Young people are just too straightforward.

Chapter 243 Young people are just too straightforward.

The wind blew in from the northeast, and the skeletal dragon's bone wings cut through the thin clouds, leaving a long, thin, silvery-white trail in the moonlight.

The Loess Plateau of the Land of Earth has already spread out beneath the Dragon Bone, with its thousands of gullies and ravines appearing in varying shades of gray-black in the night, like the palm lines of the earth.

Izumi sat on the dragon's back, resting his chin on one hand, in a lazy posture.

His Byakugan was scanning the landscape below through a height difference of several hundred meters, while his Sharingan in his left eye was half-closed, its scarlet iris gleaming faintly in the moonlight.

Yugito's chakra sample had settled down inside the sealing jar, with a faint blue flame occasionally flickering on the transparent jar wall, as if it were breathing.

He held the jar in his hand, twirled it once, and then tucked it back into his sleeve.

Zhi Shui sat not far behind him, leaning against one of the dragon's spines, with his legs crossed and his hands resting on his knees.

His breathing had stabilized, and most of his chakra had been restored, but his face was still somewhat pale.

Taking a full-scale attack from a tailed beast and then defending against it with high intensity still took a toll, and he even sustained some injuries.

He closed his eyes, not asleep, but simply resting.

"Have you ever thought about this?" Izumi's voice suddenly broke the continuous low wind sound on the keel.

Shisui opened his eyes: "What?"

"That guy who calls himself Uchiha Madara," Izumikawa said casually, as if chatting about what he had for dinner, "why did he have to appear in front of Itachi at this particular time?"

Shisui's body tensed slightly. His gaze fell on Izumi's back, his white hair whipped backward by the strong wind high in the sky, his robes billowing in the wind.

This person, who had been traveling over the Land of Earth, mentioned Itachi in a tone as if he were an onlooker.

"What are you talking about?" Shisui said.

Izumi turned his head, revealing half of his profile. The pale blue pupil of his Byakugan and the crimson of his Sharingan in his left eye simultaneously fell upon Shisui.

Two completely different pupil lights overlapped under the moonlight, revealing an inexplicable and eerie quality.

"Just now, in the dense forest on the northeastern border of the Land of Fire, Itachi Uchiha encountered a person who called himself Madara Uchiha." Izumi's tone was as calm as if he were stating a weather forecast.

"That person was wearing a mask, with only one Sharingan visible."

"He talked to Itachi a lot—about Shisui's entrustment, about Danzo, and about the Uchiha clan's coup."

"Finally—he told Itachi that time was running out."

Shisui stood up from the dragon bone. He stood up very quickly, so quickly that his body swayed slightly in mid-air before he regained his balance.

His dark eyes were fixed on Izumi, and his voice was very low: "How did you know?"

Izumi took out a palm-sized metal device from his sleeve.

The front of the device was a slightly glowing screen, which he casually tossed to Zhishui.

Shisui caught it and glanced down at the screen—it was a live monitoring feed of the Fire Country's dense forest.

Looking down from above the treetops, a clearing in the woods is clearly visible.

Two people stood in the open space: one was Itachi, and the other was a person wearing a black cloak.

"It was made by Wuming." Izumi's tone was as if she were explaining a minor technical detail. "She deployed chakra sensing nodes throughout the Land of Fire, using the same underlying architecture as your virtual reality headset."

"As long as a location with chakra fluctuations exceeding the level of a Jonin occurs within the Land of Fire, she will receive a signal."

""

"I was communicating with her when she received the signal tonight. I needed to send her the preliminary analysis results of the Two-Tails' chakra. So I took a look at it while I was at it."

Shisui stared at the screen. In the image, Itachi was standing alone in an open space, holding a shuriken in his hand, his head down, his expression unreadable.

The person in the cloak is no longer in the frame.

He returned the metal device to Izumikawa, paused for a few moments, and then asked, "Do you know that guy who calls himself Madara?"

"I don't know him." (This was a lie.) Izumi took the device and put it back in his sleeve. "But I know he's not Madara."

"The age doesn't match, the physique doesn't match, and the texture of the chakra doesn't match either—although the Sharingan is real."

"If the real freckles were still alive today, they would be at least nearly a hundred years old."

"But—that person is at most in his early thirties, but none of that matters. What matters is that he chose a very precise time."

He uncrossed his hands from his knees, stretched, and his knuckles made a series of soft cracking sounds.

"The hawks of the Uchiha clan are accelerating preparations for a coup. Danzo's patience is also running out; he's already used the word 'fumigate' to describe the Uchiha clan at a high-level meeting."

"Fugaku's silence is being interpreted by the hawks as tacit approval. After your defection, Itachi became the only person who was both trusted by the Third Hokage and highly regarded by the Uchiha hawks."

"He held on in the middle for months, but his resolve was about to break."

"Then tonight, a man claiming to be Uchiha Madara appeared before him and told him: You won't be able to wait any longer."

"This is not a coincidence. Someone is precisely manipulating the situation."

Shisui's fingers tightened slightly, and his hand, hanging by his side, clenched into a fist, his knuckles turning white.

He's not stupid. Having heard enough from Izumi's words, he could already see the chessboard unfolding before him.

He didn't know Obito's identity, but the logic was clear: someone was exploiting the conflict between the Uchiha and Konoha, someone wanted to accelerate the outbreak of this conflict, and someone was pushing Itachi in a certain direction.

Why would they do that?

"Then you'll have to ask them." Izumi turned back, refocusing his gaze on the distance. "But I can guess."

"If a conflict breaks out between the Uchiha and Konoha, the biggest beneficiary will not be the Uchiha."

"Even if the coup succeeds, the Uchiha clan cannot control the entire Hidden Leaf Village, and the other ninja clans will not stand idly by."

"The biggest beneficiary was not Danzo. Although Danzo was a hawk, his goal was never to exterminate the Uchiha clan, but to limit the power of the Uchiha."

"The only ones who can truly benefit from a full-scale conflict between the Uchiha and Konoha are those who want to weaken Konoha's overall strength."

"For example, other ninja villages. For example, certain organizations lurking in the shadows."

Shi Shui remained silent for a long time. The clouds below the dragon bone churned beneath his feet, the moonlight turning them into a undulating, silvery-gray ocean.

He finally spoke, his voice very soft, but each word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth: "What will Itachi do?"

"I don't know," Izumi's answer was unexpectedly honest. "But you know him better than I do. What will he do? What will you do?"

Shisui did not answer. He lowered his head and looked at his outstretched palm. The lines on his palm were exceptionally clear in the moonlight, each pointing in a different direction.

He remembered what he had said to Izumi on the dragon's back—"I can help you, but I have conditions."

He thought he still had time, and that he could slowly find a solution to the problem while Izumikawa was collecting the tailed beast chakra.

But he didn't know that in the Land of Fire, thousands of miles away, someone was pushing Itachi toward a cliff with no way back.

"When are we going back to the Land of Fire?" he asked, his tone no longer that of a follower questioning a leader, but rather that of someone preparing for his own decision.

Izumi turned her head and glanced at him, a very faint smile appearing at the corner of her lips.

"Once the matters of the Land of Earth are settled," he said, "Old Murasaki is just ahead. He's easier to talk to than Yugito—at least that's what the intelligence says."

"Get the Four-Tails' chakra as soon as possible, either in your way or mine, and then we'll return to the Land of Fire."

He paused, a subtle seriousness creeping into his tone.

"But you need to be mentally prepared. Even if we rush back now, it might be too late."

"I know," Shisui said. His voice was so calm that even Izumi glanced at him again.

The skeletal dragon continued its gliding deeper into the Land of Earth. Beneath its skeleton, on the Loess Plateau, the outline of a volcano faintly appeared in the night.

The crater at the summit emitted a dark red light, staining the surrounding clouds a somber, blood-red hue.

Old Zi lives near that volcanic area.

The air in the volcanic area was filled with a pungent smell of sulfur.

The skeletal dragon landed on a patch of black rock on the outer edge of the crater. The wind pressure generated when its bone wings folded up scattered the volcanic ash all over the ground.

Shi Shui leaped off the dragon's back, his boots making a soft grinding sound as they stepped onto the cooled lava.

He looked up and saw that the edge of a volcano was less than 200 meters away.

-

Dark red magma slowly surged deep within the crater, casting a pulsating dark red halo around the surrounding rock walls.

On a flat rocky ground near the crater, a person sat cross-legged.

He was an elderly man, wearing a dark monk's robe and with a shaved head.

His back was very straight, and his hands were in a mudra that Shisui was not very familiar with. His posture was as serene as if he were sitting in the courtyard of a temple rather than on the edge of an active volcano.

The air around him was so hot it was almost distorted, but not a drop of sweat appeared on his forehead.

Izumi jumped off the dragon's back and walked to Shisui's side.

He glanced at the meditating figure, and the Byakugan's insightful perception allowed him to clearly see the flow of chakra within the other person's body.

Lava Release Chakra, a composite attribute, a fusion of fire and earth at high temperatures.

Rōshi, the Jinchūriki of the Four-Tails.

"He's training," Izumi said, as if describing a trivial fact. "The temperature of the magma is about the same as lukewarm water to him."

Lao Zi opened his eyes, his pupils taking on a deep brownish-black hue in the dark red light of the volcano.

There was no hostility, no curiosity, only a polite scrutiny after the peace and quiet had been disturbed.

He glanced at Shisui, then looked at Izumi, his gaze lingering for a moment on Izumi's Byakugan and Sharingan.

"The Byakugan and Sharingan appear in one person at the same time." Old Purple's voice was deep and steady, carrying a composure that had been accumulating over the years.

"In all my years, this is the first time I've seen anything like this. You're neither from Iwagakure nor Kumogakure. What business do you have with me?"

Shisui stepped forward. He was about to speak when Izumi raised his hand, signaling him to stop.

"Don't rush, calm yourself down." Clearly, the news from Konoha had made Shisui very agitated.

A faint smile appeared at the corner of Izumi's mouth: "You learned a lot from Yugito before, now give it a try."

Shisui glanced at him, then nodded. He turned to Lao Zi and took a deep breath.

He let his hands hang naturally at his sides, palms facing forward, adopting a defenseless posture.

"My name is Uchiha Shisui. I need to talk to you about your tailed beast—the Four-Tails, Son Goku."

Old Purple frowned slightly. He didn't immediately grasp the sword like Yugito, nor did he directly attack like Yugito.

He simply released his hand seals slowly, resting them on his knees, then raised his eyes and asked in a much calmer tone than Yugito, "Tailed Beast Chakra? What do you want it for?"

"Research," Shisui said. This time he didn't beat around the bush or use those easily misunderstood protective arguments. "The person behind me needs the tailed beast's chakra for research."

"I'll let him tell you the specifics of his research himself; I don't want to relay his message."

"But one thing I can make clear to you—we have no intention of harming you, nor do we intend to forcibly extract anything from you."

"If you're willing to give it to us, we'll take a small sample and leave; if you're not, we won't do anything."

He paused, then lowered his voice further: "I know you left Iwagakure on your own, because you disagreed with Onoki's political views."

"You are not pressured to be loyal to the village, and no one will make the decision for you after you refuse."

"I'm here today only to talk to you. Not as a threat, not as a deal, just to talk."

Old Purple remained silent for a few moments. His own light moved from Shisui to Izumi River, and then back again.

Then he slowly stood up. His movements were slow, but each step was steady.

After he stood up, Shisui realized that the old monk was taller than he had imagined, with broad shoulders and muscular arms that didn't look like someone his age.

"You want to talk," Old Zi said, a very faint smile, almost imperceptible, appearing at the corners of his mouth. "Alright! Let's talk then."

"I've been sitting here for three years, and apart from lava, I haven't seen many things that can talk."

"You say you won't threaten or coerce, you just want to talk. But you should know that to talk, you have to get the other party to take you seriously first. Why should I take you seriously?"

Old Purple narrowed his eyes slightly. He slowly raised his right hand, his five fingers spread, and a ball of dark red chakra condensed in his palm.

The surrounding air became even hotter the moment the chakra appeared, and the magma deep in the crater seemed to sense something, its churning suddenly accelerating.

"If you can withstand three of my moves, I'll sit down and listen to you finish."

A brief moment of hesitation flashed in Shisui's dark eyes. Just as he was about to speak, a voice came from behind him.

"I'll do it."

Izumi walked forward unhurriedly, shielding Shisui behind him.

He turned his head, his white hair slipping down his shoulder, revealing half of his face, and a Byakugan and a Sharingan simultaneously fell on Rōshi.

The corners of his mouth held that unchanging smile, as if he were anticipating something interesting.

The young man was too reckless. He still had a use for Shisui's eye power, and if he tried to withstand it and something went wrong, it would affect his plans.