The ruins of the Ancient Kingdom of Roran.
The ruined Spiral Tower still stood alone amid the windblown sand, but the Underground Altar had long since fallen empty.
Lin Ze's "Earth Release: Yinglong" clone stood at the center of the altar and closed his eyes to sense his surroundings for a moment, confirming that there was nothing unusual here apart from faint, lingering fluctuations of natural energy.
"The last time I came here was over ten years ago. I wonder how Sara and her people are doing. They must be living pretty well in the Land of Rivers."
He murmured to himself, then sat cross-legged, formed hand seals, and pressed his hands against his abdomen.
"Seal: Release!"
Humm-
A layer of pale blue chakra light shone from his abdomen. A fist-sized, dragon-shaped shell, its entire surface flowing with an earthen-yellow radiance, slowly emerged and hovered above his palm.
It was the Sea Dragon Jade shell that had originally served as Genbu's chakra power bank, with the Ryūmyaku's energy sealed inside.
At that moment, runes flickered across the shell's surface, and it seemed to contain a vast ocean of energy. Merely holding it in his hand, Lin Ze could feel its immense, weighty power, as though it carried the pulse of the earth.
"The Ryūmyaku..."
Lin Ze gazed at it, a trace of contemplation flashing through his eyes.
In the original Naruto story, the Ryūmyaku was a special energy entity capable of triggering travel through space and time. In the movie The Lost Tower, Naruto had been swept up in its energy and traveled to Rōran twenty years in the past.
But the original story had never explained in detail exactly how that time travel was triggered.
"Travel through space and time... is essentially interference with the rules of time."
Lin