This sensation was not unfamiliar to Yami.
Before sudden death, the body always gave warnings.
With excessive sleep deprivation, it was sometimes impossible to fall asleep at all. Instead, the mind grew increasingly excited, the mouth dry, the body temperature rising.
More frightening still was the racing heartbeat. That sense of panic and tightness in the chest made one fear that once they fell asleep, they might never wake up again.
Yami had experienced this many times in his previous life. He had simply been young and careless, never taking it seriously.
Now that same feeling had returned, and fear welled up in his heart.
Without the slightest hesitation, Yami got out of bed to drink water. He did not dare gulp it down, only taking small sips.
After the dryness in his mouth eased slightly, Yami carried the kettle back to his room and lay down again, trying to empty his mind and calm his heartbeat.
No matter what he did, however, his heart rate did not slow in the slightest.
In the silence of the night, Yami's room sounded as though someone were beating a drum.
When he lifted his clothes, his violently pounding chest made it seem as if his heart were about to burst out of his body.
The overexcited mind, coupled with waves of rising temperature and dryness, left Yami unable to sleep. All he could do was repeatedly boil water and drink it.
He even took several cold showers, yet nothing improved.
This state continued until noon the next day, without any sign of easing.
Excluding a brief half-hour nap the previous afternoon, Yami had gone a full thirty hours without sleep.
And yet, he felt no discomfort at all.
In his previous life, staying awake for that long would have left his nerves taut, his eyes bloodshot, even congested, no matter how excited he felt.
But in this life, none of that happened.
Once he calmed down and paid attention, he realized that his energy was astonishingly abundant, like a perpetual motion machine.
It was obvious that this was the result of his heart pumping blood at an extreme rate.
This condition lasted a full seven days.
Yami was sleepless for seven days straight, nearly two hundred hours without closing his eyes.
During those seven days, he did not eat a single bite of food, only drinking large amounts of water.
It was not that he did not want to eat. He simply could not.
The miraculous thing was that despite seven days without food, his body showed no change at all. He was still brimming with energy.
Yami's emotions gradually shifted from fear to excitement.
If this were sudden death, he would have been long dead by now after seven days without sleep.
Since he was not dead, it meant this was not sudden death. His body was undergoing some unknown transformation.
Perhaps… his cheat was finally arriving.
Was it an unknown bloodline limit of his family awakening in his generation?
Or was it some special ability that had transmigrated with him from his previous life, or even been the main cause of his transmigration?
The sudden-death-like symptoms persisted until noon on August 28, Konoha Year 30, before finally fading away.
"It's finally ove—"
Just as his heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm, the feverish warmth and dryness vanished, and before Yami could finish his thought or check his body for changes, his vision suddenly went black. He collapsed onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
He had no idea how long he slept. Only the intense hunger caused by surging stomach acid dragged him out of that deep slumber.
"So tired…"
Yami opened his eyes, yet he did not want to get up at all.
He had not felt this kind of exhaustion from lack of sleep in a very long time.
If not for the ceiling and the familiar surroundings reminding him where he was, he might have thought the past six years were nothing more than a long dream.
Rolling onto his side, Yami pulled open the drawer of his bedside table and took out a box. Inside were two rows of six pills, the compressed rations and recovery medicine of the ninja world: soldier pills.
One was not enough. Yami swallowed three soldier pills in one go before the hollowed-out feeling in his body eased slightly.
He got out of bed and stood before a full-length mirror, stripped off his clothes, and slowly turned as he examined his body. Finding no visible changes, he immediately sat down cross-legged and began refining chakra, checking for any internal differences.
Boom.
A sound like a war drum exploded in his ears, his mind, and the depths of his soul.
At that instant, Yami's vision seemed to turn inward, arriving at the place where the human heart resided.
In that "room," a black heart was beating, thumping steadily.
The image flashed by in an instant.
Yami's eyes flew open, his face filled with shock.
If he was not mistaken, that heart had been… black?
"That wasn't my heart, was it?" Yami thought.
To confirm his suspicion, he closed his eyes again and refined chakra once more.
But the internal vision did not reappear.
Instead, as physical energy and spiritual energy were about to merge, a special energy suddenly surged out from his cells, forcefully joining the fusion of the two.
Then, a strand of black chakra formed from the fusion of all three energies appeared in Yami's abdomen.
"Black chakra… is this my cheat?"
Yami opened his eyes again and formed hand seals, trying to mobilize that strand of black chakra.
The black chakra seemed no different from ordinary chakra. Under the guidance of hand seals, it flowed through his meridians and into his right palm.
Perhaps the quantity was insufficient, or perhaps his chakra control had yet to reach the required level. That strand of black chakra failed to manifest outside his body.
After only a few seconds, it dissipated within him.
In such a short time, Yami could not discern any special properties of the black chakra.
So he closed his eyes again and continued refining chakra.
The special energy surged forth once more, mixing with physical and spiritual energy to form strands of black chakra.
When Yami could no longer extract physical and spiritual energy from his cells, that special energy rushed straight to the core and merged into the blue vortex.
Like ink spreading across white paper, part of his chakra gradually shifted from blue to black.
By the time he could no longer extract that special energy, a full third of the chakra in his body had turned black.
"Let me see what kind of effect you really have."
Yami stood up, both excited and uneasy, formed hand seals, and mobilized the black chakra as he began to perform techniques.
Since extracting his first strand of chakra at the age of three, Yami had already mastered the Three Basic Techniques taught at the Ninja Academy. During this holiday, he had also begun training in C-rank elemental techniques.
Elemental techniques could not be used at home, so Yami decided to test the black chakra with the Three Basic Techniques.
The result was… nothing at all.
He could not create a clone, nor did his body undergo any transformation.
This discovery did not disappoint him. On the contrary, it delighted him.
The inability to perform techniques meant that this black chakra was different from ordinary chakra. The lack of obvious abnormalities only meant that its special properties were deeply hidden.
And mystery meant power.
Yami swallowed another soldier pill, then opened the glass door to the balcony. Gazing at the faintly brightening sky, he formed hand seals, ready to turn into a blur and leap out.
Suddenly, his movements paused.
Recalling how he had previously managed to channel black chakra into his palms, Yami redirected it to his feet instead. He prepared to use a D-rank technique taught at the Academy: the Body Flicker.
Just like before, Yami did not vanish into a blur, but he felt a sudden sensation of stepping into empty space beneath his feet.
Lowering his gaze, Yami's pupils contracted violently.
His feet appeared to be sinking into the balcony, his calves submerged as if in a swamp.
Yet there was no sensation of compression or pressure. His body did not continue to sink. It was as though his feet had not sunk into the balcony, but fused with it instead.
Yami slowly lifted his leg, pulling his right foot free from the balcony.
Staring at the balcony floor, which bore not the slightest indentation, Yami finally lost control of his expression. He bowed his head, covered his face with both hands, his shoulders trembling as sounds escaped him, somewhere between sobbing and suppressed laughter.
After a long while, Yami lowered his hands and looked up at Konoha, bathed in the glow of the morning light, beautiful like a painted scroll. As if seeing the village he had lived in for six years for the very first time, he spread his arms wide, a broad grin still on his face, and laughed as he exclaimed,
"What a beautiful village. What a… wonderful world!"
(End of Chapter)
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