His mental energy recovered quickly under the nourishment of his Sage Body. At midnight the next day, while Konoha slept, Ling entrusted the sleeping Naruto to Kimimaro and instructed him solemnly, "Guard this place. If anything unusual happens, protecting Naruto is your top priority. Use your own judgment if necessary."
Kimimaro dropped to one knee, his green eyes gleaming with absolute loyalty and a murderous resolve. "I will obey your command. No one will harm him unless they step over my corpse."
Ling nodded and said no more. He went to a corner of the room and formed Hand Seals, sensing the coordinates in the system that marked a secret vault in a noble's estate in the eastern Land of Fire. Chakra surged as he stirred the laws of space.
"Flying Thunder God Technique!"
The familiar sensation of being ripped away swept over him. The next moment, he found himself in a space that was both dark and luxurious. The air was thick with sandalwood, the musty smell of old parchment, and the cold tang of metal. Moonlight filtered through a narrow window high above, barely outlining stacks of wooden crates, racks of scrolls, and scattered gold and silver vessels.
This was the target vault.
Ling didn't act immediately. Instead, he quietly spread his chakra perception like a web. The heightened senses granted by his Sage Body let him instantly detect hidden tripwires, faint fluctuations in the barrier, and two steady breaths outside the door. The guards were a pair of samurai around Chunin level.
He moved like a ghost, silently opening his Sharingan in the darkness. A single Tomoe turned slowly in his eye, revealing the chakra flow through every mechanism and the barrier's nodes with perfect clarity. He nimbly avoided every trap without triggering a single alarm.
First, he approached the rack that gave off a peculiar chakra signature. In an inconspicuous corner, he found his target: a scroll wrapped in black silk and inscribed with intricate genjutsu runes.
[Genjutsu: Haze Mirage Scroll]: Once activated, it can create a wide area of persistent dense fog and visual distortions, disrupting perception and concealing movement.
Exactly what he needed! Ling carefully tucked it away.
Next, he went to the heavy wooden crates. When he opened them, gold coins and jewels gleamed enticingly in the faint light. Ling had no time to count them. He channeled his chakra and used the basic spatial storage technique granted by the system—a further application of his anonymous mission reward—to quickly collect the most valuable and portable gold bars and gems. He filled three sealing scrolls, taking nearly a third of the vault's liquid assets.
The entire process went smoothly and took less than five minutes.
Just as he was about to use the Flying Thunder God Technique to leave, his extraordinary Sage Body senses caught an extremely faint but deeply malicious spatial fluctuation, like ripples on the surface of water!
It wasn't aimed at him. Rather... it was as if another pair of eyes had briefly "glanced" at the vault from a higher-dimensional plane—or, more precisely, at the spatial anomaly in this area!
Ling's hair stood on end! Was it Uchiha Obito? Or Black Zetsu? Could they really detect such a subtle spatial fluctuation?
He didn't dare hesitate for a moment and immediately activated the Flying Thunder God Technique.
"Whoosh—"
Space warped, and his figure vanished from the vault.
Almost as soon as he disappeared, the shadows in the corner of the vault began to swirl like a vortex. A figure wearing a spiral mask, with only one scarlet Sharingan exposed, quietly emerged. He wore the Akatsuki's black cloak with red clouds. It was Uchiha Obito.
Obito looked at the treasure chest with a corner emptied and the scroll rack that had clearly been tampered with. Beneath his mask, he let out a low, inscrutable chuckle.
"The Flying Thunder God Technique... Hmph. There's someone else who can use it even after Namikaze Minato's death. And that feeling..." His Mangekyō Sharingan narrowed slightly as he sensed the extremely faint traces of chakra lingering in the air. "Mixed with that nauseating Tailed Beast stench, and a hint of... Uchiha? Interesting."
He had been following scraps of intelligence provided by Black Zetsu about a "mysterious person suspected of having space-time abilities," making random sweeps through the Land of Fire. He hadn't expected to actually find a trace. His target had fled quickly, but he had at least confirmed one thing: besides him and the dead Fourth Hokage, there was a third shinobi in the Shinobi World who could use Space-Time Ninjutsu. And this person seemed to have some kind of purpose in Konoha—otherwise, he wouldn't have stolen from a relative of the Land of Fire's daimyo.
"Looks like I'll have to make a slight adjustment to the plan." Obito's figure slowly sank into the Kamui Dimension, his voice tinged with amusement. "The waters around Konoha are murkier than I thought. Perhaps... while I'm dealing with the Uchiha, I can flush out this little fish too."
The small Konoha courtyard, inside the room.
The spatial fluctuation died down, and Ling appeared, fine beads of sweat on his forehead. It wasn't from the strain of the mission, but from the gaze he had sensed on a higher plane at the last moment.
"Lord Ling?" Kimimaro immediately noticed something was wrong.
"I'm fine." Ling waved a hand and took a deep breath, suppressing his unease. "I got what we came for. But we may have attracted the attention of certain beings."
He briefly described the malicious spatial fluctuation.
Kimimaro's eyes narrowed. A bone spike emerged a few inches from his shoulder blade before quickly retracting. "Should I eliminate the threat?"
"No, not for now. And we wouldn't be able to eliminate it anyway." Ling calmed down and analyzed the situation. "They've only noticed us; they may not have identified us. Our top priority is to carry out the Uchiha operation as soon as possible. Once the plan succeeds, we'll have enough power to deal with any complications."
He carefully stowed away the genjutsu scroll and the wealth he had acquired. With these, the chances of the plan succeeding on the night of the Uchiha massacre would improve considerably.
However, he knew that the real challenge had only just begun. The enemy lurking behind the scenes had already turned its scrutinizing gaze toward him. The butterfly that had accidentally entered the chessboard had drawn the attention of the storm itself with the beat of its wings.
The first unfurling of Dawn Wind's wings had brought it within a hair's breadth of the deepest darkness in the Shinobi World, without a sound.
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