It was not long until Darui finally made it to the feudal lord's manor. The structure sat high on a ridge, surrounded by fortified walls and elite guards.
At the entrance, Darui's identity was strictly verified by the perimeter captains. Once cleared, a pair of armoured guards escorted him away from the main halls and down a spiraling staircase into the bedrock.
They soon reached an underground chamber where a steel door inscribed with barrier formulas blocked the path. The guards stepped forward and used lightning style to open the seal as the locking mechanisms groaned until the door slid open.
To Darui's surprise, the inside resembled an ancient dojo. But instead of training mats, the floor was lined with wooden treasure chests.
"The doors will seal again after you leave the room," a guard announced from the threshold. He then stepped back to leave Darui to his business. "Try not to take too long."
"Shouldn't take more than five minutes," Darui coolly replied, entering the room.
The steel slid shut behind him, sealing him in.
He walked up to the first chest he saw and lifted the lid. Inside lay a pile of scrolls. Dust coated the parchment, and the paper looked brittle enough to disintegrate if contact was made. That was how old they were, so he refrained from touching them.
Besides, he was here for the village's bound history books, not fragile scrolls.
He closed the chest and moved down the row. A few minutes later, he found a sealed stone box. Inside rested several leather-bound volumes.
"Interesting," he said to himself as he pulled them out.
Three books were stacked in the center of the room while he sat atop the nearest chest to review them.
The first book detailed the theoretical properties of how lightning chakra could be utilized in hand-to-hand combat. The forms were outdated, so this one was not of his interest.
The second book told the story of how the Cloud Village was originally founded and structured. While noteworthy, he already knew the timeline from his days spent learning in the academy. So he set it aside.
When he came across the third book, he stopped. He couldn't help but marvel at the title pressed into the leather: The Legacy of A.
Darui flipped open to the table of contents, where he scanned the pages and found that there were many chapters detailing the history of the third generation of lightning style users within the Lightning Country.
"This must be what the Raikage wanted me to bring back," he said to himself.
After putting the other two books back into the stone box, he contemplated whether he should leave right now or not. His mission was technically complete. But the history book clearly piqued his interest enough to read it.
"Guess I was wrong about five minutes," he sighed.
So he sat on the chest again, rested the book on his knees, and flipped to a chapter titled "Cloud Dancer."
✟
A thousand years ago, Arthur awoke in a grassy field.
When he stood up and assessed his body, he discovered that his abilities were severely limited. He had messed up performing the Time Travel technique, causing the chronal engine of the watch he had constructed to break.
Now he was stuck in the past.
Undeterred by his lack of power, he adapted by venturing to a nearby settlement under the name Hoshikaze. Once he fully understood when and where he was, he ventured to a different settlement, this time operating under the name John.
During his time there, he discovered they guarded a special book detailing the history of Kaguya Ōtsutsuki. Arthur saw the value of the intelligence and more than took it for himself.
Since he was now in the past, the Tailed Beasts roamed free, which meant he could interact with them directly. It also perfectly explained why some of the Tailed Beasts recognized him in the present day.
Each beast from the past was located near their respective shrines where Hagoromo had originally left them.
The Two-Tailed Cat was the closest, so Arthur tracked it down and told it the facts it needed to know—all while taking a fraction of its chakra.
The next beast he moved on to was going to be the Four-Tails.
While venturing into the volcanic mountains to find the ape, Arthur encountered an early ancestor of the Uchiha clan who could perform Black Lightning. So Arthur took him down, extracted his memories, and discovered three crucial facts about this era.
First, this Uchiha had learned the foundation of Black Lightning from a powerful monk residing in the east. Second, a bitter enmity was brewing across the continent between monks who practiced ninshū and monks who weaponized the energy into ninjutsu. Third, the primary villain fueling this conflict was an evil monk named Fujin Suzuki, whose ultimate goal was to capture the Tailed Beasts and use their power to rule the world.
Arthur ignored Fujin's war for the moment and focused on his own goals first.
So he made it to the volcanic crater where the Four-Tails resided. The beast was aggressive and territorial. A fight broke out immediately since it was too hostile to reason with.
In the end, Arthur beat the creature into submission and harvested the beast's chakra.
His next destination led him into the deep forests to locate the Five-Tails. When he found that beast, it had zero interest in him.
Arthur was going to try and continue swaying the beast until he sensed Fujin and his armed forces moving rapidly into the area. So he hid and watched as Fujin's monks captured the beast.
This allowed him to secretly track these monks all the way back to their congregation.
Days were spent there before he eventually freed the Five-Tails from its cage, thus earning the beast's trust and its chakra.
The next of the beasts on Arthur's list was the Eight-Tails. This beast was located in the high, jagged peaks where the Cloud Village would eventually be founded.
Arthur used that moment to try and learn from the local monks inhabiting the mountains, considering that one of them was the progenitor who knew Black Lightning—the same monk from the east who taught the Uchiha the technique.
When Arthur arrived at the mountain temple, he introduced himself as John and quickly discovered that two of the leading monks in this temple were the direct ancestors of the Raikage and Killer Bee.
He, therefore, integrated into their ranks by working with them, eating with them, and training with them. This allowed him to learn their specific methods of using ninshū. Through this understanding, he took their teachings and perfected his own Black Lightning.
The monks were so impressed by his fluid, devastating movements that they gave him the title "Cloud Dancer."
During his time at the temple, he also made contact with the Eight-Tails, securing the final piece of chakra he needed after several attempts.
Arthur would have stayed longer, but there was a huge problem: this specific congregation of mountain monks was politically allied with the exact same congregation he had robbed months prior.
The ancestors of A and B would eventually travel there, only to discover that Arthur had taken the sacred book on Kaguya. Since he had carelessly used the same alias, the pieces connected, and he was forced to drop the façade before fleeing.
Darui let out a low whistle upon reading that section. The history laid it bare: Arthur had essentially founded the Cloud Village's elite combat style and then immediately betrayed their leaders.
Darui kept reading.
Now that Arthur was free to interact with more of the Tailed Beasts, he decided he needed to tie up loose ends.
The congregation that ratted him out to the mountain monks was far too dangerous to let live. Plus, the fact that they possessed a book on Kaguya only made them suspicious in his eyes.
So he marched straight into the settlement of those monks and slaughtered most of them. The ones left able had their memories extracted.
This allowed Arthur to learn about the Land of Ancestors, of which a man named Ardian was the current emperor of.
Arthur traveled there and managed to secure an audience. It was in this court that he also met Jigen. Yet he was entirely unaware that Jigen was truly an Ōtsutsuki hiding in a vessel.
Two monsters shared the same room, completely blind to the other's true nature. How ironic.
Now, Arthur needed political leverage. So he managed to do a lot of menial work for the empire. This prompted the emperor to summon him and offer him a reward for his loyal service.
Arthur's original desire was to gain access to the sacred grounds and harvest the raw chakra from the Chakra Tree. But the emperor was bound by laws and was not allowed to grant this request to an outsider.
Refusing to let Arthur leave empty-handed, the emperor gave him a special scroll salvaged from the Ōtsutsuki clan instead.
Arthur accepted, but he was still bent on acquiring more power in this era. The Chakra Tree was too valuable to abandon.
Before he could initiate a coup to take the tree by force, it was discovered that Fujin had amassed an army to lead an all-out attack on the Land of Ancestors.
Arthur saw the invading army as an opportunity to boost his reputation. So he cut straight through the enemy lines, located their leader, and killed Fujin elsewhere.
The invading forces shattered without their commander.
By killing the warlord and saving the capital, Arthur earned great honour in the sight of the emperor.
✟
Darui eventually closed the book.
Nowhere else in the book did it mention Hoshikaze, John, or anything related to Arthur. So according to the modern intelligence reports Darui had memorized, Arthur's quest in the past had to have been abruptly cut short.
Darui felt a begrudging sense of amazement.
While the ancient book hadn't detailed Arthur's return, it provided the missing context Darui needed.
First, Arthur had indeed existed in the past by operating under the aliases Hoshikaze and John. Second, he had learned the secrets of Black Lightning directly from its source. And third, through a twisted temporal loop, Arthur was technically the inspiration for Killer Bee's unorthodox fighting style.
Darui didn't need a history lesson to understand the war's aftermath.
When Arthur returned to the modern battlefield, the Bird Country's morale exploded, and they charged the Akatsuki with terrifying zeal.
Jada and Jasper had foolishly tried to fight Arthur alone, but they were immediately overwhelmed the moment Arthur's clones flooded the scene.
Jasper was whisked away by Kaito, while Hoshikaze stood guard over a knocked-out Jada.
The battlefield had then fractured into legendary skirmishes: Ryugetsu fought Konan and the Animal Path, John clashed with Kisame and the Naraka Path, and Itachi was forced into a tragic duel against Izumi.
The chaos only ended when Alexander arrived, wielding power beyond comprehension to seal Arthur inside the Infinite Tsukuyomi orb.
Today, only a handful of people knew where that orb was hidden.
But none of that mattered to Darui. As far as he was concerned, the world's greatest threat was finally locked away in a cage he couldn't break out of.
"At least the Raikage has a lead to work with," Darui said, rubbing his hair with a tired sigh. "It'll be dull if he doesn't find one after what I just read."