The Lost Tower

Rōran.

Unlike the desolation of night, the ruined tower beneath the daylight possessed an inexplicable sense of grandeur.

Standing at the foot of the tower and looking up, Naruto felt as though he were gazing upon a sword piercing the heavens.

After resolving Sasuke's matter, he had returned to Rōran. The weathered buildings he had glimpsed from afar back then had left a deep impression on him, so he wanted to learn more about this lost city.

Naruto roughly estimated that the tower before him stood a full twenty-five meters tall—and that was after it had endured the ravages of time and the erosion of wind and sand.

According to the Roran Residents accompanying him, at its peak, Rōran had covered ten thousand mu, and most of its buildings had been towers like this.

The ones remaining before them would not even have counted as the tallest towers back then.

"Why not try to find a new home elsewhere instead of staying here?" Naruto asked.

The middle-aged guide shook his head slightly and sighed. "We're old. Maybe the next generation will want to leave."

Naruto nodded. The average lifespan in the ninja world was rather short. Generally speaking, someone around thirty could already call himself an old man.

This middle-aged guide before him looked barely over thirty, but he was already the grandfather of two children.

Perhaps Naruto had chosen this "old man" because his compassion had been stirred.

On this barren land, every additional child who needed raising multiplied a family's burden.

According to the guide, the Roran Residents of today mostly referred to stubborn old people like them who remained on this desolate land.

In truth, after Rōran suffered its calamity, the vast majority of its people had left their homeland to seek a way to survive, heading to other parts of the Land of Wind or other countries to make a living.

Perhaps some small village in the Land of Fire was home to former Roran residents.

That had been the guide's joking remark at the time.

"Mr. Wolf, would you like to rest for a while, or keep looking around?" The guide glanced at the blazing sun overhead and asked.

"Let's keep looking," Naruto said.

When traveling outside, especially as a Rogue Ninja, it was necessary to change identities from time to time.

"Do you need to rest?"

"I'm fine."

Though he was puzzled as to why this little fellow, who was barely older than his grandson, had stamina even more terrifying than his own, he only kept those doubts to himself.

After living long enough, one naturally learned what should and should not be asked.

A thirteen- or fourteen-year-old child who could travel alone through this desert and still had spare money to hire an old man like him was clearly not someone he could afford to provoke.

"What is that place?" Naruto asked, pointing at a domed building in the distance.

Compared with the other buildings, this domed structure was more dilapidated, yet its entrance was very clean, as if someone swept it regularly.

"That is part of a legend," the guide said mysteriously. "Legend has it that Rōran once possessed a power capable of destroying the world. The reason its ancestors were able to build so many magnificent structures amid this sea of sand was because they used that world-destroying power."

"Is that so?" Naruto stroked his chin and curiously studied the domed building in the distance.

"Do you want to go inside and take a look?" The guide looked around and asked in a low voice.

"Can I?"

Naruto asked in surprise. He had thought a place like that would restrict outsiders from entering.

"It's just a legend. Especially in the past two years, many people have come following that legend, hoping to obtain that nonexistent power capable of destroying the world," the guide said indifferently.

If there really were some power capable of destroying the world, would they still be living in Rōran?

He did not think people as frail as them could fight ninjas.

"If you want to go in and look around, you just need to pay a maintenance fee," the guide said.

Naruto was stunned. They had really turned it into a tourist attraction. He had wondered why it had been so easy to find a guide earlier. So it had become an entire industry.

"Let's go in and have a look."

He was already here, after all. It was only a little money.

Besides, there was one thing in the Land of Wind he had to praise: there were truly many wandering samurai and ninjas.

Though those people did not carry much money individually, it added up to no small sum.

The guide smiled and nodded. The legend might be fake, but the profit it brought was real.

"What's wrong?"

After walking quite a distance, the guide looked back and saw that his guest had not followed. Instead, he was staring sideways at the distant sands.

"Oh, it's nothing."

Naruto turned back and smiled apologetically.

Why was that strange chakra from Sunagakure appearing here?

The reason he had been distracted just now was because he had sensed that chakra. Though he had never met that ninja, that illusory, inhuman chakra had left an extremely deep impression on him.

"Do Sunagakure ninjas often pass through here?" Naruto asked.

"No?" The guide froze, then smiled self-mockingly. "How could ninja lords possibly pass through a barren place like ours?"

Looking at the faintly visible tower in the distance, Mukade silently removed the headband from his forehead and tucked it into the ninja tool pouch at his waist.

This time, he was acting without authorization. If the village discovered it, he would be punished.

Though he did not think anyone in a ruined place like this could discover his movements, it was never wrong to be cautious.

For the great cause of unifying the ninja world, he could no longer remember how many times he had come to this wretched place.

As a result, he was thoroughly familiar with the route.

He wondered whether the Ryūmyaku Ruins would have any followers of those absurd Ryūmyaku legends today.

The sudden Ryūmyaku craze that had emerged for no apparent reason two years ago had disgusted him to no end.

During that period, many fools who fancied themselves children of destiny would constantly wander around the Ryūmyaku Ruins in all sorts of ways.

The more fanatical ones even treated the Ryūmyaku as a summoning beast, slicing open their palms and trying to sign a summoning contract with it...

Whenever Mukade recalled those mind-numbingly idiotic actions, he could not help feeling a sense of superiority.

Unlike those idiots, he had thoroughly investigated both the Ryūmyaku and Rōran.

The Ryūmyaku was the power that had allowed Rōran's bloodline to survive within that sea of yellow sand. No one knew how long it had been passed down. Perhaps the last Queen of Roran knew, but who cared?

A man's only crime was possessing a treasure.

During the Third Great Ninja War, Rōran, which had existed for nearly as long as history itself, provoked the overlord of the ninja world at the time—Konoha.

Ryūmyaku Chakra, that power capable of destroying the world, had been personally sealed away by the young Fourth Hokage.

From then on, Rōran began to decline.

The Roran Ancient City, once known throughout the ninja world, became the Roran Ruins.

But to Mukade, whether Rōran had declined or not was unimportant. What gave him the greatest headache was the Sealing Jutsu left behind by the Fourth Hokage, which sealed the Ryūmyaku beneath the ground.

After returning empty-handed countless times, he had come to loathe Sealing Jutsu from the bottom of his heart. He especially despised the Fourth Hokage who had sealed the Ryūmyaku, and had placed him on his blacklist.

Once he had fully mastered the Ryūmyaku's power, the first people he would deal with would be the Konoha ninja. Those bastards were squatting on a treasure and doing nothing with it.

You won't use the Ryūmyaku's power, so let me use it, damn it!!

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