Chapter 4

"How interesting. He even gets to call a halt."

"Shinnosuke, take me to see Lord Hokage."

Hatake Sakumo sighed as he spoke to the "comrade" he had abandoned his mission to save.

"Don't bother. Just pass a message to your old man for me. He'll understand what I mean."

Xuan Zhe raised a hand to stop him, his tone casual.

Ever since he was six, he had never wanted to see Hiruzen Sarutobi's old face again.

Hatake Xuanzhe bent down and whispered a few words to Sarutobi Shinnosuke.

The next second, Sarutobi Shinnosuke's expression changed dramatically.

"Stay out of the compensation business. I'll handle it myself. Just don't do anything fucking stupid."

Xuan Zhe shot his older brother a sidelong glance, his face full of disdain.

Hatake Sakumo looked deeply apologetic.

That whole business, frankly, had been an idea born of a moment's impulse, when he had let his head get hot.

If he just thought it over calmly, how could he still entertain such a foolish notion?

"I'm leaving."

Xuan Zhe turned to leave, intending to return to his little house outside the village.

He had lived there for a full twenty years.

"Wait, Xuan Zhe. You hardly ever come by. Stay for a meal."

Hatake Sakumo spoke up to keep him there.

"...All right. I happen to have something to tell you."

Xuan Zhe hesitated, then nodded in agreement before adding:

"But we're eating at my place."

Half an hour later, in the Hokage's office in the administration building.

"We might not mean much to you, but if you didn't have us, that would be a completely different story."

Sarutobi Shinnosuke stood there with the Sarutobi Clan members who had provoked Hatake Sakumo earlier, their legs shaking violently and their eyes filled with terror, as he stammered:

"Dad...no, Lord Hokage, Hatake Xuanzhe...told us to pass that message on to you."

That slash had carried the power of an S-rank ninjutsu, and it had practically skimmed their scalps.

Many Shinobi might never experience that kind of terror even once in their lives.

"Not having us matters a great deal to you..."

Hiruzen Sarutobi took his pipe from his lips and quietly repeated the latter half of the message.

Then he stood and looked toward the mountain behind the village.

His sculpted face had originally been there. Now that blade energy had blasted it to powder, leaving only an empty patch.

Among the seven Hokage across the generations, Hiruzen Sarutobi's strength probably only barely allowed him to fight Kakashi Hatake to a draw.

But when it came to political maneuvering, or rather, playing mind games.

Even his teacher Tobirama Senju probably could not match him.

Although Tobirama Senju had also been a master of intrigue, he could not sink as low as his two students.

The message Xuan Zhe had asked Sarutobi Shinnosuke to relay to Hiruzen Sarutobi was just that one simple sentence.

Yet what it meant to convey ran very deep.

"All right, you may leave. Oh, Shinnosuke, stop doing those things Danzo asked you to do."

Hiruzen Sarutobi spoke with a hidden meaning.

Sarutobi Shinnosuke's brows rose. He gave an awkward "Yes," then turned and left the Hokage's office with his followers.

"Xuan Zhe..."

Hiruzen Sarutobi looked at his own statue beside that of his teacher Tobirama Senju, a huge gap blasted out of it, and sank into his memories.

Throughout Konoha's Shinobi circles, everyone regarded Xuan Zhe as an eternal Genin on the same level as Might Duy.

Hatake Xuanzhe had successfully graduated from the Ninja Academy after just one year, a pace fully on par with Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Jiraiya back then.

But in Konoha now, only Hiruzen Sarutobi and those few of the older generation still remembered it.

Back then, Hiruzen Sarutobi had only just taken the Hokage's seat. He had barely had time to warm it.

The great clans, such as the Senju and Uchiha, had been thoroughly unconvinced by this Third Hokage, their eyes fixed firmly on his position.

Only Tobirama Senju's dying instructions, along with the fact that neither clan had anyone of Kage-level strength who could contend for the position at the time, had temporarily kept the matter in check.

Although the Hatake Clan was no great clan, its leader of that generation had fathered two remarkable sons.

One was Hatake Sakumo, and the other was Hatake Xuanzhe.

At the time, eleven-year-old Hatake Sakumo had already begun to show his brilliance. He was practically a second Uchiha Itachi.

And Xuan Zhe was even more frightening than his older brother, with absurdly high talent.

The brothers had been called the twin stars of the Hatake Clan, inevitably bringing to mind the Hokage brothers, Hashirama Senju and Tobirama Senju.

All of Konoha had been saying that the Fourth Hokage would most likely be one of those two brothers.

Those words had left Hiruzen Sarutobi deeply uneasy.

Because back in the Warring States period, the Hatake Clan and the Sarutobi Clan had been mortal enemies.

The Hatake brothers' grandfather had been cut down by Hiruzen Sarutobi's father, Sasuke Sarutobi, with his own hands!

With those two boys rising to such prominence, Hiruzen Sarutobi, whose position as Hokage was not yet secure, feared them more than anyone besides the Senju and Uchiha.

So Hiruzen Sarutobi had come up with a plan.

He had drawn those four early graduates close to him, making Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Jiraiya all his **.

Taking in Tsunade had been meant to reassure the Senju Clan.

Taking in Orochimaru had been because he valued the boy's talent.

As for Jiraiya, that had purely been to squeeze Xuan Zhe out.

Because back at school, Xuan Zhe had been quite close to Tsunade.

The more Hiruzen Sarutobi thought about that, the more uneasy he became.

From then on, Xuan Zhe had never taken the Chunin Ninja Exams again. He had moved straight out into the countryside beyond Konoha and begun living a life free of worldly strife.

But now...

Hiruzen Sarutobi stared at the deep trench that sword energy had cleaved through the mountain behind the village and took a hard pull on his pipe.

"Xuan Zhe, it seems you haven't neglected your training at all these years..."

Outside Konoha, beside Xuan Zhe's little wooden house.

Kakashi had already fallen asleep inside.

A bonfire had been lit beside the fields.

The brothers, Hatake Sakumo and Xuan Zhe, sat facing each other across the fire, with two sections of log serving as their seats.

"How many years has it been since you last came back to the village? I can barely remember."

Firelight shone on Hatake Sakumo's face as he shook his head with a wry smile.

Xuan Zhe's memories had to go back twenty years-to when he had graduated early alongside the present-day Sannin and had only just acquired the title of Genin.

At the time, Hiruzen Sarutobi had only just become the Third Hokage and had personally selected Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Jiraiya as his **.

That had come as quite a shock to eleven-year-old Hatake Sakumo.

Judging by those four's actual abilities, if one of them had to be dropped, surely Jiraiya should have been the one?

It was from that day onward that Xuan Zhe moved out of Konoha.

He had absolutely refused to take the Chunin Ninja Exams.

He had barely accepted any missions, either.

He had spent his days growing a few vegetables and hunting to get by.

Even the plot of land he lived on now had been bought for him with Hatake Sakumo's money.

By the time Hatake Sakumo realized what was happening, the villagers had already started calling Xuan Zhe an "eternal Genin."

"What rotten luck, getting stuck in such a shitty era."

Xuan Zhe held a wooden skewer threaded with roasted wild boar meat.

He took a bite, then muttered again, looking thoroughly disgruntled:

"Not earlier, not later. I just had to transmigrate at this exact point..."

Transmigrate?

Exact point?

Hatake Sakumo blinked in bewilderment.

Well, there it was again, just like that "Celestial Dragons" this morning-every so often, his little brother would spout a few words he could not understand.

Having grown up with him, Hatake Sakumo had long since gotten used to it.

In his previous life, Xuan Zhe's parents had died early, and his maternal grandfather had raised him single-handedly.

Later, his grandfather had passed away too.

So when he transmigrated into this world, he had not really had anything holding him back.

But what frustrated him most was arriving during Hiruzen Sarutobi's time in power.

Right when he had first taken office, at that!

He could at least have arrived while Hashirama Senju or Tobirama Senju was in charge.

Failing that, even arriving after the Konoha 12 had grown up, when the Elders Council was nearly all dead, would have been passable.