In the deserts of the Land of Wind, day and night were two extremes.
When Toyotomi Yinglang arrived with his maid, Sakura Haruno, through the Dragon Vein teleportation array in a secluded, dry river valley surrounded by wind-eroded rock pillars, it was the hottest hour of noon.
The merciless sun hung overhead, baking the air until it warped. Everywhere they looked was a blinding yellow-white, with waves of heat rolling through the air. Every breath seemed to carry sand and flame.
Sakura Haruno instinctively narrowed her eyes and raised her uninjured arm to block the sunlight. The splint on her broken wrist looked cumbersome beneath her coarse sleeve.
The dry, scorching wind struck her face with grains of sand, stinging painfully. Unlike the cold, deathly silence beneath Rōran, this was a living, brutal inferno.
She looked at the dark gray figure ahead, utterly motionless amid the heat waves, and her heart filled with coldness and bewilderment.
Was this the world where she would serve and survive from now on?
Toyotomi Yinglang paid no attention to the harsh environment.
His constitution had long since become impervious to heat and cold. His Spiritual Energy spread outward like a precision radar, scanning an area dozens of li across.
The textures of sand and stone, the direction of the wind, the faint water veins of underground rivers, and... in the distance, a faint, distinctive Chakra fluctuation with a metallic quality.
"Found you," he murmured, turning his gaze southeast.
That Chakra was fairly strong, carrying the dryness and sharpness characteristic of the Land of Wind. More conspicuous, however, was its exquisite control over "magnetism"-the Third Kazekage's Magnet Release: Iron Sand.
Apparently, this "strongest Kazekage" was training far from the village, or carrying out some secret mission.
Perfect.
"Keep up." Leaving her those words, he shot