Walk Beside Me

Lu Zeming chose the mountain stronghold as their base for three reasons.

First, Spirit Energy was more abundant there, so he could cultivate much faster.

Second, the stronghold commanded the high ground and was easy to defend. A trail behind it led deeper into the mountains, giving them an escape route if a powerful enemy came.

Finally, the surroundings were excellent. There were mountains and water, herbs and woodland behind the stronghold, and a main road below. Both farming and travel would be convenient.

At first light, Lu Zeming returned to the village to fetch everyone.

More than thirty homeless villagers came back with him and Rin.

When they reached the stronghold gate, Rin, cradling a piglet, asked excitedly, "Big brother, is this our new home?"

"That's right. This is our new home!"

Rin ran inside on her little legs to explore, but soon came screaming back out.

"Big brother! Big brother! There are lots of dead people in there!"

"They're bad people I killed. Don't worry, we'll have them cleared away!"

The first day of any move was spent cleaning up. Nothing unusual about that!

That day, Lu Zeming noticed that some people worked hard while others slacked off. After barely doing anything, they were asking to use the toilet or get a drink.

Lu Zeming said nothing. Instead, he stayed up that night drafting village rules.

The first rule was that food would be distributed according to work: the more you did, the more you got.

Each person's daily ration was 500 grams of grain. That was only enough to keep someone alive, nowhere near enough to fill their stomach.

Anyone who wanted to eat their fill had to complete their assigned work, earn Work Points, and exchange those points for grain.

Then came a few rules on public order, rewards, and punishments.

Given the villagers' literacy levels, Lu Zeming kept things simple.

For public order, for instance, he stipulated only that murderers paid with their lives, debts had to be repaid, and thieves would be whipped.

Lu Zeming managed everything himself for a few days. Once the procedures were running smoothly, he handed the job to Kumi Uzumaki.

Looking at the newly cleared fields and the people working in them, Lu Zeming smiled with satisfaction.

"No one's getting in the way of my farming!"

The adults had work, and the children would not be idle either. Every child under twelve had to learn to read and cultivate.

Teaching them to read still fell to Kumi Uzumaki, and Lu Zeming joined in as well.

As for cultivation, Lu Zeming brought out the Chakra Extraction Technique.

He personally guided the children. Those with talent soon sensed Chakra.

He did not give up on the children who lacked talent, either.

Lu Zeming knew that in the Naruto World, everyone was born with Chakra, commoner and noble alike.

The difference between an ordinary person and a ninja was whether they could extract and control the Chakra within them!

Through simulations with his miniature self in the Inner Landscape, Lu Zeming had already discovered that most ordinary people could not extract chakra because their meridians and acupoints were blocked.

As a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, Lu Zeming might not have been a brilliant doctor, but he knew a few ways to clear those blockages.

Acupuncture, massage, moxibustion, scraping, guided exercises, breathing techniques, and medicinal herbs to improve circulation.

After that smooth succession of treatments, all fifteen children in the village became ninja.

Ninja awakened through such methods were nowhere near as gifted as those born with the ability, but something was better than nothing. At least it would make them stronger and healthier.

When Kumi Uzumaki saw Lu Zeming turn ordinary people who could not cultivate into ninja, she was stunned.

"A miracle. This is nothing short of a miracle!"

As she spoke, a trace of reverence entered her gaze.

"Piece of cake," Lu Zeming said, brushing it off.

"Are you sure you're not the son of some great clan?"

"I told you, I'm not!"

"All right. If I didn't know you, I'd think you were the Sage of Six Paths reincarnated!"

"Pah! No need to insult me!"

"How is that an insult?" Kumi Uzumaki asked, a little embarrassed. "Since you helped them, could you help me too? I want the power to protect everyone!"

"Easy. Give me your hand and I'll check your pulse first." Lu Zeming crossed one leg over the other and lowered his eyelids, putting on the air of an old-school physician.

As expected of the Uzumaki clan, her meridians were more than twice as wide as an ordinary person's. Her pulse was strong and her vitality astonishing, but it felt far from smooth beneath his fingers, with pronounced catches and delays.

A textbook case of blocked meridians and acupoints.

"This is a little troublesome." Lu Zeming frowned.

Kumi Uzumaki's face went ashen. "Is there no hope?"

Lu Zeming shook his head. "Acupuncture alone won't do it. You'll also need three days of medicinal baths with Safflower, Sichuan Lovage, Cinnamon Twig, Spatholobus Stem, and Licorice!"

Seeing Kumi Uzumaki's expression, Lu Zeming added reassuringly, "Don't worry. I have all those herbs. I'll prepare them for you in a moment!"

Kumi Uzumaki was too excited to speak.

Three days later, Kumi Uzumaki successfully cast Ninjutsu. The first thing she did was kneel before Lu Zeming.

"My Lord, whatever you intend to do, I, Kumi Uzumaki, will give everything I have to help you accomplish it. Please accept my loyalty!"

Lu Zeming helped Kumi Uzumaki up and said earnestly, "I once read something interesting. I'd like to share it with you today: 'Please don't walk ahead of me; I may go somewhere else. Please don't walk behind me; you may lose your way. Walk beside me, shoulder to shoulder—my comrade!'"

Kumi Uzumaki looked at Lu Zeming standing before her: his bright, sincere eyes, his warm smile, his figure bathed in sunlight.

To Kumi Uzumaki, the person before her no longer seemed human. He was an irresistible charmer.

Even if his charm swept her away, even if it dragged her down to the depths of hell, she would go willingly!

From then on, Kumi Uzumaki treated Lu Zeming with even greater respect and took her work even more seriously. She managed the village as though it were her own home.

Lu Zeming had kept up his own cultivation throughout this time.

Besides training in his Inner Landscape every night, he set aside time during the day to practice with a blade.

With no sword manual to follow, he found his own way to make up for it.

At first, Lu Zeming had a training partner throw stones at him while he tried to cut them down with a bamboo sword. No Spiritual Power, no sensing—just his body's reactions.

He hit only five or six stones out of ten and often got struck himself, but Lu Zeming did not lose heart. He kept practicing every day.

Each night, Lu Zeming used his miniature self in the Inner Landscape to review his movements. Where had he applied force incorrectly? Where had his motions failed to flow? Watching his miniature self repeat them made every problem clear.

Practicing, reviewing, and correcting himself, Lu Zeming needed only two days before he could cut down every stone his partner threw at full speed.

Still unsatisfied, Lu Zeming added more people to throw stones. Two, then three, then four...

If he had not been worried about disrupting the village's production, Lu Zeming would have increased the number to ten.

The stones they threw grew smaller too: first fist-sized, then the size of eggs, then pigeon eggs, and finally soybeans, hurled by the handful.

Only after Lu Zeming could keep cutting down every stone for ten straight minutes without letting a single one hit him did he feel he had reached a bottleneck and stop.

After this period of cultivation, the vortex of Spirit Energy in Lu Zeming's Dantian was more than three times its original size.

Whenever he looked at it, it resembled a swirling nebula. It was beautiful!

Lu Zeming's ability to control objects had improved just as quickly. He could now control five Kunai at once, and his maximum range had grown to six meters.

His physical strength and resilience were on another level too. Shattering a boulder with one punch was easy now, and he could leap into a five-meter-tall tree using strength alone, without Spiritual Power.

Lu Zeming wanted to keep training, but the village was running dangerously low on salt. He had no choice but to put his cultivation on hold!

Salt might have seemed unimportant, but they could not do without it!

The children had also learned basic Ninjutsu like the Three Body Technique. Without more advanced techniques, they could not develop real fighting strength.

"Looks like I'll have to make a trip to Kusagakure!"