The Namikaze Minato household.
"Whoa, you've got so many sealing barriers in your house."
"What, don't you trust yourself? Or don't you trust Kushina?"
Gekko Chizan rarely came over to Minato's house as a guest, and this time it was Minato who personally invited him.
Pakura and the child still hadn't come back. With nearly half of Konoha gone now, what would be the point of calling her back? To help? Forget it—better to stay honestly in Takigakure and enjoy life.
"That mouth of yours—if you didn't talk, it'd be so much better."
"Kushina's identity was forcibly suppressed by me from the very beginning. Not many people knew about it, but after this incident, everyone in the village knows."
"If we don't put on a show, I'm afraid no one will feel at ease."
Just as Sarutobi Hiruzen took out his pipe, ready to take a puff, Kushina's hair floated up, her eyes locking onto the old man with deadly intensity.
Feeling that murderous gaze, he immediately coughed lightly and put the pipe away.
"Hahahaha, dumbfounded, huh? You still dare to smoke in front of a child."
"If I were Minato, I'd throw you straight out."
Seeing how the old Sarutobi chickened out, Gekko Chizan couldn't help but burst out laughing.
The old man and the young one just stared each other down like that, neither willing to back down.
"Chizan, this is the situation right now. Still, I have to thank you. If you hadn't stopped the enemy on the other side…"
"Who knows what even more uncontrollable things might've happened."
Faced with Minato's thanks, Gekko Chizan chuckled.
His tone was exaggerated beyond measure.
"You're really thanking me? Verbal thanks won't do. I'm a greedy guy—how about you reward me with a few hundred million ryō?"
"Pff!"
Minato had just taken a sip of water. Hearing that, he sprayed it straight onto Sarutobi Hiruzen's face—tea leaves and all.
The old Sarutobi's face instantly went dark.
"Don't think I don't know this. You've been dragging Yamato around helping people rebuild houses—fifty thousand ryō per job, right?"
"Hmph, if I were still Hokage, I'd make you cough up every last bit!"
"At a time like this, you're actually making money off the villagers!"
Gekko Chizan didn't care in the slightest. After all, one side was willing to pay, and the other was willing to take it.
Besides, with a Wood Release talent by his side—if he hadn't supplied Yamato with chakra recovery medicine, could Yamato have built that many houses?
But thinking about it that way, he really did seem pretty awful.
The labor was Yamato's, the medicine came from Orochimaru—tsk tsk, Gekko Chizan just lay there and made money. Damn, this money was really easy to earn.
"Alright, so what if the Jinchūriki identity got exposed?"
"I've been in the village for so many years. If it's exposed, it's exposed."
"Anyway, I have a son now. Who cares about them."
Holding her son Uzumaki Naruto, Kushina's face was filled with tenderness. At this moment, whether she was a Jinchūriki or a ninja didn't matter—only her identity as a mother did.
Minato smiled as well, then stood up and walked to his beloved wife and son.
Seeing this, Gekko Chizan couldn't help clicking his tongue in amazement.
"That Red Hot-Blooded Habanero from back then can actually be this gentle now. Rare—way too rare."
"You don't need to be overly deliberate about the Nine-Tails either. After all, nothing's gone wrong for so many years."
"But, Kushina, I have an idea. I don't know whether I should say it or not."
Gekko Chizan straightened up, first taking a sip of tea. Then, under the gaze of the three of them, he slowly spoke:
"From this incident, judging by your condition—did you communicate with the Nine-Tails?"
"You haven't used the Nine-Tails' chakra all these years. Oh—no, there was once. And that time, Minato and I suppressed it together."
"Your state back then was clearly borrowing the Nine-Tails' chakra, wasn't it?"
The situation in that battle was very clear. At the start, Kushina hadn't lost her rationality. Otherwise, when Uchiha Madara threw Naruto at her, she wouldn't have dispersed her chakra out of fear of harming her own child.
And it was precisely because of that that the other side was given an opportunity to cast Genjutsu.
"Yes. Faced with those Sharingan eyes, the Nine-Tails temporarily reached a truce with me."
"I loosened part of the seal and borrowed the Nine-Tails' chakra."
The Uzumaki clan's sealing techniques were extremely powerful. Adamantine Sealing Chains were even more terrifying. As Kushina had grown to this point, unless she herself released the seal, there was no chance at all for the Nine-Tails to break free and release its power.
"Since you can borrow the Nine-Tails' power, maybe you can try to communicate with him further."
"Look at Kumogakure's Eight-Tails Jinchūriki, Killer B. And Iwagakure's Roshi and Han—they can all borrow their tailed beasts' power."
"The Nine-Tails may be terrifying, but those Sharingan eyes are no joke either."
"How does that old saying go? The enemy of your enemy is your friend. Kushina, why not give it a try?"
Gekko Chizan analyzed while stroking his chin.
After those words, the three people present all fell silent.
Kushina thought of many things. Facing powerful enemies, both she and the Nine-Tails had fallen into the enemy's trap.
That feeling of being controlled by Genjutsu made her extremely uncomfortable.
"But the risk is too great. That's the Nine-Tails."
"Chizan, you've faced him before too. That kind of power—if it's not controlled properly…"
Minato looked at his wife worriedly. If he could, he truly didn't want Kushina to have any more contact with the Nine-Tails.
After all, the Nine-Tails had always been synonymous with destruction.
"Hey, don't be so worried, okay?"
"You're practically half an Uzumaki yourself now. How strong the Uzumaki clan's sealing techniques are—don't you know?"
"Aside from that one time back then, has Kushina ever been unable to suppress the Nine-Tails?"
"Oh, no—giving birth to Naruto counts as one too."
"Relax. I've dealt with tailed beasts more than you have. Whether it's the One-Tail, Four-Tails, Five-Tails, or even the Eight-Tails, the feeling they gave me wasn't that unreasonable."
"Open your heart a bit. Accept him. Using Lady Mito's words from back then—that would be using love to reform him!"
By the end, Gekko Chizan couldn't help but find it funny. It wasn't that he was trying to laugh—he just felt that saying something like this himself was really strange.
Persuading someone to reform another with love—coming from the mouth of a bad guy like him, yeah, it felt kind of off.
Not to mention Chōmei inside him. At this moment, Chōmei was already laughing itself silly.
"Chizan, what are you even thinking!"
"You really want to reform that stinky fox with love? Hahahahaha!"
Chōmei's loud laughter echoed in his mind. Just as Gekko Chizan was about to retort, a notification sound shocked him.
[Ding! Detected that the host's 'use love to reform' statement was fully heard by the Nine-Tails, resulting in the Nine-Tails now cursing loudly.]
[This system, adhering to the principle of letting the host understand everything, will relay the Nine-Tails' words to you. The general meaning is: ...]
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Pls Drop some Power Stones
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