The morning air bit clean and sharp after the previous day's rain. Mist still clung to the lower terraces of Qing Mao Mountain, pooling in the hollows between buildings like something alive and reluctant to leave.
Itachi walked the path toward the academy compound with measured steps.
The Amplify Effect Gu rested in his aperture now—a quiet presence, settled and still, like a stone dropped into deep water. He could feel it there if he turned his attention inward. A warmth that wasn't quite warmth. A weight that wasn't quite weight. The foundation of his cultivation, bound to his life in ways that the texts described but words failed to fully capture.
The academy gates stood open. A pair of guards straightened as he approached, recognition flickering across their faces. One inclined his head—a gesture that would not have been offered a bit over a week ago.
The ceremony changed everything.
Itachi passed through without stopping.
The compound was quiet at this hour. Most students wouldn't arrive for another two hours; the morning classes didn't begin until the sun cleared the eastern ridge. A few early risers moved through the corridors—older students, mostly, their robes marking them as second or third year. They gave Itachi curious glances but nothing more.
The academy elder's study occupied a corner of the main building, its door visible from the central courtyard. Itachi had noted its location during his first visit. He crossed the courtyard now, gravel crunching beneath his shoes, and stopped before the heavy wooden door.
He knocked twice.
Silence. Then, the sound of movement—a chair scraping, papers being shuffled.
"Enter."
The elder sat behind a desk that seemed too large for him, its surface buried beneath stacks of documents, scrolls, and what appeared to be student assessment records. His white beard cascaded over his robes like a frozen waterfall; his white hair, equally pale, was pulled back in a severe knot. Ink stained his fingers. A half-eaten breakfast sat forgotten at his elbow.
He looked up, and his eyes widened.
"Fang Zheng." The elder set down his brush. "This is... unexpected. Sit."
Itachi settled onto the cushion opposite the desk, back straight, hands resting on his knees.
"This student has come to report the successful refinement of his vital Gu."
The elder stared.
Several seconds passed. The old man's mouth opened, closed, opened again.
"You've refined it." His voice carried the flat quality of someone processing information that contradicted their expectations. "Already."
"Yes, Elder," Itachi replied as the elder reached out to grasp his arm and extend his senses into his aperture.
"The Amplify Effect Gu." The elder's hand moved back to his beard, fingers threading through white strands in a gesture that seemed automatic. "You selected it the afternoon of the day before. You're telling me that in less than two days—"
"I began refinement yesterday after returning from the clan leader's residence. The process was completed that same evening."
The elder leaned back in his chair. His eyes had sharpened, the surprised fog burning away to reveal the calculating mind beneath. Itachi could see him working through implications—aptitude correlations, historical precedents, what this speed meant for the boy's cultivation potential.
"I will not pretend this is ordinary." The elder's tone shifted, growing careful. He studied Itachi's face as though searching for something. "Vital Gu refinement for most students takes between three and seven days. For those of exceptional aptitude, perhaps two days at the earliest." He paused. "You've done it in hours."
Itachi said nothing. The silence held.
The elder exhaled through his nose—a sound caught between admiration and something that might have been wariness. "I had no doubt that you would succeed before the others. Your aptitude alone made that a foregone conclusion. But I expected you at my door in three days' time. Four, perhaps." He shook his head slowly, beard swaying with the movement. "Not two mornings after."
He reached beneath his desk and retrieved a small wooden box. When he opened it, grey primeval stones caught the amber lamplight, their surfaces rough and mineral-dull.
"Twenty primeval stones. As promised." The elder pushed the box across the desk. "You've earned them fairly."
Itachi accepted the box with both hands and a slight bow of his head. "This student is grateful for the Elder's generosity."
"Gratitude is unnecessary. The reward was established to incentivize diligence." A faint smile. "Though I confess, I didn't anticipate disbursing it quite this soon."
Itachi tucked the box into his robes and rose. "If there is nothing else, this student will take his leave. I am expected at the clan leader's residence."
"Of course." The elder waved him toward the door.
The path to the clan leader's residence wound upward through the same terraced gardens Itachi had traversed the previous day. The guardhouses. The carved gates. The servant girl who met him at the final threshold—the same plain-featured young woman, though today she seemed less surprised by his arrival.
"Young Master Fang Zheng. The clan leader is in his study. Please follow this servant."
She led him through a different route today—not the formal receiving room but a smaller, more private chamber. The furnishings here were simpler. Shelves lined two walls, bearing scrolls and bound manuals in neat rows. A writing desk occupied the room's center, and behind it sat Gu Yue Bo.
The clan leader glanced up from the scroll spread before him, one hand still holding his place in the text.
And stopped.
His eyes moved from Itachi's face to his bearing, then back. Something shifted in his expression—a recalibration, quick and nearly invisible.
"Fang Zheng." He released the scroll, letting it curl shut. "I did not expect you so soon."
"This disciple apologises for the intrusion. I bring news that I hoped would please the clan leader."
Gu Yue Bo's brow rose a fraction. "Speak."
"I have successfully refined my vital Gu."
The clan leader went still. Not the performative stillness of surprise—the genuine article. His hand, already moving toward his beard, froze mid-transit.
Then comprehension settled over his features, and with it, something that might have been delight.
"In a single evening." It was not quite a question. His hand completed its journey to his beard, fingers stroking downward in that habitual gesture of deep contemplation. The motion was slower than usual, deliberate, as though he were savouring the information.
"This disciple began the refinement after returning from your residence yesterday. The process concluded before nightfall."
Gu Yue Bo stroked his beard again. The corners of his mouth had turned upward—not the diplomatic smile Itachi had observed in their previous meeting, but something less guarded. Genuine satisfaction.
"A few hours," the clan leader murmured. "To refine a rule path Gu that offers no complementary resonance with your physique." The beard-stroking intensified. "Fang Zheng, do you understand what this suggests about your cultivation potential?"
"This disciple has a sense of it, but would not presume to judge his own capabilities."
"Humility." Gu Yue Bo nodded with apparent approval. "Good. But between master and student, let me speak plainly—the speed of vital Gu refinement correlates strongly with aptitude, but also with affinity. A cultivator's will must overcome the Gu's resistance, and the strength of that will is not merely a function of primeval essence capacity. There is a quality to it. A sharpness." His eyes held Itachi's. "You possess that quality in unusual measure, it seems."
Itachi inclined his head, accepting the assessment without comment.
The clan leader leaned back, settling into his chair with the posture of a man whose morning had improved considerably. "I believe I made you an offer yesterday. A second Gu from my personal collection, contingent on your being first to complete refinement." The satisfied smile returned. "I am a man of my word. What Gu do you want?"
The question hung in the lamplight.
Itachi had already considered this. Through the walk to the academy. Through the walk from the academy. The calculation had turned itself over in his mind, examined from multiple angles, stress-tested against contingencies.
The twenty primeval stones from the academy elder's reward now rested in his robes. Twenty stones was not an insignificant sum for a rank one cultivator. Enough to purchase a common Gu worm from the clan or on the open market—a Moonlight Gu, for instance. The clan's signature offensive tool. Readily available. Well-documented. An immediate solution to his lack of offensive capability.
Which meant the clan leader's gift could address a different gap entirely.
"A defensive Gu," Itachi said. "If the clan leader has one to spare."
Gu Yue Bo's eyebrows rose. "Not an offensive Gu? Most students in your position would leap at the chance for a weapon."
"Most students in my position already possess one. Their Moonlight Gu provides offense. They lack defense." Itachi paused, choosing his next words with care. "This disciple's situation is inverted—I lack both. But an offensive Gu can be acquired through conventional means. The twenty primeval stones I received this morning from the academy elder's reward would be sufficient to purchase a Moonlight Gu. A quality defensive Gu from the clan leader's personal collection, however, represents an opportunity that primeval stones of that amount alone cannot replicate."
The clan leader's stroking hand stilled. His expression shifted again—that same recalibration Itachi had observed earlier, the look of a man revising his estimates upward.
"You've already planned the allocation of your resources." It wasn't a question.
"This disciple tries to think ahead."
"Indeed you do." Gu Yue Bo rose from his desk and moved to a cabinet set against the far wall. Its doors were carved with intricate patterns—mountains and flowing water, the Gu Yue clan crest worked into the design with subtle artistry. He produced a key from within his robes and opened it.
Inside, arranged on shelves lined with dark silk, rested dozens of small containers. Glass vials. Jade boxes. Stone jars sealed with wax. The accumulated collection of a rank four cultivator's lifetime—each vessel holding a Gu worm of varying type and purpose.
Gu Yue Bo's hand moved past several options without hesitation. It settled on a small jade container, oval-shaped, its surface polished to a mirror finish. He withdrew it, held it up to the light for a moment as if confirming something, then turned back to Itachi.
"Jade Skin Gu."
He set the container on the desk between them. Through the translucent jade, Itachi could make out a faint green luminescence—the glow of the Gu within.
"Rank one. Defensive type. It produces a barrier that covers the body entirely when activated. Among rank one defensive Gu, it is one of the finest—superior to Fish Scale Gu in both essence efficiency and protective capacity." The clan leader's voice carried the measured cadence of a teacher delivering important instruction. "It is also one of the rarest Gu on Qing Mao Mountain. In market value, only the Liquor Worm Gu rivals it. At times, the Jade Skin Gu even surpasses it."
Itachi studied the container. The green light pulsed gently, rhythmically—like breathing.
"Be warned," Gu Yue Bo continued. "The Jade Skin Gu is not easy to maintain. It consumes two liang of jade every ten days. That cost is not trivial for a rank one cultivator."
"This disciple understands."
"Good." The clan leader pushed the container forward. "Then it is yours. Use it well."
Itachi rose and bowed—deep, formal, the full measure of respect the gift warranted. "This disciple is in the clan leader's debt. Such generosity—"
"Is an investment." Gu Yue Bo's tone held no pretence. "I do not give gifts without purpose, Fang Zheng. You showed wisdom in your Vital Gu selection. You showed discipline in seeking guidance before committing. You showed foresight in planning your resource allocation before even asking for this reward." He met Itachi's eyes with a directness that demanded equal candour. "These are not the qualities of a student. They are the qualities of a leader. I intend to cultivate them."
The words settled between them, heavy with implication.
"This disciple will endeavour to be worthy of such cultivation."
"See that you do." The warmth crept back into the clan leader's voice. "The bookworm containing the reference materials you requested will be delivered to your residence by this afternoon. Study them thoroughly."
"I will."
"One more thing." Gu Yue Bo reached into his robes and withdrew a small jade token, placing it on the desk. "This grants you access to the clan's Gu feeding stores. Two-thirds of the Jade Skin Gu's requirements can be drawn from there at no personal cost—for now. Consider it part of your stipend as my disciple. The rest I expect you to source yourself."
Itachi accepted the token. Its surface was cool and smooth against his palm.
"Now go." The clan leader settled back behind his desk, unrolling his scroll once more. "You have at least one more Gu to refine. I expect you to remain ahead of your peers."
Itachi bowed once more and withdrew. Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:xxxxx12, victarionSnow, Fellow Human and 46 oth
One week since the refinement.
Seven days. In that time, the academy had settled into a rhythm Itachi recognized from another life—the sorting of wheat from chaff, the quiet emergence of hierarchy among those who had only just begun to understand what hierarchy meant.
The announcements came in sequence. Itachi, first. Then Chi Cheng, who had refined his Moonlight Gu within three days—fast by any standard, the product of genuine aptitude and what Itachi suspected was considerable preparation by the Chi family beforehand. Mo Bei followed half a day later, his horse-face split in satisfaction that didn't reach his eyes. The grandson of an elder, performing exactly as expected. No surprises there.
Fang Yuan...
Fang Yuan had been the surprise.
Or rather, Fang Yuan had been what others accepted as a surprise. He refined his Moonlight Gu on the second day—certainly a remarkable result if viewed in isolation, but one that should have drawn far more scrutiny than it received. A C-grade talent, forty-four per cent aperture capacity, refining a vital Gu faster than students with superior aptitude. The explanation that circulated through the academy was almost insultingly simple: he'd gotten lucky. Encountered a Moonlight Gu whose will happened to be weak. Fortune smiled on the undeserving, as it sometimes did.
Itachi did not—could not—accept this.
Refinement was not a lottery. The will of a Gu resisted proportionally to the gap between itself and the refiner. A forty-four per cent aperture produced thin, flickering primeval essence at the initial stage—a weak grade of an even weaker rank. For that essence to overcome even a weak-willed Moonlight Gu in four days required more than just luck*.*
Itachi's mind had wandered to that peculiar certainty he had witnessed during the Awakening Ceremony. Fang Yuan had walked into that pool already knowing his result. Then he goes on to refine his Gu with a speed that contradicts his apparent grade.
And no one asks the obvious question.
The clan's collective incuriosity gnawed at Itachi. When Itachi's own first-place finish was announced, there had been a brief flurry of attention—whispers, raised eyebrows, a few probing questions from students hoping to extract his method. The commotion died within a day. His physique explained everything, or so they decided. A special constitution produced special results. The matter was filed away, tidied into a box that required no further examination.
Convenient.
Also damning. If the people of this clan could dismiss two separate anomalies with such surface-level reasoning, what else had they failed to examine? What patterns had they overlooked, what threats had they waved away with comfortable explanations?
The intellectual rigor of this place...
In Konoha, an anomaly like that would have triggered an investigation within hours. An ANBU team assigned by nightfall.
Whether this reflected cultural complacency, institutional rot, or something else entirely, the result was the same. It was a vulnerability. One that could be exploited—by him, certainly, but also by anyone else who understood how to operate beneath the threshold of scrutiny.
Someone, perhaps, like Fang Yuan.
The morning air held the damp green scent of recent rain. Mist clung to the lower slopes of Qing Mao Mountain, dissolving where shafts of early light cut through the canopy in pale slats.
Itachi stood at the edge of a clearing roughly forty meters across, a stretch of forest floor east of the village where the undergrowth thinned enough to permit movement. He had scouted the location three days ago, returning each morning before dawn to ensure privacy. The nearest patrol route passed two hundred meters south. No one came here.
Twenty targets. He had carved them himself from sections of deadfall—flat discs of wood, each the width of a man's chest, lashed to tree trunks and low branches at varying heights and angles. Some faced him directly. Others were positioned at oblique approaches, partially obscured by foliage, or mounted behind cover that required banked throws. The arrangement was not random. It replicated, as closely as memory allowed, the target configuration from ANBU qualification courses.
His equipment lay spread on a flat stone beside him. Five dozen shuriken. Twelve kunai. A single tantō in a leather sheath. Two hundred meters of wire string, coiled tight. All steel, all forged to his specifications by a rank two Gu Master he'd hired for three primeval stones.
The blacksmith—a weathered rank two Gu Master named Zhou whose fire path Gus lent his metalwork a convenience beyond ordinary forging—had been competent if unimaginative.
The man himself hadn't asked many questions. Three primeval stones for a morning's work was generous pay for a rank two cultivator doing mundane smithing.
The weapons were crude by the standards Itachi remembered. The steel lacked the carbon content of proper shinobi-grade tools, the edges would dull faster, and the balance of each piece varied slightly from the next in ways that mass-produced kunai from Konoha's smiths never had. But they were functional. The weight sat correctly in his grip. The shuriken spun true when flicked. The tantō held its edge through practice cuts.
He could work with these.
Itachi slid four shuriken between the fingers of each hand. Drew a slow breath. Released it.
Then he moved.
The Dragonpill Cricket Gu pulsed in his aperture as primeval essence flowed into it. His legs coiled and launched him forward—not the smooth glide of the Clear Wind Wheel Gu he'd briefly considered purchasing the last time he went shopping for supplies, but something sharper. Explosive. His body left the ground at a steep angle, arcing toward the first cluster of targets mounted six meters up on a thick-trunked oak.
Different.
The burst of movement was satisfying in its violence. Raw upward force, the kind that made his stomach drop and his joints absorb impact like springs. But the landing—
His feet hit bark and slid.
No chakra adhesion. His sandals scraped against the trunk's surface and found only friction, ordinary and insufficient. Itachi's hand shot out, fingers catching a knot in the wood, arresting his slide before it cost him more than a half-second. His body swung, momentum redirected, and he released four shuriken in a fanning arc as he kicked off the trunk into open air.
Four impacts. Wood splitting.
He was already twisting, orienting toward the next set of targets below and to his right. The Dragonpill Cricket Gu fired again—lateral this time, a sharp direction change that sent him between two closely spaced trees. His shoulder brushed bark. A kunai left his right hand at the apex of the maneuver, followed by two more shuriken from his left.
Three impacts.
The absence of chakra-enhanced grip was more than an inconvenience. It restructured everything. Every surface that had been a platform in his previous life was now a gamble—dry bark held, wet bark didn't, moss was treacherous, thin branches buckled under the concentrated force of the Dragonpill Cricket Gu's explosive jumps. He had to read each surface in the fraction of a second before contact, adjust foot placement, distribute weight across broader areas.
Compensate. Adapt.
He drove himself through the course. Burst. Land. Grip. Throw. Burst again. The rhythm was rougher than it should have been, punctuated by micro-corrections—a hand bracing against a trunk he'd have run across vertically a lifetime ago, a jump shortened because the branch beneath him flexed too far. His fingers ached from gripping bark. His forearms burned with the strain of catching his own weight repeatedly.
The tantō came out for the last four targets. Close range. He landed beside the first and cut—a diagonal stroke across the face of the wooden disc that bit deep and stuck for an instant before he wrenched it free. The second target caught a thrust. The third, mounted low, required him to drop into a crouch and slash upward. The fourth he struck while still in motion, the Dragonpill Cricket Gu launching him past it as his blade dragged a groove across its surface.
Fifteen seconds. Twenty targets.
He landed at the far edge of the clearing. Dropped to one knee. The tantō point rested against the earth.
He knelt with his left hand resting on a trunk, breathing hard, and counted the seconds until his heart rate steadied.
Fang Zheng's body was healthy enough—unblemished, adequately nourished, possessing the natural coordination of youth. But it had no muscle memory for this. No calluses on the palms from ten thousand throws. No deep-set endurance from years of ANBU operations conducted across days without rest. What existed was the baseline fitness of a teenager who had never thrown a punch in earnest.
He was starting from the foundation.
Itachi gave himself two minutes. His heart rate settled. The trembling in his forearms subsided. He stood, sheathed the tantō, and walked back through the course.
The first cluster told the story clearly enough.
Four shuriken embedded in the target disc. All four within the outer ring—hits, technically, but scattered across an area the size of his spread hand rather than grouped at center. The one thrown during his slide had landed three centimeters left of the mark. Another, released at the peak of his arc, sat two centimeters high.
Centimeters. Not the margin of error he was accustomed to.
Once upon a time, Itachi could place a shuriken through a coin-sized gap at a thousand meters while falling. That degree of accuracy had been the product of a decade's refinement—muscles trained to translate visual input into mechanical output with negligible deviation. The Sharingan could perceive the target with inhuman clarity. But perception alone did not throw the blade. Muscles did. Tendons, joints, the complex chain of biomechanical events from shoulder to fingertip that determined release angle, spin rate, velocity.
Fang Zheng's body was uncalibrated. His single-tomoe Sharingan showed him exactly where the shuriken needed to go. His arm delivered it to approximately the right location. The gap between "exactly" and "approximately" was where his targets lived.
Trainable. But not quickly.
He pulled shuriken from wood as he moved through the course, cataloguing each result. The kunai throws were marginally better—heavier projectiles were more forgiving of minor release errors, their greater mass carrying them truer through air resistance. His groupings at close range with the tantō were acceptable. The blade work itself felt... not wrong, but translated. Like speaking a familiar language through an unfamiliar mouth. The movements were correct in shape, slightly imprecise in execution.
The deeper problem, though, was force.
He stopped at a target that had taken a direct kunai hit at eight meters. The blade had penetrated roughly four centimeters into the wood. Solid enough. But this was soft deadfall timber, not living flesh over bone, and certainly not the reinforced body of a Gu Master augmented by defensive worms.
Against a mortal, these weapons would kill.
Against a cultivator with weak or basic defensive Gu, they would wound—possibly severely, depending on placement. A kunai through the throat killed regardless of cultivation rank, provided it arrived with sufficient velocity to penetrate.
Against anyone employing anything slightly better—for example, the Jade Skin Gu he himself now carried—his throws would achieve nothing. The steel would glance off or embed shallowly, an annoyance rather than a threat. The force behind each projectile was simply too low. Fang Zheng's body, for all its youth and health, possessed the throwing strength of an untrained adolescent. Using directly offensive Gu was a potential solution, but that came with additional primaeval essence expenditure that served only one problem and nothing else, whilst constituting a drain on other resources.
The most efficient solution was acquiring the ability to kill cultivators with mundane weapons. Gu to enhance physical strength. Gu to improve stamina. The list assembled itself with the clean logic of a mission requisition. Beast Strength Gu. Any Gu from the series would suffice at rank one as they carve dao marks directly into the body—permanent augmentation that doesn't require continuous primaeval essence expenditure.
But that is a future acquisitions. Present resources didn't permit them. His remaining primeval stones after the smithing commission, the Dragonpill Cricket Gu's purchase, and the Jade Skin gu feeding costs not covered by Gu Yue Bo's stipend left him with a margin too thin for additional Gu purchases. Earning more was possible—the academy awarded stones for performance, and the clan offered bounties for various tasks—but not immediate.
Itachi gathered the last of his scattered weapons, inspecting each shuriken for damage before returning it to the carry pouch. One had bent slightly on impact—inferior steel flexing where better alloys would have held. He set it aside for re-tempering.
The wire string he checked for frays before storing away. Two hundred meters. Enough for the trip-line configurations and guided-shuriken techniques he intended to reintroduce to his repertoire once his base accuracy improved. Wirework had always been among his stronger skill sets. It required finesse over force—manipulation rather than brute application. Suited him, then. Suited him now.
The tanto he cleaned with a strip of cloth, oiling the blade before sheathing it. A short weapon. Limited reach. But in close quarters, against an opponent who expected Gu techniques and received cold steel instead, the element of surprise could compensate for many deficiencies.
Itachi secured his equipment and turned back toward the village. The morning sun had climbed above the canopy during his training, flooding the forest floor with light that turned the mist between the trees to gold.
Twenty targets. Fifteen seconds. Acceptable for a first week. Not acceptable as a standard.
He would return tomorrow. Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:xxxxx12, Ndkdnn, MoguMog and 40 others
The Gu arrived at dusk, carried by a clan runner who placed the lacquered box on Itachi's desk without ceremony and left. Inside, nestled on a square of dark silk, lay a creature the size of his thumb. It was a small thing. A silkworm, pale as bone, radiating a faint, milky luminescence. Its surface had an oily lustre that caught the lamplight and it sat motionless in Itachi's palm, barely reacting even when the crimson glare of his Sharingan shone upon it.
Bookworm Gu...
An information path Gu, rank one—storage type, designed to hold knowledge and transfer it directly into a Gu Master's mind upon contact. The clan leader had promised it earlier, and Gu Yue Bo was seemingly, if nothing else, a man who delivered on stated commitments.
Itachi sat cross-legged on the floor of his room, back to the wall, door latched. The residence had settled into its nightly quiet—Dong Tu and his wife had retired to their chamber an hour ago, and Fang Yuan's room across the courtyard showed no light beneath its screen. Shen Cui was somewhere in the servants' quarters. Mother Shen, the older caretaker, slept early and rose earlier.
Using the Gu was straightforward. Itachi placed it against his forehead, allowing it to unspool its contents. The transfer was immediate and nothing like reading. It seeped through the skin, bypassing the skull, sinking directly into the grey matter. There was no vertigo, only a sudden expansion of context and a dense, expanding fullness behind the eyes that radiated outward through the temples and down into the base of the skull. Ink and paper dissolved into memory. Structural. Instantaneous. One moment the information did not exist in his mind; the next it was there, complete and waiting to be examined, the way a room becomes visible when a lamp is lit.
Clan law came first. The Gu Yue Clan operated under a codified legal framework that had accreted over generations—layers of precedent and amendment stacked atop whatever foundational principles the clan's ancestor had established. Property rights. Inheritance protocols. Dispute resolution. The penalties for theft, assault, desertion, and treason, each calibrated to the offender's rank and the victim's status. Gu Masters adjudicated by elders. Mortals adjudicated by clan administrators. The distinction was absolute.
Then administrative structure. The clan leader held supreme authority, checked in practice—if not in law—by a council of elders whose cooperation was necessary for any decision requiring significant resource expenditure. Below the elders, a stratum of senior Gu Masters managed daily operations: patrols, resource gathering, trade, construction, and the academy. Below them, the rank and file. Below the rank and file, the mortals—farmers, craftsmen, servants—who comprised the vast majority of the population and possessed no political voice whatsoever.
Faction alignments were less straightforward. Three primary blocs competed for influence within the elder council. The first centred on the clan leader, Gu Yue Bo, and his direct supporters—the orthodox faction, concerned primarily with stability and the clan's external defense posture. The second coalesced around Elder Mo Chen, Mo Bei's grandfather, who advocated for a more aggressive territorial posture. The third coalesced around the more conservative and shrewd Elder Chi Lian and everyone else not in these primary camps diffuse, representing a coalition of minor elders and senior Gu Masters whose interests aligned variously with commerce, internal development, and the preservation of their individual fiefdoms.
And beneath these formal structures, the informal networks. Patronage. Debt. Obligation. Marriage alliances.
Itachi removed the bookworm from his forehead. Set it on the table. The fullness behind his eyes receded gradually, leaving behind a faint ache and a slight disorientation that reminded him of the first time he had copied a jutsu with the Sharingan. He closed his eyes and let the information settle, his thoughts wandering once more.
Gu Yue Dong Tu...
The inheritance protocols were buried in the fourth subsection of the clan's property code—a dense passage that the bookworm had delivered alongside hundreds of other legal provisions. Now, extracted from that mass and examined in isolation, the relevant provisions arranged themselves into a picture that was both unsurprising and clarifying.
Upon the death of a clan member, their assets—primeval stones, Gu worms, property, and any other holdings—passed to their designated heirs. In the absence of a will, the default hierarchy applied: spouse, then children, then siblings, then the clan treasury. Fang Zhi had died without a will. His wife had predeceased him. His children—Fang Yuan and Fang Zheng—were his sole heirs.
But his children had been minors.
The code was explicit on this point. Minor heirs could not claim their inheritance directly. A guardian—appointed by the clan or, in practice, by whoever stepped forward first—would administer the estate until the heirs reached the age of majority. Sixteen. The guardian was entitled to use estate funds for the heirs' maintenance: food, lodging, clothing, education. They were required to maintain records. They were obligated to surrender the remaining assets in full upon the heirs' sixteenth birthday.
The guardian, in this case, was Gu Yue Dong Tu.
Itachi opened his eyes.
The adoption offer. The two hundred primeval stones.
The shapes he had suspected during his last conversation with his uncle now filled with substance. It was beyond certain now that Dong Tu had not been generous. Rather, he had simply been executing a strategy with two fallback positions, each with the intention to accomplish the same objective through different means.
The adoption would have been the cleanest solution. Under clan law, adopted children's inheritance merged with the adopting household's assets. The guardian's obligation to surrender would simply... cease to exist. Dong Tu would retain everything legally, permanently, with no mechanism for the twins to challenge it.
When that failed—when both Itachi and Fang Yuan refused—the gift of two hundred primeval stones each had been the secondary play. Subtler. More deniable. Had either brother accepted, Dong Tu could have presented the stones to the clan administrators as an early disbursement of the inheritance. I gave them their share already. Here is the documentation. The matter is settled. Whether the actual inheritance exceeded four hundred stones—and Itachi was increasingly certain it did, substantially—would become a question of Dong Tu's accounting versus two teenagers' suspicions.
In a former life, Itachi would not have cared about the money. Wealth, status, material comfort—these had been abstractions to him even as a child, and by the time he wore the Akatsuki cloak, they had become irrelevant entirely. What mattered was the mission. What mattered was Sasuke. The village. Everything else was noise.
But this world operated on different principles.
Here, primeval stones were not merely currency. They were condensed cultivation potential. Each stone contained primeval essence that could be extracted to replenish one's aperture, accelerate wall refinement, fuel Gu usage in combat, or purchase the Gu worms and materials necessary to advance in rank. A Gu Master's ceiling was determined by aptitude, yes—but the speed at which they approached that ceiling, and the resources available to them when they arrived, depended on wealth.
Strength required resources. Resources required wealth. Wealth preserved autonomy. Autonomy preserved the freedom to act according to one's own judgment rather than another's agenda.
The chain was inescapable.
Itachi sat in the dim room, lamplight casting his shadow long against the wall. The bookworm sat inert on the table, its purpose fulfilled.
Sixteen. Next year.
He needed to secure that inheritance. This need stemmed not from greed—the word barely registered in his internal vocabulary—but from that fact that allowing Dong Tu to embezzle it meant accepting a degree of dependency that compromised everything else.
The days that followed settled into a pattern.
Dawn training at the clearing. The target course expanded—twenty-five marks now, then thirty, positioned at increasing distances and more severe angles. His accuracy improved in measurable increments. The groupings tightened. The shuriken that had scattered across a hand's width on the first day now clustered within two fingers at equivalent ranges. Not exactly where he needed them but getting closer.
He began integrating wire techniques on the fourth day. Simple configurations first—trip lines strung between trees at ankle and throat height, tension-release mechanisms that launched shuriken from concealed positions when a line was disturbed. The wirework demanded finger dexterity that Fang Zheng's hands did not yet possess, and Itachi spent more time untangling failed rigging than executing successful deployments. But again, at the end of the day, he was getting better, and that was what mattered.
The academy hours continued along their usual cycles and the afternoons and evening that followed, Itachi dedicated to surveying the mountain. Qing Mao was not large by the standards of the Southern Border's geography, but its terrain was dense and varied enough to reward systematic survey. Itachi mapped it in expanding circuits from the village center, moving outward in concentric rings that covered progressively wilder ground. Patrol routes and their schedules. The predictable ones ran along established paths—clan Gu Masters walking fixed circuits at fixed intervals, their lantern-light visible from considerable distance on dark nights. The irregular patrols were harder to plot but not impossible; after five days of observation, he identified three recurring patterns that the patrolling Gu Masters themselves probably did not realise they followed. Human beings were habitual creatures. Even trained ones.
These patrols guarded essential resources, like water sources, game trials and beast territories. The clan's primary spirit spring—the foundation of its prosperity and the reason three clans contested this mountain—was a primary focus and was heavily guarded and inaccessible without clearance. But secondary streams, rain catchments, and underground seeps dotted the slopes in sufficient density that water denial was not a viable siege tactic against anyone who knew where to look.
By the end of the second week, he had committed to memory a working model of Qing Mao Mountain's geography, human activity patterns, and strategic topology that would have satisfied an ANBU intelligence brief. Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:xxxxx12, Ndkdnn, MoguMog and 35 others
Morning light cut through bamboo in pale, shifting blades.
The academy's training ground was an open square of packed earth bordered on three sides by low wooden fences and on the fourth by the building's rear wall. Fifty-three students stood in loose rows, most shifting their weight from foot to foot. A rank of straw-bodied grass puppets had been staked along the far fence—motionless scarecrows, crude in construction, their woven torsos barely holding shape. Rank one. Targets and nothing more.
The academy elder stood at the front with a Moonlight Gu resting on his open palm. The crystalline crescent caught the sun and threw blue light across his weathered fingers.
"Watch."
He channeled primeval essence into the Gu. In his hand, it pulsed once—a single brightening, like a coal blown upon—and from its surface a blade of compressed moonlight detached and flew. The moonblade crossed the training ground in silence. It struck the nearest grass puppet at the sternum and passed through clean, severing the torso from its staked base. The top half toppled backward into the dirt. Straw spilled from the cut, dry and pale.
A murmur moved through the students.
"The moonblade travels roughly ten meters before dispersing," the elder said, returning the Gu to a pouch at his belt. "At this range, against an unarmored target, the cutting force is sufficient to sever flesh and bone. The technique requires a smooth, continuous release of primeval essence—not a burst. Think of water poured from a vessel, not thrown from a bucket. You will each attempt ten launches. Begin."
The students spread along the firing line in clusters of four and five, each facing a grass puppet of their own. The sound that followed was ragged and uneven—the hiss and snap of moonblades launched too hard, too soft, at wrong angles. Most flickered out before reaching their targets. A few struck glancing blows that barely ruffled the straw.
Itachi stood apart, arms folded, his back against the fence at the training ground's edge. Without a Moonlight Gu, the exercise was observational. He had known this when he selected the Amplify Effect Gu as his vital Gu—known that the academy's curriculum would orbit the Moonlight Gu as its default weapon, and that his choice would exclude him from portions of practical instruction. The trade-off remained sound. The Amplify Effect Gu's versatility across multiple Gu combinations far outweighed early participation in a single offensive drill.
Still, watching held its own value.
The students' failures were instructive. Most channeled too much essence too quickly, producing moonblades that were bright but unstable—they deformed in flight and shattered against the air before covering half the distance. Others released too little, generating pale crescents that wobbled and dropped like thrown leaves. A handful managed functional launches: Chi Cheng produced three consecutive blades that reached the puppet, though only one cut deep enough to leave a visible mark that quickly disappeared as the puppet regenerated. Mo Bei's results were similar—strong but imprecise, his moonblades veering left on a consistent bias that suggested a flaw in his wrist angle rather than his essence control.
Fang Yuan...
Itachi's gaze settled on his brother. Fang Yuan stood in the third row, between two students whose names Itachi had not bothered to learn. His posture was slack. His moonblades emerged weak and wobbly, dissipating at the five-meter mark, and each failed attempt drew a slight frown that looked, to anyone watching casually, like genuine frustration.
It was a convincing performance.
The training session continued for another hour. By its end, fewer than a dozen students had managed to land moonblades on their targets with any consistency. The grass puppets along the fence bore scattered cuts and gouges, but most remained standing—mute testament to the gap between demonstration and execution.
The elder called the session to a close. Students lowered their hands. Some shook out cramped fingers; channeling primeval essence through an unfamiliar Gu for extended periods left the hands stiff and aching, a symptom that would fade with practice.
"You have two weeks." The elder's voice carried across the yard. "By the end of the month, I expect every student to produce a proper moonblade. To encourage your diligence—" he paused, letting the silence build "—the first student to achieve consistent accuracy across three consecutive throws at standard range will receive a prize of ten primeval stones. Dismissed."
A ripple of energy passed through the group. Ten primeval stones was real money to students who received monthly allowances measured in single digits. Several heads turned toward where Itachi leaned against the fence, and he read the calculations playing out behind their eyes—The logic was transparent: Itachi had no Moonlight Gu..
He could not compete.
Relief softened a few of those faces. Chi Cheng's expression barely shifted, but his shoulders dropped a fraction. Mo Bei didn't bother hiding his satisfaction, muttering something to the student beside him that drew a sharp laugh.
Itachi pushed off the fence and walked toward the academy's store entrance without hurrying.
Ten primeval stones.
The number was not trivial in absolute terms. But the Moonlight Gu cost fifteen primeval stones to purchase, and its upkeep—moon orchid petals, twice daily—ran roughly three stones per month at current market rates. To win the prize, he would need to buy the Gu, feed it during the training period, and achieve mastery faster than fifty-two other students who already had a head start. Even under optimistic assumptions, the net return was negative. Five stones spent for every stone gained, at minimum.
A loss. The math was plain.
His resources were finite, his objectives specific. Every primeval stone spent on a redundant offensive Gu he could replace with conventional weapons was a stone not spent on maintaining his current collection of Gu, physical conditioning, equipment, reconnaissance, or other capabilities he might require. The Amplify Effect Gu, paired with the Jade Skin Gu, already gave him a defensive profile that most rank-one students could not hope to match for a few more years. Adding a Moonlight Gu would broaden his offensive options but narrow his strategic margin in every other dimension that mattered.
He let the prize pass without regret.
The store occupied a long, narrow room adjacent to the Gu storage chamber—separated from it by a thick wall and a locked door that only the attendant could open. Wooden shelves lined both sides, holding stoppered jars, bundled herbs, folded cloth, and an assortment of tools and materials whose purposes ranged from the obvious to the obscure. The attendant—a young Gu Master going by the name Gu Yue Jiang Ya with ink-stained fingers and a perpetual squint—sat behind a counter at the far end, flanked by a simple abacus and a ledger.
Students filtered in by twos and threes, their conversations carrying the restless energy of the training yard.
"—did you see Chi Cheng's third one? Cut right through—"
"—ten stones, though. I could buy new shoes and still have—"
"—need to practice tonight, maybe if I—"
Itachi entered and positioned himself near a shelf of miscellaneous supplies, browsing without haste, and watched the room through peripheral vision.
Fang Yuan was already at the counter.
Jiang Ya had set out an array of items for sale: a grass puppet—rank one, identical to the ones on the training field—bundled moon orchid petals in waxed paper, and a pouch of standard practice supplies as well as a few other items like ointments for bruises. The standard purchase for a student planning to train independently.
"The puppet's three primeval stones," the attendant said, tapping each item in turn. "Petals are one stone for a week's supply. Practice bundle's two. Seven total."
Fang Yuan looked at the tray. His eyes moved across each item with the flat disinterest of someone inspecting goods he had already decided against.
"Just the petals."
The attendant blinked. "You don't want the puppet? Every student buys—"
"Just the petals."
He wrapped the orchid petals and slid them across the counter. Fang Yuan paid the single stone, pocketed the package, and left without further exchange.
Itachi filed the observation away. The petals were food for the Moonlight Gu—essential upkeep. Fang Yuan was maintaining his Gu but declining to purchase the standard training aid. A student genuinely struggling with moonblade technique would want more practice, not less. Of course, Fang Yuan was not the only student to decline purchasing a puppet, but unlike the others, Itachi highly doubted it was a decision made as a result of youthful ignorance or stupidity.
When the counter cleared, Itachi approached.
"Three grass puppets," he said.
Jiang Ya's eyebrows rose. "Three? Most students start with one."
Itachi placed nine primeval stones on the counter without elaboration.
The woman counted the stones, swept them into her cash drawer, and produced three grass puppets from beneath the counter. They were crude things—bundles of woven grass compressed into vaguely humanoid shapes, each about two-thirds the height of a man, mounted on wooden stakes. Rank one. Stationary. Incapable of movement or resistance. Their sole virtue was the nature-type self-recovery ability inherent to all grass puppet Gu products—cuts and punctures would mend themselves over the course of several hours, making them reusable training aids.
Three was enough. One for the clearing's target course, to replace the wooden posts he had been using for close-range tantō work. The other two he held different plans for.
Grass puppet Gu existed in a ranked series. Rank one produced these inert scarecrows. Rank two produced puppets capable of basic bipedal movement—walking, turning, rudimentary evasion. The gap between a stationary target and a moving one was the gap between exercise and training, and Itachi had felt that gap acutely during every session at the clearing. His shuriken grouped tightly against fixed marks. Against a target that could sidestep even clumsily, he had no practise at all.
The refinement process to advance a rank one grass puppet to rank two was documented in the clan's general knowledge base—not secret, but not widely practiced among students, most of whom lacked the primeval essence reserves or the attainment to attempt it. Itachi possessed neither the recipe nor the refinement-path expertise to proceed on his own. But the clan leader had extended an open line of consultation, and this fell squarely within the scope of practical cultivation guidance.
He would raise the matter with Gu Yue Bo within the week.
Itachi gathered the three puppets under one arm—they were lighter than they looked, their grass bodies compressing against his ribs—and stepped out of the store into the midday light. The yard had mostly emptied. Small knots of students lingered near the academy entrance, still trading observations from the morning's session, their voices bright with the particular excitement of people who had discovered they could make light cut through air.
Across the yard, a flash of white robes disappeared around the corner of the dormitory building. Fang Yuan, heading somewhere with his single packet of moon orchid petals and no training puppet and no apparent interest in the ten-stone prize that had animated every other student in the class.
Itachi adjusted the grass puppets against his side and walked toward the eastern path.
The sun had cleared the treeline. Bamboo shadows striped the packed earth at his feet, and somewhere deeper on the mountain, a peacock parrot shrieked—a raw, carrying sound that scattered smaller birds from the canopy and left silence pooling in its wake. Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:xxxxx12, MoguMog, Ndkdnn and 46 others