A Dream? Or Reality?

Earth, Huaxia, a central hospital in a first-tier city.

Inside the VIP ward, the faint smell of disinfectant lingered. Sunlight streamed through the clean glass windows, casting its light onto the pristine white sheets.

Tsubasa suddenly opened his eyes.

A severe headache made him groan, and his vision blurred for several seconds before he could focus. All he could see was a white ceiling, and the regular beeping of the electrocardiogram monitor filled his ears.

"Where... is this?" He struggled to turn his stiff neck, looking around. Unfamiliar surroundings, familiar medical equipment... Is this... a hospital?

" Little Tsubasa! You're awake?! Doctor! Doctor! My son is awake!" A woman's voice, filled with surprise and choked with sobs, rang out from beside her.

Tsubasa turned his head and saw a haggard but undeniably beautiful face. It was his mother, who was holding his hand tightly, tears streaming down her face.

"Mom...?" Tsubasa opened his mouth, his voice dry and hoarse.

Immediately afterwards, a doctor in a white coat and a nurse walked in quickly and began to perform various examinations on him.

"What a miracle, Mr. and Mrs. Tian! Your son was in a coma for three months, and his brainwave activity was very weak. We even... prepared for the worst. We never expected him to wake up, and the initial examination shows that his nervous system does not appear to be seriously damaged!" The doctor's tone was full of disbelief after the examination.

His father, his eyes also red, patted his shoulder hard, unable to say a word, only nodding heavily.

Tsubasa accepted all of this in a daze. A coma? Three months?

His memories began to flood back like a tidal wave, but they were so absurd and bizarre. Ninjas, Chakra, the Immortal King, the Insect Race, the God of Ōtsutsuki, the Insect God... and that earth-shattering divine war, where he was struck by a green light and turned into nothingness...

Everything was so real; every detail is etched into the depths of my soul. Minato Namikaze's Flying Thunder God Technique, Naruto's thousands upon thousands of clones, Orochimaru's dying gaze, the Insect God's cold compound eyes...

But before me are worried parents, doctors in white coats, and a ward filled with modern technology.

"I... had a very long... very long dream..." Tsubasa murmured to himself, a bitter and confused smile on his face.

So, that magnificent time travel, that legendary life as Saint, that incredibly fierce battle against the True God... were all just a grand dream from the hospital bed?

In the days that followed, Tsubasa received rehabilitation treatment at the hospital. His physical functions recovered quickly, and even the doctors were amazed by his remarkable recovery ability, attributing it to the vitality of a young man and the high-quality medical care afforded by his family's good economic conditions.

His parents and relatives took turns visiting him, feeling incredibly fortunate that he had regained consciousness. They talked about the trivial things that had happened during his three months in a coma, about work, and about life.

Tsubasa tried hard to integrate into this familiar yet strange reality, but the influence of that "dream" was too profound. He would often subconsciously try to sense the so-called " Chakra," or when he saw flying insects, his eyes would instantly sharpen and his body would tense slightly, as if he were ready to fight at any moment.

" Little Tsubasa, what's wrong with you lately? You always seem so distracted," her mother asked worriedly.

"It's nothing, Mom. I've probably just been lying down for too long and I'm not used to it." Tsubasa forced a smile to brush it off.

He tried mentioning terms like " Shinobi World," " Chakra," and " Insect Race," but his family and friends thought he hadn't fully recovered from the aftereffects of his coma, or that he'd been reading too many games and novels, and they all comforted him, telling him "don't think about those nonsense things."

Everything in reality seemed to silently prove that it was indeed just a dream. A dream that was incredibly real and incredibly long, born from a serious illness.

He began to accept this "fact" and tried to treat that "memory" as an interesting fantasy story that belonged only to him. He began to try to re-plan his life and think about what to do after being discharged from the hospital.

But deep down, there's always an indescribable sense of loss and unease. That feeling of power, those comrades-in-arms, that responsibility to protect the world... were they all just illusions?

After being discharged from the hospital and returning home, life seemed to return to normal. Tsubasa recuperated at home, and his parents took meticulous care of him.

He noticed that some of his little habits seemed to have changed. For example, his movements became unusually agile and coordinated, and his reaction speed was astonishing. Once, he almost instinctively caught a ceramic bowl that his mother had accidentally dropped; the smoothness of his movement surprised even himself.

His control over his body had reached an unbelievable level; he could clearly perceive the tremor of every muscle in his body and even control his heartbeat and blood flow to some extent. Medically, this might be explained as the activation of brain potential, but Tsubasa always felt it was not that simple.

At night, he would occasionally dream of fragments. Not complete stories, but feelings—burning Chakra, the thrill of fighting in the starry sky, and... the dark green ray that ultimately reduced him to nothingness.

Each time he woke up from such a dream, he could feel his heart pounding, as if something inside him was stirring restlessly.

He began conducting tests in private. He tried to concentrate and mobilize his so-called "energy," just like in his "dream." At first, nothing happened. But he didn't give up; the feeling was too intense.

One late night, alone in his room, he cleared his mind and tried again. He recalled the feeling of refining Chakra, the feeling of concentrating energy in his palm.

Suddenly, he felt a faint but undeniable warmth in his lower abdomen, the so-called "dantian" area! Immediately afterward, a wisp of air, thinner than a strand of hair, almost imperceptible, with a faint whitish hue, flowed slowly along several specific routes on his arm, guided by his will, like a playful little snake!

Although the airflow was so weak that it couldn't even move a piece of paper, its appearance struck Tsubasa like a thunderbolt, causing him to sit up abruptly from the bed!

Tsubasa sat on the bed in the darkness, his eyes wide open, filled with utter shock and disbelief.

He slowly raised his hand and examined it carefully in the faint moonlight streaming in from the window. His palm was fair, his fingers were distinct, and his hand looked no different from anyone else's.

However, the meridians through which that wisp of energy had flowed still retained a faint, tingling, and unique sensation, as if they had been activated. That sensation was exactly the same as the one he felt when he first successfully extracted Chakra in his "dream"!

This is not an illusion!

He concentrated again, trying to guide it. This time, it was clearer! The faint flow of energy reappeared, still weak, but steadily circulating a small cycle through the familiar pathways in his body known as the "meridian system," following his will.

Chakra!

It really is Chakra!

That bizarre and fantastical Shinobi World that spans the stars, that Saint Tsubasa who fought against the Insect God and ultimately perished... Was it all just a dream?

Was it Zhuangzi dreaming of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi?

Perhaps, that serious illness, that prolonged coma, wasn't the starting point of his transmigration, but rather... the end? Perhaps, after his true spirit was obliterated in the Shinobi World, it somehow returned, carrying a trace of its original power, to this ancient body belonging to "Earthling Tsubasa "?

Or perhaps, these two worlds, these two lives, are connected by some deeper level of understanding?

Countless questions flooded Tsubasa's mind, but there were no answers. He only knew one thing—he possessed Chakra, a power that shouldn't exist in the "real" world.

He looked down at his hands, feeling the faint yet real flow of energy within his body. Outside the window, the city lights shone brightly and quietly; inside him lay the key to a vast, interstellar world.

Tsubasa sat in the darkness, a complex and enigmatic smile slowly curving his lips. His gaze seemed to pierce through the walls, reaching into the infinitely distant depths of the starry sky.

(The End)