If you're interested, you can subscribe to my Patreon to access more advanced chapters.
Thank you, fellow cultivators～
———— 🌟 ————
Land of Fire, Cat House.
Kamihane closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The air carried a mixture of mint and faint fishy odors into his nostrils. When he reopened his eyes, they sparkled with excitement.
"I...am finally back!"
Schlick~
A large, barbed tongue suddenly scraped across his cheek.
Kamihane shuddered violently. Though his body instinctively activated a water molecule barrier, the sensation remained revolting. He turned sharply to meet the glowing blue feline gaze of Boki.
"Hmm~ You seem different," Boki remarked first.
Kamihane grimaced, goosebumps still prickling his skin. "I am different, but I'd prefer you confirm that without licking me."
Ignoring him, Boki circled Kamihane, sniffing intently. A paw prodded the "Frostfall's Core" hanging at his waist, the cat's face alight with curiosity.
"Where'd you go?"
"Shouldn't I be asking you?" Kamihane countered. "Days ago, Sasuke said you hadn't returned. Weren't you battling Sarutobi Sasuke?"
Boki yawned lazily. "That Monkey Sage was fascinating—truly awe-inspiring. I kept fighting it until the summoning time expired."
"Speaking of which," Kamihane mused, resting his chin on his hand, "you're quite peculiar yourself. Shifting size at will, materializing and dematerializing, even creating barrier domains... It's like trapping enemies in a cage of your own making..."
"Finally taking interest?" Boki's head drifted closer, bronze eyes gleaming. "It's all refined manipulation of natural energy. For one billion ryō, I'll teach you my sage arts. Deal?"
"If you don't want to teach, just say so. Do you even grasp how astronomical a billion is?" Kamihane swatted at the cat's head, which dissolved into mist before reforming elsewhere.
"Besides," he added, waving a hand, "Mount Myōboku's sage arts turn people into toads, Ryūchi Cave's into snakes. Yours would probably sprout cat fur. Humans have innate sage bodies—there must be a sage art better suited to us. Yours all belong to...monster clans."
"Meow~ Where'd you learn these terms? Quite novel... Wait, what's this?"
A wisp of azure mist curled from Kamihane's pocket, carrying a glittering golden object to Boki. The mist coalesced into a paw holding the "Helmsman's Token" on its pad.
Boki nibbled it, eyes widening. "Gold! Pure gold!"
"Give it back," Kamihane demanded, reaching out. "It's useless to you."
"Nope. Consider this my payment."
Predicting this, Kamihane tossed a bulging pouch from his belt. "Here's one million ryō."
Boki caught the moneybag with a purr, relinquishing the token. After licking its paw, it mused, "Watching that Monkey Sage gave me an idea. Maybe I can become a weapon too—stay by your side permanently."
Kamihane blinked. "Like what?"
"Like this..." Boki's body dissolved into blue mist, swirling around him like stardust. The glow condensed into an ethereal longsword hovering beside Frostfall's Core.
Kamihane marveled, gripping the hilt. He flicked the blade—a standard test for sharpness via metallic resonance.
The clear, resonant ring echoed like a dragon's cry.
"It can change size," the hilt murmured drowsily.
"Noted." Kamihane suddenly feigned disinterest, carelessly tossing the radiant, ornate sword aside with a clatter.
"Way too expensive. Can't afford it."
"Three million ryō daily rent. Consider it~ I can even create cages to trap enemies and..."
Ignoring Boki, Kamihane pushed open the door.
Blinding sunlight flooded his vision, carrying the faint scent of flowers and grass. His eyes instantly adjusted, revealing endless emerald mountains stretching to the horizon. After days of icy landscapes, the warmth felt surreal—like awakening to a new world.
The Cat House remained unchanged. Despite its name, it wasn't a building but a city of ruins rebuilt by cats—ordinary felines and talking ninja-cats alike. Skilled in crafting tools and shrewd in commerce, they'd forged their own economic ecosystem.
One phrase sufficed to describe it: A Realm of Plenty.
Countless cats darted through alleys and across rooftops. Only the Uchiha clan knew how to enter this hidden domain.
"Hmm… Time to return to Lord Madara. The route back to base… Hikaku showed me several times. It should be… Wait…" Kamihane's brow furrowed as he pondered.
"Since when… am I this directionally challenged?"
Something felt wrong.
Though he'd never excelled at navigation, his Uchiha-level visual acuity and enhanced memory should have etched every path he'd taken into his mind. Getting lost in the Land of Iron was understandable—it was unfamiliar territory. But here?
He'd traveled from the Cat House to the Kannabi Bridge route countless times. There was no reason to forget!
Human direction sense is innate. Unlike animals, humans lack organs to detect geomagnetic fields. Our weak magnetic perception faded through evolution as vision and other senses ensured survival. People rely on visual memory to navigate—imagining destinations, surroundings, and routes based on experience.
But now, Kamihane's mental map had fractured.
Instinct screamed south was the correct direction, yet conflicting impulses pulled him east, west, north. Every fragmented memory clashed with his spatial awareness, as if all paths were wrong.
"Makora!"
Without hesitation, he activated his Mangekyō Sharingan. The crimson pattern of Makora spun within his eyes. Under its infinite adaptability, he scanned every cell of his body while reconstructing route memories.
"Anomaly detected. My body's been compromised."
"External interference has corrupted my spatial memory."
Was this… magnetic sense?
Had his brain evolved geomagnetic perception during an adaptation?
He froze, realization striking like lightning.
"The Flying Thunder God Technique…" he muttered, clenching his fists.
The technique's essence relied on chakra markers for spatial leaps—an undisputed space-time ninjutsu. Yet...
"Magnetism," Kamihane muttered through gritted teeth.
Space itself contained a uniformly distributed physical field—a vector field formed by countless moving particles that mediated magnetic interactions. This was the magnetic field, a fundamental environmental factor woven into the cosmos. It originated from celestial currents or spatial charge systems, its disturbances dictating the behavior of charged particles. Spatial fluctuations meant magnetic shifts.
During his battle with Tobirama, he'd channeled Makora's full power to adapt to the Flying Thunder God. Yet the sheer magnitude of spatial forces overwhelmed him. Even as Tobirama teleported him into the abyssal sea, adaptation remained incomplete.
Afterward, he'd recklessly tried forcing Makora to adapt to his own Ama no Tokotachi—a technique that altered space through temporal manipulation. Futile. Their conflicting natures clashed like fire and ice. Worse, Ama no Tokotachi caused no spatial ripples, leaving Makora's spatial adaptation stagnant.
This revealed Makora's limitation: adapting to universal truths through ninjutsu was glacially slow, if possible at all.
Against Flying Thunder God, Makora's solution had been evolving magnetic perception—to detect spatial fluctuations instantly and predict teleportation endpoints. But incomplete adaptation left this nascent sense out of sync with his visual memory, creating cognitive dissonance.
"Until I fully adapt to Flying Thunder God, my original direction sense and this half-formed magnetic perception will keep interfering… turning me into a lost fool!"
So that explained why he'd circled endlessly in the Land of Iron…
"Incomplete adaptations might trigger bizarre side effects… I'll need to monitor this closely."
He exhaled deeply, gazing at the horizon.
"Senju Tobirama… I'm coming for you."
———— 🌟 ————
ps:Support and join my Patreon
patreon.c@om/chenc11 Remove @
You can read up to 15~20 premium chapters.