The bookmarked section of Gyūbi's Nights began an entirely new story arc.
Because Gyūbi was the child of a Tailed Beast and a human, he had absolutely no standards when it came to his preferences and none of the ordinary ethical restraints of human society.
Saying that not even a female dog within ten miles would be safe from him still wouldn't properly describe Gyūbi.
Only that infamous phrase from another world—"there's no hole they won't stick their nose into"—could truly capture the terrifying scope of Gyūbi's… enthusiasm.
And tonight, the legendary shinobi whose abilities Gyūbi had transformed into was none other than the White Fang of Konoha.
The instant Gyūbi transformed into the White Fang, Granny Chiyo—one of the White Fang's greatest enemies—was apparently pulled by destiny straight to his doorstep.
Faced with Chiyo demanding revenge, Gyūbi's first instinct was to throw his door wide open, invite her inside, and enthusiastically welcome this exceptionally mature guest.
But to Gyūbi's astonishment—
After becoming the White Fang, he had completely lost interest in Granny Chiyo!
Gyūbi was disappointed for all of two seconds before accepting it.
This was hardly the first time one of his transformations had produced unexpected preferences.
The reason he had been surprised at all was that, according to popular shinobi-world rumors, the White Fang had secretly been in love with Granny Chiyo.
That was supposedly why he had deliberately killed her son and daughter-in-law.
'I refuse to allow the child you had with another man to continue existing in this shinobi world!'
What kind of domineering romance protagonist was that?
Yet now Gyūbi had personally become the White Fang and discovered that he felt absolutely nothing toward Chiyo.
Once again, the lesson was clear:
Rumors in the shinobi world could not be trusted.
Never blindly repeat what everyone else said.
Only firsthand experience could reveal the truth.
Kakashi had just been silently giving the story his approval when an inexplicable sense of unease crept over him.
Then he kept reading.
And, sure enough—
Things immediately went wrong.
When Granny Chiyo realized her enemy refused to come outside, she decided to expose every dark secret from the White Fang's past.
According to her, the truth was far worse than simply not being interested in Chiyo.
The White Fang had no interest in women at all.
And worse—
In the old days, determining a man's preferences had supposedly been simple.
All anyone needed to do was examine the number of Heart-of-Steel layers he possessed.
More or less, that was enough.
But the naturally suspicious bond-type shinobi known as the White Fang of Konoha had wanted to muddy the waters.
So he invented the One Thousand Years of Death.
By repeatedly using the technique on other shinobi, Sakumo caused so many innocent people to develop abnormal Heart-of-Steel readings that the shinobi world could no longer reliably judge anyone's preferences based on that method.
Thus, the White Fang could hide among the chaos.
Granny Chiyo's son had supposedly been one of the earliest victims.
Back then, the White Fang had only recently developed the One Thousand Years of Death.
Her son happened to be among the first people unfortunate enough to be struck by it.
At the time, the Heart-of-Steel Test had not yet been abandoned.
When Chiyo's daughter-in-law saw her husband's readings suddenly spike, she fell into despair and assumed he had been hiding a suspicious side of himself all along.
Her son tried desperately to explain.
But there was no way to prove he was telling the truth.
So in order to convince his wife that the White Fang had caused everything, he had no choice but to bring her onto the battlefield and personally seek revenge against Sakumo.
The result?
Both husband and wife were struck by the White Fang's One Thousand Years of Death!
Only in her final moments did Chiyo's daughter-in-law finally realize that her husband had never deceived her.
He had been telling the truth all along.
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
The naturally wicked White Fang of Konoha killed them both.
And because the couple died together, Sunagakure's postmortem examination revealed that both of them carried the same abnormal Heart-of-Steel readings.
That was when the village finally realized the readings could be artificially altered by enemy ninjutsu.
From that day onward, the Heart-of-Steel Orientation Test was abandoned throughout the shinobi world.
The White Fang had accomplished his sinister objective.
No one could use the test to expose him anymore.
But Heaven's Wheel always turned.
No one escaped karma forever.
The White Fang had committed such wicked deeds in order to hide his suspicious bonds.
He had caused the deaths of a loving couple.
He had flooded the shinobi world with countless innocent people carrying false Heart-of-Steel readings.
Eventually, his retribution arrived.
On one occasion, Sakumo traveled to the Land of Hot Water with a teammate for a mission.
Asuma: Why is it always the Land of Hot Water?
At the time, the Land of Hot Water had not yet developed its later reputation as a gathering place for suspicious bond-type shinobi.
It was still simply a peaceful tourist destination famous for hot springs.
While Sakumo and his teammate were bathing together and approaching their mission target, Sakumo suddenly noticed something.
His muscular teammate had an unusually high number of Heart-of-Steel layers!
Sakumo's thoughts immediately began wandering in a dangerous direction.
He had never used the One Thousand Years of Death on this teammate.
Therefore, as far as Sakumo was concerned, those readings could only mean one thing.
His teammate had to be a bond-type ninja.
And this was where the true wickedness of the White Fang became obvious.
Nobody else could use the Heart-of-Steel Test anymore.
But Sakumo himself still could.
All he needed to do was remember how many people he had personally struck with the One Thousand Years of Death.
It was no different from remembering how many pieces of bread you had eaten.
During the mission that followed, Sakumo abandoned their objective in order to save his teammate's life.
For someone as famous as the White Fang, abandoning one mission was hardly an unforgivable disaster.
Especially when it had been done to save a comrade.
But according to the story, Sakumo had ulterior motives.
He believed that after risking everything to save the man, his teammate would naturally repay him with affection.
So after the mission failed and the group began returning to Konoha, Sakumo quietly slipped into his teammate's tent in the middle of the night.
The teammate woke in horror.
Only then did the truth come out.
He had never been a bond-type ninja at all.
The abnormal Heart-of-Steel readings Sakumo had seen were merely symptoms of a medical condition.
The man had even visited a medical-nin for treatment before.
The medic had told him that his Heart-of-Steel levels were somewhat high, but that another physical characteristic compensated for the imbalance well enough that surgery was unnecessary.
Since he was afraid of operations anyway, he chose not to undergo treatment.
Who could have imagined that this decision would lead Sakumo to completely misread the situation and approach him under false assumptions?
The teammate was furious and disgusted.
He had believed Sakumo abandoned the mission because he cared about a comrade.
Instead, Sakumo had apparently saved him for entirely selfish reasons!
But the teammate couldn't openly reveal what happened.
Doing so would damage his own reputation too.
So on the journey back to Konoha, he could only vent his anger by constantly criticizing Sakumo for abandoning the mission.
Meanwhile, Sakumo lived in terror that the teammate might expose his secret.
After all, this was supposedly a man who had invented the One Thousand Years of Death just to sabotage the entire shinobi world's Heart-of-Steel testing system and hide his own preferences.
Yet after all that effort—
One careless mistake had exposed him to his own teammate.
In the end, unable to endure the crushing psychological pressure, the White Fang chose to take his own life.
"But what I never expected," Chiyo declared in the story, "was that the White Fang had actually faked his death and gone into hiding somewhere in the shinobi world!
"All these years, he has still been lurking in the shadows, waiting for chances to attack other people's Heart-of-Steel!
"For the sake of the shinobi world!
"For my dead son and daughter-in-law!
"White Fang of Konoha, get out here!
"You had the nerve to mess with everyone's Heart-of-Steel, so have the nerve to show yourself!"
Because Gyūbi refused to open the door, Granny Chiyo stood outside and narrated the entire story with the dramatic flair of a professional storyteller.
And the terrifying part was—
If Kakashi temporarily ignored the fact that the White Fang was his father…
The logic of this version almost seemed more coherent than what had actually happened.
That was exactly what made it so horrifying.
The story was absurd.
But it was absurd in a way that sounded just plausible enough to fool people.
Cold sweat rolled down Kakashi's face.
"Who the hell wrote this book?"