Chapter 5: The Second Day After Arriving on Earth
Lying on the bed, Shen let out a long sigh.
When the magic circle had activated, he had only managed to shout that one sentence before he saw Fatty running toward him, instead of running away, the regret in his eyes vivid and unmistakable. Fatty had been blasted away by the shockwave when the formation activated, slammed into the wall of the rooftop stairwell, and passed out. After that, Shen's soul had left his body. He watched his own body collapse to the ground, then lost consciousness. By the time he woke up again, he had already become Ōtsutsuki Shen.
"I just hope Fatty doesn't blame himself too much. At least I really did come to the Naruto world, and I really do have a chance to become friends with Naruto."
Shen laughed at himself a couple of times, but when he imagined his parents in that other world holding his cold corpse and crying in agony, his heart ached all over again.
He let out another deep sigh. Since things had already come to this, there was nothing he could do. Perhaps when he became strong enough in the future, he might be able to go back. If even his original world—a world in the Age of Dharma Decline—could still activate a formation capable of crossing between worlds, then there was no reason this place, with its far more advanced cultivation civilization, couldn't do the same.
And if it really couldn't?
Then it would only mean one thing—he still wasn't strong enough.
After sorting out his thoughts, Shen sat up. Looking at the nearly finished roasted rabbit over the fire pit, he smiled.
"Enough of that. Right now, filling my stomach is more important."
With that, Shen got up and walked over to the fire pit, picked up the roast rabbit, and sat down on the wooden stool he had just made. After taking a couple bites, he picked up the pottery jar beside him, filled it with water, added some seasoning, then tossed in the rabbit bones he had removed earlier. After placing the lid on top, he simply waited for the rabbit bone soup to finish simmering.
And while waiting, Shen didn't stay idle. He began controlling his chakra and injecting it into the fire pit to strengthen the flames.
Although Shen had inherited this world's memories, he realized that while this world's original Shen had decent chakra, he had never received any systematic training. Even if Shen himself, as a Naruto fan, only counted as a half-baked amateur, he was still far better than the original Ōtsutsuki Shen, who only knew how to refine chakra and little else.
If only he had arrived a month or two earlier, then he definitely would have shown Ōtsutsuki Hien exactly why flowers were so red!
Gradually, as he used chakra to amplify the flames, the red fire in the pit began to grow larger. Then, as Shen poured in more and more chakra, the flames turned blue. Their color became brighter and brighter until, in the end, they became white.
Purururu—
The sound of boiling water snapped Shen out of his focus. Realizing that the rabbit bone soup in the pottery jar had already come to a boil, he immediately withdrew his chakra. The fire instantly returned to its original orange-red color.
Now that the soup had boiled, the next step was to let it simmer slowly over low heat, drawing the essence from the bones. Only a broth made that way could truly be called exquisite—both delicious and nourishing.
Shen smiled as he slowly chewed on the roast rabbit, crisp on the outside and tender within, while waiting for the soup to finish.
To be honest, after finally arriving in the world he had dreamed about day and night, life had suddenly become rather boring.
The era he had arrived in was a thousand years before Naruto's birth. Even the Sage of Six Paths was still inside his mother's womb. This was hardly the grand and chaotic Warring States era of later generations.
"Man, how long will it take before I can become friends with Naruto? I really don't want to meet him only after my mindset has become old and ancient. How would I even be friends with him then?" Shen thought gloomily as he looked out the window. "Looks like I'll have to find some way to enter a deep sleep or hibernation. And I haven't eaten a chakra fruit, so my lifespan is only around a thousand years at most. By the time I meet Naruto, I'd already be an old man."
"Hm… looks like researching the God Tree needs to be put on the agenda too."
Taking a vicious bite out of the rabbit meat, Shen muttered to himself. He refused to believe that a God Tree capable of producing a fruit that granted immortality would only have such limited use. Clearly, the main family had no intention of sharing the God Tree's true secrets with the rest of the clan. Maybe even among the main family, only a few people knew the real truth.
At the very least, someone like Momoshiki clearly didn't know much—otherwise they would never have left a mere servant to guard the God Tree.
Those veteran members of the main family who had personally planted God Trees for years certainly knew some secrets. But with his current status, Shen had no right to return and ask them. He could only study the God Tree's mysteries here on his own.
After finishing the rabbit meat in a few bites, Shen removed the pottery jar of rabbit bone soup from the fire pit, poured the broth into a large bowl, and began drinking. With chopsticks, he picked up the rabbit bones and cleaned off every bit of meat clinging to them, then tossed the bones into the fire pit.
After gulping down the soup, he looked at the night outside, which was already on the verge of turning into deep midnight, and prepared to sleep.
Before going to bed, Shen finally confirmed one thing.
Sure enough, the Naruto world at this point in time really didn't have a moon yet.
Thinking about it, once the Sage of Six Paths eventually sealed his mother and hung her up in the sky, he would be able to see her every night just by looking up. And Ōtsutsuki Hamura would go live on the moon. Shen had no idea whether Hamura had done it to guard Kaguya or to keep her company by watching over her grave, but he figured it was probably the latter. After all, she was still the mother who had given birth to and raised him.
Perhaps after sealing Kaguya, even Hagoromo regretted it afterward.
Shen didn't believe that Kaguya had never told her sons anything about the Ōtsutsuki clan. The two of them had inherited her chakra, after all. Yet even so, they had still been persuaded by Gamamaru to seal their own mother. No matter how one looked at it, that was a little strange.
Then again, maybe the two brothers truly had been acting for Earth's sake. At that time, Kaguya had indeed been frantically creating the original version of White Zetsu in order to prepare for Momoshiki's eventual pursuit. Among those sacrifices, if memory served, there had even been Hagoromo's lover.
After letting his thoughts wander for a while, Shen lay down and peacefully fell asleep.
What he didn't know was that, at that very moment, the toads of Mount Myōboku were making large-scale preparations to strike against Kaguya. Guided by one of the powerful sages of their clan, they had sensed that Kaguya's due date had been brought forward for some unknown reason, so the arrangements they had previously made could no longer be carried out in time.
"What do we do? What exactly is going on? How could that woman's due date come a whole month early?!" a gigantic toad roared angrily.
"Calm down, Toad Hunter. This isn't something any of us wanted," another equally massive toad said in a composed voice. Though calm on the surface, anger could still be heard in his tone.
"Then what do we do? Are we supposed to just give up? This is a rare chance!"
"At this point, all we can do is change the plan. But whether it will succeed like this is no longer guaranteed. After all, we can't just charge straight into that woman's palace and attack her. Damn it—why did that woman have to build her palace right next to Mount Myōboku's node on the continent?"
"That's not the real issue. The real issue is how quickly she's absorbing natural energy! She's stealing thirty percent of the natural energy that flows from the continent into Mount Myōboku. If this keeps up, Mount Myōboku may truly decline. We might even lose our title as one of the Three Great Sage Lands!"
"Everyone! By the order of Great Sage Toad, when Kaguya gives birth, we are to release all of Mount Myōboku's natural energy at once! Kaguya must die in childbirth!"
At that moment, a tiny orange toad no bigger than a palm leaped over to the group of giant toads and shouted the order.
"Hm? Gamamaru? Are you sure the Great Sage really gave that command?" the hot-tempered Toad Hunter asked as he looked at the little toad.
That's right—the messenger was none other than Gamamaru, who would one day become the Great Toad Sage.
"That's right. The Great Sage said so himself. He said that if that woman is struck by such a massive surge of natural energy during childbirth, she will certainly suffer difficult labor. And for a woman, difficult labor is a grave and terrifying thing—serious enough to threaten her life."
"I see… so that's the plan. In that case, as soon as the toads outside monitoring her report that the woman has gone into labor, we'll blast all the natural energy toward her palace. Hahahaha! That woman will definitely die from complications in childbirth. And when that happens, not only will she die—her child will die too! That sinful bloodline must never be allowed to survive!"
"No! The Great Sage said that when the time comes, we should do everything possible to preserve her child. In the future, the world may suffer invasions from outsiders like Kaguya. We need her bloodline to resist those foreign invaders. Besides, the Great Sage said the sinful one is Kaguya herself. Her child is innocent!"
"Hm. True enough. I spoke rashly."
"Then I'll be heading back now."
After saying that, Gamamaru leaped into a pond and disappeared.
"That little guy… he's definitely going to become someone extraordinary."
"Heh, true enough. Maybe he could even become the next Great Sage one day."
"What nonsense. He only became a sage not long ago. Great Sage? Let him wait another two hundred years. Hahahahaha."
"Hahahahaha!"
Once their burdened thoughts had eased a little, the toads began joking about the departed Gamamaru.
***
"Mm, I really slept well. Time to wash up, then head out and catch a couple of birds to eat. This forest really is huge. Yesterday, even when I was flying that high in the sky, I still couldn't see the end of it."
After a peaceful night's sleep, Shen got up, ready to freshen himself up and then head out to hunt.
"Alright, let's go!"
After washing up, Shen rose into the air and flew toward the deeper parts of the forest. Before long, he spotted a flock of birds flying through the sky. Seeing that each of them was nearly the size of a pottery jar, his eyes lit up. He accelerated in an instant, chased them down, and reached out with one hand.
A moment later, two birds were in his grasp.
After examining them closely, they looked somewhat like wild geese from his previous life—except their feathers were much more beautiful.
Carrying the two dead geese back to his hut, the next step was obvious: bleed them, scald them, pluck the feathers, and remove the innards. Although he had never personally handled such things before, every year when he went back to his hometown, he would watch his grandmother slaughter chickens. After seeing it often enough, he naturally knew the process.
He put one goose into a pottery jar to make soup, and rubbed the other with salt, planning to cure it. Although the peak of summer had already passed, the weather was still hot. If he didn't preserve the meat, it would spoil quickly.
At moments like this, Shen was rather grateful that he had come from the countryside. If he had been some city kid, then even if someone handed him ingredients out in the wild, he probably wouldn't know what to do with them. It was true what people said: children from poor families learned to manage life early.
After enjoying a rich and satisfying breakfast, Shen prepared to start felling trees and building a proper house. Although his current hut was already enough to keep out wind and rain, there was no reason to make himself suffer needlessly. If he had the ability to live in a better house, then why shouldn't he?
Condensing chakra into the shape of an axe, he swung it at a thick tree. With just one blow, a tree half a meter wide crashed to the ground. The tremendous sound startled the animals living in the forest. Shen heard countless roars and bird cries, and then every creature fled in the direction opposite him.
Ignoring the beasts that had run away, Shen continued cutting trees. After felling more than ten large ones, he finally stopped.
Then he walked to the site where he planned to build his grand house and pressed both hands to the ground.
"Earth Release: Foundation-Laying Technique!"
Well, it wasn't actually a ninjutsu. He was simply using chakra to compress the soil beneath the entire surface area downward—basically the same principle as compacting the foundation at a construction site.
Looking at the ground, now nearly thirty centimeters lower than the surrounding area, Shen nodded in satisfaction. Then he covered it layer by layer with nearby soil, compacting the foundation again and again, until at last the foundation beneath his feet stood about twenty centimeters higher than the surrounding ground. Only then did he stop.
By that point, Shen was a bit tired, and most of his chakra had been used up.