Seeing the three Sand ninja suddenly turn pale and bolt in terror, Hinata and her teammates stared at one another in confusion.
They assumed those three must have encountered something terrifying, so terrifying that they immediately grabbed Arima and ran as well.
None of them could have imagined that everything had been caused by Arima himself.
After all, Arima could freely wield his Conqueror's Haki, striking only the three Sand shinobi while carefully ensuring Hinata's group remained unaffected.
On the other side, Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro were fleeing as if chased by a demon.
Just moments earlier, they had felt as if some indescribably dreadful presence had descended upon them, so oppressive that even Gaara's One-Tail inside him had trembled uncontrollably.
The three didn't stop running for half a day. Only then, exhausted, did they collapse beneath a tree.
Temari's hands were still shaking, her fan nearly slipping from her grip. She stammered nervously, "That was terrifying… I've never felt anything like that! Not even Gaara, "
She abruptly cut herself off, glancing at Gaara beside her. Seeing that he didn't seem offended, she quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
Still, from that brief glance, she had clearly noticed his little finger trembling.
Sensing Temari's gaze, Gaara shot her a harsh glare, then crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and ignored her completely.
But in Temari's eyes, that glare looked more bark than bite. Her younger brother, always strong, always cold, had for once shown a sliver of weakness.
His expression resembled a kitten freshly bullied by a lion, fragile, powerless, and lost.
Kankuro fared even worse. His entire body quivered nonstop as he gasped for breath, completely oblivious to Gaara's state.
It was clear that Arima's Conqueror's Haki had left a deep psychological scar on these poor kids.
Meanwhile, Arima continued traveling toward the central tower with Hinata's team, and along the way they obtained another "Earth" scroll without much trouble.
When they reached a river, Arima took the initiative to separate from them.
He explained, "If I follow this river, I can find my way back."
Hinata and the others didn't suspect anything.
Arima needed to act alone now, to gather information about this version of Konoha.
More importantly, he had to find a way to clear the blockages in his chakra pathways and restore the flow of chakra.
Earlier, he had tried to condense chakra again, but the moment it touched his meridians, it instantly retreated into his cells, as if his entire network of chakra pathways had been frozen by the power of time.
He had even tried using the Paw-Paw Fruit's ability to expel the obstruction within his meridians, but the effect was extremely poor.
It would take an enormous amount of time to grind through it.
The fastest solution would be to use the ocular technique of his Six-Tomoe Rinnegan, but without chakra, he couldn't activate his Rinnegan at all.
So Arima was stuck in a vicious cycle.
At this moment, his only usable powers were his Haki, the Dark-Dark Fruit, and the Paw-Paw Fruit. All ninjutsu and ocular techniques were essentially sealed.
Arima sighed quietly. "How ironic… a ninja who can't even perform the most basic E-rank jutsu. Tsunade, Grandma… you'll have to wait a little longer for me."
As a child, Arima had trained in the Forest of Death often and knew the terrain well. In less than half an hour, he made his way out.
With Observation Haki, Arima easily evaded the detection of patrolling shinobi, he even slipped past several passing jonin without them sensing a thing.
He infiltrated the Anbu headquarters, using the Paw-Paw Fruit's spatial displacement ability to follow one Anbu operative straight through the entrance barrier.
Deep underground in Anbu territory was a secret archive, constructed by Tobirama when Anbu was originally founded.
Only the Hokage and the Anbu Commander knew how to open the barrier.
Now, with no chakra in his body, Arima could only stare helplessly at the barrier blocking his way.
Still, it wasn't hopeless, if he could wear down some of the temporal power clogging his meridians and unblock even a single pathway, he would naturally be able to open it.
Even so, his trip wasn't fruitless.
After leaving Anbu, he confirmed that most of Anbu's configurations were still exactly the same as when Tobirama had been in charge, identical to those in his original world.
Thinking back to the incident where Natsuka, Yuna, and six others traveled through Roran using the Dragon Vein, Arima speculated, 'Parallel worlds might have begun splitting from that point onward.'
But once he realized this, another thought hit him, if parallel worlds had started forming back then, then there should be another version of him in this world.
Yet from the reactions of those three kids, it seemed they had never seen someone like him, never even seen a face resembling his.
Even after accounting for the slight changes in his appearance due to bloodline evolution, it still shouldn't be to the extent that they couldn't recognize him at all.
'Could it be… that the me of this world already died long ago? Then what about Tsunade?
Where is this world's Tsunade? And Grandma… Mother, Nawaki, Kushina, Natsuka, Nono… where are they now?'
Countless questions echoed through Arima's mind.
Even stranger, as he walked through the village, he hadn't found any trace of the Senju or Uchiha clans.
Following his memory, Arima made his way to the Senju clan's ancestral grounds, only to find them long abandoned.
He continued into the clan's shrine and eventually located the family records in a hidden room.
He flipped through them page by page until he found his mother's name, but nowhere was there a "Arima."
In another notebook, he finally discovered the truth about his counterpart in this world.
That version of him had secluded himself somewhere with his mother, and afterward, all contact had been lost.
Combining this with Yuna's previous explanation, Arima finally grasped part of the truth.
'These parallel worlds exist because of the system. Every time I relied on the system to make a major decision, a new parallel world might've split off.
And the world I'm in now… is the original world, the one with no system.'
Right then, the system's voice chimed in.
"This system was created by a great being in a higher-dimensional world. It is a gift for the host. Please do not be alarmed."
Hearing the system suddenly speak again startled Arima.
He took several deep breaths to steady himself and decided not to dwell on it anymore. Since he had come here, he could only continue forward one step at a time.
From the notebook, Arima also learned the tragic fate of his granduncle, grandmother, and Nawaki.
The news was hard to accept. What pained him most was discovering that in this world, the Senju clan seemed to have dwindled until only Tsunade remained.
Arima decided to stay in Konoha for a while, then search for this world's Tsunade. Even if they were strangers, decades of shared history and feelings made it impossible for him not to care.
That night, Arima stayed at an inn, unable to sleep.
The existence of parallel worlds left him unsettled, and he couldn't bear the thought of Tsunade leaning into the arms of some unfamiliar man.
The next morning, using the money he had taken from the Senju ancestral home, Arima purchased a small shop and posted a renovation request at the mission center.
Over the following days, three diligent genin worked tirelessly, giving the shop a complete makeover.
Arima had always doted on the children of Konoha.
He deliberately raised the mission's reward to C-rank, instantly delighting the three genin, and greatly boosting their fondness for this kind, handsome uncle.
The day after renovations were completed, Arima's little barbecue restaurant opened for business, and the three kids came to support him.
Arima's grilling skills were exceptional, but what truly elevated the dishes was how he used the Paw-Paw Fruit's abilities to remove any harmful impurities from the meat.
The result was predictable, those three genin were instantly conquered by the taste.
Within days, the shop's reputation spread rapidly, and customers flooded in.
Naturally, this activity soon caught the attention of Anbu, and the news that a Senju clan member had returned to Konoha reached the ears of the Third Hokage.
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