Gaara raised his amber eyes toward the vast sky. It was as though he could see through time to his future self, unleashing a massive sandstorm like a natural disaster.
When Naruto sees that I've become Kazekage the next time we meet, what kind of face will he make?
He'll probably give me that guileless, sun-bright grin again.
At the thought, the barely visible curve of Gaara's lips deepened just a little.
The next day, the Canopy Screen began its broadcast right on time.
[The next two days were like dancing on a knife's edge for Boruto and his companions.]
[They followed Shikadai's plan, hiding by day and traveling by night. Using the darkness and the forest's tangled terrain for cover, they made a detour south, hoping to skirt the Senju Clan's main search routes.]
[But the tracking skills of ninjas from the Warring States Period were far more primitive than they had imagined—and far deadlier and harder to shake.]
[By day, they hid in natural tree hollows, rock caves, or makeshift shelters Shinki concealed with a little Iron Sand and some branches and leaves.]
[Through the gaps, they could clearly see teams of ninjas in light-brown Senju Attire moving through the forest like tireless hounds, searching and examining the ground.]
[These ninjas had none of the high-tech equipment of the future, but their methods were direct and effective:]
[No matter how careful Boruto and the others were, walking across soft forest soil and ground strewn with dead branches always left faint traces.]
[The Senju ninjas clearly had tracking experts among them. They could distinguish overlapping footprints left by different numbers of people with different weights, even when the edges had blurred. They could also judge when someone had passed by the direction flattened grass pointed and how fresh a