Huo Yuhao slept very soundly this time, from morning until dusk. During this period, his mother, Huo Yun'er, had tried to wake him up. Normally, his reflexes were sharp enough to deflect every single bullet from a repeating fire-lock gun with just a blade, but this time he showed not the slightest reaction. It was only after Huo Yun'er went out to run errands that Huo Yuhao slowly regained consciousness.
In the past year, he had never slept so comfortably for so long. Whether measured by the duration of sleep, the quality of sleep, or the peace of mind he felt while sleeping, this was by far the most restful sleep Huo Yuhao had ever experienced.
Unconsciously, he reached his Right Hand toward his left hip, but the familiar, icy touch was not there. First came an instinctive panic, followed immediately by a sense of relaxation and a lingering feeling of loss.
Huo Yuhao slowly got up from the bed. A note was pinned beneath an empty bowl on the table.
"Yuhao, when you wake up, go to the stove and get a stuffed pancake from the pot. It should still be warm."
Carefully folding the note and putting it away in his pocket, Huo Yuhao sat heavily on the edge of the bed. Though he was only six years old, his gaze carried the worldly weariness of someone who had lived through countless years.
During that year which felt like a dream, he had neither soul power nor Soul Tools. All he possessed were fragmented ninja combat techniques and a scattering of blurred, incomplete memories.
Huo Yuhao could not forget the day he had carefully crawled like a wild dog with a broken tail, moving slowly through the tall grass to eventually evade the patrols of the Ashina samurai and successfully reach the foot of the Moon-Viewing Tower.
Through a gaping hole in the cliff behind the Moon-Viewing Tower, Huo Yuhao had climbed inside in a state of utter wretchedness, and there he met the Divine Heir, the person who would change his life—a child just as small, frail, and weak as he once was.
At that time, the boy was holding a collection of poetry by the light of a dim candle, reading works left behind by the poet Li Bai of the Eastern lands, specifically the five poems on touring Dongting Lake (Number Two).
"Ah, my ninja, you have arrived."
The Divine Heir Kuro hurriedly jumped down from a stack of books, stroking Huo Yuhao's weather-beaten face with a look of heartache. Then, with great effort, he handed Huo Yuhao a Katana that was taller than half his own height, along with a medicinal gourd capable of restoring a person's injuries.
Perhaps this sudden warmth left Huo Yuhao at a loss. After seeing Kuro meticulously use the medicine from the gourd to tend to the wounds on his body, an unfamiliar thought welled up from the depths of Huo Yuhao's heart.
Helping to wipe away wounds—is this something friends do for each other?
Looking at Kuro, who was trying his hardest to bandage his wounds by the faint candlelight, the softest part of Huo Yuhao's heart was touched.
In the Duke's Mansion, Huo Yuhao had never had friends his own age. All he knew were the cold glares of the Duchess and her increasingly undisguised discrimination and mistreatment.
Though Huo Yuhao did not understand what all those words meant while the Divine Heir was bandaging him, he understood one thing: they needed to leave Ashina before making any further plans. Since that was the case, they were going to escape, right?
Looking at his newly bandaged body and the black Katana in his hand, a certain thought inevitably rose in Huo Yuhao's mind—the combined result of the lingering memories in his head and his own instinctive reactions.
This is my friend, someone I must protect at all costs, just as the creed in my mind dictates.
For the one who ranks next only to one's parents, keep them etched in your heart at all times; protect them with your life. If they are taken from you, you must rescue them at all costs. This was the creed of the ninja.
At that time, Huo Yuhao did not yet realize how heavy the promise in his heart truly was. It was a vow that could only be fulfilled by trading life for life, dancing through blood and fire over and over again, suffering countless injuries with broken bones, and crawling out of hell time and time again.
Huo Yuhao had tried negotiating with those Ashina folk; he had tried dropping to his knees and begging for mercy. But the end result was always having his belly sliced open by a sword, spilling ten meters of intestines onto the ground, followed by a final decapitation from a notched Katana.
The power of immortality brought by the Dragon's Heritage allowed him to revive over and over again—falling, reviving, falling again. Even when thrown off a cliff to shatter every bone in his body, he would simply wake up once more before a Sculptor's Idol.
After being cut down by the same samurai a dozen times, Huo Yuhao, who was only six years old and around the same age as the Divine Heir, suddenly understood one simple truth: weakness and begging for mercy were utterly useless.
As the saying goes, the children of the poor take charge of the house early. The true essence of this saying is that children from impoverished families touch the most realistic side of the world much earlier and are forced to accept it. Huo Yuhao was precisely such a child.
Much like the proverb from the frigid northern lands: failure is so cold, yet Moscow weeps for no tears.
From that day on, Huo Yuhao cast away the weakness in his heart—or perhaps he didn't cast it away, but merely locked it away where no one could see. Yet there was no denying that from then on, the only side Huo Yuhao showed his enemies was the sharp edge of a blade.
When Genichiro severed his left arm, Huo Yuhao learned to use a ninja's fangs to tear into his opponents. When struck by lightning from the heavens, Huo Yuhao learned to hover above the ground and execute lightning reversals. When chopped into minced meat by the dual-wielding White-Armed Monkey, Huo Yuhao threw down two handfuls of firecrackers without a shred of martial honor, taking advantage of the enemy's utter chaos to behead him in a single stroke.
As long as he could rescue Kuro, Huo Yuhao did not care whether his methods were noble or base. As long as it honed his martial arts, Huo Yuhao never hesitated to learn the intricate techniques of enemies who had killed him dozens or hundreds of times over—using the enemy's own advanced arts to subdue them.
He endured countless hardships, fought his way up to the Tenshukaku to rescue Kuro, used the Senpou Temple monks' signature leg techniques to kick open the temple gates, seized the Mortal Blade that killed the moment it was drawn, and brought two catties of explosives to blow up the Guardian Ape guarding the Fragrant Water Lily. He carried a pouch of ash and unhesitatingly flung it all over the corrupted Monk's face to snatch the Shelter Stone blessed by the Fountainhead Waters.
Not only that, he even fought his way all the way to the Fountainhead Palace inhabited by the Divine Dragon, stunned the creature with heavenly lightning, slashed open its eyeball to extract a tear, and used the Father's Bell Charm to retrieve the blooming Everblossom. To fulfill that promise, Huo Yuhao had truly staked everything he had.
To let his friend, to let Kuro live on as an ordinary person, Huo Yuhao even brought an end to his own life, because only thus could the power of the Dragon's Heritage cease to flow entirely.
"Lord Divine Heir... Lady Emma, Anayama the Peddler, and Kotaro..."
Huo Yuhao felt a sense of lingering loss. Aside from the memories, everything about Ashina seemed like a fleeting dream. He was no longer the one-armed wolf who could leap across roofs and vault over walls with omnipotent skill; he was merely a little squirt of six years old, barely scraping by in the Duke's Mansion.
"Really, is there nothing left at all?"
Involuntarily, Huo Yuhao reached out his hand and stared blankly at his palm. Suddenly, a light blue Buddha Candy appeared quietly right there in his hand.
In an instant, Huo Yuhao's heart was shaken to its core.