After a few turns, the passage led to a staircase descending farther down.
They were already beneath Konoha.
"A new recruit. Register him," Wood Kite said to a beautiful blonde woman.
"Oh, this year's top graduate?" The blonde uncrossed her long legs and sized Shinsei up with a smile. "Such a handsome little fellow would be wasted on your team. Why not give him to our secretarial team? He'd be a treat for the eyes."
"Forget it." Wood Kite took Shinsei's ninja identification and handed it over. "We've been shorthanded for ages. We waited a long time to get someone assigned to us."
"Stingy!" The woman filled out the form and stood up. "Come with me."
Shinsei said nothing and quietly followed.
The room beyond the door was enormous, lit a stark white by electric lights. All kinds of white animal masks hung inside.
"Pick one." The blonde winked at Shinsei. "You can choose a code name for yourself now."
Shinsei did not care whether the mask looked good. He pointed at one with a single horn.
"That one. As for a code name, Hakutaku will do."
"Hakutaku?" The blonde tilted her head, unable to work out what the name meant.
"Let's go. Put on your mask. I'll introduce you to the team." Seeing that registration was complete, Wood Kite immediately led Shinsei away.
Shinsei put on the mask and found his vision slightly obstructed, though it made little difference.
In a spacious hall, three people wearing different masks were each occupied with their own activities.
A burly masked man was doing one-handed push-ups. A masked woman with long purple hair sat reading, occasionally showing an inexplicable smile. Another, lean man lay on a lounge chair nearby, staring into space.
"Everyone, come meet him." Wood Kite straightened and addressed his teammates. "This is our new member, Hakutaku."
"Oh, a newcomer?" The purple-haired woman stood up. Her voice sounded quite young. "A little fellow, too. Take off your mask and let your big sister see whether you're handsome."
Of course, Shinsei did not remove his mask. Pretending not to have heard her request, he simply bowed.
"Hello, seniors! I'm Hakutaku, your new teammate."
"Heh, it's about time we got someone new." The burly man's voice was as rough as his build suggested. "Code name: Giant Beast."
"You can call me Goat." The lean man sounded a little languid.
"I'm going on duty. Show him around. He officially starts tomorrow." With that, Wood Kite left.
"My code name is Hashihime," the purple-haired woman said with a smile. "So if you fall for your big sister, you can never leave me."
Shinsei did not know how to answer. He knew Hashihime was a woman from ghost stories who had killed herself over unrequited love.
"First lesson for the newcomer: a test." Hashihime brushed back her long hair. "Which of you wants to test him?"
Goat looked lazy and uninterested. The burly Giant Beast spoke up.
"I'll do it."
"Have a spar and get a rough idea of each other's abilities." Hashihime walked out the door. "Let's go to the training ground."
The four went outside, with Hashihime leading the way. Along the way, she explained the Anbu's rules to Shinsei.
The exact number of Anbu members was classified. In principle, only the Hokage and the Anbu commander knew.
The Anbu's basic unit was the squad, usually consisting of three to five people. Its leader was called the squad captain. Wood Kite was the captain of Shinsei's squad.
Above squads were divisions, and above division commanders were battalions. The exact number of divisions and battalions was classified, and they were not to pry.
Normally, squads took turns on duty. Wood Kite's squad, for instance, was currently assigned to the Hokage Building. The captain had to be ready for the Hokage's orders at any time, and squad members could not go far.
A different team handled guard duty at the Hokage Building.
After their rotation, they would go on missions. The specific assignments were also classified. They might leave the village or even the country.
A squad generally had combat ninja, sensory ninja, and medical ninja. Of course, they were not all specialists. Knowing some basic medical ninjutsu and sensory ninjutsu was enough.
They finally emerged from the basement into a grove of trees.
A patch of sandy ground lay in the center of the grove, surrounded by wooden targets specifically for kunai throwing.
Shinsei and Giant Beast walked to the center of the grounds and formed the Seal of Confrontation.
Giant Beast struck first, swinging his massive fist hard.
Shinsei turned sideways to evade it, then chopped his right hand toward Giant Beast's abdomen. Giant Beast did not dare take the blow with his belly, even though the child before him only came up to his chest.
Giant Beast reached to catch Shinsei's right wrist. Naturally, Shinsei would not let him. Relying on his agile movements, he bent his right arm into an elbow strike toward the chest.
Thud!
With a dull impact, Giant Beast barely managed to bend his body and block Shinsei's right elbow with his arm.
Better to take ten punches than one elbow. Giant Beast felt his left arm go numb and sore. The elbow strike packed considerable force, instantly wiping away his dismissive attitude.
Though the new teammate's height made it clear he was young, he was already highly experienced in taijutsu. If Giant Beast did not take this seriously, he might lose.
Giant Beast's face reddened slightly. With a low shout, he swept out his right leg.
Limited by his still-developing body, Shinsei did not dare truly pit his physique against an adult ninja's. The burly man before him had clearly put hard work into taijutsu. Shinsei could only move nimbly and counter when the opportunity arose.
By unspoken agreement, neither used ninjutsu. Fists and feet flew back and forth.
Finally, Hashihime could watch no longer and spoke up.
"Has Giant Beast gone soft, or is our new little fellow stronger? That's enough taijutsu. Let's test Hakutaku's ninjutsu."
Unable to defeat Shinsei, Giant Beast felt a little embarrassed. But today's purpose was not to overpower Hakutaku with taijutsu. It was to test his abilities so they could coordinate better on future missions.
"Careful," Giant Beast warned, then rapidly formed hand seals.
Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire Technique!
A mass of flame burst from Giant Beast's mouth, swiftly becoming a fire dragon that swept toward Shinsei to surround him.
Shinjō rapidly formed hand seals.
Water Release: Water Formation Wall.
Water rose from the ground and spun around Shinsei. The scorching flames were held firmly outside the wall of water. However fiercely the fire burned outside, Shinsei remained unmoved within.
Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire focused more on burning, but water-nature chakra countered it. Giant Beast stopped feeding it chakra and formed new seals.
Fire Style: Great Dragon Flame Bullet!
An enormous fireball exploded, sending steam billowing up.
When the mist dispersed, Shinsei stood unharmed inside the wall of water.
Giant Beast tried several other fire release ninjutsu, but none could do anything against Shinsei's water wall.
"All right, that's enough." Hashihime pressed a hand to her forehead and called a halt. She could tell Shinsei did not want to reveal more about himself, but that no longer mattered. If he could bring Water Release: Water Formation Wall's defensive power to this level, his water release abilities were certainly substantial.
She simply did not want a newcomer dragging the squad down. But the abilities Hakutaku had revealed already put him on par with anyone except the captain.
Further testing was unnecessary. Information about their own abilities was everyone's secret. Hakutaku had proved himself, and she did not want to offend him. They would be going on missions together and entrusting their lives to one another.
The three looked at the newcomer Hakutaku without their earlier faint air of superiority.
Shinsei had nothing else to do that day. He said goodbye to the three and returned home.
Nobita was entertaining guests. Seeing his son return, he asked with concern how things had gone.
Unable to say more, Shinsei could only tell him he was joining the Anbu.
After going upstairs to fetch his things, Shinsei went to the first-floor storage room.
Of course, Shinsei had not come to look for anything. He formed hand seals.
Earth Release: Subterranean Voyage!
Chakra enveloped Shinsei's body and carried him out of sight within the room.
He traveled downward, passing through at least three hundred meters of earth before his body suddenly felt light and he dropped into a space.
Who knew how many secrets were hidden in Konoha? There was certainly no shortage of basements, and Shinsei needed one of his own.
Shinsei had never dared build an underground room before because it would be too easy to discover if it were too close to the surface. Some earth release ninja might wander underground with nothing better to do.
Only after his chakra reserves had surged over the past year had he felt comfortable using earth release to build his own secret base.
This place was far from the surface. Earth release ninja with low chakra reserves could not get down here. They would exhaust their chakra before reaching halfway and suffocate in the earth.
Even if some earth release expert discovered this place, it would not matter. There was nothing particularly remarkable stored here. It was only a place to research ninjutsu.
Lights came on along the walls, brightening the room. Sensing the charge remaining in the battery, Shinsei abandoned the idea of replacing it.
The entire space was about fifty meters long, twenty meters wide, and a little over ten meters high. Apart from tables and chairs made with earth release, there was no furniture.
Using earth release, he opened a hole at either end, letting fresh air from an underground river pass through the hall.
Mm, the air's much better. Not as stuffy as before.
He took two sheets of white paper from his pocket. Unfolded, they were densely covered in writing.
These were the two ninjutsu Shinsei had secretly read.
Lightning Release: Chidori and its advanced form, Lightning Release: Lightning Blade, had been stored together and counted as one.
The other ninjutsu was the renowned Flying Thunder God Technique.
He had not had time to study them closely before. Now Shinjō could finally examine them properly.
He had a solid foundation in lightning release ninjutsu, so this would not be difficult for Shinsei. He believed he could get started quickly. Although he could not use it even after learning it, he mainly valued the ideas behind advanced lightning release.
But the Flying Thunder God Technique, a space-time ninjutsu, was unfamiliar territory for Shinsei. He needed to study it carefully.
The Flying Thunder God Technique involved no particularly profound theory. It was essentially a more complex summoning ninjutsu. It looked easy, but its requirements were extremely demanding.
Put simply, summoning ninjutsu could summon ninja beasts, and Flying Thunder God used the same principle to reverse-summon a person.
The principle was simple. It could be accomplished in three steps.
Create chakra capable of reverse-summoning yourself.
Sense the chakra you created.
Activate the chakra.
Then the reverse summoning would succeed. It looked so simple, but in practice, every step was fraught with difficulty.
Creating chakra capable of summoning yourself involved sealing jutsu: creating a chakra formula capable of summoning yourself. This required precise chakra control and an understanding of sealing jutsu.
Sealing jutsu was a little easier, since you could follow the instructions, but the precise chakra control would stump many people.
The second step was sensing the chakra you created.
This inherently barred many people. Chakra-sensing ability was not something you could learn simply by studying. It required talent. Either you could do it or you could not. Shinjō, for example, was born without it.
The third step was activating the sealed chakra.
Shinsei could read the words, but he could not understand this part. He had no ability to sense chakra and could not understand how sensing alone let someone manipulate the chakra they had left behind. As he understood it, only chakra could manipulate chakra. If Shinjō sealed his chakra somewhere far away now, he could do nothing but stare helplessly without a connection to his own chakra.
He had no idea how Tobirama Senju and Minato Namikaze had mastered Flying Thunder God. He simply could not understand it.
Looking at the Flying Thunder God Technique without being able to practice it, Shinsei wanted to tear his hair out in anguish. If only he had known, he would have memorized the Impure World Reincarnation Jutsu instead. That was another ninjutsu he desperately wanted.
Forget it. Flying Thunder God can wait. Once I solve chakra sensing, then solve manipulating chakra through sensing, I can learn Flying Thunder God. Without solving those two problems, no amount of research will help.
He recopied the paper recording Flying Thunder God in Chinese mixed with pinyin, then hid it using earth release.
Back to researching lightning release.
He formed hand seals, gathering lightning release chakra in his right hand. The crackling chakra sounded like hundreds upon thousands of birds clamoring.
He thrust the Chidori in his right hand into the wall.
With a tremendous crash, the wall burst apart, sending dust flying.
Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!
He spat the dirt from his mouth and pulled his arm out from deep inside the wall.
The penetrating power really is good. And I could clearly feel the lightning release chakra making my body considerably faster. This was only my first attempt. With more practice, Chidori's penetrating power and its ability to increase my speed should grow even stronger.
Otherwise, why would Kakashi's eyes be unable to keep up with Chidori's speed?
Speaking of which, Shinsei was slowly coming to understand that the Senju physique offered more than just large chakra reserves. At the very least, it also concealed comprehensive enhancements to neural reaction speed, recovery, stamina, and strength.
Now it seemed the Senju bloodline was not so simple. As expected of the Sage Body, which could just about suppress the Sage Eyes.
The Sage Body simply lacked the clearly defined stages of the Sage Eyes. The Uchiha Clan's Sage Eyes progressed from one-tomoe to two tomoe, then mitsudomoe, then Mangekyō, with Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan above that and Rinnegan beyond it. The Senju physique, however, lacked clear benchmarks. All he knew was that it could ultimately grant Hashirama Senju's almost inexhaustible chakra reserves. Madara Uchiha had only dared challenge him to a desperate fight after capturing Nine-Tails to use as a battery.
Having lived two lives, Shinsei had noticed as a child that his eyes in this life could see much more clearly than in his previous one. He had previously assumed the physical constitutions of people in the two worlds were different.
Take Kakashi, for example. After developing Chidori, his eyes could not keep up with the speed it granted, so he could only use it for a single killing strike. The situation only improved after he obtained Obito Uchiha's Sharingan.
Naruto, though not a Senju, was a distant relative of the Senju and likewise a descendant of Asura, the Sage of Six Paths' son. Yet whenever his speed increased, his eyes never failed to keep up.
Madara Uchiha possessed the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, which could greatly improve his dynamic vision. If his opponent Hashirama Senju's neural reactions could not keep up, how could he have kept Madara Uchiha firmly suppressed?
Tobirama Senju, the first to hold the title of the Shinobi World's fastest, likewise had no trouble with his body failing to react.
Shinsei strongly suspected that the second to hold the title of the Shinobi World's fastest, the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, also had Senju blood. After all, the Uzumaki Clan was famous for red hair, yet Naruto Uzumaki was undeniably blond.
If Minato Namikaze did not have Senju blood, how could he have overridden the Uzumaki bloodline? Naruto Uzumaki's terrifying chakra reserves were no product of some second-rate bloodline. At thirteen or fourteen, he had a hundred times Kakashi's chakra. Those were not reserves an ordinary Kage-level ninja could possess.
Tsunade and Nawaki were also descendants of both the Senju and the Uzumaki, and neither had inherited the Uzumaki Clan's red hair.
Shinsei pulled his thoughts back and worked hard at experimenting with Lightning Release: Chidori.
Though this ninjutsu could not see the light of day, Shinsei still wanted to understand how its lightning release increased his body's speed so he could develop his own lightning release ninjutsu.
Among all ninjutsu, nothing is indestructible. Only speed cannot be overcome.
Once his physical speed improved, his ability to survive would increase greatly.
Today was his first official day, and Shinjō did not dare be late.
After he collected his uniform, Captain Wood Kite went to the Hokage Building to await orders, while the four of them stayed in the basement, ready for the captain's summons at any time.
Bored out of his mind, he asked Hashihime how to pass the time.
Apparently, boredom was a common problem among Anbu on rotation. The neighboring basement had snacks and hot water, and, to Shinsei's delight, several rows of bookshelves.
Apparently, Hashihime had borrowed yesterday's book from here.
Hashihime was delighted that Shinsei also liked reading. She discreetly showed her disdain for their two illiterate teammates who did not read.
The shelves held quite a varied selection, including curious tales and miscellaneous accounts, and even the complete collection of Jiraiya's Icha Icha Paradise.
Though Shinsei also wanted to read Jiraiya's masterpiece, he was more interested in improving himself. The shelves held many training notes left by his seniors, including insights into training various chakra natures. Though they contained no ninjutsu, there were plenty of theories and conjectures about chakra.
This was far better than the Ninja Academy's library, which mostly held children's books.
Shinsei took a volume of insights into lightning-nature training and quietly began reading.
Konoha provided lunch at noon. He continued reading in the afternoon, and nothing happened before the end of his shift. There was even an allowance for this kind of duty. Shinsei only hoped for more days of slacking off like this.
This continued until two days later, when it was their squad's turn to stand guard.
Shinsei felt this kind of guard duty was pretty damn stupid: crouching in a corner, silently watching Konoha, keeping watch to prevent unexpected incidents.
He could not move around freely or let anyone discover him. Even going to the toilet required someone to cover his post. A single day like this was torture.
Fortunately, after a few days, it was finally their squad's turn to go on a mission.