Mind's Eye of the Kagura

Yellow sand swept past, and a long defensive line came into view.

According to Old Master He Yan, Sunagakure lay beyond this natural barrier.

As they entered the narrow passage and felt the brief coolness, everyone in the caravan could not help but breathe a sigh of relief. Even with shinobi hired as escorts, traveling merchants could hardly avoid feeling on edge.

In a place like the Land of Wind, the greatest danger for merchants was not actually shinobi, but the harsh climate.

This season was still fine; sandstorms were rarely seen. If they came again a few months later and had poor luck, they would get to witness what a natural disaster truly was. Beneath sandstorms that blotted out the sky and covered the earth, whether one was a shinobi or not no longer mattered.

Once caught in a sandstorm, no one could do anything. There was only one outcome: death!

After walking through the narrow passage for several minutes, Naruto finally saw Sunagakure nestled amid the yellow sands.

Unlike Konoha's wooden structures, Sunagakure's buildings were all constructed from sand and stone. As far as the eye could see, brownish-yellow houses of varying heights created a strange visual impact.

"Not bad, right?" He Yan smiled. Thinking back to his first time coming to Sunagakure to trade, he too had been deeply struck by its uniquely styled architecture.

"Welcome to Sunagakure. I wish you a good harvest." After saying that, the Sunagakure shinobi escorting them vanished into the crowd.

Shinobi villages were economies that depended heavily on the outside world.

None of the Five Great Shinobi Villages, including even the prosperous Konoha, possessed the ability to be self-sufficient. They had to rely on outside deliveries of supplies to develop steadily.

If even wealthy Konoha was like this, then impoverished Sunagakure went without saying.

For every caravan that came to trade in Sunagakure, everyone in the village, from top to bottom, welcomed them with open arms.

In He Yan's words, trading in Sunagakure brought the highest profits. Goods would never lack buyers; the only concern was not having prepared enough merchandise.

The harsh climate directly stopped many interested merchants outside the borders of the Land of Wind.

An untapped market was every merchant's dream.

"I remember you said you came to find a friend, young man. Will you be traveling with us?" He Yan asked with a smile.

"No need to trouble yourselves." Naruto shook his head, flipped down from the ostrich the caravan had lent him, and handed the reins to the old man with a smile. "We'll meet again if fate allows."

"Grandpa, why did you choose to bring along a stranger this time?" A young man moved close to the old man and asked softly.

"Cultivating a good connection." He Yan stroked the ermine on his shoulder and chuckled.

The youth looked at the old man, then at the ermine on his shoulder, completely unable to make heads or tails of it.

Though it could not compare with Konoha, Sunagakure was still one of the Five Great Shinobi Villages. Its scale naturally could not be small.

Finding someone in a place like this was no different from searching for a needle in a haystack.

But since Naruto had chosen to enter Sunagakure, he naturally had his own method.

"How do you like the scenery here?" In the Mental Space, Naruto asked as he lay sprawled across Kurama's belly.

"It reeks of Racoon Dog." Kurama propped his chin on one hand and snorted.

"You two clearly have pretty similar personalities, so why can't you stand each other?" Naruto laughed.

Over this period of time, he had visited the Mental Space quite a few times and met several of the nine tailed beasts. Of them all, Kurama and Shukaku had the most similar personalities.

Yet those two, unexpectedly, got along the worst.

The Mental Space was a shared place for the tailed beasts to communicate. As long as a tailed beast entered it, the others could sense it, but they rarely used it.

Perhaps because the tailed beasts had lived through such long years that they already understood one another extremely well, or perhaps simply because they were sealed within Jinchuriki and felt embarrassed to let the others know, this place for communication had been abandoned for quite a long time before Naruto came along.

Recently, perhaps because he often entered and left this meeting place with Kurama, the other tailed beasts had grown curious and entered the Mental Space as well.

That was how Naruto came to know quite a few tailed beasts.

The tailed beasts who saw Kurama bringing his own Jinchuriki into the Mental Space found it utterly absurd.

Among the nine tailed beasts, Kurama's temper was well known to them all.

That he could actually communicate with a human on a spiritual level was, in the eyes of every tailed beast, the most outrageous thing since their birth.

"Aren't you looking for that Racoon Dog brat?" Kurama snorted.

"According to Shukaku, Gaara is still making up for his mistakes over the Chunin Exams and is most likely running around outside, so I'll take my time looking. There's no rush." Naruto shook his head.

"It's not every day I get to come to Sunagakure. I should at least look around, right? Who knows when I'll come again."

"What if you can't find him?" Kurama asked.

"If I can't find him? Then I won't." Naruto spread his hands.

"Who told him to take so long to win Shukaku over? If they could contact each other in the Mental Space, would there be so much trouble?"

"..." Kurama's brow twitched. This guy was getting more and more presumptuous.

In the outside world, Naruto asked a passerby where he could find a nearby inn.

Within the range of his Mind's Eye of the Kagura, there was no familiar chakra signature.

This was what he relied on: the Mind's Eye of the Kagura, a Kekkei Genkai he had awakened not long ago.

Kurama might have been a homebody fox, but his first two Jinchuriki had held no low status. Indirectly influenced by both of them, Kurama was quite knowledgeable as well.

As soon as Naruto described the strange sensory ability that had awakened within him, Kurama told him that he had awakened the Uzumaki Clan's Kekkei Genkai.

Naruto had been utterly dumbfounded when he heard that.

It could not be helped. He was just a poor kid who had to save on food, save on lodging, and save on everything.

A Kekkei Genkai was something only nobles could have.

When a poor kid suddenly possessed something only nobles could possess, no matter how good his mentality was, surprise was unavoidable.

Sunagakure covered a vast area, but the range of the Mind's Eye of the Kagura was not small either.

Naruto felt that if he wandered around enough, he might just catch Gaara.

"Hmm?"

Suddenly, an extremely strange chakra signature entered the range of the Mind's Eye of the Kagura.

Chakra was formed by combining spiritual energy and physical energy, and shinobi were naturally attuned to this power.

But the chakra within his sensing range had foreign energy mixed between its spiritual and physical components. It was like pouring gasoline into clean water, making him instinctively uncomfortable.

The chakra signature was not far from him, and it was rapidly approaching.

Two minutes later.

Naruto glanced over from the corner of his eye and saw a man so thin he was practically skin and bones walk onto the street.

Though he was a shinobi, he looked like the sort of frail bamboo pole who had indulged in excess and might collapse to the ground the next second.

Seeing the man disappear around the street corner, Naruto rubbed his chin. Though he was curious what exactly the man's body had gone through, he did not forget that he was in someone else's stronghold and chose not to meddle.

He found an inn with a fairly good reputation among traveling merchants and settled in.

He had two days. After two days, Old Master He Yan's caravan would leave Sunagakure for the next trading destination.

Though it would not have been impossible to stay longer, continuing to travel with Old Master He Yan's caravan would make it much easier to leave Sunagakure.

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