Konoha's Defense

Inside the sealing space, the Nine-Tails' roar paused for a moment, and its blood-red eyes narrowed as if inspecting this tiny human toddler who dared to face it directly.

It felt the genuine sense of loneliness in Naruto's words, one that shared a rather bizarre sense of "misery loves company" with it.

Yet this did little to diminish its hatred in the slightest; instead, it made it feel even more ironic.

"Hmph, what boring whining," the Nine-Tails' voice deepened. "What do your human pains have to do with the old man?"

"Your loneliness is precisely the ugly proof of you humans repelling each other! Get lost, brat, stop coming here to humiliate yourself! If not for this damn seal, the old man would have eaten you long ago!"

Naruto knew this communication could only end here.

Although he failed to glean much useful information, he at least genuinely felt the Nine-Tails' immense, boundless resentment, and made it "remember" his name.

"I'll come again!" Naruto shouted unwillingly, then didn't dare linger any longer, concentrating all his intent on thinking, "Go back! Hurry back!"

The dizzying sensation washed over him once more, and his soul was yanked violently back.

"Hah!"

At the desk, Naruto jolted awake, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, as if he had just experienced a life-or-death struggle.

He looked down at the Sheep Talisman in his palm, warmed from his tension, and muttered to himself:

"The Nine-Tails, it really seems to hate humans so, so much! And well, it also looked kind of painful."

Though this communication couldn't be counted as a success—and could even be called an extreme failure—Naruto faintly felt in his heart that he seemed to have caught a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg.

That Nine-Tails Fox might not be entirely as he had imagined.

Immediately, he gripped the Sheep Talisman tightly again.

Next... next time when I'm a little stronger... I'll go try again! A flash of stubbornness crossed Naruto's eyes.

As for the Nine-Tails in its cage, after that human brat's soul vanished, a trace of an imperceptible, strange light flashed through its blood-red eyes.

That tiny yet abnormally audacious brat seemed somewhat different from those previous vessels.

Over the next few days, Team 7, to which Naruto belonged, took on quite a few D-rank missions under Kakashi Hatake's training.

However, because of the Nine-Tails, Naruto's Chakra control was not particularly good, causing him to mess up several missions and implicating Sasuke and Haruno Sakura in a thorough scolding from clients.

And Naruto also solidly took several iron fists from Haruno Sakura, getting covered in bumps all over his head.

At night, Naruto lay in bed, tossing and turning. The exhaustion from the day's missions was still there, but he didn't feel a shred of sleepiness.

His gaze drifted from time to time to the drawer of his bedside table, where his secret was hidden—the Sheep Talisman.

After a few days of communicating with the Nine-Tails, his fear of this talisman had diminished greatly, replaced by an increasingly fervent curiosity.

Soul Departure; this kind of experience was far too novel and alluring to Naruto.

"Always going to pick fights with that smelly fox is pointless too," Naruto muttered, a thought suddenly popping up. "Since the soul can float out, can it go outside and look around?"

"Like seeing what Konoha is like in the middle of the night?"

This idea made Naruto incomparably excited.

Roaming the village like a ghost, listening to everyone's sleep-talk, seeing who wasn't sleeping in the middle of the night—just thinking about it felt fun!

No sooner said than done! Naruto immediately scrambled up and took out the talisman. Already having some experience, this time he calmed himself down even faster, holding the talisman and concentrating on the thought of "going out to take a look."

Soon, the familiar weightless sensation enveloped him. He successfully performed Soul Departure once more, floating weightlessly inside the room.

"Yosh! Success!" Naruto excitedly waved his translucent arm, then couldn't wait to phase right through the wall.

Konoha in the dead of night was silent, with only the occasional footsteps of patrolling ninjas echoing in the distance.

Like an unleashed husky, Naruto floated back and forth excitedly in the air, passing through houses and skimming past treetops, feeling incomparably free.

"Haha! No one can find me! This is way more fun than pranks!" Naruto smugly tried to phase right through the bodies of a few villagers returning late.

Yet nothing happened at all; these villagers continued chatting away on their own, sensing nothing amiss.

Finding it boring, Naruto drifted higher and higher, wanting a bird's-eye view of the entire village's night scenery from the air.

However, when he ascended to a certain height, preparing to appreciate the full view of Konoha under the night veil, the sight before him made him freeze abruptly, all his playful thoughts vanishing into thin air in an instant.

He saw a massive web of light composed of countless dense Chakra lines and special runes!

These light webs, like an inverted bowl, closely shrouded the entire sky above Konoha.

They weren't physical entities and were invisible to the naked eye in the material world, but from Naruto's soul perspective at that moment, they were shockingly clear.

"What... what is this?!" Naruto was dumbfounded, suspended midair as he looked up at this massive barrier shrouding the entire village, his jaw hanging wide open.

He instinctively looked down, and wherever his gaze reached, even more startling details reflected in his eyes.

He saw that many important facilities within the village, especially the Hokage Building, had actually become the energy hubs and primary defense targets of this light web!

The entire Hokage Building was wrapped by layer upon layer of even more complex barriers.

Not only that, he also saw that at the walls on the edge of the village, the barrier's light wall was even more pronounced, resembling a transparent city wall that fused perfectly with the barrier above to form a complete, 360-degree dead-zone-free massive protective shield.

He could even faintly see that at some nodal points, extremely faint streams of Chakra were slowly injecting, maintaining the operation of this massive barrier.

The entire village of Konoha was firmly protected within, much like a massive cocoon.

Naruto floated in the air, speechless for a long time. It was his first time feeling the concept of a "village" so intuitively.

It wasn't just a settlement, but a stronghold guarded at all times by powerful forces.

He recalled his casual pranks from before, and the seemingly "easy" infiltration when he stole the Scroll of Seals.

Thinking back on it now, it was simply laughable.

The reason he had managed to succeed was probably not because his skills were top-notch, but because this barrier's defense mechanism regarded him as "a member of the village," and thus did not trigger the highest alert.

Regardless, this discovery completely shocked him.

Turns out the village has always been protected by something this awesome? he muttered to himself. In his soul state, though he couldn't feel the cold, he felt an indescribable emotion surging within him.