The midday sun beat down mercilessly on the vast estate of Lady Shijimi, the wife of the local feudal lord. The expansive rear gardens, usually a testament to opulence, were plagued with tough, thorny weeds that had invaded the delicate flower beds.
For any ordinary mortal, it was a sweltering afternoon of physical labor. For the newly graduated members of Team 7, it was the epitome of humiliation.
Sakura Haruno knelt on the damp earth, sweating profusely. Her hands, once pampered with scented lotions, were now caked with mud and covered in tiny scratches from the thorns. She let out a pitiful whine as she yanked at a particularly stubborn root.
A few meters away, Sasuke Uchiha worked in sepulchral silence, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed a seething fury. I am an Uchiha, his mind screamed, ripping out a handful of grass with disproportionate force that sent soil flying through the air. I awakened my fire. I trained until I bled. And my first official mission as an elite shinobi is… pulling weeds like a common peasant?
At the edge of the garden, Kakashi Hatake rested comfortably in the shade of a large oak tree, sitting atop a wooden fence. His one visible eye was glued to the pages of his beloved Icha Icha Paradise. Occasionally, he turned a page with exasperating slowness, completely ignoring his students' suffering.
And then there was Naruto.
The reincarnated Immortal stood in the center of his assigned section of the garden. He wasn't sweating. His orange jacket was impeccably clean. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, his blue eyes analyzing the weeds with the same cold detachment a general would examine a battlefield before a massacre.
Manual labor as punishment, Naruto reflected within the vastness of his expansive mind, without moving a single muscle. In the Pure Jade Sect, pulling weeds from the Spiritual Gardens was a task reserved for the lowest-ranked outer disciples—those whose talents were so abysmal they served only as fertilizer. To subject the so-called elite warriors of this village to mundane tasks for a few coins… is an offensive waste of martial potential.
The very concept of losing precious hours—hours that could be used to temper the bones, meditate on the laws of the world, or absorb natural energy—was repulsive to him. The law of time was the only law even the gods feared. Wasting it in mud was a capital sin.
Naruto slowly unclasped his hands and brought them before his chest. His mortal fingers intertwined in the familiar cross seal.
"Sakura. Uchiha. Step away from the earth," Naruto ordered. His voice was not a shout, but a low, resonant command that cut through the garden's hot air.
Sakura stopped, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her dirty arm. "What are you saying, Naruto? If we don't finish this by sunset, Kakashi-sensei will make us—"
Poof! Poof! Poof!
Three dense clouds of white smoke erupted around Naruto, cutting off the girl's complaints. When the smoke cleared, three exact replicas of the blond were standing on the grass. However, there were no mischievous grins on their faces. No shouts of enthusiasm. The clones shared the same icy expression and the same perfectly balanced posture as the original.
Sasuke stood up abruptly, his dark eyes locked onto the clones. The Shadow Clone Jutsu? the prodigy thought, his envy stabbing anew. It's a B-rank technique. It creates real physical bodies that evenly split the user's chakra. Is he going to waste his energy reserves on this?
Beneath the shade of the oak tree, Kakashi lowered his orange book slightly. His single eye fixed on the scene with sharp attention.
Without uttering a single word, the three shadow clones dispersed across the garden. Their movements were hypnotic. Utilizing the astonishing economy of motion from the Pure Jade Style, the clones didn't simply rip the plants out by force. Their hands slid to the base of the weeds, identifying the roots' center of gravity, and with a precise, lethal twist of the wrist, extracted the entire plant without disturbing a single extra gram of soil. They advanced at a dizzying speed, clearing square meters of weeds in seconds, moving with impeccable synchronization, like parts of the same siege engine.
Sasuke and Sakura stood frozen, watching three hours' worth of work evaporate before their eyes.
Naruto ignored his stunned comrades. He walked with measured, silent steps toward the large oak tree, stopping a couple of meters from the fence where Kakashi rested. With a fluid motion, the blond sat down on the grass in a perfect lotus position, closing his eyes for a moment to stabilize his unnatural breathing rhythm.
Kakashi closed his book with a soft snap.
"Using an advanced kinjutsu—an art designed for high-level tactical espionage and multi-combat—to do a client's gardening work," Kakashi remarked, his tone wavering between reprimand and genuine fascination. "Don't you think that's overkill, Naruto? You're draining your chakra reserves out of laziness."
Naruto opened his eyes, his blue gaze connecting directly with the veteran's dark eye.
"Chakra is an internal resource. It regenerates. It recovers," Naruto replied, his voice laden with millennial patience. "Time, on the contrary, is an absolute law of the universe. Once a second passes, not even the heavens can return it. Spending the absolute law of time to save a renewable resource like chakra is the pinnacle of mortal stupidity, Kakashi."
Kakashi blinked, completely disarmed by the raw, brutal philosophical logic of the answer.
"Furthermore," Naruto continued, settling his hands on his knees. "Shadow Clones transfer muscle memory and spatial experience to the user once they disperse. While they handle the repetitive movement and perfect finger dexterity, my original body can rest, and my mind can focus on acquiring real knowledge. Blind physical labor is for oxen. The mind is the true field of cultivation."
Sasuke, who had slowly walked toward the shade to escape the sun, clenched his fists upon hearing this. His pride demanded he return to the mud to avoid being outdone, but the crushing efficiency of Naruto's method left him speechless. With an inaudible grunt, the Uchiha crossed his arms and leaned against the tree trunk. Sakura, seeing Sasuke stop, ran to sit near him, exhausted and secretly grateful not to ruin her hands any further.
Naruto paid them no attention. His primary goal in creating free time wasn't simply to rest. He needed military intelligence.
"Since my projections are taking care of this irrelevant task," Naruto said, looking directly at Kakashi, "let's use this earned time. Yesterday you mentioned that my talent for Fuinjutsu came from Uzumaki blood. That awakened a tactical curiosity in me."
"Tactical curiosity?" repeated Kakashi, definitively putting away his book. The relaxed atmosphere had evaporated.
"This village is a conglomerate of bloodlines," Naruto analyzed, his mind tracing invisible maps in the air. "Families that have preserved genetic alterations and secret spiritual techniques through inbreeding and isolation. In my… reading at the library, the names piled up, but the public texts are vague and censored. As a former ANBU captain, you know the truth of these forces. Tell me about the clans of Konoha."
Sasuke turned his face sharply toward Naruto, his eyes widening with a mix of surprise and wariness. Why is that idiot suddenly interested in the village's blood politics?
Kakashi sighed. "Detailed information about the capabilities of the noble clans is classified material, Naruto. It's considered a state secret to prevent enemy villages from finding weaknesses."
"I'm not asking for the blind spots in their defenses," Naruto replied coldly. "I'm asking for the nature of their arts. A warrior who doesn't know the fangs of the beasts he sleeps with wakes up with his throat cut. Let's start with those who call themselves the strongest. The Hyūga clan."
Kakashi looked toward the clones, who were already finishing the second section of the garden with surgical precision, and then returned his gaze to the blond. He saw no harm in explaining the basics, and perhaps observing Naruto's reactions would give him more clues about the boy's strange psyche.
"The Hyūga clan," Kakashi began, his voice adopting the tone of a tactical instructor. "Possessors of the Byakugan, a pure-blooded dojutsu. Their eyes grant them nearly 360-degree vision, perception across kilometers, and the ability to see the chakra circulatory system of any living being in microscopic detail."
The All-Seeing Celestial Eye, Naruto translated in his mind, remembering the blind monks of Thunder Peak who could see through the illusions of the material world. A formidable ocular mutation.
"Their fighting style, the Gentle Fist (Jūken), leverages this vision," Kakashi continued. "They don't strike to break bones. They inject their own chakra like needles directly into the enemy's energy networks or internal organs, sealing pressure points (tenketsu) and paralyzing chakra flow from within."
Naruto nodded slowly. Meridian-sealing arts through point strikes. Dangerous for an ordinary shinobi who relies on constant energy flow. However… my body is tempered by Chaos. My meridians aren't fragile conduits; they're fused with my bones. A point strike from a Hyūga against me would be like trying to drive a wooden needle into a steel plate. Their hand would shatter before they could block my energy.
"Interesting. An art of internal dissection," Naruto murmured, showing no astonishment. "Next. The trio that always operates together. Nara, Yamanaka, Akimichi."
Sasuke frowned. He knew those three from the Academy. Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji. He'd always thought they were weak, but the way Naruto demanded the information made them seem like key pieces on a giant chessboard.
"The Ino-Shika-Chō Formation," Kakashi nodded, increasingly disturbed by the genin's clinical questions. "The Nara clan manipulates shadows. They use Yin Release to give physical substance to darkness, paralyzing, strangling, or controlling the enemy's movements from a distance."
Shadowy Restriction Yin Arts. Binding the body through its reflection in light. A cunning magic, Naruto thought.
"The Yamanaka clan," Kakashi continued, "are specialists in mind control and interrogation. They can project their own consciousness out of their body to possess a target's mind, reading their memories or forcing them to act against their will."
Soul Arts, the Immortal identified, a flash of genuine danger crossing his blue eyes. In his past life, cultivators who attacked the soul directly were feared and massacred at the slightest provocation. The soul is the core of existence. If a Yamanaka tried to enter my vast mental landscape, the residual pressure of my thousand-year memories, added to the barrier where Kurama rests, would crush their tiny mortal consciousness like an insect against a stone wall. They'd become vegetative instantly.
"And the Akimichi clan," the Jonin finished, "convert their body's calories into pure chakra, using Yang Release to expand their size, increasing muscle mass and bone density to become unstoppable destructive forces."
"Body expansion based on caloric combustion," Naruto whispered. "A crude method, but effective. They forge their bodies with the brute force of Yang."
Naruto closed his eyes, processing the information. The pieces of the mortal puzzle were beginning to fit together.
"One is missing," Naruto suddenly said, opening his eyes. "At the Academy, there was a lonely kid. Always covered by a coat, dark glasses, hiding his thermal presence. Shino Aburame."
Kakashi tensed slightly. The Aburame clan was one of the most lethal and least understood in Konoha.
"The Aburame clan," Kakashi replied in a low voice, making sure no one else was listening. "They don't use conventional weapons. At birth, their bodies are offered as living nests to various species of chakra-destroying insects (Kikaichū). The insects live beneath their skin, feeding on their chakra. In return, the host mentally controls the swarms, using them to devour the enemy's energy, spy over massive distances, or poison silently."
The silence that followed was dense. Sakura stifled a scream of pure disgust, hugging herself. Sasuke felt a shiver of revulsion run down his spine. Insects living under the skin? It was an aberration.
But on Naruto's face, a slow, deeply dark smile began to form. It was the first time Kakashi had seen Naruto smile with an expression other than cold indifference or boredom.
Demonic Gu Cultivators! Naruto thought, his ancestral blood vibrating with recognition. In the forbidden sects of the Immortal World, Gu Venom Masters raised parasitic insects within their own meridians, sacrificing their humanity in exchange for the ability to devour the pure essence of their rivals.
So this peaceful village harbors soul assassins, body-forgers through hunger, and demonic parasite breeders. Konoha isn't a village of soldiers. It's a prison of monsters disguised as a home.
Naruto stood up fluidly. Fifty meters away, the three shadow clones simultaneously dispersed into clouds of white smoke, having finished the work in record time, leaving Lady Shijimi's garden in a state of absolute perfection.
The memory of the task flowed back into Naruto's mind. He felt the phantom fatigue in his fingers but dismissed it with a simple act of will.
"Knowing your neighbors is the first step to not being devoured by them," Naruto said, looking at Kakashi, who was processing the level of military analysis he had just witnessed from a twelve-year-old genin. "The garden is finished, Sensei. Collect the payment. My time today has been invested productively."
As Kakashi stood up, feeling he was in charge of a team secretly led by a veteran strategist, Naruto looked up at the clear blue sky.
The information gathering was concluded. He knew the pieces on the board. He knew the history of the Sages. Now, the sun was beginning its slow descent toward the west.
Tonight, the ancient Immortal promised himself, feeling the breeze brush against his cheeks. Tonight, I will slip away from the red eyes of the Uchiha and the surveillance of the Jonin. Tonight, I will sit beneath the open sky of this mortal world… and force Natural Energy to bow to the will of the Dao.