Holy Land

In the desert.

The sun had barely risen when Lin Chongshu woke from the heat.

The temperature difference in the desert was absurd. In the latter half of the night, he had been cold enough to curl into a ball, yet now it was like an oven again.

He climbed up, sand rustling down from his collar and sleeves. His wounds had been bound tight by bandages all night, leaving them stuffy and itchy.

He found a large rock jutting out of the ground and pressed his back against it, catching his breath with the lingering coolness of the stone.

His mouth was dry, his throat felt like it was on fire, and hunger had his stomach pressed against his back.

He dragged his ninja tool pouch in front of him and opened it. Its interior was covered in densely packed runic markings.

It worked on the same principle as a sealing scroll, using sealing formulas to compress an item's physical volume to the smallest possible size and tuck it into the inner compartment. A pouch the size of a palm could hold nearly half a general store.

He turned the pouch upside down and shook it, scattering its contents across the ground.

Four Military Ration Pills, a roll of bandages, a small flask of water, three cigarettes, two signal flares, a pile of kunai and shuriken, and, tucked deepest inside, a square map of the bordering territories.

He unscrewed the water flask and took two gulps, then picked up two Military Ration Pills and tossed them into his mouth.

They were pressed from coarse grains and had no taste whatsoever, dry as if he were chewing coal slag. He washed them down with a mouthful of the remaining water, forcing the half-crushed pills down his throat.

These were the most ordinary kind of Military Ration Pills. Every ninja faction had its own formula; high-end ones could quickly restore chakra, but these were merely emergency rations for staving off hunger. Their effect was simple and brutal: fill the stomach, much like compressed biscuits.

Their only advantage was that they kept hunger at bay. Their only drawback was that they tasted bad enough to make one want to die.

Then he picked up a cigarette and held it between his lips. A bitter, spicy tobacco flavor exploded in his mouth.

He did not smoke it. He merely chewed it, using the pungent taste to suppress the lingering flavor of blood in his mouth.

He spat the chewed tobacco onto the sand, picked up the map, and spread it over his knees.

As one of the Five Great Nations, the Land of Wind covered an enormous territory and bordered many countries: the Land of Ghosts, the Land of Bears, the Land of Birds, the Land of Rain, and the Land of Rivers.

Among them, the Land of Rain and the Land of Rivers also bordered the Land of Fire.

The Land of Fire and the Land of Water were the places Lin Chongshu most wanted to visit.

The Land of Water, Kirigakure.

The Fourth Mizukage, Karatachi Yagura, should already have been controlled by Obito's Sharingan and be enforcing that terrifying rule of the Bloody Mist Village.

The entire village distrusted one another. Students of the same class had to slaughter each other to graduate. In a place like that, fear was the air. Everyone feared others and was feared in turn.

If he could bully the entire Hidden Mist Village and make everyone fear him, wouldn't he take off like a rocket?

He could gather the strength of an entire village in one go and become a true all-around warrior. That would be much faster than picking them off one by one in Sunagakure.

Most importantly, Mei Terumi was there too.

But that was just wishful thinking.

Leaving aside the fact that Kirigakure was separated by an entire sea, with his current strength, going to the Bloody Mist Village to bully people? He might get killed on the first day by those Hidden Mist genin who had been murdering since childhood.

In a place like Kirigakure, without strength, it was hard to say who would be bullying whom.

The Land of Fire was somewhat gentler.

Konoha, the holy land for all bullies.

There were many powerful people alive there. More importantly, the bullying atmosphere was thick, and it was all legal, institutionalized, and practiced by everyone.

The Hyuga Clan's main-branch and branch-family system alone could feed him for a lifetime. The conflict between the Uchiha Clan and the whole village would let him farm points while lying down; he only had to stand in a crowd to mooch off the bullying aimed at the Uchiha Clan.

Going to Konoha to bully people meant low difficulty, low risk, and high returns.

The more Lin Chongshu thought about it, the more certain he became that he had chosen the right direction.

He folded the map, placed it beneath the back of his head, lay beneath the rock, and opened the system panel.

The desert was too hot at noon. Traveling now would be suicide.

[Name: Lin Chongshu]

[Age: 23]

[Strength: 5.5]

[Mental: 6]

[Agility: 4.3]

[Constitution: 4.8]

[Speed: 5.1]

[Shukaku's Power: Sand Manipulation (Proficiency 16)]

[Bloodline Limit: Magnet Release—Gold Dust (Proficiency 1)]

Seeing the panel, he nearly laughed.

A transmigrator who had spent nearly half a year scraping by in Sunagakure, only to nearly end up as Rasa's feed.

He closed the panel, pulled his feet back into the shade, and Tsunade, Anko, Mei Terumi, Kurenai... flashed through his mind.

When poor, cultivate oneself; when successful, help the world!

"Miss her, her, her, her, her..."

As soon as the sun set, the desert temperature began to drop.

The heat that had roasted people's skin off during the day had not fully faded when the cold wind was already scraping across the ground.

Lin Chongshu crawled out from beneath the rock and rolled his shoulders.

He pulled the map out from beneath his head, stared at the few stars that had just appeared overhead for a long while, then picked a direction, though he had no idea whether it was right.

As he walked, he tried using Magnet Release to draw Gold Sand from beneath the ground.

He pressed his hand against the sand and closed his eyes to feel for it.

At first, he felt nothing. Then, gradually, he found it. Some extremely tiny particles deep underground resonated with him and began floating upward.

The particles crawled up through gaps in the sand, gathering in his palm and forming a small pinch of Gold Sand that glimmered dimly.

He stared at the strands of Gold Sand in his hand for two seconds.

"Damn! This really is a great ability."

Even though his proficiency was only at 1 and he could not use it to fight yet, it was excellent for making money.

The ninja world required money too. Lodging cost money, food cost money, and buying ninja tools and Explosive Tags in the future would cost money as well.

With Magnet Release: Gold Dust, it was like carrying a small gold mine with him.

The only issue was that the efficiency was too low. It took one or two hours just to form a palm-sized gold ingot, and the farther he traveled, the less Gold Sand he could draw from underground.

Still, that allowed him to confirm that he was getting farther and farther from the Land of Wind.

He pinched the small amount of Gold Sand he had just drawn out and looked ahead.

Sparse withered grass and low shrubs began appearing along the desert's edge, while a faint dark-green outline could be seen in the distance.

It was an oasis. He had probably already entered another country's territory.

More than a dozen mud-brick houses were scattered near the oasis, thin smoke rising from their chimneys.

The village was not large, but because it stood near the border, quite a few traveling merchants passed through.