"Such a child is best suited to disappear from everyone's sight, and the Second Hokage believes that the Senju bloodline will not betray."
"Subsequently, he gave you a new identity:"
"In the slums on the outskirts of the Hidden Mist Village, there is a drafty wooden shack. Your father goes out early to fish, and your mother stays home mending fishing nets. You are named 'Shinji,' the son of a fisherman, as ordinary as one can be."
"At the age of three, your father died in the war. At the age of five, your mother died in bed from illness, and her body was only discovered three days later. From then on, you became an orphan, surviving on the charity of neighbors and scavenging for scraps in trash heaps."
"At the age of six, the Hidden Mist Village Ninja Academy began admissions. You heard that if you could graduate, you would receive a Ninja stipend and no longer have to go hungry. So, you signed up."
"The academy under the Blood Mist policy is not a good place. The teachers are indifferent, classmates are wary of each other, and people get injured on the training grounds every day."
"The Sage Body you possess gives you physical recovery and Chakra reserves that far exceed ordinary people, but you know this is still far from enough compared to the difficulty of the task you must complete."
His spirit lifted, Shinji felt his consciousness fully settle back into this body, and only then did he begin to perceive everything around him.
The classroom in the Hidden Mist Village was perpetually shrouded in gray daylight, the windows looking as if they were covered in a layer of permanent, grimy gauze.
This place was completely different from the vibrant, lively feeling of Konoha.
Shinji sat by the window, his peripheral vision sweeping over his neighbor.
A girl with tea-brown hair was looking down, her fingertips rolling the corner of her textbook over and over, curling it into a soft arc, releasing it, and then curling it again.
She was a very cute budding beauty; if this were his past life, she would certainly have been very popular among the male students at school.
But at this moment, no one in the classroom was surrounding the girl, and no one was talking to her.
She was like a quiet reef forgotten in a corner, with the tide flowing past her without making a sound.
Mei Terumī.
The corners of Shinji's mouth lifted slightly.
"It seems my plan will be easier to realize."
The future Fifth Mizukage, possessor of dual Kekkei Genkais, and the savior of the Hidden Mist Village.
At this moment, she was merely an isolated little girl.
An orphan of the Lava Release clan, a bearer of a Kekkei Genkai.
In the world of her peers, she was in herself a "threat." She seemed to understand this principle herself, so she never looked up and never spoke first.
This was just right for Shinji to build a bond in the future.
Ring-a-ling. The bell for the end of class pierced the gray air like a pebble thrown into stagnant water, startling a flurry of movement as students packed up their books and stationery.
Mei Terumī closed her textbook, kept her head down, and moved along the edge of the crowd, her pace unhurried.
Like a shadow afraid of disturbing anyone, she disappeared at the end of the corridor.
From beginning to end, she did not glance toward Shinji even once.
Shinji was not in a hurry; he stood up, packed his books, and walked toward the training ground.
It wasn't that he didn't want to go up and build rapport. It was that he couldn't.
If this were an ordinary story, Shinji should walk over, hand her a handkerchief, and say, "I understand you."
Then begin a childhood sweetheart bond.
But Mei Terumī was able to master two Bloodline Limits during the years when the Fourth Mizukage was crazily slaughtering Bloodline Limit clans, without being strangled in the cradle.
Such a person's mind was as deep as the deep sea outside the Hidden Mist Village.
At this moment, she was indeed isolated, indeed lacking love, and indeed longing to be chosen. But this by no means meant she would easily trust a peer who proactively approached her.
Children who grew up in the Blood Mist all understood one principle: kindness without reason is often more dangerous than blatant evil.
The reason Mei Terumī could become the Mizukage in the future relied not only on her Kekkei Genkai, but even more on the keenness and capability honed from fighting her way out of desperate situations.
If he rashly approached her now, he would only be suspected by her later, or even have his true colors seen through.
Furthermore. Shinji looked down at his hands. These hands were not yet strong enough.
Although this body possessed the Sage Body, had the gifted Water Release aptitude, and had the capital to survive on this bloody path.
But these were still far from enough. He had to become stronger first.
He had to first become the person she would proactively remember, rather than a seatmate who rashly struck up a conversation in the classroom.
Moreover, although the strength in the simulation could not be brought into reality, the combat experience, training methods, conditioned reflexes, and combat awareness could all be inherited by the real world.
Even if he couldn't complete the task, it wouldn't be a waste of the simulation opportunity. While there was plenty of time, he should get stronger first.
"For the sake of the task, and also for experience, you began to train. Not the kind of training where you 'work a little harder than others,' but forcing yourself to the limit."
"Forcing yourself until every breath felt like it was burning, every inch of muscle was screaming, and then continuing to take another step forward."
"In the early morning, when other students were still lingering in the warmth of their beds, you were already standing on the training ground."
"The morning mist of the Hidden Mist had not yet dissipated, and the gray-white water vapor flowed along the ground. Your figure stood in that haze, repeating the most basic Kunai throws against a row of wooden stakes."
"Fifty times. One hundred times. Two hundred times. Until your arms were too sore to lift, and until every Kunai could accurately hit the same spot. That kind of precision was not talent; it was the memory carved into your muscles through countless repetitions."
"During the morning combat class, while others would spar for ten minutes and then step aside to drink water and rest, you proactively walked up to the instructor and requested extra training. Opponent after opponent was swapped in; you were knocked down and crawled back up; knocked down again, and crawled back up again."
"In the end, even the instructor slightly frowned, with a hint of indescribable emotion in his eyes. Was it surprise, or something else? He himself couldn't tell."
"During the afternoon theory class, you sat in the last row by the window. Every Chakra circulation route the instructor explained, every Ninjutsu hand seal sequence, was carved into your brain like a chisel on a stone tablet—stroke by stroke, not allowing for any blurriness."
"After school, you didn't return to your dwelling but went straight to the training ground, training until dark, training until the blisters on your hands broke and healed, healed and broke, and a thin layer of calluses formed on your palms."
"At night, returning to that simple wooden shack, there were no lights inside, so you sat cross-legged by the moonlight filtering through the cracks in the window. Closing your eyes, you followed the Chakra refinement method taught in class, circulating the energy within your body over and over again."
"You knew better than anyone else: how long the road was that you had to walk in these fifteen years. The Sage Body gave you a Chakra foundation far exceeding that of your peers, but a foundation is just a foundation. Without training, you would still be trash."
"Three months later."
Chakra control test.
A row of students stood on the training ground, with a row of Kunai set up ten meters in front of them; the ring of each Kunai was only as thick as a fingertip.
At the instructor's command, the people beside him began to weave hand seals one after another.
The water flow controlled by some was crooked and twisted, scattering onto the ground without even touching the first Kunai.
Some managed to pass through, but couldn't retract it, spilling water everywhere.
It was Shinji's turn.
He raised his hand, and a thread of water as fine as a hair condensed at his fingertips. It was so fine it was almost invisible, yet it remained condensed without dispersing.
That thread of water extended forward, accurately passing through the ring of the first Kunai, winding around once. Passing through the second, winding around once. The third, the fourth.
The rings of the entire row of Kunai were passed through by him, the water thread wound three times at the end, then returned along the same path, landing into the water bottle in his palm.
Not a single drop was spilled.
The entire process was as quiet as a silent movie.
The instructor beside him looked down at the clipboard, then looked up at Shinji as if to confirm:
Full marks.