Looking back over the past thousand years, without the Rinnegan, even Black Zetsu's scheming across the Ninja World had come to nothing, hadn't it?
And yet the person before Bai Sui was only a boy in his early teens. Even if he would one day wreak havoc across the Ninja World and cause countless deaths, Madara was still just a child right now.
Besides, in Bai Sui's view, Madara had mostly been manipulated. If Black Zetsu hadn't maliciously led him astray, he wouldn't have taken that path.
And over the years of traveling, Bai Sui had also drawn his own conclusions, combining what he had learned in his previous life with his experiences here.
Every child developed a different personality and way of thinking, shaped by their family, culture, and upbringing.
As they grew up, everyone had to go through a process of moral socialization: learning society's mainstream values and moral standards, internalizing them, and becoming an adult who could meet society's expectations.
The family was the first place where people underwent moral socialization. A lack of love, absent parents, and domestic violence all created fertile ground for antisocial individuals, warmongers, and others of their ilk.
Such people often displayed arrogance and an unhealthy personality.
This was often caused by stunted psychological development and a lack of healthy family values during childhood.
They tended to be narrow-minded and paranoid, with severe violent tendencies. They wanted to use force to solve every problem...
The family Bai Sui had grown up in during his previous life had its share of problems, but they were nowhere near as severe as those in the Ninja World.
And it wasn't just isolated cases. Bai Sui felt that most families throughout the entire Ninja World were troubled.
Of course, that might have been a difference in perspective. But the fact remained that these people were savage, cold-blooded, and cruel, eager for violence and war, with no regard for life or kindness.
While traveling, Bai Sui had seen quite a few ninja and samurai cheerfully plunge their weapons into swaddled infants.
At first, Bai Sui thought such inhuman acts were isolated incidents, and he had been furious. But the farther he traveled, the more horrors he witnessed.
Scenes like that never made Bai Sui physically ill, but they did shake him deeply.
At first, Bai Sui had tried to change the way these people thought. After enough attempts, he realized it was a fool's errand.
He might have been able to change a handful of people through his own efforts, but he couldn't reach the rest.
Besides, he didn't want to give those who had already stained their hands with innocent blood a chance to change. They had committed their crimes, and that was that.
As a result, Bai Sui had made quite a name for himself over the years. More than a few ninja clans and other factions had fallen to him.
But all that killing didn't solve anything. At most, it let Bai Sui vent the frustration pent up in his chest. The age was simply like this: if a village wasn't slaughtered by ninja today, bandits would plunder it tomorrow.
Toward the end of his travels, Bai Sui had even started journeying through uninhabited places, just so he wouldn't have to see any more of it.
Bai Sui understood that the war was nearing its end. It wasn't because he had seen Senju Hashirama and Madara, but because the whole Ninja World had been ravaged by war until nine out of ten households stood empty.
The war would soon contract as manpower ran short. Looking back, Bai Sui thought that was part of the reason Hashirama and Madara had managed to establish a village.