"Shinobi-sama, it's this…"
"I found it when I was tidying up today. At first I thought it was just a regular coin, but it turned out to be a gold one."
"And the key is… I don't even know when I got it…"
The next day, a Konoha patrol squad was making its rounds through Kikyō Castle when a well-meaning civilian reported something abnormal.
Local public sentiment was holding up pretty well. It even had that "shinobi and civilians are one family" vibe. Kikyō Castle was where The Fireflies had first taken root. Some stories, told often enough, really could shape the mood of a place.
Wartime made everyone more alert—shinobi and civilians alike. The fact that this merchant reported the anomaly so quickly was also the result of years of constant messaging.
Shinobi gathering intel from civilians wasn't unusual. Getting it promptly was the unusual part.
"This is… a koban?" The squad leader took the coin and examined it. "A gold koban from the Sonoshi clan?"
The more he looked, the more certain he became. This wasn't just "strange." It was an antique. That was why a term as obscure as "Sonoshi clan" slipped out of his mouth.
At first, he suspected an economic crime—counterfeit currency, fraud, that sort of thing. Those schemes existed even in peacetime. War only made them worse.
But the moment he identified it as "Sonoshi," he knew it wasn't that simple.
By coincidence, the squad leader was a shinobi from the Nara clan.
Nara shinobi were famous for thinking too much.
He tilted his head ever so slightly. A shinobi behind him caught the signal instantly and drifted closer to the merchant without making it obvious.
"This is an old coin that can't be used as legal tender," the squad leader said, keeping his tone calm. "Thanks for reporting it. How about this—we'll exchange it from you at double its value. Sound good?"
He talked while his teammate quietly watched the merchant's reactions.
"Really?" The merchant couldn't hide his grin. "That's… that's too kind. If anything like this happens again, I'll report it right away!"
Double-value paper money in exchange for an antique precious-metal coin. On the surface, neither side lost.
This was also why civilians and shinobi got along well here. The money the shinobi paid came from public funds anyway. Why not be generous?
The exchange finished. The merchant thanked them over and over. The squad resumed its patrol.
They walked a short distance. The shinobi who had quietly checked the merchant leaned in and spoke low.
"Captain Nara. He does have traces of genjutsu on him."
"Someone crossed the battle line and slipped into the city?" another shinobi guessed.
"Espionage?" a third scoffed. "What kind of spy uses that kind of money so openly? That spy wouldn't survive twenty-four hours. Honestly, this feels less like a spy and more like some antique crawling out of the grave."
The squad leader stopped dead.
That offhand comment snapped something into place in his mind.
"Don't talk nonsense," he said. "We report it up. That's all."
And so, information about a single gold coin moved up the chain. It passed through several hands and eventually reached Nara Hideyuki, the western front's overall commander.
At this point, the Fire Country's western front was almost quiet. Konoha had achieved its strategic goal and pushed Sunagakure back into the desert.
Sunagakure wasn't happy, but it had nothing to say.
In both shinobi world wars, Sunagakure's strategic decisions had been wrong. During the First Shinobi World War, the Wind Country could have stayed tucked away and avoided entanglements. But cats couldn't resist stealing fish. Sunagakure had attacked Iwagakure.
The Second Shinobi World War didn't even need retelling. Sunagakure broke faith. The Wind Country lost a rich logistics base. From that day on, it became Konoha's enemy rather than its friend. It lost a stable strategic rear as well.
Everyone else was studying "how to win." Sunagakure alone was studying "how to lose." Truly eccentric. Truly outstanding.
"A gold coin. Genjutsu." Hideyuki narrowed his eyes.
Compared to the average Nara, he didn't just overthink. He also knew more.
This tiny incident in Kikyō Castle instantly brought back memories of what several shinobi in The Fireflies—Akimichi Jinharu among them—had once experienced. It also dragged his mind back to the battle of Kikyō Castle decades ago.
Was this… another space-time incident?
Hideyuki didn't treat it as routine. He reported it directly to Yūshin.
…
Uchiha Zhijian headed east. He reached the old Uchiha settlement quickly.
The closer he got, the heavier his mood became. Time had left marks everywhere.
Most of the buildings were ruined or collapsed. Only a few structures near the village center still kept their shape. This was Uchiha ancestral land, after all. The clan wasn't extinct. People still came now and then, if only to clean up and pay respects.
Zhijian wandered through the place like a man in a fog.
The broken scenery crushed him.
Not completely, though. His eyes were still just ordinary three-tomoe Sharingan.
Apparently, this level of "carrying a sack of rice up a few floors" wasn't enough to force a Mangekyō.
His emotions surged anyway. The Sharingan activated on their own.
"Uchiha Zhijian… is that really you?"
Zhijian froze.
The despair was so intense it nearly made him black out. In a village so empty it didn't even have a stray dog, someone was calling his name.
He thought it was a hallucination.
Then he realized it wasn't.
Zhijian snapped his head around.
Half a pale body was embedded in a boulder.
The thing noticed his gaze and actually grinned. It finally decided to pull the rest of itself out of the stone.
Pale skin.
Completely naked.
"You," Zhijian said, stepping forward without hesitation, "who are you?"
"Does it matter?" the creature replied. "What matters is this. You have nothing now. Do you want to see your family?"
White Zetsu weren't useful for much, but they did have a few specialties.
Temptation was one of them.
"My family…" Zhijian's voice went thin. "I can still see them?"
"Of course you can."
…
Back in the sealed cavern, Black Zetsu appeared again—abrupt as ever, like it was deliberately training Madara to stop reacting.
This time, it didn't wait for Madara to speak.
"Madara. You were right," it said. "We found your brother. He's at the old Uchiha site."
Madara stopped pretending his legs didn't work. He stood up in a single motion. Excitement broke across his face.
So his third brother really was alive.
He took several steps forward—then halted.
"I… can't leave here."
The plan had already begun. He couldn't expose himself because of a moment of emotion. And objectively speaking, he was still "tubed." If he pulled out that connection, he couldn't stay active for long.
There was another issue, too.
Madara couldn't be sure his brother would stand with him unconditionally. Unlike his second brother—who trusted him blindly—his third brother had always had his own mind.
Put bluntly, the second brother was a brother-obsessed type. The third brother was a mama's boy. They weren't the same.
And what a pity.
The third brother lived.
The second brother had already become a "one-plus-one brother."
"Black Zetsu," Madara said, voice low. "Bring me a White Zetsu."
Black Zetsu didn't understand what he was planning, but it followed the order and produced one.
Madara didn't waste time.
He fixed his three-tomoe Sharingan on the unlucky White Zetsu. No one here cared that White Zetsu lives mattered too.
Slowly, the White Zetsu's shape began to change.
It turned into the withered form of an elderly Uchiha Madara.
Madara himself sat back down, breathing hard. He had just cut chakra, forced power through an old body, and pushed himself past what he could handle.
Black Zetsu stared.
Madara had lost his Rinnegan. Yet he was using an ability associated with the Rinnegan anyway.
That wasn't scientific. It wasn't supposed to happen.
This "piece" called Uchiha Madara was starting to exceed Black Zetsu's expectations. It decided, silently, to act even more carefully.
Of course, Madara had always been good at using ocular power "without eyes." He could open Susanoo without them. Compared to that, this was nothing.
He had only used the Body Replacement technique to create a vessel.
A clone.
The other Madara opened his eyes.
"Go," Madara ordered. "Go meet Zhijian."
"You won't go yourself?" Black Zetsu asked.
Madara chuckled. "You are me. I am you. What's there to distinguish?"
"…Fine," the clone said. "Lend me your cane."
It walked past the original Madara and took the cane he'd polished for years without asking.
…
With the war situation as it was, the Third Hokage had already returned to Konoha. There was no reason for him to stay on the front line.
Yūshin had gone to look at Konoha's wonder project and hadn't planned to return.
Then he changed his mind.
He received a request for help from his nominal great-great-great… great-granddaughter.
Transferring the Nine-Tails was not something Uzumaki Mito would entrust to just anyone. She would choose the person she trusted most.
And trust didn't get more absolute than the ancestor himself.
"Transferring the Nine-Tails?" Yūshin said when he heard. "Yeah. Mito's old enough."
He understood Mito's plan. It also happened to fit his own arrangements for the tailed beasts' future.
So he decided to help.
The next moment, he appeared in Uzumaki Mito's small courtyard.
"Oh?" Mito looked up, surprised. "Yūshin-sama… you came back that quickly."
She was with the unlucky girl she had chosen: Uzumaki Kushina.
Mito was explaining what it meant to become a jinchūriki—more like issuing warnings in advance. Becoming a jinchūriki was a painful experience.
"So this is the kid," Yūshin said, looking Kushina over. "How old are you?"
"Almost fourteen, Yūshin-sama," Kushina replied.
Yūshin nodded.
Even the way she answered showed it. Strong-willed. The type who would stand on tiptoes when someone measured her height.
"Then we start now," Yūshin said.
"Huh?" Mito blinked, stunned. "Yūshin-sama… shouldn't we prepare?"
Could you really just start?
Even an appendectomy needed advance notice. Preparation mattered.
And extracting the Nine-Tails meant Mito would be facing death soon after. No matter how you framed it, asking someone to rush toward death felt cruel.
"Preparation." Yūshin paused. "Right. We do need that. Give me a moment."
He vanished.
He reappeared almost immediately.
This time, he wasn't alone.
A ramen chef stood beside him, wearing a chef's hat.
The chef looked equally stunned. He held a kitchen knife in his left hand and chopsticks in his right. He didn't look reliable in the slightest.
He was smart, though. One glance at Mito and Kushina, and he understood what was about to happen.
"Both jinchūriki are fine," the ramen chef's voice sounded directly in Yūshin's mind. "I was just too young back then."
He was using chakra transmission.
The way he looked at the current Nine-Tails carried the same feeling as looking back at your middle-school blog posts.
"I know what you're about to do," the ramen chef continued. "And honestly, it's not fair to the 'Nine-Tails' right now. So I have one condition."
Yūshin signaled him to keep going with a look.
"Someday," the ramen chef said, "you still have to transfer the 'Nine-Tails' to the Child of Prophecy."
Yūshin thought: you're asking a lot.
His Yin-Yang Release could already keep Mito from dying just from extraction. Bringing this guy was just insurance.
But Yūshin understood why the ramen chef had built a life in Konoha. He was waiting for a reunion in the future.
Yūshin nodded.
"Fine," he said. "Deal."
Then he turned back to Mito and Kushina.
"Alright. Preparations are done," Yūshin said. "Operating room. Let's go."
A space-time passage opened in front of them.
The effect was basically the same as what he already knew how to do. Still, Yūshin used Yomotsu Hirasaka anyway, purely out of the instinct to use the newer, "higher-grade" technique.
It was supposed to be the ultimate space-time ninjutsu.
He just didn't yet understand what made it "ultimate."
He tilted his head and walked in first.
No one paid attention to his Rinnegan.
Mito had received no explanation at all. She stepped into the passage with the calm of someone ready to die.
The ancestor was the ancestor. Doing this in another dimension meant the Nine-Tails wouldn't be able to damage Konoha.
Kushina passed by the ramen chef. She wrinkled her nose without thinking.
This guy smelled like scallions.
How was he supposed to help with something like this?
🔥 Want to read the next 50+ chapters RIGHT NOW?
💎 Patreon members get instant access!
⚡ Limited-time offer currently running...
👉 [Join on - patreon.com/GoldenLong]