Early the next morning, Naruto stretched his limbs in the corridor.
The door to the room at the far end opened, and Konan emerged with heavy dark circles under her eyes.
Naruto exclaimed, "Konan, what happened to you?"
Konan looked out at the curtain of rain beyond the window. "It's a long story. Anyway, I've deciphered our teacher's code. Take a look..."
She wrote the decoded message on a sheet of paper and handed it to Naruto.
The coded message was a single sentence.
-I returned from the underworld, leaving memories behind. The dead of the Pure Land, a taboo for the living. Never...
Konan asked, "What do you make of it...?"
Naruto's gaze grew intent. "This sentence alone doesn't give us much to go on, but the Pervy Sage must have learned some huge secret. He might not even be able to express it directly in writing, so he can only pass it on through a code like this... He's trying to give us a clue."
Whoosh...!
Lightning flashed and thunder roared as rain poured down.
On the tower's sixth floor, Jiraiya sat at the head of his bed, deep worry filling his world-weary eyes!
Up in the seventh-floor corridor.
Naruto said, "I think there'll be more to this code. It'll take a long time before we truly understand what the Pervy Sage wants to tell us..."
"..." Konan's expression was grave. She vaguely sensed a cloud of mystery hanging over Jiraiya's resurrection and loss of speech, one that concerned an earth-shattering secret!
Seeing the mood grow heavy, Naruto smiled. "But didn't the Pervy Sage say he'd 'watch over' us? So everything will work out for the best~!"
"Mm..." Konan nodded, much of her unease dispelled. Seeing that Naruto had gotten ready so early in the morning, she asked,