A few days later at one of Konoha's expansive training grounds...
A dark-skinned man, his clothes torn and one arm missing, staggered forward.
"Damn it! If my chakra weren't sealed, I'd already be out of Konoha by now!"
The grumbling man was Ji, who had been enduring endless interrogations under the Sharingan.
Back in the interrogation room, he had seized the chance when guards left in groups, slipping out a small iron wire hidden in a secret spot and quietly picking the lock to escape.
"This is a training ground, so I must be near the village outskirts," Ji thought, well aware of Konoha's layout.
At its heart stood the Hokage Tower and Ninja Academy. Expanding outward was the newly built Commercial Street circling the village.
Next were the compounds of the four major clans, followed by smaller clan territories. Closer to the edge of the village were the homes of common ninja.
Konoha's large training grounds were built here precisely for easy access by civilian ninja.
Ji found it perfectly natural that the interrogation department was also located here.
Facilities like that were always placed in secluded, sparsely populated areas.
"Yo yo yo, I'm your DJ Shen—time to get this party jumpin'!"
A voice echoing across Konoha made Ji, who thought he'd narrowly escaped danger, breathe a sigh of relief.
He had been suspicious earlier about why all the interrogators left at once, but now felt reassured.
"This EDM isn't bad at all—it's actually got me hyped!" Ji listened for about ten seconds, thinking nothing suspicious was going on.
He turned toward the wall of the central Konoha Grand Hotel, where a massive screen showed DJ Shen—the man who took his arm—spinning records.
"Lights up! Flood the place till they can't see straight!" At DJ Shen's command, Konoha was instantly bathed in dazzling, colorful lights.
The constantly shifting, flashing hues gave Ji a sensation like time travel.
The intense lighting that didn't dim even in daylight, the towering hotel hundreds of meters high wrapped in glowing screens, and the energetic yet orderly crowd.
All of it stirred a deep desire in Ji—to transport Konoha's technology back to Kumogakure.
"Just wait. Within ten years, we'll surpass you!"
With this newfound dream, he resolutely turned and headed toward the village wall.
Ten kilometers outside Konoha, in a quiet forest, a father and son bickered as they walked.
"You brat, you doubting my genjutsu skills? I've had three tomoe for almost twenty years now!"
"Three tomoe's that impressive? Dad, hold off the lecture until you actually have the Mangekyō!"
"You think Mangekyō just falls from the sky? This is a time of peace—even awakening one requires seeing true tragedy unfold with your own eyes!"
"Tch. Dad, remember when Tsunade died? You looked like someone had lost their whole family."
"Why'd you have to bring that up now?! Mark my words, one day you'll end up running from Konoha yourself!"
The father-and-son duo were none other than Kazushi and Shen, dragging an unconscious man missing one arm behind them with a rope.
The conversation they'd just finished was the result of Shen's sudden brainstorm two days ago—he speculated that given the conditions required to unlock the Mangekyō, watching the final season of *Game of Thrones* might actually trigger an immediate awakening.
So he approached his old man, who was totally obsessed with this epic series, to test whether his theory held any water.
Although they reached no definitive conclusion in the end, judging from Kazushi's enraged Triple Tomoe at the time, if Aiko hadn't walked by, his Sharingan might really have evolved into a Mangekyō.
"So what if we escape? I've still got tons of new ideas. I'll just hand them over to the TV station sometime. Who knows, once I finish laying low, there might be a dozen new Mangekyō added to the clan!" Shen still firmly clung to this idea of awakening.
Deeply emotional tragedies? He claimed that back in another life, he'd actually watched a whole bunch of shows that made him so angry he wanted to kill the screenwriter—all because of a bizarre situation involving a certain classmate.
Especially those Korean dramas about tragic love stories, car accidents, and terminal illnesses—he'd practically watched every single one without missing a single episode.
As for what happened to that female classmate later, well… that's a sad story. Telling it might even spawn a drama more heart-wrenching than the ones he watched.
Kazushi gave a sharp tug on the rope: "Dream on! If unlocking the Mangekyō were really that easy, wouldn't everyone who did it before be total idiots?"
*Thud!* The man being dragged by the rope smashed his head into the thick trunk of a tree.
Shen rolled his eyes upward, completely ignoring this accident: "Old man, don't tell me you don't like Daenerys? Quickly confess the truth, or I'll go straight to Mama and spill everything!"
*Thud thud thud!* The unconscious man's head got stuck right between two trees.
Failed to pull him out after several tries, Kazushi activated his Fire Nature Chakra Mode.
"Just a little bit," he muttered quietly before yanking hard with both hands, ripping the man free.
"Eh," Shen's eyelid twitched repeatedly, believing that right now his old man's mind must be anything but calm.
He glanced at the man who still had a faint breath left and said with a strange expression, "Old man, did you pick up bad habits from Uncle Jiraiya? I heard he thinks he's had enough practice writing for smaller publications and is now starting to work on a real full-length novel."
"Hmph! I have absolutely nothing in common with that brat! What kind of stupid Hottest Girls List is that anyway? It's pointless for two kids in their teens to be on it!"
Still holding a grudge, Kazushi claimed that someone like Jiraiya deserved to be eliminated.
Shen, his eyes full of teasing amusement, grinned rather sinisterly, "Old man, you're not jealous, are you?"
"Piss off!" Kazushi shouted furiously and yanked hard on the rope, lifting the unconscious man high into the air.
*Plop!* The man crashed down into the woods, rolling over a dozen times.
"Old man, you're being dishonest," Shen said, shooting him a scornful glance.
Sensing the heavy sarcasm, Kazushi clenched the rope tightly in his hand and thrust it forward, preparing to yank his brat of a son over and give him a solid beating.
"Got to go!" Shen immediately made a quick getaway, not forgetting to taunt along the way: "La la la, old man, you can't catch me!"
"You rascal, don't celebrate too soon!"
"Don't forget to bring the mission target. If we lose this person, it'll be a real problem."
Inside the Hokage Tower Office, the Third Hokage watched through his crystal ball as a rare father-and-son-style chase unfolded. Instantly, he regretted entrusting such an important task to these two.
These two troublemakers—one whining about getting dirty, the other insisting he was still a kid—had tied up Ji, who had only one arm, and were dragging him across the forest.
"This guy might come back from Kumogakure with serious brain damage," thought the Third Hokage, believing at the very least, a cerebral hemorrhage would be likely.
Inside the crystal ball, the father-and-son pair were running so fast they seemed to hit a hundred miles an hour, dragging Ji until blood smeared everywhere. If it weren't for his strong constitution, he'd probably already be a corpse by now.
The Third Hokage picked up a red UPhone, preparing to call the two and tell them to tone it down a bit.
"Wait, this guy tried to kidnap a Konoha villager; as long as he survives, who cares if he ends up disabled or not?"
He quickly turned cold, forcibly suppressing the momentary wave of sympathy he had just felt.
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