Thud!
Once again, a shuriken glowing with half-red heat embedded itself into the wooden target. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the red bullseye at the center.
"That's a B-rank Fire Release ninjutsu, Phoenix Flower Claw Crimson?! How did you use it without hand seals?!"
Uchiha Fugaku was seeing such a genius for the first time—someone capable of using half the effect of a B-rank Fire Release technique without forming seals.
But if he was this talented, why had he failed to pass the village's Chūnin Exams for six entire years?
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Bai Xing continued guiding the chakra in his hand, steadily attaching it to the other half of the shuriken. This prevented the heat from burning his hand while also increasing the rotational power of the weapon—winning purely through force.
"Another ten rings… Did… did he cheat or something?"
The Uchiha member holding the score sheet couldn't possibly cheat in a situation like this. Even if the shuriken nearly filled the red center of the target, as long as it landed within that area, it counted as ten rings.
"With talent like yours, how could the village let you remain a genin for six years? I really can't understand it."
At this point, Fugaku no longer cared about winning or losing. He simply wanted to understand the young man in front of him—the peer who had apparently developed a seal-less Fire Release technique on his own.
After landing the fourth hit, Bai Xing picked up another shuriken. Sweat appeared faintly on his forehead.
He had to focus completely to accomplish something like this.
"I've never learned a C-rank ninjutsu. If a chūnin couldn't even use a C-rank technique, that would be pretty laughable, right?"
"What?!"
Fugaku never expected that a man with such talent didn't even know a single C-rank ninjutsu.
After all, Mikoto, despite being much younger, had already mastered two C-rank Fire Release techniques, several D-rank genjutsu, and even the basic E-rank Three Body Techniques.
Time passed.
Even though Bai Xing tried to speed things up, mistakes were unavoidable. Two of the throws landed at eight rings, but the other eight stuck close to the red center.
The Uchiha recorder swallowed nervously, unsure whether he should announce the result.
"That's enough. I lost."
"The Uchiha clan can afford to lose."
Fugaku widened his three-tomoe Sharingan, perfectly copying the technique Bai Xing had painstakingly refined over six years—combining Fire Release chakra with projectile weapons.
With more practice, Fugaku himself could perform the same technique.
"What do you call this shuriken taijutsu?"
Precisely controlling chakra required far more effort than simply using a B-rank ninjutsu. After throwing just ten shuriken, Bai Xing was already sweating.
"Propulsion Shuriken."
"Good name." Fugaku laughed.
"You're treating Fire Release chakra like an engine, using it as a propulsion system to power the shuriken's attack."
Even if Bai Xing only possessed a bit of cleverness and couldn't rely on it to become a chūnin—
That cleverness was a technique many people would never learn in their entire lives.
"I acknowledge you a little now," Fugaku said.
"Although you're one year below me… if I remember correctly, when you graduated, you were the dead last in your class, weren't you?"
Even in Class A, it was rare to find someone who could only perform one of the Three Body Techniques and needed a second exam to successfully perform two of them.
"That was me."
Bai Xing didn't deny it.
Back then, he had just transmigrated and was forced into an exam immediately. The social pressure nearly gave him anxiety, and he still had one technique left to demonstrate.
When he tried using ninjutsu from memory for the first time—he failed.
Thus, someone who could actually perform the Three Body Techniques perfectly ended up becoming Class A's worst student.
Fugaku dispersed the spectators and acknowledged Bai Xing, but that didn't mean the other Uchiha members were as broad-minded.
"He's just a genin. Developing a tiny trick and acting like he's something special."
"Exactly. It takes him forever just to throw one shuriken, and it only flies in a straight line. If it were me, I could dodge it easily with a simple substitution technique."
"Besides, our Sharingan already observed his chakra flow. We could learn it easily if we wanted."
"Typical civilian."
Even as Bai Xing walked away with Fugaku, unable to hear their words, he could imagine them clearly.
Because of his strange ideas—and partly intentionally—he had clashed with his original team's leader. Just a few months after joining the team, he chose to leave and train on his own.
During that time, he had almost resorted to stealing.
After graduating from the Ninja Academy, there were no more orphan subsidies or dormitories.
Rent was expensive. A tiny one-bedroom apartment under thirty square meters cost ten thousand ryō per month, and that was in the outskirts, far from the commercial district.
And D-rank missions?
Without even a little strength, you couldn't complete them.
Back then, while training, he also worked part-time at a restaurant—serving dishes and washing plates.
He worked thirty days a month, ten hours a day.
Because he worked harder than everyone else, his monthly salary reached ten thousand ryō, while other waiters earned only four or five thousand.
Fortunately, the restaurant provided meals, saving him some money.
Even then, he didn't dare eat too much, afraid he'd get fired.
Later he rented a corner warehouse for two thousand ryō per month and lived there for a year.
In the second year, after confirming he could independently complete D-rank missions, he successfully finished one and officially quit his job.
From then on, he became a mission-grinding maniac.
Luckily, the Chūnin Exams here didn't require a registration fee.
Otherwise, he would've had to limit his acting a bit—perhaps only taking the exam once every two years to save money.
So that was the tragic life of a genin.
No strength. No team. Even completing D-rank missions was difficult.
And even if you had a team—during wartime, taking C-rank missions without protagonist-level luck meant a high chance of dying.
Someone like Might Dai, who trained to the limit every day as a genin, had no spare energy for missions or part-time work.
And he was married.
Which meant his savings were probably empty and he was buried in debt.
Bai Xing even suspected that after Dai's child was born, he might not have had money to buy nutritional supplements for his wife.
Her body might have grown weak from poor nutrition… and after breastfeeding for a few years…
…
"We're here."
"I can only take you this far. From here on, it's your conversation with Elder Qian Si."
Fugaku brought the three of them to the gate of a magnificent mansion courtyard and gestured toward it.
The gate stood open. In a world of ninjas, walls and doors meant little to someone determined.
Pulled from his thoughts, Bai Xing nodded.
"Alright. Thank you, Fugaku-jōnin."
"No need to be so formal. We're not working right now. Just call me Fugaku."
Fugaku patted Bai Xing on the shoulder.
He believed strongly in the concept of talent. The fact that Bai Xing hadn't become a chūnin or learned C-rank ninjutsu probably had its own reasons.
Or perhaps…
The kid was hiding something.
A young ninja capable of developing a seal-less nin-taijutsu technique couldn't possibly lack the chakra control needed for C-rank ninjutsu.
And Fugaku also knew what had recently happened.
The Second Shinobi World War had fully erupted.
The village—and even the police force—had begun assigning extremely dangerous missions outside the village.
For a ninja, cowardice isn't always a bad thing, Fugaku thought before leaving.
His mind drifted back to the classmates he had graduated with.
Some were fighting bloody battles across distant lands.
Some had already returned to the Pure Land.
Some had lost their status as ninjas.
As for him—
Thanks to his family's influence, he avoided the dangerous border patrol missions and trained for several years. He had only become a jōnin two years ago.
Before he could finish the thought, a shout suddenly came from inside Uchiha Qian Si's courtyard.
"If you dare go with this brat, don't come back!"
"Hmph! Grandpa, I'm already grown up! I have my own ideas!"
Turning his head, Fugaku saw a girl with long straight black hair wearing a high-collared Uchiha clan uniform leap up from the courtyard wall using chakra.
She was accompanied by three ninjas.
"Uchiha… Mikoto…?"
Fugaku felt a faint stirring in his heart.
Bai Xing noticed Fugaku hadn't left yet and nodded to him briefly before turning his gaze toward the furious elder in the courtyard.
"Grandpa Qian Si, I understand your concerns. But this is the Hokage's order."
"If you have objections, you can discuss it with the Hokage and notify me afterward. Simply forbidding Mikoto from leaving won't solve anything."
The elderly Uchiha Qian Si—with white hair, deep eye bags, and sunken cheeks—immediately developed a large vein popping mark on his forehead.
"I fought alongside the previous generation in countless battles!" he roared.
"We fought the Senju clan until both sides were exhausted before founding Konoha Village together!"
"And now you want to talk about attitude?!"
"Tell me—whose squad leader is a genin?!"
"Was your squad leader a genin back then?!"
Bai Xing's expression turned cold.
"A genin… might understand the hardships of genin better."
"That's all I have to say. I'm simply carrying out orders."
"Withdraw! Assemble at the Hokage Tower!"
"Yes!" ×3