Hii Kōri closed his eyes, his entire perception entrusted to those Spirit Thread Nerves extending ever downward.
Descending, descending, continuing to descend.
The Spirit Thread Nerves woven into a whip had long since unraveled, returning to a slender size to maximize extend their length. The clear water wrapped around the nerve threads—finer than hair—formed into trident-shaped probes, pushing aside the increasingly compact gravel, soil, and rock layers, pursuing the faint trace deep within the earth.
Dozens of meters, hundreds of meters, three kilometers, five kilometers... Finally, at a depth of nearly seven kilometers within the earth's crust, Hii Kōri's perception completely touches that majestic pulsation.
It was not a surging torrent, but more like a massive dragon breathing slowly—no, for this planet that countless life called home, this stagnation to the point of being almost solid, pure natural energy slowly flowing through the deep earth veins was closer to "star blood."
Even from such a distance, relying only on the slender Spirit Thread Nerves extending from his fingertips as a connection, he could still "see" some extremely concrete scenes within that vast torrent.
Light.
An ocean of light.
The gentle, almost transparent light currents emitted a clear, light blue shimmer.
Then, boundless white flowers bloomed within the currents, spreading infinitely to the edge of vision, illuminating heaven and earth with incomparable brightness.
And Hii Kōri stood within that current and flower sea, gazing at the distant horizon.
This was an earlier time—before that celestial tree took root in the earth, when what was now called the Dragon Vein, the star blood, still flowed freely within the entire planet.
An unreachable dream.
This was merely a memory recorded in the planet's residual blood—a not-so-distant past for it, a plain narrative containing no intense emotions.
Yet merely being within that flower sea was enough to make one feel intense pathos.
The celestial root descended by raiders from the universe would drain the nutrients of all life on the planet, bearing the "fruit of the God Tree."
In classical astrology or the Hermetic occult system, if the human body was compared to a small universe, then its heart was the sun.
An important corollary of the resulting macro-micro cosmos theory was that the universe as a whole could be considered alive—a world soul possessing thought or spirit.
If one regarded the planet as a kindred life form, what might be depicted could be called a "star soul," a "star's heart."
And since the celestial root called the God Tree would plunder and extract the nutrients of all life, how could the planet itself be an exception?
If only that had never happened. If only it had withered a thousand years ago.
But when the raiders were in turn betrayed and sealed by her own descendants, losing all possibility of hatching, yet unable to simply die—the star soul was left with only this last surface-approaching tributary, vainly wailing, dreaming ancient dreams not so distant.
Until today.
"How ugly."
The white flowers were shattered. The clear and light light currents stained with the violet of a dying person's complexion.
The ancient star dream thus ended. What came into Hii Kōri's view was nothing but a bruised appearance that couldn't even be called miserable.
"Truly... ugly."
Opening his eyes, the sorcerer with lowered gaze unconsciously shook his head and repeated himself.
Whether it was the dying dream of the Dragon Vein, or the means of the Ōtsutsuki clan descending from the Cosmos—exhausting the source to catch the fish—to Hii Kōri, both were excessively ugly.
Compared to the abomination felt when actually seeing these remnant remains, the techniques understood from fragmented comic settings were truly worth mentioning.
No creation, no growth, no room for extension—monotonous and bland.
It is clearly a planet soul capable of sprouting infinite possibilities—how could it only fall into such a pitiful situation?
It's clearly a race capable of freely moving through space in physical form—why were their means so uninsipiring and boring?
Truly, too ugly.
"Teacher, did you find it?"
Seeing Hii Kōri's reaction, Yahiko couldn't help but be the first to ask. The other three children also cast curious glances.
They only knew Hii Kōri was looking for something in the Great Sand Sea, but what it actually was—their teacher had never mentioned to them.
"Ah, found it."
Suppressing that violent hatred—like encountering an absolutely incompatible natural enemy—Hii Kōri raised his hand and ruffled Yahiko's slightly messy orange hair, revealing an expression no different from usual.
"But I can't handle it here. This monotonous trip will have to continue a few more days."
Withdrawing his Spirit Thread Nerves from underground, he moved his somewhat stiff shoulders from maintaining the same posture for so long, teasing his disciples as if joking.
"With teacher here, it's not boring at all."
As if taking this joke seriously, Konan blinked, raised her hand high, and retorted quite seriously.
"Okay, okay~ Then I'll rely on everyone to accompany me a while longer~"
Gently flicking Konan's delicate, cute nose, Hii Kōri walked toward the off-road vehicle with a smile, his mind already made up.
The true form of the Dragon Vein had been identified. The reason its existence had remained undiscovered was, besides the Dragon Vein itself being nearly dried up with only this one tributary left, its burial depth was another natural barrier concealing its traces.
Seven kilometers—as a distance to travel, it was truly not worth mentioning. For an ordinary person's pace, it would only take a little over an hour; for a ninja's speed, a few minutes.
But when that distance was vertical depth, things were completely different.
Gravel, rock, soil—these substantial substances easily block the tentacles of perception. Seven kilometers of sand, soil, and rock layers was almost equivalent to trying to sense what was buried beneath a mountain from its peak.
Even Hii Kōri, mastering the Uzumaki clan's Kagura Mind's Eye, had relied on Kagura knowledge to confirm that something existed here—shooting the arrow first, then drawing the target—before conducting deep exploration.
Similarly, this distance isolates almost all attempts to utilize the Dragon Vein.
In his previous world, the average depth of open-pit mines was around five to eight hundred meters. For deep mining shafts, the deepest gold mines barely exceeded four kilometers.
At that depth, underground rock temperatures already exceeded seventy degrees. Without using powerful refrigeration and ventilation systems to transport cooled, breathable air underground, humans couldn't endure such an environment.
The same applied to ninjas. After all, even ninjas capable of refining chakra, their physical strength in most cases differed little from ordinary people.
Conventional ninjutsu and sealing technique would find it difficult to effectively channel such deep energy to the surface.
With excavation and exploration technology out of reach, and unable to sense or realize what was contained here, the Dragon Vein had naturally remained hidden until now.
But correspondingly, if the country of Rōlan truly existed, then that country must be built at a vent where the Dragon Vein was relatively close to the surface.
The original plan—to ignore Rōlan's existence and directly divert a tributary from the Dragon Vein's veins to Sunagakure—had completely failed. To find a relatively convenient way to utilize the Dragon Vein's power, exploring Rōlan's state naturally became necessary.
After all, this planet's vitality now was but a long twilight, the lingering fragrance of "bloodstains" left in the soil when star blood was extracted to the surface. But measured by the scale of human life, it would still take at least a thousand years for the entire planet to become a dead zone.
The vast majority of the Country of Wind's land being this barren desert was instead because the remnants of the Dragon vein lay buried deep underground, nearly stagnating.
In this case, if Hii Kōri extracted the Dragon Vein to the surface, he could naturally bring this vast sand sea vitality lasting thousands of years—until the planet died, this might still be the last place to fade away traces of life.
But... wouldn't that be too boring?
If Hii Kōri knew nothing, he could naturally drive the Dragon Vein's power to transform this country without worries.
"Knowledge is poisonous"—that's what it meant.
Star blood, star soul... things that once existed only in philosophical theory now reflect Hii Kōri's eyes as concrete existence. How could he look away?
Because extinction would eventually come in the distant future, so consider the present first?
Because the power gap with aliens was so vast there was no room to make up, so just ignore it?
Because someone would eventually handle those final troubles, so you can manage your own small plot with peace of mind?
Are you kidding?
Are you kidding?!
ARE YOU KIDDING!!!
Over ten years since time travel, Hii Kōri could clearly feel his emotions as a human being gradually perfected.
But equally, he could clearly realize to the fading of his passion.
The more he refined chakra, the more he practiced ninja techniques, the more he became accustomed to it.
The intense passion and exhilaration felt upon first arriving in this world, the excitement and joy of first forays into completely unknown territory—had been inevitably consumed.
Indeed, this was unavoidable. In his previous life, when expanding knowledge into other fields, he had experienced this natural link countless times. Just passion loss—he had long grown accustomed.
Hii Kōri would still devote himself to various experiments, still be keen on developing various ninjutsu, still waste no time planning future experiment directions, still feel happy at various results.
The field of chakra still had quite a lot of space to explore, and he was happy to continue within it and inspire.
But—it still fell short.
That electric-shock-like tingling stimulated him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, that decisive throb that made him say "Yes! This is it!"—surging through him like a storm—had been absent for a long time.
Because he recalled the comic plot and gained further awareness of this world's essence.
This feeling was almost like having the answer on the surface, then reverse-engineering the problem-solving steps based on the question and answer.
This naturally counted as a pastime, but—completely insufficient!
Precisely because of this, after realizing the deviation between the plot in his memory and this world's reality, he felt irritable yet simultaneously eagerly planned his next move.
Because at his core, he was still pursuing new topics, still enjoying the pleasure of elucidating the unknown.
And now, this genuine unknown had opened its doors to him. Could he endure not entering?
Are you kidding!
The sudden elevation of his vision even allowed Hii Kōri to feel a strong sense of purpose—as if he had been reincarnated into this world precisely to accomplish this.
Of course, he knew this was an overly exaggerated illusion.
Even if his technique could return everything it touched to its initial state, targeting the Dragon Vein—this star blood drained to nearly exhaustion, waiting vainly for drying up over a thousand years—involving the entire planet scale was too exaggerated for Hii Kōri.
But...
"Isn't this pretty interesting?"
Both hands gripping the steering wheel, Hii Kōri's glass-like gray eyes seemed to burn with bright sparks.
That was the fire of extremely elevated "positive" cursed energy, equally the fire of bursts of inspiration.
Relying solely on pushing his technique to attempt such a feat—I'm afraid he couldn't achieve it no matter how long he trained, right?
After all, life nurtured on a planet, even drawing the planet's nutrients, couldn't surpass the planet itself. Moreover, this planet was chronically dying; how could residual traces of gestation power be sufficient to compensate for its shortcomings?
But what if those Ōtsutsuki who had devoured countless planets were turned into fuel, reintegrated into the shattered star soul egg to heal its wounds, then transformed back to original state by his technique?
Worth a try!
After all, wasn't his technique called [Palm Hatching]? If he could actually "hatch" a planet's soul, that would be far too fitting, wouldn't it?
If Gojō Satoru—who in the previous life could be called the one who best understood Hii Kōri's personality—were present, he would surely see through his smile, even through the turban wrapped around his face to block the wind and sand.
The madness, softened by family warmth and bonds, had been re-dyed. Just one look would make one's stomach churn, nerves tingle.
That was the sign of the runaway train called Hii Kōri about to depart the station.
Since the goal was decided, all that remains is to consider how to achieve it.
Unlike the project that would eventually yield results through continuous attempts, this project might be the greatest project he would spend his whole life unable to reach the other shore.
Yet this challenge—completely entering uncharted territory, uncertain of success—how could it not make Hii Kōri's heart sway?
"Whoo---"
"Whoa!"
The desert buggy suddenly accelerated without warning, launching from a towering dune straight into the sky.
Beneath Hii Kōri's wild exhilarated howl—as if liberated nature—the four children's screams sounded vague and feeble.
"Slow down! Teacher!"
***
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