Observation Haki!

It was Hinata.

Ye Chuan sheathed Wado Ichimonji, reined in his excitement, and went over to open the door.

Sure enough, Hinata Hyuga stood at the door, carrying a wrapped lunch box. When she saw Ye Chuan open the door, her little face reddened again. She lowered her head and said softly:

"I... I made dinner, so I brought some over for you..."

Ye Chuan looked at her, feeling a little helpless.

In the year or so since their last sparring session, although he had remained withdrawn, Hinata seemed to have set her mind on him, finding all sorts of excuses to approach him from time to time.

Over time, although Ye Chuan had never taken the initiative, he had tacitly accepted this peculiar friendship. Perhaps they counted as childhood friends, in a sense?

"Come in." Ye Chuan stepped aside to let her in.

He knew that, given Hinata's personality, she would probably keep waiting at the door if he did not accept it.

Hinata walked into the room with small steps, set the lunch box on the table, and looked at Ye Chuan a little nervously.

Ye Chuan did not stand on ceremony. He really was hungry after training.

He opened the lunch box. Inside were neatly made rice balls, rolled omelet, and a few side dishes. It looked appetizing, far better than anything he made himself.

He ate quietly while Hinata sat rather stiffly beside him, occasionally sneaking a glance at him.

After finishing the meal, Ye Chuan tidied up the box and handed it back to Hinata.

"Thank you. It's getting late. You should head home."

"Mm! Mm!" Hinata nodded hurriedly and took the lunch box.

"I'll walk you part of the way," Ye Chuan said, rising and putting on his coat.

At an intersection not far from the Hyuga Clan Compound, Ye Chuan stopped, looked at Hinata, and suddenly gave her a warning:

"Hinata, listen. Tonight, no matter what happens or what you hear, do not go outside. Understand?"

Although Hinata was a little puzzled, she still nodded obediently when she saw Ye Chuan's serious expression.

"Mm, I understand, Ye Chuan."

"Good. Hurry home." Ye Chuan waved.

As Hinata's figure disappeared around the street corner, the softness vanished from Ye Chuan's face as well.

He raised his head and looked toward the orange-red setting sun sinking below the horizon.

He remembered it clearly. According to the original story's timeline, tonight was the night of the Uchiha Clan's... massacre!

A brutal slaughter targeting his own clan, tacitly approved and even planned with the involvement of Konoha High Command, and carried out personally by Uchiha Itachi, was about to unfold.

Should he do something?

The thought flashed through his mind for only an instant before he snuffed it out completely.

Help the Uchiha?

Leaving aside the fact that he had no ties to the Uchiha and no reason whatsoever to help them.

Even if he helped, what would he gain? Making enemies of all of Konoha High Command?

Besides, what could he possibly help them with?

Uchiha Itachi was already an Anbu squad captain, with strength at least on par with an elite Jonin, perhaps even greater.

With his current strength, which did not even qualify him as a Genin, how would charging in be any different from throwing his life away?

Inform the Third Hokage? Don't be stupid.

The Third could not possibly know nothing about this. Even if he wanted to stop it, he probably could not turn things around. Or rather, he had simply tacitly permitted it to happen.

If a nameless orphan like him ran over to report it, even if he was not arrested as a lunatic, Danzo, lurking in the shadows, would probably dispose of him immediately.

"So... do nothing. Stay out of everything." Ye Chuan made the most rational decision.

Before he possessed enough strength to crush everything in his path, any attempt to interfere with the plot would be foolish.

His first priority was to survive, then grow stronger.

Everything, without exception, had to be premised on his own safety.

As for the Uchiha's tragedy, Konoha's darkness, and the wars to come...

Those were things he would only be qualified to consider once he possessed enough strength.

Night slowly enveloped all of Konoha like an enormous curtain.

A bloody slaughter destined to go down in history was about to begin.

Ye Chuan simply turned around in silence and walked back to the little house that belonged to him.

No matter how the world outside changed, time always flowed onward.

In the blink of an eye, another three years quietly passed.

Ye Chuan stood in the clearing behind his house, where his footsteps had long since packed the ground firm.

He was already ten years old and had shot up in height.

Although he was still considerably slighter than peers such as Choji Akimichi, years of pushing his training to the limit had given him a lean, well-proportioned physique.

Now, what he held was no longer the wooden sword that had accompanied him in the beginning, but the pure-white Wado Ichimonji.

Holding a real blade felt completely different from holding a wooden sword.

With every swing, he could feel the keen edge cutting through the air and the faint vibrations transmitted through the blade.

This had brought his understanding and control of swordsmanship to a new level.

Beside him stood two figures identical to him.

They held wooden swords, meticulously repeating their slashes.

After three years of continuous training, he could now reliably create two Shadow Clones.

Over those three years, the system's daily task had also been upgraded again, becoming even more outrageous. The required number of sword swings had soared straight to five thousand.

Without two Shadow Clones helping share the sword-swinging task, his original body alone could never have completed such an enormous training load.

"Good thing I learned the Shadow Clone technique. Otherwise, I really couldn't keep this up."

Ye Chuan occasionally felt grateful for that.

But something bothered him: the inheritance progress seemed to have become something of a rip-off.

He was clearly earning more inheritance experience, yet the resulting increase in his inheritance percentage was not as fast as he had imagined.

It was like the progress bars in certain shopping apps from his previous life-the further they went, the slower they became...

Ye Chuan could only speculate:

"Perhaps it's because the later stages of Hawkeye's inheritance contain increasingly vast amounts of information."

"Naturally, turning it into something of my own becomes harder, and requires more experience."

Under these inflation-like conditions, he had trained hard for three full years, putting in far more effort than in the beginning, yet the increase in his inheritance percentage offered less return.

As of now, his inheritance percentage showed [36.72%].

Although this progress was already quite astonishing, enough to bring his basic swordsmanship, physical instincts, and combat intuition to an extremely high level, the goal of 100% remained far out of reach.

As the inheritance percentage rose, Hawkeye in his mental world had long since shed his youthful immaturity.

The current Hawkeye was around twenty years old. His gaze was proud and sharp, and he had officially set out to sea.

In Loguetown, Ye Chuan witnessed the execution of the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, with his own eyes and heard the bold final words that ushered in the Great Pirate Era.

Based on his experiences within the inheritance, he surmised that Hawkeye's strength at this stage was probably already terrifying.

Although he was still some distance from firmly holding the position of the world's strongest as he would later, he was probably already close to the strength of the Worst Generation's Supernovas when they first arrived at the Sabaody Archipelago.

His bounty... was probably approaching a hundred million Beli too, wasn't it?

As he continued absorbing Hawkeye's insights into swordsmanship from this period, an unexpected gain quietly arrived.

Haki!

Haki, a special system of power originating from the world of the Pirate King, was a latent power possessed by all humans, a manifestation of willpower.

It was mainly divided into three types: [Observation Haki], which could sense presences and foresee danger; [Armament Haki], which could improve defense and strengthen attacks; and [Conqueror's Haki], which only one person in a million possessed.

This was a power entirely different from chakra, leaning more toward the application of the mind and will.

Ye Chuan had not expected that, after his inheritance percentage passed 30%, he would actually glean a trace of Haki's secrets from it!

It was neither the powerful Armament Haki nor the rare Conqueror's Haki, but the most basic and most practical of them: Observation Haki.

"I still can't control it freely, much less see the future..."

During a break in training, Ye Chuan closed his eyes and carefully felt that wondrous state.

"It's just a very vague feeling, as though... my sixth sense has been amplified to the extreme?"

His current level was probably about the same as Usopp's when he first awakened Observation Haki in Dressrosa in the original story.

He could vaguely sense things beyond his field of vision, but it was very unstable, required extreme concentration, and had an extremely limited range and precision.

Just like now...