Hanzo's Speed

After briefly getting a handle on the situation, Zhou Yang left the tavern. Since his target was still some distance away, he could not reach it right away. He planned to stay here for the night and get some rest. After all, he had already covered more than half the journey. He could take it, but his legs could not. One hundred and twenty-five kilograms was no joke.

He wandered slowly through the streets in search of a place to stay, humming a tune as he walked.

This was his first time leaving the Rain Ninja Village, and Zhou Yang found the new surroundings quite novel. After all, this place had barely been depicted in the original anime.

Although the Rain Ninja Village was relatively impoverished compared to the major nations, the towns built here were bustling. There were no cries of vendors hawking their wares, yet the streets were still packed with people and filled with voices.

Although this mission came with no reward, Hanzo had still given him some spending money. It was one thing not to let someone earn money while on a mission, but making them lose money would have been going too far. Plus, Zhou Yang had relentlessly pestered him. As a result, he was carrying more money than he had at any point since entering this world. Naturally, he could now afford to stroll around and shop.

In his previous life, as a shut-in, he had scoffed at shopping. It wasted both time and money; it was far more fun to stay home and enjoy some anime. But after coming to this world, without a computer or any entertainment facilities, he had no choice but to go shopping. At least he could treat it like a VR anime experience, right?

"Flower's Fate House. Not a bad name, but the illustration is awful. Who drew this sign? That woman looks way too abstract. Whatever, I'll go with this place."

"Oh? A ninja lord has arrived! Sisters, come out and let the ninja lord have a look!"

"Uh... sorry, I came to the wrong place."

"What? You're just a brat? Didn't you see the sign saying minors aren't allowed inside?" A middle-aged woman stood with her hands on her hips, looking thoroughly annoyed.

Zhou Yang stepped back outside and looked. It really did say that. He had been so focused on mocking the ad's artwork that he had not noticed. Embarrassed, he slipped away.

Zhou Yang wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. "I thought the owner had a pretty refined taste in names. Who knew it was that kind of establishment? That was really awkward."

After searching for a while, Zhou Yang finally found somewhere to stay. The reason was simple: many places were already full. He could not help but marvel at how much traffic this place saw.

Seeing what he looked like, the owner said, "You're lucky. This is the last room in our inn."

Since the owner had taken the initiative to chat, Zhou Yang was happy to talk with him.

"Boss, business must be good around here."

"Yeah, business has been pretty good lately." The owner smiled happily as he spoke.

"Lately? Was it bad before?"

"Bad? Not exactly. We'd get two or three guests now and then."

"Now and then? And you don't call that bad?"

"You have to compare it to know! Back then, many shops would not see a single customer for an entire month. Compared to them, we were doing alright. That's why I was able to hold on until now—until times like these!"

"So you mean a lot of shop owners couldn't take it anymore and sold their storefronts?"

"Of course! With no income for a whole month, anyone would think that way, wouldn't they?"

"Was it because so many wandering ninjas arrived that you suddenly started making money?"

"Of course not. Those ninjas are part of the reason, but they aren't the main source. The real main source is these merchants."

"Merchants? I remember there was a large-scale trading expedition about twenty years ago, wasn't there?"

"Well... I don't know about that. But from what they've been saying, something from our country has been selling extremely well, so that's why things turned out like this."

"Oh, so that's how it is." It looked like these people liked seafood even more than I had imagined!

At first, Zhou Yang had been worried that they would not be used to the taste, but now it seemed he had simply worried for nothing.

That night, Zhou Yang did not sneak off to some secret place to wait for the pain to descend as he had before. Instead, he stayed at the inn. As time passed, the duration of his pain had shrunk to less than two hours, and his endurance limit was about the same. So tonight, he did not plan to run away. He intended to endure the entire period in one go.

As for why his pain only lasted this long now, it was related to the injuries he had suffered recently. The massive blood loss had stimulated his bone marrow's blood-producing abilities, accelerating the rate at which his blood was replaced. Naturally, the pain he endured while it accelerated was extraordinary. That was why, after suffering such severe injuries and falling into shock, he had suddenly been awakened by pain at night.

Lying on the bed, he opened the scroll Hanzo had placed on the ground yesterday. He had not looked at it yet.

"Zhou Yang, our Rain Ninja Village is renowned throughout the Ninja World for assassination. The reason is not merely our education, but our unique understanding of assassination. In our view, two things are most important in assassination: concealment and speed. Concealment improves the secrecy of an assassination, while speed is both the means of assassination and the guarantee of escape. Since the path you walk is fundamentally unsuited to assassination, concealment is of little use to you. Speed, however, will be useful.

This is my summary of speed-type ninjutsu and the methods for applying it. It may be difficult for you to understand at your current level, but I am giving it to you anyway. Your fighting style differs from ours, and your chakra is completely unlike ours as well. So I do not expect you to learn from this. I hope you will use this method as a reference and forge your own path to speed. It may sound like a fantasy for someone as young as you, but I believe that if you could create a B-rank ninjutsu on your own before even becoming a ninja, then this may truly have a chance of becoming reality."

What followed was page after page of highly academic text, as well as speed-type ninjutsu from across the Ninja World and analyses of those techniques. Zhou Yang's eyes were left dazzled and overwhelmed.

"Damn, Hanzo really is treating me well as a teacher. He actually gave me something like this." In Zhou Yang's eyes, this scroll held a status in the Rain Ninja Village no less important than the Book of Seals in the Hidden Leaf Village. It could be called one of the foundations of the Rain Ninja Village's survival, as well as the summary of half of Hanzo's life.

Zhou Yang did not know how fast Hanzo was, but he could glean some clues from Hanzo's battle with Qianbai. Only then did Zhou Yang recall that Qianbai had been less than a meter away from him at the time, while Hanzo had been at least twenty meters away. In other words, Hanzo had moved at least twenty times faster than the flight speed of his Kamehameha. And that was only the minimum. Moreover, in the brief glimpse he had caught, Qianbai had ended up behind Hanzo. That meant Hanzo had thrown Qianbai behind him while the Kamehameha was still in flight!