Desolation of the Caged Bird

Zi Wuji could not sleep. His back still had not grown accustomed to the beds of this world, and the urge to buy an actual mattress constantly lingered in his mind. His father was absent again, on another mission, the details of which were left unsaid. Inoue had dropped by in the middle of the night, with an excuse that she was there to do the laundry. She'd been looking for his father. Zi Wuji had seen them talk after his birthday, and the man's interest in her was passing and faint, but she intended to change that. 

He'd always been able to control his body, and after a day of pointless lessons from the teachers, an evening spent training his physical form and martial arts, and a night spent with a healthy dinner, it took him no effort to lay against the bed, however uncomfortable it might be and fall into a slumber.

Today was different. Odd things had happened one after the other. The first was when a young academy student in his class had missed wide with his shuriken throw, and struck a flying dove. The class burst into laughter at the sheer oddity of the entire experience, and the teacher reprimanded the boy endlessly. It was odd, because to Zi Wuji's knowledge, the migrating path of the flock of doves was wrong. It was as though they were fleeing from something.

After that, he'd seen an accident occur on his way home. A carriage containing several ornate clay and ceramic goods lay shattered on the roadside, and the owner, a pot-bellied merchant, screamed at the top of his voice to the ones responsible. Amongst the shattered goods were several ornate mirrors. Seeing himself in the fragmented reflections brought an odd feeling to his throat.

The events continued. The more he scanned the village with his Byakugan, the more he saw. A black cat lay dead in an alleyway, and a number of children were poking and prodding at it with a stick. Zi Wuji peered deeply and found that the creature's heart simply stopped, as though scared to death, though he could not fathom what.

He'd placed a finger into his tongue, and emerged it out, feeling for the air. He returned it to his mouth. He tasted copper.

Upon nightfall, his restlessness grew. Goosebumps raced down his skin as he attempted to lay down. 

Goosebumps? Me?

He departed swiftly from his home in the dead of night and returned to the same forest clearing he'd made his personal training grounds. An endless thumping echoed over and over in his chest, and he grasped at it. Sweat dripped from his brow, and his hands shook.

This… could it be?

Zi Wuji swiftly removed a storage scroll from his pocket, bit into his thumb, and smeared his blood on it. His mother's calligraphy set emerged, as did a piece of parchment, and a bottle of ink. He cut open his right thumb with a small blade and poured it into the ink. Turning the mixture, he applied his chakra judiciously into the entire thing and stopped only when the mixture of blood and ink became a thick, dark red.

He stifled the flow of blood to his thumb with his chakra, took out the brush, and began to make numerous strokes on the paper. His hands became a flurry of motion and movement, his brows creased hard, and the goosebumps on his skin continued to grow.

Once he was complete, the piece of paper was filled with numerous characters and writings, forming into a complex pentagram within an even more complex circle. Zi Wuji channeled his chakra into the paper, adding bit by bit until it began to float upwards.

"To avoid tomorrow's death, one must accept the death of today." 

The paper morphed, rapidly, into the shape of a sword. The sword pulsated with chakra and lunged forward.

It phased through Zi Wuji as though he were not there, before abruptly turning a brilliant, burning red. The paper sword disintegrated into ash, and a baleful shriek, like the cry of an injured banshee, was released from it. A sword, formed, of pure spiritual energy appeared above Zi Wuji's head, slowly hovering, turning, and rotating. 

A spiritual 'Blade of Damocles' hung above him, and the goosebumps growing on his skin dissipated. 

He exhaled, threw his head backward, let out a sharp laugh, and glanced upwards to the spiritual sword hanging over his head. No one else but him would be able to see it. 

"To think I'd have to use this…" 

The Death Liberator Sword Array was one of the twelve great arrays and twenty formations of the Karma Desolation Way Codex. The functions of the twelve arrays and twenty formations were all heaven-defying, but could only be used sparingly, and possessed numerous limitations.

To begin with, the original Death Liberator Sword Array should have been composed of a hundred such swords each of them circling above him at all times. The fūinjutsu variation he'd remade in a hurry functioned as he expected it, but it was far too weak. Rather than a hundred swords, there was only one, hanging above his head.

The Way Codex so far had been inactive in his life, except for now. Now, it'd warned him of impending doom. Zi Wuji clicked his tongue. He crossed his legs and moved into a meditating position, taking deep, slow breaths as he deactivated his Byakugan, closed his eyes searched deep within himself.

Deep within, he opened the consciousness of his soul. Deep within, a book floated, chained and held in place, with the cover fading away, and the edges torn and frayed. The Way Codex was damaged.

He reached out for it, only to meet resistance. The further his hand moved to touch it, the stronger the resistance grew. There was no power within the floating and chained book. There was no life to it, compared to when Zi Wuji first accessed it.

It needed to be recharged. 

If I could cultivate, the Way Codex would have recharged on its own naturally… 

To power the codex, he needed Qi.

Demonic Qi, Heavenly Qi, and Underworld Qi were the best options, as the sheer energy inherent in such powers would serve as the best fuel. Failing that, Yin Qi absorbed from the life essence of vital women would help, though such a method would be far slower. 

Once the codex was recharged, he would not only be able to benefit from the full power of its Karma Desolating Abilities, but he'd be able to reap the talent of someone else and, if need be, reincarnate once more in a different world.

Yet, he could see no means of recharging it.

Chakra was not Qi. The individual components could potentially be converted to Qi, but Chakra itself could not become Qi. Attempting to use Chakra as Qi was akin to cooking a recipe that called for eggs and milk, and then using a slice of cake as a substitute. Even a fool knew that while cake possessed both eggs and milk, it was not the same as eggs and milk.

Even if he could extract Yin Qi from women to power the Codex, it would require dual-cultivation methods. Alas, he could not cultivate.

Am I truly to be stuck living the life of a lowly mortal assassin?

No. Just now, the Codex had warned him of impending doom. Weakened as it was, it still possessed the means to guide him. Since he'd been reincarnated, it was the first time he'd felt such a strange occurrence in a single day. This meant something had stirred it.

Zi Wuji opened his eyes and reactivated his Byakugan.

…Shinobi?

Five hundred meters away, Zi Wuji spotted them. There were more women than men in the group. Three of them were garbed in the attire customary of individuals in the Konoha Hospital, whilst the others were dressed in medical attire. Of the shinobi present, four of them were Jōnin, six were members of the ANBU corps, and an additional four were members wearing insignia which marked them as the Hokage's personal guard.

Were he a fool, he'd have called it coincidence. The spot in the forest he chose to practice in the dead of night just happened to be where he managed to spot a strange entourage of individuals moving at high speed to an unknown location, one at a time.

Were it any other day, Zi Wuji would have ignored them. Yet, not tonight. Tonight, anything even remotely suspicious was worthy of his investigation. He wasn't sure what had spurned the Codex to action, nor did he know why he'd been fated to meet his end today, and he would not rest until he found out the answers to both questions.

Trailing the mysterious group of medic-nin, Jōnin and ANBU wasn't hard. The range of his eyes enabled him to keep the distance of half a kilometer without ever losing them. His remade Phantom Treading Steps made it so he was undetectable, and using the Earth Skating Steps to slide and glide across the entire forest, his pace never fell behind.

They were cautious. One of them was a sensor of sorts, constantly pausing to check if they were followed. They would never sense him, even if he were directly beside them. They ran deep into parts of the forest Zi Wuji had never been to. They continued until they crossed a threshold that marked the territory of Konoha, and continued further still, which made Zi Wuji increasingly curious.

After about thirty minutes of tailing them, they crossed a barrier. The shimmering wall of purple light was invisible to the regular eye, but not to his Byakugan. The characters and symbols put in place to hold the barrier made his brows furrow. Even stranger, there were eight chūnin covering eight cardinal points, each of them creating a second barrier that acted as a diversion to hide the first one.

What is the point of all this…?

Zi Wuji snorted as he scanned the barriers. Not only were they massively and grossly ineffective, but he could also count no less than ten ways to circumvent them both. They did not account for spatial transferences, they did not make exclusions for means of teleportation or individuals approaching from above the clouds or beneath the earth, and worst of all, the barriers held fatal flaws that could be erased upon finding the location of a central point.

Dealing with this low-tier work is almost insulting…

Zi Wuji stopped at a clearing where the barrier began and found the characters in the dirt. He readied himself to dispel it, only to pause briefly. With his Byakugan he found no more than four traps in place for those lacking caution, and the further he peered, the more he saw an unexpected layer of complexity.

Eight Trigrams?

Zi Wuji narrowed his brow.

They're at the level of imbuing seals with the Bagua?

The Bagua template was meant to be used to stabilize, protect, adjust or restore balance in life by analyzing and structuring a given space.

In Zi Wuji's experience, the shinobi of the Elemental Nations should only be aware of two types of Bagua: the Early Heaven Sequence and the Later Heaven Sequence. They worked through balance through opposites and acceptance of change, and both Bagua were associated with the eight compass cardinal directions. Which, in turn, were determined by the marker stars of mega-constellations known as the Four Celestial Animals.

This is the traditional Early Heaven Sequence… utilization of the taiji… if I were to alter this here… using the Autumn Equinox White Tiger as the key…

Twenty seconds after coming across the barrier, Zi Wuji phased through it. He glanced back to the barrier as he crossed, and pressed his hand against his chin.

This handiwork… 

The style was crude and the person who'd set it up had the most atrocious handwriting Zi Wuji had ever seen, as though they were an impatient brat. If he ignored the stupidity of not accounting to block the heavens, the earth, spatial transference, conjurations, and apparitions… 

The work was somewhat passable.

In a world where fūinjutsu had been crippled in its infancy, this level of skill would probably make one a master. If he were to be entirely honest, he had not expected anyone in the Elemental Nations to be capable of such a thing.

I might as well correct the flaws…

Whoever set up the barrier would come back to find it improved a hundred times beyond their capabilities, and as they realized their ineptitude, they would either shake in awe or they would wallow in despair. They would learn the difference between a puddle and the vast ocean, and the thought of it filled Zi Wuji with twisted glee.

No one would ever suspect him, as no one had any cause or reason to. Thus, he had no qualms editing the nature of the barrier to strengthen it. Satisfied that the work was done, he departed from the barrier, to continue in pursuit of the group he'd been tracking.

Zi Wuji raced through the forest blissfully unaware of the changes happening with the Karma Desolation Way Codex within him, and the grander, far-reaching consequences of an inconsequential decision.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"He's still not here?"

"Yes, Biwako-sama."

Sarutobi Biwako hissed sharply. She was already feeling somewhat sore from having to run all this way in the dead of night, rather than using the simpler and faster method her husband's successor possessed. A part of her felt that all of this security was needless, as was all the need for secrecy, but, she was of a different generation, and in the end, she could only accept how things were now with those younger in charge.

The ANBU were stationed in positions to ensure they would watch out for any intruders, not that Biwako believed anyone would find this place with the number of precautions the husband and wife duo had put in place. The barrier was still up to her knowledge, and she was ready, with her gloves and her tools, but the only thing missing, or rather, the only person missing, was the man lauded as the fastest in the world.

Fastest man in the world, but can't even arrive on time for the birth of your own child?

Within the prepared delivery room, a red-haired woman's breath came out in short, harsh bursts. Biwako exhaled, sometimes wishing she had the same smoking habit as her husband and son so she'd be able to at least alleviate a bit of her tension. Alas, as a medic-nin, she knew how bad those little sticks were, and she'd often chastised both men time and again to avoid using them.

"Kushina, we're going to have to start without him."

"M-Minato will b-be here."

"We can't delay this any longer," Biwako said firmly. "The risks are too great."

"H-he will be here —"

Biwako frowned. In a way, she understood. The birth of a child was often an unforgettable moment, and they wanted to share it together. Of course, they were kunoichi and things rarely went as they wished. Whilst she'd been in labor, her husband, at the time, had been at the front of the battlefield. In those days the fear lingered in her that her child would only get to know his father from pictures, stories, and a giant carving of his face atop a mountain.

Somehow, he'd lived. Somehow, he'd retired. The only one to do so, as far as Biwako was concerned. No other Kage in history, across all the shinobi villages, had ever successfully retired. They all died in office. Every single last one of them.

Kushina's ragged breaths came out more forcefully. Sweat pooled across the woman's brow, and Biwako couldn't stand it. The woman was resilient, Biwako would give her that. As a relative of Mito-sama, there was no other way she could be. As the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, resilience was an absolute necessity.

The question was whether or not this much resilience was worth it.

"Five minutes," Biwako announced. "Five minutes is all I'm giving him."

Better for the man to miss the birth of his child than to lose the boy and regret it his entire life. She turned her gaze to a tri-pronged kunai kept in the center of the room, and exhaled. There was no feasible explanation as to why the man was not yet here when that thing was. Biwako hoped he had a good one, else, his wife would probably never forgive him.

"Biwako-sama, t-there's a minor problem."

One of the medic-nin she'd brought with her approached her, nervously. 

"What's the matter, Taji?"

"M-my sealing scrolls s-stopped working. I-I can't bring out any of my tools."

All of Biwako's danger senses went on full blast. "What do you mean they stopped working?"

"T-they were working fine earlier, b-but they suddenly s-stopped —"

"Move inside. Quickly!"

"H-hai!"

She exited the delivery room and called for the attention of one of the Jōnin guards.

"Yes, Biwako-sama?"

"Do you have any sealing scrolls on you?"

"I —"

"Use them."

The guard stared blankly at the odd request, before doing as intended. He brought out a sealing scroll from his pocket, bit his finger, and stroked his blood across it. Biwako waited, patiently for ten full seconds, and nothing emerged. 

"That's…" the Jōnin frowned.

Biwako swiftly formed a set of hand seals, bit her thumb, and struck the ground. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"

Nothing.

She sucked in a deep breath of air.

"Check the barriers," she barked. "Investigate the area and see if you find anything suspicious. Now!"

"Yes, Biwako-sama!"

She spun on the heel of her feet and entered the delivery room. She glanced at the women present and nodded sharply to all of them.

"Get ready. Let's begin.."

"M-Minato isn't —"

"He's not coming," Biwako said firmly. "Something or someone is blocking all forms of space-time ninjutsu in the area."

"W-w-what?"

"We don't have time, Kushina," Biwako's eyes sharpened. "We're doing this. Now."

XXXXXXXXXXX

…Birthing a child? Here?

Zi Wuji sat on a tree and peered from a distance into the heavily guarded room. The shinobi had been tossed into a frenzy of some sort, and all of them slipped past him, never finding his location. With his eyes, he could see them coming literally miles away, and with his Phantom Treading Steps they were incapable of tracking him.

He didn't know why they were all guarding the red-haired woman in the delivery room. Granted, Zi Wuji would admit she was on the more attractive side of women he'd seen in this world so far, but beyond that, he could only assume she was an important figure of some sort. 

Why would an important person choose to give birth to their child in the middle of nowhere?

The more he studied the woman, the more abnormalities he found. Her chakra quantity was vast. Incomprehensible, even. No one he'd seen so far in this lifetime had even a quarter as much chakra as she did. Peering further still, he found a seal on her stomach. The signature was familiar to him, and upon deciphering it, a breath hitched in his throat.

There's something sealed something in her. What could possibly possess so much chakra?

Moments after asking that question, he spotted a blond-haired man in a white coat dashing forward. The man was sweating and breathing heavily, and numerous guards rushed out and bowed to him as one.

I've seen him somewhere….

Zi Wuji recognized him. He was the man the teachers often transformed into when teaching the Transformation Technique. His figure and likeness were similar to that of the fourth head on the obnoxious mountain overlooking the village.

"Hokage-sama!"

That's the Hokage?

Zi Wuji assumed the leader of such a large village would be older and wiser. The leaders of Sects were often elderly individuals because power came with time and age. The man in front of him, with his blond hair and pretty-boy looks, could only be in his twenties.

The longer he watched, the more things began to add up. The red-haired woman was the wife of the Hokage, and the man was here to protect her. There was something sealed in her, something powerful and dangerous, and it was likely the seal would weaken during childbirth. 

Zi Wuji clicked his tongue. He was curious as to the skill level of the man who was the leader of the entire village, and he was curious as to what exactly was within the seal. He could not peer past it at this range. If he were closer, close enough to examine the seal in person —

I would need to get the Hokage's wife alone and naked…

He'd only unraveled the secrets of the Caged Bird Seal and still needed to wait. He did not know the skill level of the Hokage and needed to acquire more information on the man's combat abilities. The chakra sealed away in his wife was nigh-infinite. If he could absorb even half of it from her, it would solve nearly all of his problems with the Transformation Technique.

He would be able to transform his body into that of a cultivator.

He'd be able to cultivate again and ascend the heavens.

Unraveling the seal, however, was not wise. He'd be better off slowly draining the chakra from whatever was stuck in the seal without it being able to fight back or resist. This would mean also having to drain the woman's chakra, which meant, a means of dual cultivation.

I'll need to recreate my Yin Peculation and Flutter Forcing Finger Art… 

He needed to have an adult, or at least, a pubescent body for that. Transforming into an adult and having sex would not work to properly absorb the energy, as his chakra circulatory system would still be that of a child, and thus, would be incapable of holding the excess chakra.

The amount of chakra was so vast, that he needed to train his body to withhold it all, else, he'd simply die from the excess. This too would take time. 

He was not in a hurry. The woman was the wife of the Hokage, so it was likely she'd be heavily protected at all times, if not skilled in her own regard. Subjugating her would make him the enemy of the entire village. In the time it took for him to reach physical adulthood, he would ensure he was strong enough to kill the Hokage and everyone who'd come after him.

It's only a matter of time.

He'd followed the entourage thinking that something big was going to happen, all while feeling an impending sense of doom. He'd even used the Death Liberator Sword Array in case he met an overwhelming opponent, but instead, he'd found an opportunity. 

He'd found a means to become a cultivator once again.

The sound of a child's cry echoed throughout the clearing, and the husband and wife welcomed new life into the world, as Zi Wuji, quietly and unseen as he'd ever been, slipped out of the forest.

It was only a matter of time.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"This shouldn't be possible."

His one good eye peered through his mask towards the visible barrier, and his Sharingan spun rapidly within. Once more, he channeled chakra to it, casting Kamui, and once more, an incoherent force slammed him backward, sending him careening and skidding against the ground.

Finally, he'd thought of a solution. Slipping his physical body through the ground, he dug underneath the earth and moved towards the barrier —

Once again, the same incomprehensible force repelled him, outright smacking him out of the ground. He was sent careening through a solid tree, and collapsed on the ground, coughing and hacking as he felt numerous broken ribs.

Gritting his teeth, he tried again, to teleport past the barrier — 

Again, he failed. He tried again, and again, and again, using his old stubborn-headed nature to his advantage, and time after time, it was to no avail.

After the eighteenth failure, he roared in frustration. It made absolutely no sense. His sensei shouldn't be able to create a barrier of this skill. Was it his wife then? Was Kushina the one behind it? He didn't think her skill would grow to such absurd levels in a manner of years.

He could not pass the barrier. Attempting to teleport through with Kamui would have the same result as though he'd slammed head first at thousands of miles per hour into a brick wall. 

He could not break the barrier. He had neither the skill nor the patience to dismantle such a complicated thing. He'd only ever dabbled in the most basic and rudimentary fūinjutsu, so the task of breaking it or unraveling it was above and beyond him. 

He could not go under it. Doing so created a far more violent reaction that would injure him even worse than he was injured now.

Then, from above?

Once more, he tried —

Once more, the barrier sent him crashing into the dirt.

"GRAAAAAH!"

He kicked the earth and slashed at the trees in cold fury. He turned to stare at the giant shimmering wall, his gaze consumed with utter rage. That his plans would be foiled by a meager barrier of all things? A measly barrier? 

It was unthinkable.

He couldn't get through, and, even if he somehow managed it, it was likely that his abilities would not work inside it either. He did not doubt his skills in combat, but without the aid of the invulnerability granted to him by Kamui he wasn't confident in taking on his sensei, nor was he confident in fighting off the man's elite guard.

If it was indeed his sensei who set up this barrier, then there was no hope of victory. Using the Flying Thunder God Technique in a space where no one else could escape from was such a disgustingly deadly combination. The odds of defeating such a tactic were slim to none. If they fought, it was very likely that he'd be captured if not outright killed.

Foiled by a barrier.

It stung. Worse than the pain of the boulder, but not as much as the ache in his chest when he saw the love of his life pierced through the heart. His ears picked up the sound of movement, as several shinobi were approaching his position, and against his will, he chuckled.

"You've won this round, Minato-sensei…"

On the night of October 10th, a masked man vanished with a swirl of space,