Naruto: The Immortal Sage

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A song rang out over Mount Myōboku early that morning.

"If you want to be the best, you've got to learn to take the pain~ Master likes his green tea and his robes dyed red~"

"Through summer heat and winter cold, I dream of skies beyond the gates~"

"A punch from the left, a sword thrust from the right…"

The door of a hastily built wooden hut creaked as someone yanked it open.

"Bunta! Why are you howling at this hour? What the hell are you even singing?" Jiraiya shuffled out, yawning, with dark circles under his eyes.

Gamabunta grinned. "Ha! Shows what you know. That's a Mount Myōboku classic! We've been singing it for a thousand years. Gamamaru, the Great Toad Sage, taught it to me himself. They say even the Sage of Six Paths used to hum it. As for who wrote it… heh, don't ask me."

Jiraiya gave a resigned nod. He'd been too excited to sleep all night.

"Quit sulking." Gamabunta clapped his hands. "You're too scrawny to handle Sage Arts yet. Try to force it, and the natural energy will turn you to stone. We'll start with taijutsu and get you into shape first."

"All right." Jiraiya stopped grumbling and turned his attention to training.

Jiraiya settled into a demanding routine, shuttling between Konoha and Mount Myōboku. With Fukasaku's permission, he made regular trips to the village to take missions with Tsunade and Orochimaru, gaining experience in the field. Back on the mountain, he trained his body and learned to sense natural energy.

A seal tied to his summoning contract lay deep within his soul, preventing him from telling outsiders anything about Mount Myōboku. The Grand Sage had placed it there himself, and no one in the shinobi world could remove it.

While Jiraiya devoted himself to training, unrest spread across the shinobi world, threatening to draw every nation into conflict.

…

Rain never seemed to let up in Amegakure. A man in an orange spiral mask leaned against a wall, watching a young man practice with a sickle in the center of the training ground. Behind the mask, Tobi's gaze was cold.

When Hanzō of the Salamander was still a child, Tobi had implanted a salamander's deadly poison sac in his body. He had also taught him a ruthless style of sickle fighting designed to kill with a single strike.

With Tobi's secret support and direction, Hanzō had crushed every rival faction in the Land of Rain. He had forced the small buffer country, trapped between three great nations, into unity and broken Konoha's hold on it.

The Land of Rain now stood on its own, a power in the southwest that the other villages could no longer ignore.

Sunagakure and Kumogakure saw their chance, too, and began provoking clashes along their borders to test the other villages' limits. Iwagakure held back; Ōnoki had only just taken office and was in no hurry to attack anyone.

Kirigakure kept its borders closed. Hidden behind its year-round fog, the village remained cut off from the outside world, and no one knew what was happening within.

Rumors spoke of a Bloody Mist campaign that had swept through the village after the Second Mizukage's death. Kirigakure was supposedly purging its ranks of kekkei genkai users.

Back in Amegakure, Hanzō knelt before Tobi. "Lord Tobi!"

Tobi gave a low chuckle. "You drove off that Sand force, and now the whole shinobi world calls you the Demigod."

"I owe it to your teaching, my lord. Without you, I would have died in the war long ago."

Tobi smiled and waved off his thanks before turning away. "Our arrangement stays between us. You work in the open, and I work in the shadows."

With his hands clasped behind his back, he slipped into the darkness. Hanzō nodded, a faint glint passing through his eyes.

…

When Manji returned to the Pure Land, it looked much as it had for centuries. It had grown larger, though, and so had the workforce extending its borders.

Manji had ordered everyone who had committed crimes in life to help expand the realm. Lesser offenders served five years; the worst worked for eternity.

At the edge of the realm, Manji summoned the men supervising the work—the eight clan leaders who had once been the Pure Land's strongest.

Gen Uchiha and Shima Senju stood with the Uzumaki clan head, the three Ino-Shika-Chō leaders, and the heads of the Sarutobi and Shimura clans.

"Grand Sage!" The eight bowed, surprised by his visit. Manji hadn't come to see them in centuries.

"You haven't changed a bit." Manji smiled at them.

For a moment, they stared at him. Then shy smiles began to appear.

Manji conjured nine chairs and gestured for them to sit, but the clan heads began refusing at once.

"We couldn't possibly sit beside you, Grand Sage."

Manji sighed and waved away their objections. "There's no need for all that. Sit down."

Only then did the eight take their seats. They talked over old times with Manji for a while, and the clan heads grew nostalgic.

"I've felt for a long time that sentencing you to this work for eternity was too harsh. When we're finished here, you can go back to your clans. Spend some time with your families."

The offer caught all eight by surprise. The Sarutobi clan head recovered first and rose to his feet, his eyes reddening as he bowed.

"Grand Sage, we know what we did was wrong. We've spent years here reflecting on it. Your forgiveness is more than we could have hoped for. But we…"

He trailed off, and the Shimura clan head spoke up.

"We've been here so long that we're used to the work. Our children and the rest of our families are here, too. If we went back to our clans, we'd have nothing to do. We'd rather stay and be of some use to you, Grand Sage."

The others nodded along. Back among their clans, they'd have little to do beyond chatting with old political rivals and the elders they'd once known.

Here at the frontier, things were different. Over the years, the workforce expanding the Pure Land had grown to twenty million people—and the eight of them ran the whole thing.

They'd never had so much power.

Who in the history of the world had ever commanded twenty million people? Even at their largest, their own clans had numbered only in the tens of thousands.

They were only expanding the Pure Land, but directing that many people felt like commanding vast armies. There was no describing the thrill of having twenty million people answer to them.

Go back to their clans, and they'd lose all of that in an instant. They'd be nobodies with nothing to do.

Manji understood at once and smiled. With twenty million people under them, of course they weren't eager to leave.

"All right, then. You can keep working here, with the same rights as everyone else. You'll have more freedom from now on. Just remember—everyone in the Pure Land is equal. Don't abuse your authority."

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