Rescuing a Damsel in Distress, the Move He Used Was Called Thousand Years of Death

Naruto's chakra poured into that thin-skinned balloon.

Massive amounts of chakra churned together right in the center of the balloon, spinning in a chaotic and unruly mess.

Yet viewed from afar, it looked just like a kid playing blindly with a toy, and nobody could guess that the trick hidden inside this little ball could flat-out knock a Jonin on his back.

The Nine-Tails quieted down, no longer reaching its claws out from the cell every day.

The spiritual foundation of two lifetimes combined made Naruto handle chakra as smoothly as if he were molding mud.

Even that hacked Naruto from the original story couldn't match his current level of control alone.

It just happened to be the New Year.

Snowflakes fell as if they were free, blanketing the entire street.

Naruto wandered around with a crunching sound under his feet, experiencing his first time spending the New Year entirely alone.

"You're from the Hyuga clan, right? Show us your Byakugan and open our eyes!"

"That's right, if you don't want to show it, don't hang around here."

"That pair of eyes of yours looks sickening; you might as well be a monster."

"You little Byakugan monster!"

Every single piercing, heart-wrenching curse drilled into Naruto's ears.

Naruto paused for a moment, turning his head to look in the direction the voice came from.

Three five- or six-year-old brats cornered three-year-old Hinata against the wall, cursing her so fiercely she almost buried her head in her chest.

Naruto raised an eyebrow.

The timing was quite precise; this little play had already begun.

To be fair, the only decent human thing Hiruzen Sarutobi ever did when Naruto was little was probably finding him a good wife.

This account wasn't hard to calculate: if old Sarutobi wanted to sit firmly in the Hokage seat, he had to get Hinata and Naruto connected so he could tie the Hyuga faction to his carriage.

Last time they picked the Fifth Hokage, Danzo tripped him up badly right to his face, strictly using the fact that he was right beside the Fourth Hokage when he died yet failed to save the man as an argument, claiming he was utterly unqualified to be Hokage again.

Old Sarutobi had no choice, only able to grit his teeth and say he would substitute for a few days until the next generation of sprouts grew up.

Because of this, his tenure as Hokage felt like something he had stolen, and he couldn't stand tall.

Yet old Sarutobi was no pushover either; while Danzo was over there trying to pull Kakashi into his camp, Sarutobi turned around and cast a net, luring Danzo into making a move against him.

The ending? Not only did he firmly grasp Kakashi's heart, but he also seized Danzo's handle for assassinating the Hokage, cutting him down to size like a quail that didn't dare let out another peep.

Now the only ones in Konoha who could still trade blows with old Sarutobi were the Uchiha, who had taken root since the village's founding, and the Hyuga, picked as the best among the mediocre.

His calculations were razor-sharp: pull a weak Hyuga, strike a strong Uchiha.

With that calculation, he simply had to wade into the muddy waters of the Hyuga.

Commoners all treated Naruto as a monster transformed by the Nine-Tails, but after these three years, the prominent clans with actual foundation had long since figured out his background, knowing he was Minato's son.

With old Sarutobi suppressing the news, they didn't dare shoot their mouths off, but they didn't need to follow those foolish commoners in deliberately giving Naruto a wide berth either.

When Shikamaru asked his dad if he could play with Naruto, Shikaku let him make his own decision, and the root of it was right here.

They all understood that the fox inside Naruto's belly would never blow up, and picking up Naruto's thread was equivalent to standing on the Hokage's side.

Middling minor clans like the Ino–Shika–Cho were the best at reading the wind's direction.

Yet high-and-mighty great gates like the Hyuga held their noses in the air, looking down from the bottom of their hearts on whatever little foundation the Sarutobi clan possessed, ordinarily refusing to let Hinata have anything to do with Naruto.

Yet this time it was obviously old Sarutobi digging a pit and waiting for the Hyuga to jump right in.

For Hinata, a proper high-class young miss of a prominent clan, to have her nose pointed at and cursed by a few commoner brats—no ghost would believe such a thing if word got out.

You could figure it out with your toes that the Hyuga branch family members watching over Hinata must have been tripped up by something, unable to break away for the moment.

Naruto truly didn't have much favorable feeling for that scheming bastard old Sarutobi.

Still, since the man had pushed a wife right to his doorstep, he wasn't foolish enough to push her away.

Seeing that tears were already swirling in Hinata's eyes, Naruto sauntered forward, raised his voice, and shouted: "Hey! Let go of that girl and let me have a go!"

The ANBU lurking in the shadows was filled with question marks.

The three kids in front turned their heads with expressions of utter disgust: "What onion are you? Looking for a beating, are you?"

Naruto was only a little over three years old at this time, and compared to those two years older than him, he was as scrawny and thin as a little chick.

Naruto didn't get annoyed either, cheerfully extending a finger to point at the three of them: "If I were you, I'd hurry over and kowtow to apologize."

As he spoke, as if remembering something, he glanced sideways at the direction where the ANBU was hiding and added: "I, your lord, am the man who's going to be Hokage."

"Hokage?" The leading boy's mouth split into a grin as he bent down and poked right in front of Naruto's face. "Just you, a runt?"

"Is your brain flooded?" a follower nearby chimed in with a laugh.

Supposedly, following the old script, Naruto should have put on airs to conjure up a Shadow Clone right then and there, only to drop the ball on the spot.

However, a slight glitch had occurred right now.

He couldn't do it at all.

No one had ever taught him even a single-seal ninjutsu.

Right now, the only thing he could pull out of his pants pocket was an A-rank seal-less ninjutsu, Rasengan.

He sucked through his teeth, eyeing those three brats, and muttered, "Not worth it."

If he pressed that Rasengan down, he probably wouldn't even be able to pick up a single whole bone.

Not to mention exposing himself, and worse yet, scaring off his future wife Hinata.

Alright then, Naruto clapped his palms together and formed the Tiger seal.

The three kids opposite him changed their expressions. "You can use ninjutsu too?"

Naruto hooked the corner of his mouth, grinning sneakily. "Ninjutsu? I call this taijutsu, old man!"

"Taijutsu secret technique, Thousand Years of Death!"

The ANBU member's mind was already piled high with question marks.