The desert, lone smoke, setting sun...
In the vast, lofty, boundless desert, towering buildings stood at its far end, as though preserving that city's prosperity forever.
"So this is Rōran? I'd heard a little about it before, but I never expected it to be this prosperous. Is something wrong, Minato-sensei?"
Gazing into the distance and taking in the exotic scenery, Hua Yue turned his head and asked loudly.
"Something is wrong. Rōran is merely a small country near the Land of Wind. How could it have built such a grand cluster of buildings? Leaving aside the financial resources required, the population alone wouldn't warrant something on this scale."
"Unless someone within Rōran is using these massive buildings to conceal some unspeakable secret. So it really is the Dragon Vein?"
Hua Yue nodded slightly in agreement. Looking down at the distant city-state, he fell into thought.
The Dragon Vein generally referred to chakra flowing through the earth, but Rōran's Dragon Vein was more like an enormous crystalline mass of chakra flowing beneath the ground.
The God Tree needed a thousand years of absorption to form a single chakra fruit. For a Dragon Vein of this scale to exist within this azure planet was truly extraordinary.
"We'll begin the infiltration mission now. Contact each other by radio every ten minutes. Our mission is to protect Sara, the current Queen of Roran, and investigate the Dragon Vein."
"Uchiha Hanazuki, I'll leave the covert support and protection work to you. Dismissed."
As the figures scattered, the Anbu squad led by Namikaze Minato vanished at high speed. Beneath the Three-Eyed Demon Fox Mask, a brilliant smile appeared on Hua Yue's elegant, handsome face.
"Summoning Jutsu: Nine Mask Svāhā: Grim Reaper!"
Unlike before, only the formation marked with the character for "three," representing the Grim Reaper,