On the outskirts of a town in the Land of Hot Water, inside a cheap, dilapidated rented room.
Faint light filtered through the dusty window, casting a dim gloom over the cramped space. The young boy stood in the center of the room, looking at the woman before him—his mother, Yoko.
Her vacant eyes stared at nothing in particular, her lips constantly mumbling a stream of unintelligible words.
A heavy weight pressed against the boy's chest. It was the exhaustion of a long journey mixed with the numbness of countless dashed hopes. But right now, it was mostly a near-desperate, suffocating anxiety.
He took half a step forward, his voice dry, forced out of his throat:
"Mom! Where exactly is my sister?"
His gaze locked tightly onto Yoko's face. The contours of her features were so familiar—this was the face of the woman who used to cook for him, the woman who had looked at him with genuine worry when he was sick as a child...
But the expression resting on those features now was completely alien. It was shrouded in a disconnected, trance-like haze, as if the person sitting in front of him was just a stranger's soul wearing his mother's skin.
Yoko seemed entirely deaf to his words. She didn't even lift an eyelid. Her mumbling merely grew slightly louder, breaking into fragmented syllables: "...Holy God's blessing... grace... light... the end... purification..."
The boy clenched his fists at his sides, his knuckles turning slightly white from the force. The only sounds left in the room were his mother's hollow ravings and his own increasingly heavy breathing.
His name was Motoya Yamagami. He was born into a wealthy family that once ran a hot spring inn in the Land of Hot Water.
He was the second son, with an older brother above him and a younger sister below. If the world had stayed on its normal tracks, he might have inherited the family business, guarding their ancestral bathhouse and living a peaceful life amidst the steaming mist and the idle chatter of guests.
But the flames of the Second Great Ninja War had spread across the entire shinobi world. Even the Land of Hot Water—famous for its tourism and known as the country of wellness—was not spared.
Tourists vanished, and the family's income was instantly cut in half. His mother, Yoko—a woman with an intense need for control hidden deep in her bones—began turning all the stress and frustration of their failing life into harsh, bitter words, pouring them out day after day onto her silent husband.
Ultimately, unable to bear the heavy burden, his father chose the same tragic escape as many others who had been driven to a dead end.
The war finally ended, but their wounds did not heal.
In some parts of the Land of Hot Water, an organization called the Church of the Holy God quietly emerged, preaching about doomsday salvation and the grace of the Holy Son.
Yoko, whose mind was already deeply unbalanced, quickly became obsessed. She sold off the family's assets—the ancestral land, the hot spring inn they depended on—and donated vast sums of money to the church in exchange for their illusory blessings and karmic rewards.
In the end, even the house that sheltered their family of four was sold. The Yamagami family was utterly bankrupt.
To support himself and help his family, young Motoya joined the local security force early on. He spent his days maintaining weapons and equipment, living a mundane life on a meager salary.
He thought that no matter how bad things got, he still had his family. At least his older brother and younger sister were still around.
That was until the day a piece of news struck him like a bolt of lightning—his older brother, who had always silently endured everything, had followed in their father's footsteps.
Motoya rushed back to the place that used to be their home, only to face not just his brother's cold body, but an even more heart-shattering reality.
His younger sister was missing.
Looking at the completely deranged woman before him, Motoya turned to leave this suffocating place.
Just then, a hoarse, broken voice came from behind him.
"Motoya... where are you going?"
He paused, but didn't look back. His voice was hard as stone: "Since you refuse to tell me where she is, I'll go find her myself!"
After a brief silence, Yoko's erratic voice sounded again: "Your sister... has already received the Holy Grace and ascended to the next world... She has gone to the paradise without pain to enjoy the Holy God's blessing of immortality... It is her fortune..."
BOOM!
The words struck Motoya's mind like the sharpest lightning.
He snapped his head around, his body trembling uncontrollably, his teeth grinding together so hard they audibly cracked.
The worst-case scenario—the one he had desperately avoided thinking about—had just been confirmed by his own mother in the most absurd, callous way possible.
His last shred of hope shattered.
After a long time, scalding liquid finally broke through the dams of his eyes, rolling down his young but weather-beaten face.
He looked at the woman, his voice hoarse, thick with endless agony and absolute resolve:
"Mom... this is the last time I will ever call you that."
Flames of rage burned in his chest, nearly swallowing him whole. He wanted to roar, to smash everything in sight, maybe even...
But looking at that familiar face that was now nothing more than an empty shell, all of his violent impulses were crushed by a much deeper, heavier sense of powerlessness.
He couldn't raise a hand against that face, even if the person living behind it was no longer his mother.
He didn't stay a second longer. He turned and strode away, viciously slamming the creaky, broken wooden door behind him.
The cramped room returned to the gloom, leaving only Yoko talking to the air, continuing her numb, incomprehensible ravings.
...
Motoya returned to his even shabbier single-room dorm in the security force barracks.
He didn't turn on the light. By the faint daylight filtering through the window, he walked silently to his bed and pulled out an old but sturdy wooden box from underneath.
Opening it, there wasn't much inside—just two carefully stored items.
A sheathed katana, and a flintlock pistol with a slightly crude design but an impeccably maintained barrel.
The katana was his standard-issue weapon as a town guard. The pistol, however, was not standard equipment. It was something he had built himself—scavenging parts during his shifts and free time, slowly tinkering, assembling, and modifying it in the security force's abandoned workshop.
He took the two items out. The cold touch of the metal transmitting into his palms miraculously suppressed the burning heat in his chest.
Without a second glance at the shabby room, he turned and left, never looking back.
The venomous fire of revenge burned his insides, but cold reality hit him like a bucket of ice water.
The Church of the Holy God... its tentacles spread across the entire Land of Hot Water. It was absolutely not something an ordinary guard who couldn't even use ninjutsu could shake.
Reckless fury would only make him disappear silently into the darkness, like a moth to a flame.
He needed power. Powerful, overwhelming strength capable of tearing through their layers of hypocritical protection.
His brother was gone. His sister was gone. This family was shattered beyond repair.
But at the very least, he couldn't let the tragedy that befell him happen so easily to anyone else.
This thought, though faint, was incredibly resilient, sparking a sliver of light from the ashes of his despair.
Get stronger... but where?
He could refine chakra; he could feel the energy flowing within him.
Ironically, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't release that energy into any form of ninjutsu—as if he were born missing a crucial conversion component.
The path of a shinobi was permanently closed to him.
That left only one option. It pointed toward a neighboring country near the Land of Hot Water—a place that existed alongside the ninja system but focused entirely on tempering the physical body and mastering weaponry.
The Land of Iron , the nation of samurai.
Walking on the road out of town, the morning light was faint, unable to dispel the gloom in his heart.
As he passed an old utility pole, a brand-new propaganda poster pasted on the peeling wall caught his eye.
It featured a refined, gentle-looking middle-aged man in luxurious official robes, wearing a picture-perfect smile.
Prime Minister Abe! The head of all officials in the Land of Hot Water. After the aging Daimyo gradually withdrew from politics, this powerful minister had seized control of the government and spearheaded the nation's economic recovery following the Second Great Ninja War.
Looking at that hypocritical face, the suppressed anger in Motoya's chest flared up again.
The Church of the Holy God was running rampant in the Land of Hot Water, brainwashing the masses, extorting wealth, and taking lives. If someone told him that the man sitting at the very top of the country was completely unaware—or entirely uninvolved—he would never believe it!
"Traitor to the nation!"
He ground the words out through his teeth.
Reaching out, his fingers viciously gripped the glossy poster and ripped it right down the middle!
He crumpled the torn paper into a ball and threw it into the muddy ditch by the road, as if tossing away a piece of nauseating filth.
Adjusting the pack on his shoulders, he gripped the hilt of the sword at his waist and the pistol tucked into his coat. He strode forward, heading north toward the land famous for its steel, snowstorms, and martial spirit—the Land of Iron. He walked firmly, never looking back.
Ascended to the next world. The Holy God's immortality.
On the road, the howling wind and snow relentlessly battered the boy's face. But compared to the freezing blizzard, what made him feel truly cold—what made him tremble—were his mother's final words.
The grace of immortality? The boy took a deep breath, his eyes turning resolute.
He was leaving to seek a master and learn the martial arts, traveling a thousand miles into an uncertain future.
But when he returned, he would give everything he had to execute the nation's traitors and sever that so-called immortality!