Minato Namikaze's eyes lit up, and he quickly looked ahead.
Had it worked?
The smoke slowly cleared.
Naruto looked down. Beneath his palm lay a lively little tadpole.
"Is this... a tadpole?"
Minato Namikaze nearly lost his composure.
Though he knew the Nine-Tails' chakra would affect Xuan Zhe's ability to gather chakra, he hadn't expected it to go this far off course.
This child really had no talent...
"How about we try something else?"
To keep his son from feeling upset, Minato Namikaze quickly changed the subject and pulled a water ball out from behind his back.
But he was overthinking it.
Naruto hadn't felt discouraged in the slightest.
A month passed in the blink of an eye.
The rich and powerful figures from the various nations of the shinobi world arrived in Konoha one after another.
Among them were filthy-rich merchants and noble lords with sizable territories.
These were the patrons who gave ninja villages major commissions ranked A-rank and above.
In plain terms, they were the clients.
In Xuan Zhe's eyes, every one of them was a fat sheep ripe for fleecing.
They had come to see for themselves how well the newcomers from the major ninja villages could fight.
That would help them decide which village to approach first when they had a big job in the future.
In previous years, nowhere near this many important people had come.
But this year was different.
There was the Fifth Hokage's son, not to mention a descendant of the Uchiha Clan.
There were the younger members of the three Ino-Shika-Cho clans, the Kazekage's three children, and that descendant of the Yuki Clan rumored to be the likeliest successor to the position of Mizukage.
These would all be the mainstays of their villages in the future.
Of course they had