Upheaval in the Land of Waves

Three days later, early morning, at the entrance to Konoha.

The morning mist had yet to disperse, dampening the grass beside the road. All of Team 7 had assembled, the four of them wearing brand-new Konoha forehead protectors, their packs neatly arranged and their ninja tools fully stocked. Tazuna stood to one side, rubbing his rough palms together, his brow tightly furrowed and his expression filled with unconcealable anxiety.

Kakashi wore his ninja tool pouch slung diagonally, one hand tucked into his pocket. He looked as lazy and casual as ever, but a barely perceptible trace of gravity lay deep in his eye. Before departure, he had received a secret order from the Third: spatial fluctuations along the Land of Fire's borders had been abnormal for nearly half a month, with traces of unknown energy appearing repeatedly. Covert infiltration by foreign forces was suspected. He was to remain vigilant throughout the journey and report any anomalies immediately.

At the time, he had merely assumed ANBU from another ninja village had infiltrated the country. Now, looking at the composed Lin Chen beside him, he felt a faint unease rising within him. All the recent strange incidents seemed to have some inexplicable connection to this unfathomable young genius.

Lin Chen stood beside the road, his gaze sweeping calmly toward the border.

On a level others could not perceive, he could clearly detect tiny spatial rifts drifting through the air. Wisps of unfamiliar energy that did not belong to the Shinobi World were quietly seeping through them.

[Ding! Acceleration of the Myriad Worlds Fusion process detected!]

[Trace amounts of energy from the Pirate Plane and Jujutsu Plane have begun seeping into the current world. Spatial rift activity continues to rise!]

[New Plunder permissions unlocked: you can plunder otherworldly ability origins, bloodline fragments, and special energy systems!]

The system notifications rang out in his mind. A faint gleam flashed in Lin Chen's eyes as understanding settled over him.

From the moment he had transmigrated, he had known this was not simply the Hokage plane, but the Great World of Merged Heavens. The Shinobi World, One Piece, Jujutsu, Bleach... the barriers between countless planes were slowly dissolving. He simply had not expected the fusion to happen so quickly, and the Land of Waves happened to be the weakest spatial node in these waters.

"Interesting," Lin Chen murmured, the faintest curve rising at the corner of his lips.

What others saw as an unknown crisis was, to him, nothing more than another batch of opportunities delivered to his doorstep. Devil Fruits, the three types of Haki, cursed energy techniques, Domain Expansion... which of them was not a top-tier inheritance capable of overturning the Shinobi World?

"Everyone's here. Let's go."

Kakashi raised a hand, and the group set off along the main road through the woods, heading toward the Land of Waves.

Naruto bounced along the entire way, brimming with excitement over his first mission; Sasuke traveled in cold-faced silence, occasionally glancing at Lin Chen from the corner of his eye, resentment and competitiveness churning in his gaze; Sakura walked in the middle, keeping an eye on Sasuke while nervously gripping the kunai at her waist.

Lin Chen walked at the rear, his steps unhurried, but his spiritual sense remained spread out, silently sensing the energy traces along the way. The closer they came to the border, the stronger the otherworldly presences grew: both an overbearing vitality carrying the salty tang of sea wind and a cold, clinging, hostile negativity invisible to ordinary people.

The two utterly different forces intertwined, quietly breeding strange changes upon the soil of the Shinobi World.

On the second day of their journey, they entered the dense forests along the Land of Fire's border.

They had just passed through a thicket when Kakashi, who was leading the way, abruptly raised a hand, signaling the group to stop.

"I smell blood."

He stepped forward slowly and parted the waist-high weeds. A corpse dressed as a caravan guard lay starkly beneath a tree. Its entire body was shriveled, skin clinging to bone, as though all its blood and vital essence had been drained away. Several pitch-black claw marks remained on its neck, with faint black mist lingering around the wounds, giving off an indescribably eerie air.

Several pitch-black metal fragments the size of fingernails lay scattered beside the corpse's hand, gleaming coldly in the sunlight. Kakashi picked one up. The instant his fingertips touched it, he felt the chakra inside him grow slightly sluggish, its circulation inexplicably slowing a fraction.

"What strange metal." Kakashi's brow furrowed tightly as he quietly activated his Sharingan and examined the fragment. "It can suppress chakra flow. I've never seen a material like this. And these wounds... they weren't caused by ninjutsu or a summoned beast."

He had spent years in the Shinobi World and had seen kekkei genkai, secret techniques, and forbidden techniques, but he had never seen such a bizarre death. The black mist on the corpse was cold and sinister, and even his Sharingan could not see through its true nature.

Naruto leaned in for a look, then shrank back in fright. "Isn't that a horrifying way to die? Could it have been a ghost or monster?"

Frowning, Sasuke reached toward the black mist. As soon as his fingertips drew close, he felt a bone-piercing chill and hurriedly withdrew his hand, his expression darkening slightly. "This power... something's very wrong with it."

Sakura hid behind them, her face pale, not daring to look any longer.

Lin Chen stood at the back, his gaze passing over the corpse and metal fragments. He already understood.

The black mist was cursed energy left behind by a low-level cursed spirit that fed specifically on human vitality and negative emotions; the pitch-black metal fragments were clearly seastone debris, which naturally suppressed energy systems such as chakra.

Traces of Jujutsu and One Piece had appeared on the same caravan corpse, indicating that the spatial rifts were expanding faster than he had anticipated. Creatures and objects from other planes were already flowing into the Shinobi World in batches.

"Lin Chen, what do you think?" Kakashi suddenly turned toward him.

After experiencing several strange incidents, he instinctively wanted to hear Lin Chen's opinion.

Lin Chen stepped forward, glanced at the corpse, and said evenly, "It was probably caused by some special kind of spirit and a foreign metal. The Shinobi World is vast. It's normal for there to be things we don't know about."

He spoke lightly, without the slightest intention of revealing the Myriad Worlds Fusion.

Kakashi gave him a long look. Seeing that he was unwilling to say more, he did not press him, but the doubts in his heart only deepened. He kept feeling that Lin Chen not only knew what this was, but was even extremely familiar with this kind of power.

After giving the corpse a simple burial, they continued on their way. Along the road, similar eerie traces grew increasingly frequent: wild beasts gnawed down to their skeletons, pitch-black claw marks on tree trunks, scales from unknown creatures washed up on the shore... the entire border forest lay beneath an inexplicable pall of oppression.

By the time they reached the Land of Waves, it was already evening on the third day.

The small island lay by the sea, the sea breeze salty and damp. What should have been a peaceful fishing-village scene now carried a heavy air of death. Few people walked near the village entrance, and every household had its doors and windows tightly shut. The occasional passing villager hurried along, their face filled with fear.

Tazuna had remained silent the whole way. Only after entering the village did he finally sigh and confess to the group, "Honored ninja, there's something I've kept from you."

"The thugs Gato hired are only a minor problem. Over the past half month, things have kept happening on the island." His voice grew heavy. "The workers at the construction site keep hearing a woman crying at night. When they wake up the next morning, they're weak all over, as though their souls have been sucked out. Three people have already disappeared completely. A strange ship washed ashore, too. No one dares go near it. The village elders say... a sea demon has come."

He had originally only wanted to hire ninja to deal with Gato's thugs, but the situation had grown increasingly bizarre, far beyond what ordinary ninja could handle. Truly left with no way out, he had concealed the details, deciding to trick them into coming first.

Kakashi's expression darkened instantly.

What had begun as an ordinary C-rank escort mission now involved not only rogue ninja forces but unknown, eerie incidents as well. Its difficulty had long since soared to A-rank or higher.