At dawn on the Gobi, the wind cut like a knife.
The sun had yet to clear the horizon, but the refugee caravan was already breaking camp.
Bare-chested, Naruto raced across the soft sand with a tamarisk crate the size of a millstone on his shoulder. It was packed with iron parts for repairing axles, heavy enough to give three grown men trouble. On his shoulder, it might as well have been cotton.
"Hey, mister! Where do you want this? Still on the wagon up front?"
Naruto shouted in flawless local desert dialect. A carefree grin spread across his face, and beads of sweat gleamed on his skin in the morning sun.
The old man in charge of supplies had been fretting over how to move the crate. Now his wrinkles bunched up with delight. "Well, Xiao Xuan, the heavens sure blessed you with strength! Put it there. Yes, easy now!"
Naruto chuckled. His stomach tightened almost imperceptibly, and with a casual shrug he lowered the several-hundred-pound crate onto the wagon bed without stirring a speck of dust. He made it look effortless.
"Here, eat up!" The old man pulled two still-warm mixed-grain flatbreads from his coat and pressed them into Naruto's hands.
Naruto took a bite without hesitation. The bread was hard enough to serve as body armor, but he chewed it like marshmallow. His cheeks puffed out like a hamster's, and he swallowed one in a few bites.
"That's good! Thanks, mister!"
His hardworking, bottomless-stomached, empty-headed act quickly won over the entire caravan. In this desert, where no one knew where the next meal would come from, a harmless, obedient young fool willing to work hard was a rare treasure.
At the other end of the caravan, however, Sasuke Uchiha was enduring the darkest moment of his life.