Silent Hunt, Abyss of the Mind

"Big brother, that woman from Hidden Sand earlier..." After sitting down, Sasuke lowered his voice. His Three-Tomoe Sharingan slowly turned in its sockets as he instinctively analyzed her. "Her presence was powerful, and her chakra reserves were nothing to scoff at. She's a formidable opponent."

"A formidable opponent?"

Naruto leaned back in his chair and adjusted into a comfortable position, the corners of his mouth curling into an almost imperceptible smile. "She's just a cat that meows a little louder than most."

Sasuke's mouth twitched faintly, and he wisely shut up.

He knew that by his big brother's standards, a "formidable opponent" probably only meant someone worth taking slightly seriously.

Just then, a man with a face full of scars and a head wrapped in a bandana entered with more than a dozen cold-faced Chunin.

Ibiki Morino, captain of the Hidden Leaf Interrogation Force and chief examiner for this written test.

The moment his face, practically screaming "keep away," appeared at the podium, the entire classroom seemed to drop several degrees.

"Welcome to the first stage of the Chunin Ninja Exams, you pieces of trash."

Ibiki spoke in a voice like grinding sandpaper, his rules concise and cruel. "First, the test is worth ten points. You start with ten, and every wrong answer costs one point. Second, this is a team exam. If one person gets zero, the entire team is eliminated. Third, every act we deem cheating will cost you two points. Get caught five times, and you can get the hell out!"

The room erupted the instant he finished speaking.

"These rules are way too insane!"

Sakura's face went pale in an instant, her hands twisting together uneasily.

Watching the panicked rookies below, Ibiki wore a cruel smile as he added, "Oh, and among you, we've already planted our people as 'standard answers.' The essence of this exam is to test how skillfully you can steal intelligence right under our noses!"

At his command, the test papers were handed out.

Sakura took one look at the questions, and beads of cold sweat immediately formed on her forehead.

"Reverse decryption of the 'Type Four Periodic Skip Cipher' in cryptography..."

"Calculate the fifty-meter precision trajectory correction for a shuriken in headwind conditions using a parabolic decay model..."

Th-this wasn't something Genin could possibly solve!

She instinctively looked toward Sasuke and found that he had already activated his Sharingan. His crimson eyes turned calmly as they caught the subtle movements of other examinees, trying to copy their answers.

Then she looked at Naruto... Sakura nearly forgot how to breathe.

He had not even picked up a pen.

He simply leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed and an utterly calm expression, as though the commotion around him had nothing to do with him.

What are you doing?!

These are the Chunin Ninja Exams!

No matter how strong you are, you'll be eliminated if you hand in a blank paper!

Sakura screamed anxiously inside her heart.

Naruto was not asleep, of course.

He merely found it a little boring.

"Using pens and paper to pass information? How adorably primitive..." His consciousness sank into the sea of his mind.

Since mastering the Great Evolution Divine Soul Art, he had never used it in such a complicated environment.

This secret art was not a brute-force mind-reading technique. It was closer to a form of "Mental Tuning."

It could not directly read deep memories or future plans, but like an invisible net, it could capture the surface thoughts being "broadcast" by all targets within range.

Using it consumed a considerable amount of mental energy, and overuse would leave him mentally exhausted.

It might have been difficult against ordinary ninja, but against these Chunin acting as "standard answers"... in order to make cheating possible, they had to repeatedly simulate the solving process in their minds.

To Naruto, they were like bright signal towers in the darkness.

"Buzz—!"

A pure mental wave, invisible and intangible, beyond the scope of chakra perception, silently spread from Naruto and instantly wove itself into an invisible net covering the entire classroom.

Every person's heartbeat, breathing, even the tense tremors of their muscles, appeared in perfect detail within his "net."

He easily filtered out the chaotic noise filled with "What do I do?", "This is too hard," and "I'm dead," then precisely "tuned" in to several unusually calm signals.

[The answer to the first question is C. The key is that variable X is a distraction. These brats definitely won't figure it out.]

[The trajectory calculation for question four... Good thing I memorized the formula beforehand, or I'd be stumped too.]

[Oh? That red-haired kid from Hidden Sand used sand to create a third eye for peeking. Pretty clever, but still far too primitive.]

Naruto's mental power moved like the most skilled thief, sweeping past one "signal tower" after another without resistance and "downloading" every correct answer into his brain word for word.

The entire process took barely a dozen seconds.

"Done."

Naruto slowly opened his deep eyes. A trace of nearly imperceptible fatigue flashed through them before he picked up his pen.

The other examinees around him were still scratching their heads, drenched in cold sweat.

Up front, Kiba Inuzuka was secretly lifting his sleeve to let Akamaru peek at the answers; in the shadows along the ceiling, Shino Aburame's Kikaichū had silently formed a reconnaissance network.

And Naruto...

There was no frantic scratching of a pen in the examination hall. Instead, an even more unnerving silence descended.

Everyone saw the blond boy's wrist remain as steady as a rock, his pen gliding over the paper like flowing clouds and running water, without the slightest pause or hesitation.

He was not answering questions. It was more like he was putting on a performance no one could understand, with elegant and cold detachment.

Less than a minute passed.

"Click."

A soft sound rang out.

Naruto gently set his pen on the desk. It was not loud, yet it was perfectly clear in the deathly silent room.

Then, under everyone's stunned gaze, he swung his feet up onto the desk with a bang, clasped his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes again. His breathing was steady, as though he had merely finished some trivial task and was now resting with his eyes shut.

The entire examination hall fell silent.

Every examinee, including the disguised Chunin, froze and stared blankly at this boy who seemed to belong in a completely different world from everyone else.

Had he given up?

No, he had clearly finished writing!

But... how could he possibly have been that fast?!

"Hey! You blond brat!"

Chief examiner Ibiki Morino's face was so dark it looked ready to drip water.

He strode toward Naruto step by step, his tall body casting a heavy shadow as the interrogation captain's terrifying pressure surged forth. "Are you mocking this examination?"

Naruto did not even lift his eyelids. In a slightly weary voice, he replied, "I'm not allowed to rest after finishing? There sure are a lot of rules."

"Finished?"

Ibiki laughed in anger. "Kid, this isn't playing house at the Ninja Academy!"

He snatched up Naruto's test paper, intending to tear it apart in public as a warning to the others.

But when his gaze fell upon the paper, the savage grin on his face instantly froze.

Question one, correct.

Question two, correct.

Question nine, correct!

Every question had been answered!

The answers were so neat they looked printed, without a single correction. They were flawless!

Th-this was impossible?!

Ibiki's breathing abruptly stopped.

He instinctively looked at Naruto, only to find that the other boy was resting with his eyes closed, as though all of this was only natural.

No peeking, no suspicious movements, not even the faintest chakra fluctuation!

Ibiki's keen observational ability, which he had always prided himself on, had completely failed at this moment!

He could not see through this boy at all!

The blond boy was like a bottomless fog. No, he was an abyss!

A terrifying abyss so deep that merely staring into it was enough to make one's soul fall!

This was no Genin at all!

This was a monster wearing human skin!

Ibiki swallowed with difficulty, forcibly suppressing the storm raging in his heart as he tried to keep his voice from trembling.

He slowly straightened up, took a deep breath, and shouted at the top of his lungs to the entire room:

"Alright, you pieces of trash! The written test is over! Now, I'll announce the tenth question!"