Chapter 17

"Tamaza Ryojin!"

Shimizu suppressed the urge to attack, while Hyozuo picked up Madara and carried him out of the room. Tamaza Ryojin raised both hands above his head, smiling as he calmly explained to Shimizu.

"Don't worry. They went to Ryūchi Cave! Isn't this the result you wanted?"

"If he dies, your entire clan will pay for it!" Shimizu stepped toward Tamaza Ryojin and issued an ultimatum.

"To show my sincerity, I'll stay with your clan for a few more days!" Tamaza Ryojin nodded. Knowing there was no way he could leave the Uchiha Clan right now, he spoke to Shimizu first.

"You're most welcome!"

"Ah...!"

A sharp pain came from Mingye's fingers. Then he felt the floorboards vanish beneath his feet, and his body began to fall. He cried out several times before crashing to the ground.

"Such a young age, yet so steady. You didn't even flinch when you saw me, eh?"

Just as Mingye had gotten to his feet, a sinister voice rang in his ear. The slithering sound of a forked tongue and the constant echoes told him this probably wasn't an open area. The echoes meant it was either an enclosed space or a valley. Mingye couldn't see his surroundings, and he couldn't sense chakra here either, so he had no idea where the other person was speaking from.

"Don't kill him! If this kid dies, Manda, those children from the Wind-Thunder Clan will be in deep trouble!"

A giant serpent with pure black scales lay coiled before Mingye. Its seven- or eight-meter-wide head slowly drew closer, as if it meant to swallow him whole. The tiny snake that had reverse-summoned Mingye appeared at his neck and raised its head to warn the giant serpent. The black serpent gave a surprisingly human frown, its eyes rolling in every direction, before moving closer to Mingye.

"So it's you, Ara! Where did you find such a weirdo? He saw me and didn't even move. It's as if...!"

"He's blind, and you have no chakra signature. How could he sense your body here?" The little snake called Ara chuckled, mocking the black serpent.

The giant serpent called Manda moved close to Mingye, its enormous head looming over him. Its forked tongue flicked out again and again, lightly touching Mingye's face. Once it realized Ara hadn't lied, it impatiently demanded, "Blind! Don't take this the wrong way, Ara, but why have you been bringing every bit of trash here lately? This is Ryūchi Cave. Anyone without the qualifications to be here is nothing but food for me!"

"Your name is Manda?!"

Hearing the little snake call the sinister voice Manda, Mingye grew curious. Orochimaru's summon was Manda, an enormous serpent more than fifty meters long. Mingye could hear the voice but couldn't sense the other's chakra, so he had no way to tell whether this one was the same size as the Manda he'd heard about.

"You've heard of me, have you?" Manda asked, his eyes brimming with pride and disdain. It seemed he was weighing whether eating Mingye would be worth the trouble.

"Come with me. I still have to take him to Granny. You should know this kid is from the Uchiha Clan!"

Seeing Manda's eyes dart about, Ara knew what he was planning. He hurriedly tapped Mingye with his tail and pointed him in the right direction, then turned a cold gaze on Manda and warned him.

"That bunch of ninjutsu fanatics—you brought him here for what? He can't even learn Sage Method. Are you planning to grant him the inheritance?"

At the mention of the Uchiha, Manda looked distinctly pained. They were a pack of mad dogs who bit others and often bit their own as well. They were fiercely united when they stood together, but once a disagreement arose, it was a fight to the death. Not even the bonds between brothers or between parents and children could stop them from killing one another. Thinking it over, Manda abandoned the idea of swallowing Mingye and questioned Ara again.

"Granny will decide!"

"Tch. Call me when you're done. I'll be sharpening my fangs!"

Ara's words were ambiguous, but he was also warning Manda not to target the kid. He raised his body high and slowly slithered toward a nearby cave dwelling. His enormous body made the ground tremble, like a minor earthquake. Mingye stood beside Manda, and his keen senses were startled by the sudden, violent shaking. The other's body had to be enormous to cause tremors just by moving normally. Thinking of the classic battle between Gamabunta and Shukaku in the manga, he wondered if the fight might have been even more spectacular with Manda in Gamabunta's place.

Mingye didn't dwell on the image for long. Ara's tail curled back around his neck, and a faint trace of chakra entered Mingye's senses. Knowing he had to keep his head down while staying under someone else's roof, Mingye quickly followed the direction Ara had indicated, toward the place where the so-called Snake Sage lived.

"Yo!"

As Mingye walked, the smell of tobacco wafted toward him. The pungent stench made his whole body sting, and he couldn't even take another step. Ara slipped away from his body and vanished. As Mingye struggled helplessly, a voice suddenly reached his ears. Then a force pressed down on him, and he fell to his knees.

A scroll bearing the three characters "Ryūchi Cave" rested in the jaws of a great dragon's head. On the stone seat directly below it, a giant serpent with raised white scales wore a woman's hair ornament and the attire of a lady. She held a pipe in her mouth and watched Mingye with an amused expression.

"This kid isn't one of those idiots from the Wind-Thunder Clan you keep as nourishment. Where did you find such a talented one?"

"Granny, this is the person I found in the Uchiha Clan. He awakened his eyes! And he's blind," the little snake Ara replied, slithering over to the White Snake Sage.

"Blind?!"

The White Snake Sage swung her pipe. A cloud of white smoke enveloped Mingye, lifted him into the air, and dragged him in front of her. Mingye's body was held fast. Suddenly, his wrist stung, and he felt his blood rapidly draining away. Pale-faced, he struggled to speak to the White Snake Sage. "If our clan has offended you in any way, I apologize. But if you really kill me, the Wind-Thunder Clan may no longer be your blood food in the future!"

"I'm never short on blood food. If you're afraid to die, just say so. Threatening me is a joke. What could you possibly threaten me with?"

To the White Snake Sage, Mingye's words were nothing but a joke. As she spoke disdainfully, the blood she had drawn from his body turned black. It swallowed everything around it and rapidly expanded. Milky-white sage chakra poured from the White Snake Sage's mouth and flowed into the black sphere, purifying it until it turned white.

The White Snake Sage didn't look pleased. Instead, her brow furrowed. After taking a deep breath, she lowered Mingye and stopped his bleeding. "You aren't a reincarnate. I can't believe someone with such fine talent isn't one. So how did you awaken those so-called unique eyes? Tell me. Maybe I'll be in such a good mood afterward that I'll take you as my disciple!"

Mingye had already cursed himself eighty thousand times in his head. He'd thought that even if he wasn't welcomed, and couldn't go to Mount Myoboku with Jiraiya and earn the same respect, at least his life wouldn't be in danger. Now he realized how foolish he'd been. The two giant snakes he'd met in Ryūchi Cave had made it perfectly clear that they didn't care about the Uchiha Clan at all. They simply wanted to savor him as blood food. In their eyes, he was probably a plate of braised pork, just a little tastier than an ordinary person.

Mingye then resigned himself to explaining every detail of how he had awakened his eyes and gone blind. The White Snake Sage nodded slightly, then looked at Ara and said, "Take him to the Dragon Transformation Pool. If he can't sense energy within three days, feed him to Manda."

"What about the Wind-Thunder Clan?"

"If they die, they die. At worst, I'll throw the scroll into the woods again and let whoever finds it inherit the power. It doesn't matter who gets it! Kid, don't blame anyone else. The world is unpredictable. Going with the flow or defying fate are both ways to survive. But there are also people who do whatever they please, acting as they wish, beyond the reach of any law. If you can sense energy within three days, I'll teach you Ryūchi Cave's Senjutsu. If you can't, you'll die anyway once you go back. You might as well die here sooner. At least an early death means an early rebirth, and you'll have forged a good bond with me!"