Rumors

Ever since Hyuga Iwa had signed a contract with Ju Zai, he felt that his life had somehow become miserable. It felt less like he had signed a contract and more like he had sold himself into servitude. He had found himself a master!

Come to think of it, Hyuga Iwa had never even considered the Summoning Jutsu at first. From his limited understanding of the Hokage, the Hyuga Clan did not seem to have any particularly powerful summoned beasts.

Besides, in his mind, only places like the Three Great Sage Lands had truly worthy summoned beasts. The others seemed rather useless, so he had barely considered them.

And among the Three Great Sage Lands, Hyuga Iwa would have preferred the Slug over snakes or toads.

But today, after running into them by chance and acting on a whim, he had signed a contract with the Ninja Cat Clan. Thinking about it now, perhaps he had been a little impulsive?

Still, Hyuga Iwa was not the type to regret things easily. Since the contract had already been signed, it had to be useful somehow, right?

What did the Uchiha Clan usually use Ninja Cats for?

Hyuga Iwa thought about it for a long time before realizing that he did not seem to know the Uchiha Clan all that well. At the very least, he had no idea about this.

Granny Cat did not seem like a simple person either!

But what did that have to do with him?

On the other hand, those three Sealing Jutsu gave Hyuga Iwa some ideas, and the Summoning Jutsu in particular reminded him of the Flying Thunder God Technique invented by the Second Hokage.

This technique had later been carried forward by the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, who had made a tremendous name for himself with it during the Third Shinobi War.

Speaking of the Flying Thunder God Technique, this space-time ninjutsu developed by the Second Hokage used formulas to achieve instantaneous movement. The user would first leave a Flying Thunder God Formula on a target or object, allowing the user—or objects indirectly in contact with the user's chakra—to teleport instantly.

Wasn't that very similar to the Summoning Jutsu?

After personally experiencing the Summoning Jutsu once, Hyuga Iwa keenly realized that it really was very similar to the Flying Thunder God Technique!

Could the signed contract be regarded as a Flying Thunder God Formula, while the process of casting the Summoning Jutsu was like activating the Flying Thunder God Technique? Then, the contracted creature would be summoned over, while the Flying Thunder God Technique would teleport someone to the location of the inscribed formula.

So, using the Flying Thunder God Technique was more like a Reverse Summoning!

At that thought, Hyuga Iwa instantly grew excited. If he could thoroughly study the Summoning Jutsu, did that mean he might also have a chance of achieving an effect like the Flying Thunder God Technique?

Maybe this was the Flying Thunder God Technique itself?

Right, then how had the Second Hokage developed the Flying Thunder God Technique?

Perhaps he had drawn inspiration from the Summoning Jutsu?

Hyuga Iwa thought that although he did not know the formula for the Flying Thunder God Technique, if he could truly derive the Flying Thunder God Formula through studying the Summoning Jutsu and learn the Flying Thunder God Technique, he would strike it rich!

With a goal in mind, Hyuga Iwa threw himself wholeheartedly into researching the Summoning Jutsu. But since he had never systematically studied formulas, he simply could not understand what those tadpole-like markings meant, leaving him with no way to begin.

"Looks like I still need to start with the basics." Hyuga Iwa sighed, feeling the disappointment of gaining something only to lose it again.

Speaking of basics, Hyuga Iwa thought of the hand seals used by ninja to perform ninjutsu. The twelve basic hand seals could be combined in different ways to activate different ninjutsu.

When ninjutsu was used—especially the Summoning Jutsu—the formulas that often appeared made Hyuga Iwa realize that there had to be some connection between hand seals and formulas.

However, Hyuga Iwa could not decipher that connection for the time being. In many people's eyes, hand seals and formulas were completely separate systems, and they would never link the two together.

"Then perhaps I can start with hand seals? Looks like I need to properly investigate their origins."

Hyuga Iwa knew the twelve hand seals. Or rather, every ninja knew them.

Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar corresponded to the twelve earthly branches of Taoism from his previous life. At Ninja School, the first thing they learned was hand seals. After all, without knowing how to form seals, one could not use ninjutsu, much less be called a ninja.

After thinking for a long time, Hyuga Iwa roughly had a direction for his research: begin by investigating the origins of hand seals.

But that would not be easy to investigate. After all, a thousand years had passed since then, and much information had already vanished into the river of history. What remained for the world might only be speculation.

The legends of the Sage of Six Paths had become mythological tales passed from mouth to mouth, but Hyuga Iwa knew that the Sage of Six Paths had truly existed, and the emergence of hand seals had to be connected to him.

If not him, then his younger brother!

There was no other possibility!

After all, before the Sage of Six Paths, the people of the Shinobi World had never possessed chakra and could not use ninjutsu!

Hyuga Iwa sighed softly to himself. "The road ahead is long and arduous."

Over the following days, Hyuga Iwa began researching the Summoning Jutsu and the three Sealing Jutsu. Compared to searching for a needle in the ocean, it would be a good choice if he could gain inspiration from existing materials.

At the same time, whenever he had free time, Hyuga Iwa turned into an incessant question-asking child. He would grab a teacher and keep asking questions until the teacher was sick of it, yet he would continue asking. And his questions were the kind that were extremely difficult to answer, sometimes impossible to answer at all.

For a time, almost every teacher developed a headache whenever they saw Hyuga Iwa. Some teachers would immediately resort to pretending to be sick, claiming they needed the bathroom, or using all sorts of other excuses the moment they spotted him...

In any case, they nearly exhausted every excuse they could think of.

At first, Hyuga Iwa had felt somewhat embarrassed, even upset whenever he was turned away. But after it happened enough times, he became shameless. Since they did not want to see him so badly, then he would make a point of seeking them out!

Thus, the teachers at the school spent a period of time living in constant dread, until the Hokage, having learned of the matter, stopped Hyuga Iwa. The price of that intervention was allowing Hyuga Iwa to look things up in the Leaf Village library himself, provided that he did not consult prohibited materials.

In truth, Hyuga Iwa was happy with that arrangement. He knew that those teachers might not even know more than he did!

His happy days passed one by one amid study and training, until sudden news shattered the peace of Leaf Village.

Hatake Sakumo had abandoned a mission in order to save his comrades. He had rescued them, but the mission had failed.

What should have been an ordinary piece of news suddenly caused an enormous uproar in Leaf Village. The villagers blamed Sakumo because ninja lived by their missions; abandoning a mission was equivalent to abandoning one's life. What angered people even more was that the comrades he had rescued actually turned around and accused him, saying that he should not have abandoned the mission...

For a time, public opinion throughout the village was almost unanimously condemning Hatake Sakumo. Even Kakashi Hatake was implicated, pointed at and subjected to harsh words by the villagers.

When Hyuga Iwa learned of the news, he remained very calm, because he knew that if history followed its original course, Hatake Sakumo would eventually choose suicide to put an end to the storm.

And after Hatake Sakumo committed suicide, the village's gossip would quickly disappear, and people would soon forget the matter. Years later, perhaps people would remember only Hatake Sakumo's fearsome nickname, the White Fang of the Leaf, which had terrified the entire Shinobi World!

However, Hyuga Iwa felt that it would be a pity to let the White Fang of the Leaf die just like that.

Anyone with clear eyes could see that this was a typical smear campaign, perhaps intended to damage Hatake Sakumo's reputation. Before this, he had been the leading candidate to become the future Fourth Hokage!

Hyuga Iwa felt that if there was anyone in Leaf Village under the greatest suspicion, it was undoubtedly Shimura Danzō.

At the same time, he believed that the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, had definitely played some role as well. Even if he had not orchestrated it, he surely knew where the rumors had come from. He might even have helped fuel them.

After all, without the approval of those two men who held the highest authority in all of Leaf Village, how could the news have spread so quickly and so widely?

I have to think of a way to stop him from killing himself!

As Kakashi Hatake's friend, Hyuga Iwa was fairly familiar with Hatake Sakumo as well. He was a genius ninja whose strength surpassed the Legendary Sannin, a man who charged forward fearlessly and was always active on the battlefield.

He possessed both ruthlessness toward enemies and warmth toward comrades. He was someone who always wore a smile. A person like that should not die like this!

Because it would only weaken Leaf Village's strength and embolden enemy nations.