Chapter 25 — A Little Secret of the Ninja World

The next day.

The morning light was faint and soft.

Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke arrived at the village gate together and waited quietly.

Wang Xu had set the time for eight o'clock, but they had still set out half an hour early.

If they were disliked for being unpunctual, that would be far too great a loss.

After all, Wang Xu was now not merely the jonin leader of Team Seven, but also their "patron."

Perhaps it really was because their own strength was too feeble; the Lord God had not even assigned the three of them a rookie reincarnator mission, but had impatiently outsourced the training task to a certain mysterious person named Wang Zhiyao, whose worldview was thoroughly abnormal.

On this field excursion, if Wang Xu thought they performed well, then naturally there would be heaps of reward points waiting; but if Wang Shenzhi approved of their performance, then all their efforts would go down the drain.

As the three walked along, each was silently pondering the future.

After waiting a while, Uzumaki Naruto was the first to break the silence: "Sakura-chan, once you get your reward points, what do you plan to exchange them for?"

Having opened the topic, he quickly grew excited. "I saw loads of amazing powers! The Rumble-Rumble Fruit—once you eat it, you can turn your body into lightning, super strong! And there's a Saiyan bloodline too—every time you get beaten half to death and then recover, your fighting strength shoots way up!"

Hearing this, Sakura and Sasuke could not help exchanging a glance, both visibly moved.

The Rumble-Rumble Fruit aside, both of them had seen similar entries on the exchange list.

It belonged to the Devil Fruit category. Anyone who ate that kind of fruit could gain formidable powers, and could even, through self-development, awaken the fruit's abilities and gain the power to rewrite the world—but at the same time, they would be hated by the sea and become a landlocked coward.

To exchange for that kind of power, if one ever ran into a Water Release ninja, one would be completely and utterly countered.

There was a modified Devil Fruit Plus, a strengthened version with the water weakness removed, but the price was much higher as well, so the value for money was absolutely not high.

As for the Saiyan bloodline...

One could say it was excellent quality at a low price.

A formidable physique, fanatical fighting spirit, immense bodily potential, plus that terrifying racial trait Naruto had mentioned—it almost made one feel that this bloodline had existed from birth solely for conquest and battle.

Having read the prophetic book, both of them knew just how absurdly powerful Naruto's bodily recovery ability was.

His body pierced through by Chidori, and yet he could still recover at extreme speed...

The Saiyan bloodline and him...

Were simply a perfect match!

"I thought it over carefully, and I'd better give up on the Devil Fruit."

Naruto's single sentence made his two teammates regard him with new eyes.

But his very next sentence knocked him right back down to his old self: "The exchange list says Devil Fruits taste like shit... I'm not tasting that!"

Sasuke's eyes flickered faintly, his thoughts swaying.

So it was because of the taste that he had lucked into making the right choice...

He forced out a stiff smile. "The power Naruto picked is pretty good. I look forward to crossing blades with you then."

As for Yan Qiu's original "teachings," Sasuke remembered them crystal clear—a student who understood how to borrow momentum and exploit resources would be looked upon favorably by Wang Xu.

Naruto, Sakura...

These two teammates were enormous potential stocks, resources worth exploiting! One could even say that their very existence was a kind of "momentum"!

The former was the Nine-Tails jinchuriki, the reincarnation of Asura's chakra, the possessor of the Sage's Body. The latter, though she had no special power, had been chosen as the protagonist of this world and therefore must possess something extraordinary.

Perhaps she was the darling of the world's will.

Especially after patiently studying "that power," Sasuke had come to understand that there were no coincidences in this world—everything was inevitable.

Unfortunately, Sasuke's flirtatious glances were wasted on the blind.

To his friendly overtures, Naruto stuck out his tongue, made a funny face, and said in a tone that begged to be punched: "Your smile looks so fake..."

The moment those words left his mouth, veins bulged on Sasuke's forehead. It was like a spark falling into a powder keg, exploding in an instant.

"Damn dead-last! One day I'm going to kill you!"

Sasuke, red-faced and mortified beyond endurance, directly tackled Naruto to the ground.

Whatever resolve, whatever change—he cast it all behind him. In his eyes and in his heart, there was only this infuriating little blond beneath him.

"Damn it! I will never lose to you, you smug bastard! Get a load of my training results!"

Naruto was not about to take it lying down either, and started shouting back.

"Hey... Sasuke, don't be angry, we're a team..."

Sakura suppressed her true nature, striving to put on the demeanor of a virtuous wife and gentle mother, and softly tried to break up the two tangled in their brawl. "I actually quite liked the power [Vector Manipulation], but it's too expensive, and it demands a lot of computational ability—you'd need to exchange for lots of supporting powers to bring it out fully. So I picked two other powers instead. Would you two help me look them over?"

Sasuke and Naruto, pulled apart, exchanged a glance, snorted in unison, and looked exactly like a bickering young married couple.

Sakura gave a dry laugh and went on talking to herself. "They're two class inheritances: Flame Haze Warrior and Fire Dragon Slayer Wizard. After reading the descriptions, I felt both had good value for money and high growth potential..."

Naruto, that hopeless blockhead doomed to die alone, was still stewing in silence, but Sasuke's eyes lit up.

"Oh? Those two powers seem to ring a bell... They may not be as universally applicable as the one I picked, but they still count as exchange entries with no small potential."

Just as he was about to speak, a figure turned from illusion into flesh and slowly appeared before the three of them.

"Good, all of you are on time."

Wang Xu swept a faint glance over the three of them. "Then, let's set off."

"Yes, sir!" the three genin of Team Seven answered at once.

...

From Konoha to Suna, if Wang Linchuan were on his own, with his psychokinesis fully unleashed and his body converted to particles, he could get there in a few minutes.

But now he had three little drag-alongs behind him, and the journey seemed to stretch on endlessly.

Wang Xu floated in the air, keeping to a speed the Team Seven genin could just barely match, and yawned boredly.

A moment later, he thrust his hands into his pockets and turned around, yet without halting his flight.

"Since we've left Konoha, let me tell you all a little secret of the ninja world..."

That mysteriously spoken sentence instantly perked up the three genin, who were so exhausted they were panting with their tongues hanging out.

Wang Huai'an's voice drifted softly to their ears: "Nearly every year, in most graduating genin squads, they deliberately slip in one incompetent, impulsive fool of a ninja."

"Why?" Naruto, true to the Uzumaki name, had more stamina than Sasuke and Sakura, and still had enough spare breath to think.

He curled his lip, and the fox whiskers beneath his concealer curled up again. "How could something like that happen? It makes no sense at all. Anyone can tell it's a lie!"

"No, there's still some basis to it."