Chapter 59: The First Exam
Deep in the night, the faint, flickering light of torches could be seen along the outer walls of Konoha.
A patrol team from the Uchiha Military Police Force walked their route against the howling night wind.
The wind was cold. Uchiha Tekka instinctively tightened his robes.
"Alright, that's it for tonight. Dismissed."
"Yes, sir."
The patrol team dispersed.
Tekka, the team leader, lay down on the ground and looked up at the moon through the dense canopy of leaves. The area grew quiet. He saw a kind, gentle face in the bright, clear moon, like a photograph in a round frame.
He touched the three-tomoe Sharingan in his eye socket. "Grandma," he whispered, "I'm a Jōnin now..."
"A Jōnin, you say? Congratulations."
A raspy voice suddenly broke the silence.
Tekka's reverie was shattered. He leaped to his feet, a look of alarm on his face. Standing before him was a strange man with messy hair and a single-holed, tiger-striped mask. A three-tomoe Sharingan in his right eye stared back at him, cold and emotionless.
The Sharingan? Is he an Uchiha, too? When did he get so close?
After a moment of shock, Tekka's hands went to his ninja pouch. He drew a kunai in each hand and, spinning them rapidly, he lunged, aiming for the man's chest.
But then, something incomprehensible happened. His kunai passed straight through the man's body, but the feedback from his hands told him that he had struck nothing.
A look of horror on his face, Tekka pushed off the ground and leaped backward, his Sharingan darting back and forth, trying to find the man's true form. But he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
"Fine eyes you have there," the masked man said with a cold laugh, and then he was moving.
He had calculated Tekka's landing spot. The moment his feet touched the ground, the man's katana was unsheathed.
He phased through Tekka's flurry of kunai strikes and then, with a single, powerful slash, his blade bit deep. It first severed Tekka's right arm, then continued, unimpeded, through his chest.
In front of him... I'm completely powerless...
Tekka gripped the kunai in his left hand, trying with all his might to look up at his attacker, but his strength was rapidly fading, his consciousness blurring.
The masked man walked toward him and looked down at his dying clansman, his single eye as cold and emotionless as a stone.
"Now they're mine."
Tekka didn't know who he was, but he suddenly understood why he had been attacked.
"The... Sharingan..."
He strained to lift his head and forced a smile.
The next moment, he plunged the kunai in his left hand into his own left eye.
"Sorry... can't let you have it..."
With his last ounce of strength, he drove the blade deep into his skull.
"Did you destroy your left eye because you noticed I only have a right?" the masked man said, his voice a low rasp. "I could have stopped you. But I didn't."
"Actually, what I really need is a right eye."
After a moment of contemplation over the body, he placed a hand on Tekka's head and absorbed the corpse into his spatial vortex.
The next afternoon, the first exam began.
The news of Hyūga Neji's challenge and victory over the Konoha ANBU had spread throughout the village. He had become one of the focal points of the exams, his name mentioned in the same breath as Uchiha Itachi and Deidara. The odds on him at the casino had skyrocketed.
As Neji and his team walked toward the exam site, they were met with a mixture of wary, fearful, and hostile glares from the other candidates. Neji was unconcerned. Darui, a Jōnin, was also unfazed. Only Karui, a fresh graduate from the academy, was a nervous wreck.
The first exam was a written test, held at the Ninja Academy, designed to test the candidates' information-gathering abilities. There were five classrooms, with ten teams in each. Neji's team was assigned to the fourth.
He sat down at his desk, completely at ease.
"Neji," Karui whispered, her eyes darting around nervously, "is the test hard?"
"It's not about whether it's hard or not," he said with a smile. "It's... well, don't worry. With me here, you're guaranteed to pass."
"Tch, it's just a written test. How hard can it be?" Darui said, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head. He was a Jōnin, after all. He wasn't the least bit worried.
Soon, the proctor, Namiashi Raidō, a Tokubetsu Jōnin with a long scar on his face, came in to explain the rules.
The test papers were distributed.
"The medicinal properties of a silver-tailed snake's gallbladder?!" Darui's confident expression faltered as he read the first question. As a young genius who had been promoted to Jōnin, he was well-read. Though he wasn't a medical-nin, he had some knowledge of pharmacology. But he had never heard of a "silver-tailed snake."
"There are countless strange and poisonous snakes in the world," he muttered to himself. "It's probably some rare species from the Land of Fire. How am I, a ninja from the Land of Lightning, supposed to know?"
He skipped the first question and moved on to the second. It was a calculation problem. An enemy was hiding in a blind spot behind a large tree. The question asked how to throw two kunai so that they would collide and change trajectory to hit the target.
For a master of shurikenjutsu, this was something that could be done by muscle memory alone. For a Jōnin like Darui, it was a simple task. But the question required him to use the principles of physics to write out a detailed derivation. He knew the answer, but he had no idea how to write out the process. He had been out of the academy for seven or eight years; he had long since forgotten all that.
"Are you kidding me? Konoha genin have to solve this crap?" he cursed under his breath, his already dark face turning even darker. He moved on to the third question.
"A personal interpretation of the Will of Fire?"
He felt like he was being personally targeted. He scoffed and threw down his pen.
Two of the proctors immediately turned to glare at him.
Karui, who had been waiting to copy his answers, looked at him with a frown.
He gave her a reassuring look and continued to read the rest of the questions. The more he read, the angrier he got. The questions were all related to being a ninja, but they were clearly designed to be impossible. Not even the Five Kage could answer them.
"Damn it, I shouldn't have been so cocky," he thought, burying his head in his hands. "Karui's waiting for my answers... what am I going to do?"
Meanwhile, Neji rubbed his temples and calmly activated his Byakugan.
In the original timeline, only the book-smart Sakura had been able to answer all the questions on her own. Neji didn't know the answers either, but he didn't need to. He just needed to know how to cheat.
He scanned the room. The other candidates were all either fidgeting nervously or looking around furtively. It seemed no one knew the answers. Did Konoha not plant a mole in this room? That seemed unlikely.
He activated his Byakugan again and, this time, he found him. A Konoha genin, sitting in the front row, calmly writing down the answers. Neji was in the back corner, and the mole was in the opposite corner.
"They're deliberately targeting me," he muttered to himself. "But they underestimated me."
Even from the furthest distance, under the watchful eyes of the proctors, he could use his Byakugan to silently copy the answers.
Outside the classroom.
"Are you ready, Raidō?" Kakashi asked, his single lazy eye fixed on him.
"Don't worry, Kakashi," Raidō said with a wicked grin. "It's all set up. I've specifically instructed the proctors to keep a close eye on those two troublemakers, Deidara from Iwa and Hyūga Neji from Kumo. The moment they slip up, they're out."
"Let's hope it works," Kakashi said.
Konoha was using these exams to show off. Deidara and Neji were clearly not ordinary genin. If they could be eliminated in the first round, it would take a lot of pressure off the Konoha candidates. As for Mei from the Mist and Yura from the Sand, they didn't seem to be anything special.
In the Root laboratory.
"Are the test results in?" Danzō asked, his voice cold.
"We've confirmed it," a lab technician said, handing him a data sheet. "The arm is indeed cultivated from the First Hokage's cells. And the cell activity is ten percent higher than the samples we have in our own lab. The cultivation technique is superb. The one who created this is a true genius of scientific research."
Danzō glanced at the data sheet and nodded, satisfied. "Prepare for the transplant."
"But, Lord Danzō," the technician said, hesitating, "to transplant a Wood Release arm so rashly... it will put an immense strain on your body. Please, reconsider."
"That is not your concern," Danzō said with a snort. "You have three days. In three days, I will have this arm."
He left the lab and returned to his office, his mood excellent.
The three greatest powers in the shinobi world were Wood Release, the Sharingan, and the Tailed Beasts. He had already transplanted a three-tomoe Sharingan. If he could also gain the power of Wood Release, he was confident he could surpass Hiruzen in personal strength.
As he reached his office and pushed open the door, he saw a figure with messy hair and a katana at his waist, his back to him.
Danzō's good mood vanished. He tensed. No one could have snuck into the Root headquarters, into his office, undetected.
"Who are you?" he asked, his chakra surging.
The masked man slowly turned around. "Who I am is not important," he said, his voice a low rasp. "What's important is that I can help you."
"Hmph," Danzō snorted, looking at the single-holed, tiger-striped mask. "A rat, hiding its face. You've made a foolish mistake, trying to play games with me."
He flew through a series of hand signs with blinding speed.
Wind Release: Vacuum Sphere!
Highly compressed bullets of air shot toward the masked man.
"Heh heh..."
The man just laughed, not even trying to dodge as the bullets struck him.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The walls behind him were riddled with holes, but he stood there, completely unharmed.
"Not a physical body," Danzō thought, his brow furrowed. "When did I fall under a genjutsu?"
He disrupted the flow of chakra in his body and tore the bandage from his right eye, revealing a crimson, three-tomoe Sharingan. He looked at the man again.
"I didn't expect you to have already started collecting Sharingan," the masked man said, a hint of surprise in his voice. "In that case, the gift I've prepared for you is not so precious. It seems I'll have to add something else..."