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Sand forward camp, main command tent.
They had barely finished one topic when the next one dropped like a brick.
"Word just came from the village. About thirty Cloud ninja slipped into the Land of Wind recently. They posed as merchants, gathered a ton of intel, and started picking off our returning teams. Most of them got wiped out by an unknown ninja."
"Unknown ninja?" Chiyo raised an eyebrow. Since when did other villages go out of their way to help Sand?
"That's what the reports say. At first our people thought it was one of ours who got lucky, but the timing didn't match up. No Sand forces were operating in that area then."
The room went quiet while everyone chewed on that.
Ebizo spoke first, sounding unsure. "Could it have been Matsushita Taiichi or Namikaze Minato? Both of them are strong enough and have the motive to stir up trouble between us and Cloud."
Chiyo shook her head. "The wind style used at the scene was extremely high-level—top-tier even for Sand standards. Neither of those two has shown that kind of wind release yet."
She was right. Taiichi had been holding back exactly for moments like this.
After a long silence, Chiyo cut through the speculation.
"Whoever this mystery ninja is, the real issue is Cloud. They're clearly hostile. We can't afford to keep bleeding on the Leaf front while they steal our peaches from behind."
Rasa and Ebizo nodded. The Cloud threat was the priority. The unknown ninja was secondary.
Chiyo's voice turned thoughtful. "Still… my gut says it was Taiichi. That kid's too slippery and too talented for his own good."
Rasa and Ebizo exchanged looks but didn't argue. When Chiyo trusted her instincts, she was rarely wrong. If she said it was Taiichi, they were inclined to believe her.
A week later, the front lines had settled back into the usual daily grind of raids and skirmishes.
Taiichi stayed put in camp the entire time. He wasn't slacking—he was training harder than ever. Two shadow clones handled medical duties, one kept researching in the Land of Wind, and his real body focused on one thing: mastering the Spirit Transformation Technique.
The panel showed it sitting at Lv0 (97/100). One good push and it would finally level up.
He practiced in a small grove just outside camp, three shadow clones forming a protective triangle around his real body. Spirit Transformation meant leaving the physical form completely exposed. The clones were there to make sure nobody turned him into a corpse while his soul was out wandering.
Hands moved through the seals at a deliberate pace. Taiichi felt every shift in his chakra. When the final seal clicked, a tugging force pulled at his very soul.
He didn't fight it. He leaned into it.
A faint blue glow wrapped his body. A translucent figure began to rise.
Halfway out, the pull reversed and snapped him back inside.
"Damn it—almost!" Taiichi slammed a fist into the dirt, leaving a clear crater.
The panel updated anyway.
[Spirit Transformation Technique Lv0 (99/100)]
One more try.
He waited half an hour for his soul to settle, then ran the seals again. This time when the blue figure pulled free, the panel flickered.
[Spirit Transformation Technique Lv1 (1/100)]
Taiichi's soul shot completely out of his body, wrapped in soft blue chakra that gave it a faint glow. The world looked different. Colors were muted, like an old black-and-white TV with a slight tint. But the real change was the soul flames he could see everywhere—tiny flickering lights marking every living thing around him.
A small beetle on the ground had a tiny white flame no bigger than a sesame seed. A bird in the trees burned brighter. His own soul flame was massive in comparison, steady and strong.
He tested movement. The soul form moved fast—blindingly fast over short distances, almost like Flying Thunder God. He zipped straight up into the air above the Leaf camp.
Below him, the entire base glowed with hundreds of soul flames. Big ones, small ones, colored by the chakra nature each person favored. He drifted lower and studied a familiar chunin he'd saved once before. The man's flame was mostly fire-red with streaks of wind-blue.
Emotions showed too. Warm orange flickered when people laughed. Cold gray-blue when they were tired or hurt.
Taiichi grinned inside the soul form. This technique was busted. He could read strength, chakra affinity, and mood at a glance. He needed to figure out how to fake his own soul signature before someone else with this ability got a good look at him.
He floated toward the command tent and nearly got caught when Jiraiya's massive, multicolored soul flame suddenly flared in alarm.
"Who's there? Show yourself!"
Taiichi let his voice ripple through the air with chakra. "It's me, sensei."
Jiraiya's eyes widened as Taiichi's translucent form appeared. "You actually learned Spirit Transformation?"
They talked for a while—Jiraiya circling him like a curious scientist, commenting on how solid Taiichi's soul looked compared to the old stories about Kato Dan. Then Taiichi felt the pull calling him back.
He said goodbye and shot back to his body.
The moment his soul reconnected, a wave of pure safety and power crashed through him. His panel updated instantly.
[Through learning Spirit Transformation, your soul was stimulated. Spirit +1]
[Through learning Spirit Transformation and meditating on the experience, Advanced Meditation experience +1000]
Taiichi laughed out loud. Two bonuses from one technique. Not bad at all.
He opened his eyes and looked at the normal world again. It felt dull after the soul vision. He already had ideas about how to recreate parts of that sight without leaving his body.
This was going to be useful. Very useful.