On the way, Naruto thought of something and broke the silence, "According to my intelligence, the Mysterious Peacock Method that you Hoshigakure ninjas practice allows you to condense Chakra wings to fly, right?"
"Instead of winding our way through the forest, it would be faster to just fly directly there."
Natsuhi's footsteps faltered, and a look of difficulty appeared on her face.
How could she not want to fly back directly?
Hoshigakure was not close to here, and traveling by land would take at least half a day.
"The Mysterious Peacock Method can indeed fly, but if I were to carry two people, my Chakra would be exhausted before we reached Hoshigakure. By then, let alone fighting, I wouldn't even be able to stand steadily."
Naruto shook his head. "You just need to lead the way in front, we have our own way of keeping up."
Naruto turned to Jiraiya.
Jiraiya's expression froze. "Ahem, Naruto, slow down a bit. I am getting old and can't handle…"
Before Jiraiya could finish his sentence, Naruto had already moved behind him and firmly grabbed him by the back of his collar with one hand.
Natsuhi hesitated for a moment. She had originally approached Naruto for help because she saw him refuse a fiancée who had been delivered to his doorstep. He even said, right to her face, that marriage should be with someone you love.
Thinking Naruto had noble character, she gathered the courage to ask for help. But now, this development was completely beyond her expectations.
Not only did Naruto not formulate any meticulous infiltration plan, but he was also urging her to fly back quickly, looking like he was prepared to just force his way in and seize it.
But having come this far, she could only grit her teeth and choose to continue trusting Naruto.
She formed hand seals with both hands, and purple Chakra surged from her back, condensing into a pair of wings. Her body leaped into the sky, tracing a smooth arc through the air.
She looked back, and then froze completely. She saw that with a flash of golden light, Naruto was flying beside her, carrying Jiraiya.
No hand seals, no condensed Chakra wings—he was just hovering in mid-air out of nowhere.
She couldn't help but blurt out, "What kind of Ninjutsu is this?"
Naruto did not answer Natsuhi's question. "Lead the way, time is of the essence."
Natsuhi snapped out of it and nodded hurriedly.
She flapped the wings behind her and flew toward the direction of Hoshigakure.
Naruto followed closely behind, carrying Jiraiya.
Soon, Natsuhi led Naruto and Jiraiya through layers of mountains and a valley filled with purple toxic mist, arriving at Hoshigakure, which was hidden deep within the mountains.
When they landed, the villagers along the way stopped their work, looking at these two ninjas from the outside with surprised and speculative gazes.
"Naruto-sama, what is your plan?"
Naruto asked, "Where is the Star?"
Natsuhi pointed to a building, it was the ancestral hall of Hoshigakure.
"Right now, the Star is locked by Akahoshi in the deepest part of the ancestral hall. No one except him and his trusted aides can get close, and they are still forcing young ninjas to use the Star."
Jiraiya looked at the ancestral hall and then turned to look at Naruto. "Naruto, this is, after all, a matter of another country. Do things with some restraint. The problems of Hoshigakure can only be solved by Hoshigakure itself, all we can do is help them remove the stumbling block."
Naruto nodded and then walked toward the ancestral hall.
The villagers along the way stopped their work, whispering and discussing among themselves.
At the entrance of the ancestral hall, two sword-bearing Jonin saw Naruto walking straight toward them. They simultaneously drew their swords, crossing the blades to block the door.
"This is a restricted area, unauthorized persons are forbidden to approach. Outside Ninja, leave Hoshigakure immediately."
Naruto's figure passed between the two of them.
The two Jonin maintained their sword-drawing posture, their pupils dilated in extreme shock. They had completely failed to capture any trajectory of movement. He passed through their line of defense and was already standing in front of the main gate.
Naruto raised his foot and kicked open the main gate.
Rumble!
The wooden door collapsed inward, the door panels splitting into several pieces and crashing onto the stone floor.
The interior of the hall was a dim, large hall. On a stone platform in the center, a meteorite emitting an eerie purple fluorescent light was enshrined.
Several young ninjas sitting around the Star were startled by the sudden loud noise and looked toward the entrance in confusion.
A man stood up from behind the Star, his eyes burning with a paranoid gleam.
"Who is it that dares to trespass into the Hoshigakure ancestral hall? You are not a ninja of Hoshigakure. State your name, outsider."
Naruto's perception swept through the hall, and he clearly sensed that the Chakra radiation emitted by this Star was eroding the bodies of everyone around it. The Chakra pathways within the bodies of those young ninjas sitting around the Star had already suffered varying degrees of damage, with the most severe case already approaching an irreversible critical point. If they were exposed to the radiation for another few months, they couldn't be saved.
"Hand over the Star. This thing is killing your next generation."
Akahoshi sneered, "This Star is the supreme treasure of Hoshigakure, it is our only hope for resisting the Five Great Nations."
"Without the power of the Star, Hoshigakure would have been annexed long ago during the Third Great Ninja War."
"What would an outsider like you understand? You have no idea how much we have sacrificed to protect it."
Akahoshi waved his hand, and the four trusted Jonin standing on both sides of the hall lunged at Naruto simultaneously.
Naruto glanced at them without moving a step. With a slight tremor of Chakra from his body, four invisible shockwaves struck the chests of the four Jonin, knocking them all flying simultaneously and causing them to crash into the stone walls.
The four of them slid down the wall, their heads lolling to the side as they passed out.
The smile on Akahoshi's face froze. He took two steps back, his back hitting the stone pedestal where the Star was enshrined. His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but he couldn't utter a single word.
By the time he regained his senses, Naruto had already arrived behind him at some point.
Snap!
Akahoshi collapsed to the ground.
After finishing this, Naruto walked up to the Star, which was emitting a purple fluorescent glow.
A wave of radioactive Chakra spread outward from the core of the Star, and the closer one got, the more clearly one could perceive the energy brewing within it.
"Interesting."
Naruto took out a blank scroll and sealed the Star into it. The purple fluorescent glow vanished the moment the scroll closed, and the entire shrine fell into silence.
The villagers outside had already gathered around. They had just heard the sounds of fighting and Akahoshi's roar from inside. The interior of the shrine was in a mess, and Akahoshi and his trusted Jonin were lying on the ground in disarray. A dark-haired boy was walking out of the shrine, holding a sealed scroll in his hand.
Natsuhi stood at the very front of the crowd, and upon seeing the sealed scroll in Naruto's hand, her eyes turned red.
Naruto stood before the remains of the kicked-in wooden door, and handed the scroll to Natsuhi. "It's time to tell everyone what this Star really is."
Natsuhi took the scroll, her hands trembling slightly. She raised her head to look at the villagers gathered outside the shrine and held up the scroll in her hand.
"Everyone, the Star is killing us."
Natsuhi pointed to the three young ninjas still leaning against the wall inside the shrine. "Last month, three people coughed up blood and fainted. My husband died ten years ago, and he wasn't even twenty-five when he died."
"Everyone who has been practicing near the Star for a long time will have their bodies eroded by it."
"Akahoshi has been keeping this from you all. He locked everyone who fell ill in the sanatorium behind the mountain, forbidding them from speaking and forbidding them from returning to the village."
"This isn't a supreme treasure, it's poison!"
An uproar broke out in the crowd.
A few people turned pale, clearly because their loved ones had once used or were currently using the Star.
An old man with a head full of white hair squeezed out from the crowd, his lips trembling as he walked up to Natsuhi. "Is what you said... all true?"
"My grandson coughed up blood last year, and Akahoshi said it was a normal reaction during practice and told him to keep training."
"I'm sorry, it's true." Natsuhi bit her lip, her eyes brimming with tears.
Just then, a commotion broke out in the crowd.
A boy squeezed out from the back of the crowd. He stared blankly at Natsuhi, his lips moving for a long time before squeezing out. "Mom?"
Natsuhi stood frozen on the spot as if struck by lightning. She turned around and saw the boy's face, her pupils contracting.
"Mom, you didn't die! I thought you were dead!" Sumaru looked at her in disbelief.
Natsuhi stumbled forward and pulled him tightly into her arms. Sumaru trembled in Natsuhi's arms, burying his face in her shoulder as he wept.
Naruro retreated to the edge of the stone steps outside the shrine and leaned against a pillar, watching this scene of mother and son reuniting.
A while later, Natsuhi let go of Sumaru. She wiped the tears from her face, walked up to Naruto, and bowed.
"Naruto-sama, I don't know how to thank you. I thought I had lost everything, but today you helped me find it back."
"This Star..."
She handed the scroll back to Naruto. "Please take it away. This is our agreement."
Naruto took the scroll and put it into his ninja tool pouch. "Take good care of your child. He is very strong, he has been able to hold on until now despite being radiated by the Star for so long."
Natsuhi nodded and bowed to Naruto once more.