Chapter 39: The Sannin's Observation
Five days flew past like running water.
For the candidates preparing to participate in the third official exam, these five days—and the month that followed—represented an urgent race against time. Every spare moment was devoted to training, to pushing limits, to closing gaps before the public matches began.
But for Ryuzen, these were some of the most unpleasant days he had experienced in years.
The reason was simple: Hinata hadn't come over.
She had been right to worry. After Hiashi Hyūga learned that his eldest daughter had passed the elimination round, he immediately restricted her daily activities. The daughter he had long dismissed as a failure suddenly demanded his attention. He began conducting strict training for her—the kind of rigorous instruction she should have received years ago but had been denied due to his disappointment in her perceived weakness.
As a result, Ryuzen—who had been cared for by Hinata for years, who had grown accustomed to her presence in every corner of his life—suddenly felt her absence like a physical ache.
He who usually prepared breakfast alongside her, who shared lunch with her, who trained beside her until evening—he found himself unable to eat at home. The apartment felt empty. The kitchen felt cold. The futon felt too large.
Even meditation in the spiritual world lost its appeal. After two years of consistent practice, he found himself unable to focus, his thoughts constantly drifting to red scarves and shy smiles.
For the first time in recent memory, he left the village and returned to the waterfall area where he had trained for so many years.
The waterfall thundered down from the cliff top, countless tons of water slamming against the boulders below. Spray rose like mist, fine as dust, falling like gentle rain upon a figure seated cross-legged on the water's surface.
Ryuzen sat motionless on the churning river, calm as a statue. His long silver hair hung loose past his shoulders, a few strands plastered to his forehead and face by the moisture-laden air. His expression held a touch of melancholy nobility—the kind of quiet sorrow that artists tried to capture in paintings but never quite succeeded.
This beautiful scene, like something from a scroll painting, stopped several women who had come to the waterfall in groups to play in the water. They paused at the riverbank, unable to bring themselves to disturb the noble young man immersed in his sword meditation.
The tableau also drew the attention of a legendary ninja who had followed those same women for entirely different reasons.
"Hey hey... Pervy Sage, why did you drag me out here? I wanted to practice my summoning technique!" Naruto Uzumaki complained loudly, glaring at the white-haired man crouched behind a bush.
Jiraiya ignored his young charge completely. He was peering through a gap in the foliage, watching the departing "little ladies" with obvious disappointment. Then his eyes caught something else—the figure beneath the waterfall—and lit up with genuine interest.
"Yeah, yeah. You can practice here. Don't disturb me," he said absently.
"Seriously..."
Naruto could do nothing about such an irresponsible teacher. He crossed his arms and sulked, wondering why the legendary Toad Sage had to be such a pervert.
But Jiraiya had already forgotten Naruto existed. His attention was fixed entirely on the boy beneath the waterfall. He clicked his tongue in wonder: "Amazing, amazing... I haven't been back to the village in so many years, and this generation produces someone like this."
Water-walking was nothing special. Any competent genin or chūnin could master chakra adhesion well enough to stand on liquid surfaces. Sitting on water was equally unremarkable—merely a variation of the same technique.
What truly caught Jiraiya's attention was the aura radiating from that still figure.
The noble temperament, yes. But beneath it—inside it—something sharper lurked. An intent that made even Jiraiya's instincts prickle slightly.
In the ninja world, aura meant something. Just as Haki existed in the world of pirates, killing intent and presence existed here. In the original timeline, Uchiha Sasuke had been paralyzed by Zabuza's murderous aura. Later, Orochimaru's Kage-level presence would freeze him completely. And the auras of the First and Second Hokage—Senju Hashirama and Senju Tobirama—could crush lesser shinobi without a single blow being struck.
The stronger a person was, the more easily they could read an opponent's strength from such subtle signs.
A legendary Sannin like Jiraiya could see at a glance that the noble temperament radiating from this boy contained an incredibly sharp sword intent beneath its surface. That was why he praised so highly.
Konoha was called the cradle of genius, but most true geniuses emerged during wartime. Peace bred complacency. Bloodshed bred strength.
Even Uchiha Itachi had only awakened his true potential after witnessing the horrors of the Third Shinobi World War—seeing enough death to think like a Hokage, to question the meaning of existence, to experience the loss of comrades and friends. That path had led him from a simple Sharingan to the Mangekyō.
Aside from jinchūriki, the geniuses emerging from this peaceful era topped out at someone like Uchiha Sasuke—talented, yes, but fundamentally untested.
That was why this boy surprised Jiraiya so much.
But the next scene transformed surprise into genuine shock.
Ryuzen ended his meditation after a long while. He rose slowly from the water, his movements fluid and unhurried. He turned to face the waterfall, its thunderous power crashing down before him.
From his wrist, he removed a simple hair tie and gathered his long silver hair into a single ponytail, clearing his periphery. His right hand settled on the sword at his waist.
Shing—thwip—shing—thwip—shing—shwing—
The next moment, Ryuzen vanished.
An afterimage soared upward, feet stepping on the falling water as though it were solid stone. He climbed the waterfall in an instant, each frozen moment in his ascent marked by an explosion of dazzling silver light.
Three blinks of an eye. Maybe four.
Then Ryuzen stood on the cliff top, his back to the precipice.
Below him, the waterfall hung motionless—as though time had stopped.
A heartbeat passed. Two.
Then the silver-white curtain of water fractured into dozens of separate pieces.
BOOM—
A sound like a dam bursting roared through the canyon. Water exploded in every direction, tons of it suddenly released from some invisible constraint.
"What?! What happened?!"
The thunderous noise startled Naruto badly. He spun left and right, searching for the source of the explosion, finding nothing but Jiraiya's stunned expression frozen on the white-haired Sannin's face.
The waterfall had already returned to its normal flow, as though nothing had occurred. The silver-haired boy had vanished from the cliff top.
But the shock of what he had witnessed remained etched into Jiraiya's consciousness.
Long moments passed before the Toad Sage finally exhaled. When he spoke, his voice carried genuine wonder: "Such swordsmanship... is this really something a kid can do? And aside from the Body Flicker Technique at the start, there was absolutely no chakra fluctuation!"
He understood the physics involved. He knew how much force the waterfall generated—enough to crush a full-grown man if he stood directly beneath it. He knew that cutting through such volume required either wind chakra nature transformation or a blade capable of channeling chakra to extend its cutting edge.
But that boy had simply drawn his sword. Once per slice. Multiple slices in the space of seconds. And the waterfall had separated as cleanly as paper.
Without chakra. Without visible effort. Without anything Jiraiya could explain.
Not even the samurai of the Land of Iron could accomplish such a feat. Not even Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang of Konoha, had been credited with such pure swordsmanship.
The young face flashed through Jiraiya's mind—those red eyes, that silver hair, that noble bearing.
He turned abruptly to Naruto: "Naruto, are there any genin in your generation who specialize in swordsmanship?"
Naruto blinked, then brightened. "A genin who's good with a sword? Yeah, and he's super amazing!" The memory of Ryuzen's instant kill in the preliminaries surfaced. "Pervy Sage, let me tell you, Ryuzen's sword skills are incredible! We couldn't even see him draw his sword. Before anyone could blink, his opponent was already on the ground."
"Ryuzen..." Jiraiya frowned slightly. "That's a surname, isn't it? Unfamiliar." He murmured to himself: "A civilian genius?"
He looked back toward the cliff where the boy had stood, then down at the waterfall still recovering from its unnatural severing.
A civilian genius with swordsmanship that surpasses anything I've ever seen. In Konoha. In this generation.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
On the other side of the village, in the Hyūga compound, Hinata collapsed onto her training mat, gasping for breath. Her father had driven her harder today than she had trained in months. Her arms ached. Her legs trembled. Her tenketsu burned from repeated activation.
But for the first time in her life, Hiashi Hyūga had looked at her with something other than disappointment.
Tomorrow, she thought as darkness crept across her vision. Tomorrow I'll find a way to see him.
Just for a little while.
Just to know he's okay.
Ryuzen sat alone in his apartment that night, staring at the ceiling. The kitchen was dark. No smells of cooking drifted through the rooms. No soft voice asked if he was hungry. No warm weight settled beside him on the futon.
Five days.
Twenty-nine more until the matches.
He could wait.
He had waited six years already.
But knowing that didn't make the waiting any easier.
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