After a full day of training and helping out, Shira dragged his tired but fulfilled body home. After having a simple dinner with his parents and exchanging some village gossip, he washed up and went to bed early.
The intense physical training, the honing of swordsmanship fundamentals, and the carefully handled medicinal herbs in Granny Chiyo's inn all consumed a great deal of his energy.
The moment his head touched the pillow, a heavy sense of sleepiness washed over him like a warm tide. He quickly drifted into a deep dream.
However, the dream that night was anything but ordinary.
Shira felt like a ghost without a physical form, floating in a bizarre and fantastical passageway, with incredibly clear images flashing rapidly before her eyes—
In the endless desert, a colossal, dragon-head-like structure rises from the sea of sand, radiating ominous energy fluctuations.
A very familiar blond figure— Naruto Uzumaki —was confronting a gloomy-faced, bearded man.
" Rōran..." Shira suddenly heard a woman's voice calling out this place name in her dream.
A massive puppet army, a towering giant tower that reaches into the clouds, and... an even larger, terrifying, spider-like puppet!
The energy of the Dragon Vein shot into the sky like a pillar of light, distorting space and time.
Suddenly, three masked figures appeared, the leader of whom had strikingly blond hair!
It's Minato Namikaze!
Besides, the scenes unfolded so quickly that they dazzled Shira, yet they were also imprinted on her mind with unparalleled clarity.
What alarmed him most was that the face of the person who fought Naruto and Minato and tried to control the power of the Dragon Vein was becoming clearer and clearer!
The dream was like a forced, immersive movie, playing out the entire plot of "The Lost Tower" in his mind from a third-person perspective!
As the dream drew to a close, the Dragon Vein was sealed by Minato, and that person vanished in the energy surge... The final image froze on the face of the missing-nin from the beginning of the movie, with his name appearing beside him as if marked—
Mukade
Shira suddenly realized the difference. The dream information accurately told him that the bearded and fat man was originally an ordinary villain, but now the dream clearly identified him as a puppeteer belonging to Sunagakure!
"Call--!"
Shira suddenly sat up in bed, panting heavily, her forehead covered in cold sweat.
Outside the window, the sky was just beginning to lighten, and the morning chill seeped in through the cracks, giving him goosebumps.
Everything in the dream was vivid in my mind, every detail terrifyingly clear. It wasn't an ordinary dream; the immersive, bystander-like feeling, the sensation of being forcibly bombarded with information... was this my belated perk as a transmigrator?
Was it because of Chiyo's mention Chiyo yesterday, coupled with his own strong will, that triggered some kind of premonition?
What really sent chills down his spine was that the villainous boss, Mukade, who caused a time warp and nearly led to a massive disaster in the movie, was very likely in the same village as him at this point in time!
A future time-traveling criminal might currently be just an insignificant Chunin, or Special Jōnin? He might be tinkering away in the puppet workshop, handing over work in the mission hall, or even... someone you just brushed past yesterday!
This absurd and terrifying feeling made Shira's heart pound.
He had been thinking about how to use Rōran to save others, but he never expected that the biggest threat and variable might have been lurking right beside him all along!
What if this Mukade already knew the secret of Rōran?
"I have to keep an eye on this person!" Shira took a few deep breaths, forcing herself to calm down.
He has no evidence, nor can he go and tell people, "I had a dream that Mukade is a traitor who will defect to Sunagakure to find an ancient ruin and then rule the world."
Shira sat on the edge of the bed, processing this astonishing information.
When he watched the movie, he didn't pay Mukade the villain's identity, never expecting that he was missing-nin from Sunagakure!
After a long silence, Shira finally uttered a sentence in a tone that was a mixture of utter absurdity and lingering fear:
"Huh? The villain is right next to me?"