Hinata, Stop Pretending — Chapter 44

They looked terrified, thinking, Had they run into a ghost? Their feet immediately picked up speed as they tried to get farther away from this road.

When Hinata grew tired of running and no longer wanted to continue, she came back to her senses and realized she had arrived in a sea of lush green. Towering trees surrounded her in every direction.

Only occasional beams of light filtered through the gaps between the leaves. Huh? Hinata was stunned. Where had she run off to in her excitement?

Why did this place look a little familiar? Wait, let her think carefully. She began to feel uncertain, and her hands instantly formed several seals: Ox, Dog, Dragon, Rat, Dog, Boar, Snake, Tiger. Her eyes lit up, and she shouted, "Shadow Clone Jutsu, release!"

Elsewhere, amid another patch of greenery, another Hinata was practicing the Gentle Fist Style, constantly sweating away. Then, to her utter confusion, she suddenly turned into a puff of smoke and vanished.

The moment Hinata finished forming the seals, her body swayed. Once the Shadow Clone was released, its memories and exhaustion instantly crashed down on her.

After swaying once, Hinata showed no further reaction, but her eyes were filled with disbelief. She had actually run straight to the Forest of Death right after gaining her freedom. There was definitely something poisonous about this place.

Her name was Hinata Hyuga, and she endorsed the Forest of Death.

Don't ask how she knew. Otherwise, what had she just released the Shadow Clone for? Of course the place looked familiar. It would have been strange if it hadn't.

Although she did not know whether her Shadow Clone had any bizarre traits like those possessed by other big shots who had come to the Naruto world, after she mastered the Shadow Clone Jutsu at the age of nine, her Shadow Clone had quietly remained in this Forest of Death for three years.

It sweated every day while the original body reaped the fruits of its labor. Whenever the Shadow Clone ran out of Chakra and its memories returned to the original body, after all this time, how could she not have grown attached?

That was the bond they had beaten into each other. Mm, she could call herself Hinata the Forest Demolisher. When she was in a good mood, she beat up trees. When she was in a bad mood, she beat up trees. When she had nothing to do, she beat up trees. So after three years, her relationship with this place could be called rock-solid. No, they were iron sisters.

However, this iron sister of Hinata's had a very good temper. It only ever silently endured and had never fought back.

But Hinata was not someone who failed to repay kindness. She secretly resolved that if anyone bullied her iron sister in the future, she would never let them off.

Of course, that was just a joke. Today was the weekend. Mm, don't ask why there were weekends in Naruto. If she said there were, then there were.

Hinata thought that if she encountered a weekend in her previous life, she would never stop until she had slept herself into oblivion. Unlike now—look how diligent she was every day, even though most of the time her Shadow Clone trained in her place.

As for herself, she still slept in whenever she could and took things as easy as possible. Don't argue. What was wrong with training through a Shadow Clone? That was one of Naruto's defining features. In the end, she was still the one who got tired. Was there any difference?

She stretched her limbs. Since she had already come to the Forest of Death, she might as well relax completely! She had been holding herself back quite a bit at the Hyuga Estate.

Letting a Shadow Clone vent could never feel as satisfying as venting herself.

As Hinata, someone with a system, she had kept many secrets in her daily life. After all, her true persona was that of a pig pretending to be weak while eating the tiger. Naturally, with the stingy system rarely issuing missions, Hinata could only earn daily Reward Points through disguises.

She had fulfilled the system's requirements to perfection, so over the past four years, there had rarely been times when anyone saw through her disguise.

And those few times could only be considered accidents. Hinata estimated that they should not be much of a problem. Besides, where in the world was there a flawless disguise?

Otherwise, a disguise without the slightest flaw would only draw the attention of those with ulterior motives.

Drawing on her familiarity with the Forest of Death, she did not remain where she was. With a leap, she easily landed on the trunk of a tree.

She then began jumping from trunk to trunk, her target the deeper parts of the Forest of Death. As she leaped, Hinata thought, So this was probably what the so-called qinggong of my previous life was like!

As for why she was heading deeper in, that was naturally because she had only been on the outskirts of the Forest of Death just now. If her original body were to go wild beating up trees, one careless move might draw someone else's attention.

And over the years, she had not truly muddled through her days as imagined. Through all sorts of contacts, she had paid particular attention to the Anbu and Danzo's Root.

Although these two departments seemed to have had little presence in her previous life, whether in the original work or in the information she had encountered now, it was no secret that anyone who could become Anbu was among the elite of countless ninja.

As for Root, there was no need to say more. Its members had basically clawed their way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood under brutal elimination rules. Every one of them could be said to be no weaker than the Anbu.

What Hinata meant was that whether it was the Anbu or Root, neither lacked so-called exceptional talents.