Drops of blood slid down the keen blade and fell to the ground. The Yuki Clan Chunin facing Jing Xiu stared in disbelief.
"Your speed..."
Jing Xiu twisted the short blade in his hand, shredding the man's heart. "No matter how seriously you take me, the fact that I'm a child still makes you let your guard down, doesn't it?"
With his back to Jing Xiu, Black Wolf never turned around. He had already recognized the scream as an adult's.
White Lotus, who had witnessed everything, made an unexpected decision. "Retreat! Water Release: Hidden Mist Technique!"
The Sharingan's perceptiveness far surpassed the Byakugan's. But against a mist that spread for hundreds of meters, even though the Sharingan retained some advantages, the Three-Tomoe Sharingan could do nothing if the enemy was determined to escape.
Black Wolf tested the waters with a Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Technique. Its wide attack range cleared a large swath of mist in an instant.
Seeing that the Yuki Clan really had withdrawn, Black Wolf finally turned around and stared at Jing Xiu with unblinking crimson eyes.
Black Wolf had thought that his Sharingan's "highest-level" Three-Tomoe form would intimidate Jing Xiu. Yet Jing Xiu ignored him completely and walked straight into the thick mist.
Black Wolf bristled. "Damn brat!"
He quickly caught up with Jing Xiu. "Brat! I think what you said earlier made some sense. Since we ran into the Yuki Clan, we could naturally run into the Hozuki Clan too."
Jing Xiu looked at Black Wolf as though he were an idiot. "If the Kaguya Clan gained you, an Uchiha Jōnin..."
"Regardless of anything else, in twenty years, Sharingan shinobi wearing bone armor would definitely appear on the battlefield."
"The other clans in the Land of Water would never want to see that."
Black Wolf studied the child before him closely. "It seems taking your corpse along would be easier after all. You actually make me feel afraid!"
Seeing that Jing Xiu remained unmoved, Black Wolf could only swallow his pride. "Then what should we do next?"
Jing Xiu did not answer. He continued walking at an unhurried pace.
Black Wolf sighed. "You need to understand! You're only safe as long as I'm safe. If anything happens to me, you'll definitely die before I do!"
Jing Xiu had picked up an icicle from the battlefield. With it, he once again drew a rough map of the lands surrounding the Land of Fire.
"If we head straight to Rain Country, we'll definitely face one ambush after another, just like before. So we need to take a different route."
Seeing that Black Wolf had no intention of interrupting, Jing Xiu continued. "I suggest we pose as father and son, then slip into a Hyuga Clan caravan heading to the Kaguya Clan."
"With your skills, pretending to be a samurai shouldn't be difficult, should it?"
Black Wolf froze. He looked at Jing Xiu, who was about the same age as his own son, with the same young face and the same bright eyes. "Ryosuke!"
For a moment, he could no longer tell whether the boy before him was his own son, Uchiha Ryosuke, or the clan head's son, Uchiha Jing Xiu.
Biei Town was a small village in Hyuga territory.
That day, a middle-aged man covered in scars, with a long sword at his waist and a wispy goatee beneath his chin, entered the village from the north with a thin, dark-skinned child.
"Halt! This is Biei Town of the Hyuga Clan. Who are you?"
The middle-aged samurai stepped forward, his menacing appearance making the village guard stumble. "I'm a wandering samurai, and this is my son. We're looking for work as guards to earn some food."
The guard scrambled to his feet, feeling he had lost face. But another look at the middle-aged samurai still left him uneasy. "There's an abandoned house at the east end of the village. Stay there for a couple of days! A caravan belonging to the Hyuga Third Elder's faction will be coming through in a few days."
The middle-aged samurai was none other than Uchiha Black Wolf, while the thin, dark-skinned child was Jing Xiu.
"Since we have nothing else to do, why don't I teach you how to extract chakra?"
Jing Xiu ignored Black Wolf and simply sat cross-legged at one side of the bed.
Over the past few days, he had killed several bandits in addition to that Yuki Clan Chunin.
A thin layer of clear spring water had also appeared at the bottom of the Urn of Life.
If I take an ordinary bandit as one unit, each produces about three drops of source of life. One Chunin is worth roughly two hundred drops of source of life.
A little over a hundred drops of source of life are equivalent to ten days of practicing Baji Fist and the Pure and Tranquil Scripture.
By that calculation, to master the martial arts that would normally take ten years, I only need to kill about two hundred Chunin.
At that thought, Jing Xiu opened his eyes and looked at Black Wolf. "Is there any meat left?"
Without the Uchiha Clan's medicinal baths and specially prepared nutritious meals these days, Jing Xiu could only maintain his nutrition by eating large quantities of meat.
Black Wolf had also marveled at Jing Xiu's enormous appetite.
Fortunately, the Land of Fire had plenty of dense forests, filled with birds of prey and wild beasts. With Black Wolf's skills, he could hunt down as much meat as they needed.
"Is your training method the secret Uchiha Training Method passed down through the clan head's faction?" Black Wolf asked curiously as he watched Jing Xiu practice his stance.
"If you want to learn, just copy me. Why worry about any restrictions? You're an Uchiha rogue ninja now."
Jing Xiu did not even glance at Black Wolf's dark expression. He simply kept up his daily training.
Morning and evening, he practiced the Pure and Tranquil Scripture to steady his soul, and his mental strength slowly increased along with that twice-daily practice.
In the mornings, he practiced his stance. In the afternoons, he practiced his fist techniques and swordsmanship.
At first, Black Wolf had dismissed Jing Xiu's training. In his opinion, extracting chakra, practicing Hand Seals, and so on were what a normal Uchiha ought to train in.
But after training alongside Jing Xiu for a while, he was astonished to discover changes in his body. Even the chakra within him had become a little more condensed.
Black Wolf, whose strength had hit a bottleneck and had not improved for a long time, was delighted. Still, Jing Xiu's training was rather excessive for a five-year-old child.
He had been shocked by Jing Xiu's almost deranged self-discipline. Sometimes, he even wondered whether Jing Xiu had already awakened his Sharingan. Otherwise, what five-year-old would torment himself so madly?
He must have suffered some kind of shock to become like this.
The two stayed in Biei Town for an entire month. According to the original schedule, the caravan belonging to the Hyuga Third Elder's faction should indeed have arrived within three to five days.
But as relations between the Hyuga and Uchiha grew increasingly strained, the caravan's route had undergone drastic changes.
Biei Town was too close to the Uchiha, so the caravan arrived several weeks late.
"You're that wandering samurai? As long as you can withstand two strikes from me-no, four-you and your son can join the caravan."
A member of the Hyuga Branch Family looked haughtily at the middle-aged samurai Black Wolf was disguised as.
Black Wolf lowered himself into a lunge and placed his right hand on his sword hilt, preparing an Iaido Slash. The moment this Hyuga Branch Family member attacked, he would draw his long sword and meet attack with attack.
The Hyuga Branch Family member grew interested. He had only intended to test Black Wolf with ordinary Gentle Fist strikes, but seeing Black Wolf's stance, he immediately grew serious and used the first four palms of the Hyuga Eight Trigrams Palm, which he had only recently mastered.
The Uchiha were arrogant, but the Hyuga were no less so.
Against a mere wandering samurai, a proud Hyuga would not stoop to going back on his word. Four palms meant four palms.
"A mere samurai! Let me show you the Hyuga's mighty power! Ninja Art: Eight Trigrams: Four Palms!"