When Jie opened his eyes, the ruined city and endless desert were gone.
Green trees surrounded him, and complete buildings stood in the distance. Beyond them, he could hear faint voices and see smoke rising from the city.
The land around Roran was still alive, with no sign that the city had fallen or been swallowed by the desert.
Jie looked back at the Dragon Vein.
"It waited until I drained it completely before doing this?"
Minato's seal was gone, and the Dragon Vein had returned. It had less power than the one Jie had just absorbed, but the chakra beneath the ground was real.
Everything around him made it clear.
He had been sent to Roran's past.
That was better than going to an unknown future, but Jie soon saw another problem.
The Dragon Vein in his own time had been fully drained. If its power was needed to send him back, then he might not be able to return.
Depending on how far back he had gone, waiting for his original era to come again could take hundreds or even thousands of years. E
ven if his changing body could eventually survive that long, remaining in the past would create far too many problems.
Before that thought could go any further, the system notification interrupted him.
"Reward issued."
Jie paused.
He had heard the system just before the Dragon Vein erupted, but the time-space disturbance had swallowed the rest of the announcement.
He opened the system record.
"Host has completely drained the Dragon Vein. Reward settlement completed."
"Reward: One space-time journey."
"Location: Roran."
"Era: Random."
"Duration: One month."
Jie looked at the message for a moment.
So the system had caused the sudden burst.
That explained how an empty Dragon Vein could send him through time. More importantly, the trip had a time limit.
After one month, the system would send him back.
The only question was how much time would pass in his own world.
If one month passed there too, his sudden disappearance would worry Konoha. Izumi knew he went to Roran, but if she found the Dragon Vein empty and no sign of him, it would only make things worse.
There was also Black Zetsu.
If Black Zetsu found out Jie was gone, he might take the chance to move Toneri or keep working on bringing Kaguya back.
However, worrying would not help. Jie could only hope that little or no time would pass in his own era and focus on the month ahead. The system had fixed the duration, so finding a way back on his own was unnecessary for now.
He looked back at the Dragon Vein.
It did not have as much power as the one from his time, but it still held a large amount of pure chakra and natural energy.
Since the chance was right in front of him, Jie did not want to waste it.
He placed his hand on the Dragon Vein and used Sealing Technique Absorption.
Because he had done this before, it was much easier this time. The chakra flowed smoothly into the Six Paths seed without needing much control.
But the result was weaker.
Maybe this Dragon Vein had not existed long enough to gather the same amount of chakra, or maybe each new stage of his transformation needed much more energy than before.
Either way, after the Dragon Vein was drained, Jie's transformation rose from sixty percent to just under eighty.
That was already enough.
Most of the chakra moving through his body now carried the heavier feeling of Six Paths chakra. The transformation was still incomplete, but the difference between his current body and the one he had before coming to Roran was already clear.
In a short time, he had improved more than he would have in years of normal training.
Jie pulled back his hand and looked toward the distant city.
He had no Flying Thunder God marks in this time. To find out when he had arrived, he would need to travel toward the place where Konoha would later be built and look for information along the way.
Before he could leave, Jie sensed many people coming.
They were moving quickly toward the Dragon Vein. Most of them had weak chakra and were likely ordinary soldiers rather than shinobi, but their numbers showed how seriously Roran treated whatever had happened here.
The people of the city had clearly noticed that the Dragon Vein's chakra was gone.
Jie stayed where he was and waited.
Soon, he heard voices from above.
"Move faster!"
"Surround the Dragon Vein!"
Jie looked up and saw soldiers gathering around the pit. A woman in formal clothes stood with them, giving orders with confidence.
She was likely Roran's queen.
When she looked into the pit and saw that the Dragon Vein was empty, she was first shocked, then angry.
"Who did this?" she asked. "Who touched the Dragon Vein?"
So the Dragon Vein was very important to the city.
Before the soldiers could move, Jie jumped up from the bottom of the pit and landed in front of them.
The queen stepped back in surprise.
"Protect Her Majesty!"
The soldiers stood in front of her and raised their weapons.
Jie released a small amount of his chakra.
The soldiers froze at once. They still held their weapons, but none of them could move forward.
Jie ignored them and looked at the woman behind them.
"What year is it?"
The queen hesitated. Her eyes briefly moved toward the empty Dragon Vein before returning to Jie.
"Why do you want to know?"
"I have my reasons."
She clearly did not like the answer, but after glancing at her frozen guards, she held back.
"Roran Year Fifteen," she said carefully.
Jie paused.
Roran Year Fifteen meant nothing to him.
The ninja world did not use one calendar. Each country had its own way of counting the years. Without knowing when Roran's calendar began, he still could not tell how far into the past he had travelled.
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