Trap at the Abandoned Outpost

The smell of disinfectant from Konoha Hospital still seemed to linger in Yan's nostrils.

A week had passed since he had "fished" Mitarashi Anko out of Orochimaru's abandoned laboratory.

Over that week, undercurrents had begun to stir among Konoha's upper ranks.

The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, had spoken with him twice. The first time had been a routine inquiry into the details of the mission, which Yan had brushed off with his usual excuse about "beyond-standard sensory abilities." The second time, the old man had merely sat with him atop Hokage Rock, quietly smoking his pipe as they watched wisps of smoke rise from the village below. Then he had asked an entirely unrelated question. "Yan, what do you think a village is?"

Yan had not answered.

He knew that even the Third Hokage himself was uncertain of the answer.

As for Orochimaru—the man who had cast a massive shadow over the ninja world—he had been strangely quiet after someone had forcibly branded his "creation." It was as though nothing had happened. Yet Yan's Observation Haki would occasionally catch traces of chakra hidden in the village's darkest corners, carrying the uniquely cold, sinister aura of snakes.

Those were eyes.

Orochimaru's eyes.

It irritated Yan. He did not like being watched from the shadows by a venomous snake. It reminded him of the department manager from his previous life who was always tattling behind people's backs. Disgusting.

That day, Jiraiya's "special tutoring" had just ended. Minato was drenched in sweat as he practiced the third stage of the Rasengan, trying to compress chakra into a perfect sphere without using shadow clones. Meanwhile, Yan leaned against a tree with his eyes closed, using Observation Haki to sense the trajectory of every falling leaf within a thousand meters of the training ground.

For him, learning senjutsu was a process of translation. Jiraiya's explanations merely helped him graft the internal circulation logic of the Haki system onto the external circulation required to draw in natural energy. His progress was so fast that even Jiraiya was left clicking his tongue in amazement. More than once, Jiraiya had privately grumbled to the Third Hokage that the kid was no genius—he was a monster, the kind of monster born to deal with natural energy.

Just then, a Shadow Guard member wearing an eagle mask appeared silently behind him.

"Lava, the Hokage has an urgent mission for you."

Yan opened his eyes.

Minato stopped practicing and looked over with concern. Jiraiya also put away his usual frivolous expression, his brows knitting slightly. Solo missions dispatched directly through the Shadow Guard were usually no trivial matter.

"What mission?" Yan rose to his feet and brushed the grass clippings from his clothes.

"Emergency reconnaissance. A secret supply outpost suspected to belong to rogue ninjas has been discovered on the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Rice. Intelligence indicates that the outpost may contain prohibited weapons smuggled in from Hidden Mist Village. You are required to infiltrate alone and verify the intelligence. Mission rank: A. Time limit: twenty-four hours." The eagle-masked man's voice carried no emotion.

Infiltrate alone. The border of the Land of Rice. Prohibited weapons.

Put together, those words carried an unusual scent.

Yan's mind raced. The Land of Rice was where Orochimaru's Hidden Sound Village was located. At this point in time, sending an Uchiha to investigate an outpost connected to Hidden Mist—it looked like a deliberate arrangement no matter how he viewed it.

Was this the Third Hokage testing him? Or... Danzo's handiwork?

"When do I leave?" Yan asked.

"Immediately."

Yan glanced at Minato. Concern filled the other boy's eyes. Yan gave him an almost imperceptible nod in farewell. Then he put on the ANBU mask carved with Lava patterns along its left side. With a flash, he followed the eagle-masked man and vanished at the far end of the training ground.

Jiraiya walked over to Minato and patted him on the shoulder, his gaze dark as he watched Yan depart. "Don't worry. That kid... he's as slippery as an eel. He won't die."

Minato said nothing. He simply gathered chakra in his palm once more. This time, the determination in his eyes carried even greater weight.

The border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Rice.

It was a hilly region forgotten by war, filled with jagged rocks and sparse vegetation. The air was thick with the dry scent of dust.

Yan moved like a phantom through the shadows of the rocks. His Observation Haki had already spread out like the most precise radar, scanning for every sign of life within a thousand-meter radius.

The coordinates in the mission briefing pointed to a basin surrounded by massive boulders.

From the outside, nothing about it seemed unusual. There were no chakra fluctuations, no guards, and even the birds and beasts deliberately avoided the area.

Too clean.

Clean like a trap that had been carefully swept and prepared.

Yan stopped atop a towering stone pillar and looked down at the basin below. His gaze lingered at its entrance. Several extremely faint chakra threads—ones nearly impossible to detect with ordinary sensory ninjutsu—formed a concealed barrier there.

This barrier was not meant for defense, but for concealment. It isolated every trace of scent, sound, and chakra fluctuation inside from the outside world. Only by stepping into it could one discover what lay within.

Beneath his mask, Yan's lips curved into a cold smile.

He was almost certain that this was a trap set specifically for him.

He did not choose to go around it, nor did he call for support. He wanted to see who had gone to such lengths to invite him into the jar.

He leaped down from the stone pillar and landed without a sound. Then, like the most ordinary reconnaissance ninja, he cautiously stepped into the basin covered by the barrier, one step at a time.

The instant his entire body passed through the barrier, the invisible screen behind him rippled like water before sealing shut completely.

The world fell silent.

The wind, the insects, every distant sound—all vanished in that instant. The air became thick and oppressive, as though he had been submerged in the deep sea. At the center of the basin was not the supply outpost described in the mission briefing, but a level stone plaza that had been artificially carved out.

A person stood at its center.

He was tall and slender, his skin so pale it looked as though he had soaked in a morgue for three days and nights. He wore a simple kimono, and long black hair fell loosely over his shoulders.

Orochimaru.

He turned around. His golden, snake-like vertical pupils fixed themselves on Yan, brimming with a sickly, undisguised greed and excitement.

"Hehehe... Uchiha Yan, I've been waiting for you for a long time."

His voice was hoarse and sticky, like fingernails scraping against glass, making one's scalp crawl.

"It seems my 'creation' left quite a deep impression on you." Orochimaru extended his absurdly long tongue and licked his lips. His gaze roamed over Yan without restraint, as though admiring the most perfect work of art he was about to claim for himself. "Tell me, what was that power? That pure, tyrannical power capable of forcibly 'purifying' even my curse mark... That was certainly not the Uchiha bloodline limit."

Yan stood where he was, expressionless, showing not even a hint of surprise.

His Observation Haki clearly captured the intense emotion in Orochimaru's emotional spectrum, so strong it was nearly overflowing—possessiveness.

"I was wondering who was bored enough to put on such a grand show," Yan said from behind his mask, his voice thick with undisguised mockery. "So it's Konoha's S-rank rogue ninja, one of the legendary Sannin, cosplaying as a stalker out here?"

"A stalker? Hehe, no. I am a scientist in pursuit of truth." Orochimaru's smile grew increasingly twisted. "And you, Yan... your body, the power you possess that exists 'beyond the rules'... you are the most perfect 'vessel' I have ever seen!"

A nearly crazed light flickered in his eyes.

"The Sharingan, combined with a power that even I cannot analyze... If I obtain your body, I will be able to touch the ultimate secret of immortality, perhaps even... surpass the Sage of Six Paths!"

Orochimaru took two steps forward, and the air throughout the basin distorted under the immense chakra radiating from his body.

"Obediently... become part of me, Yan." His neck abruptly stretched out like a boneless mollusk. His pale face drew close to Yan's, those golden vertical pupils nearly pressing against Yan's mask.

"I will allow you to live on in an entirely new, eternal way."

A foul stench washed over him.

Yan looked at the face inches away and the golden vertical pupils reflecting his own figure.

He could even smell the nauseating odor in the man's mouth, a mixture of blood and chemical agents.

He was silent for a moment.

Then, in a voice colder and more emotionless than Orochimaru's, he slowly spoke.

"Are you done?"

"Hm?" Orochimaru's smile froze for an instant.

"If you're done," Yan said, tilting his head slightly as though avoiding something filthy, "then it's my turn."

"I'm not interested in your immortality."

"I just happen to think... you're very noisy, and... very dirty."

The instant his words fell, an aura far more terrifying and domineering than Orochimaru's chakra pressure erupted from Yan's body.

It was not chakra.

It was pure will—the will to rule over all.

Conqueror's Haki!