Seeing that Saya was ignoring his words, An Lushan knew it was useless to say anything further. Although he had used his schemes to become the premier minister beneath the Queen of the Kingdom of Loulan, it was still inconvenient to openly oppose the Queen's decisions.
However, given his status, making a person vanish without a trace was no difficult task.
On the other side, having eaten and drunk his fill, Li Fusheng sat cross-legged on the bed and began to cultivate. He discovered that in this nameless place, the concentration of Spiritual Energy was even denser than out in the desert.
Though he had been rescued by the people he just met, he was still in an unfamiliar environment, and recovering his physical strength as quickly as possible was the safer choice.
Once he possessed Spiritual Energy, he would be somewhat stronger than an ordinary person. Even though he had never fought anyone, Li Fusheng estimated that he could easily keep eight or nine strong men from getting close.
After all, even without Spiritual Energy, relying solely on his family's inherited Qi Condensation Formula to strengthen his body allowed him to take down three or four bare-handed tough guys.
Moreover, once he had a certain amount of Spiritual Energy within his body, he should be able to use some of the spells recorded in his family's secret manual.
Just as he began his seated meditation, however, the bedroom door was pushed open from the outside once more.
It was the younger girl from earlier who walked in again.
"Are you cultivating?" the girl asked curiously.
Unfortunately, Li Fusheng could not understand what she meant; assuming she was asking whether he had eaten his fill, he nodded and said, "I'm full already, thank you!"
Sara likewise could not understand what he was saying, but seeing him nod, she understood that he was meditating.
So, with even greater curiosity, she asked, "Can you teach me how to cultivate too?"
Anyone who had watched Naruto knew that the bloodline of the Queens of Loulan possessed no special abilities other than the secret technique to manipulate the energy of the Dragon Vein.
Therefore, Sara yearned greatly for the practice of ninjutsu. Sadly, her mother did not approve of her spending energy on cultivation.
Now that she had finally encountered someone who understood cultivation, she could not help wanting to learn from him.
Asking someone abruptly about cultivation-related topics was a taboo even in the Shinobi World. But as the saying goes, Li Fusheng had no idea what she was talking about.
And so began his mismatched, cross-purposes replies.
For half a day, although Sara failed to get any cultivation methods from Li Fusheng, they still chatted enthusiastically.
Because of her status, the people around her were far too respectful and distant.
Whenever her mother was busy with affairs, Sara didn't even have anyone to talk to. Looking at Li Fusheng, on the other hand, although he appeared very polite, he didn't give off a feeling of excessive detachment.
Thus, even though she couldn't understand him, Sara kept chatting away.
Before he knew it, several days had passed, and Sara personally brought dinner to Li Fusheng's room.
To better maintain her relationship with Li Fusheng and persuade him to agree to teach her cultivation, Sara decided to teach Li Fusheng how to speak, and even snatched away the maid's job of delivering meals.
For some reason, Saya did not stop her daughter's actions.
An Lushan, on the other hand, had developed murderous intent toward Li Fusheng, yet never found an opportunity to make a move.
Yet the desire to kill in his heart grew increasingly intense.
If he had previously only worried that Li Fusheng's appearance would disrupt his upcoming plans, his experiences over the past few days made him entirely certain that Li Fusheng would inevitably affect him.
The reason he felt this way lay in the room where Li Fusheng was staying.
It was located inside the Queen's Royal Palace, originally meant for entertaining distinguished guests from other countries, yet it had been given to some unknown fellow of mysterious origins.
Even worse, the Queen's successor, Sara, spent all day long cooped up in the room with him.
An Lushan began to suspect whether Queen Saya already doubted him and had hired a ninja from the outside to investigate him in secret while protecting Sara's safety.
The story about rescuing him on the road was simply fabricated to put him off his guard.
Otherwise, why take a rescued stranger and casually hand him over to some commoners to look after? Why settle him right by her side?
As for Sara offering to teach him how to read and speak, Li Fusheng did not refuse. He had no idea when he would be able to leave this place and return to the city.
Without learning the local language here, even daily communication would be a problem.
Furthermore, he could vaguely sense some spiritual power reactions within Sara's body, leading him to believe that she, too, was a practitioner.
Only once they could communicate could he converse and study with her, verifying what they had learned against one another.
As for outsiders, Li Fusheng had barely seen anyone. Aside from learning the names Sara and Saya, the only person he was relatively familiar with was a maid named Keiko.
"Hey, Fusheng-kun, where do you come from? Are you from Sunagakure? Or somewhere else in the Land of Wind, or perhaps another realm?"
Sara looked at Li Fusheng as he ate and asked softly.
For some reason, she found that the boy she had rescued looked better the more she gazed at him, causing her cheeks to turn slightly red.
Li Fusheng's original appearance could only be considered handsome, falling short of being strikingly gorgeous. But as he drew Spiritual Energy into his body, his temperament underwent a heaven-shaking transformation.
It gave people the impression that the longer you looked at him, the more handsome and fascinating he became.
Through these past two days of study, Li Fusheng could already barely understand some common vocabulary, but Sara's question was spoken too quickly and at too great a length.
It left Li Fusheng momentarily unable to comprehend. Just as Sara asked it again and he was about to answer, Li Fusheng froze in place.
"Wait, Sunagakure?"
"That's right, Sunagakure. Is there a problem?"
"Let me catch my breath for a second!" Li Fusheng said, slapping a hand over his face.
A flurry of thoughts raced through his mind: "Sunagakure? Isn't this a place name from the anime? Could it be that I'm not in a Secret Realm, but have time-traveled / transmigrated?"
To make sure, Li Fusheng looked at Sara and asked, "Then where are we right now?"
"The Kingdom of Loulan, of course! You must have heard of it, right?"
"Loulan? Does this place exist in Naruto?" Utterly bewildered before, Li Fusheng was now even more bewildered.
When the anime Naruto first started airing, he had watched it on television. Because elements like ninjutsu and hand seals were inextricably linked to traditional Taoist arts from the past,
he had followed it and watched quite a bit. But after entering college, he had to live in a dorm and had no mobile phone to keep up with the latest episodes, so he usually spent more time reading metaphysical and Taoist texts.
Consequently, his knowledge of Naruto basically stopped at the point where the protagonist Naruto and the others participated in the Chunin Exams, and he hadn't even seen the outcome of the third match.
His understanding of the Shinobi World was essentially limited to the most basic facts, such as the existence of the Five Great Nations and the Five Great Shinobi Villages.
Hearing that the Kingdom of Loulan existed here as well made him start to doubt whether this so-called Sunagakure was even the one he knew.
The problem was that Sara had also mentioned the Land of Wind, which pretty much clinched it. It wasn't as though ancient Loulan had a place called Sunagakure and the Land of Wind lying around it.
Yet neither geography nor history books had ever contained even a tiny scrap of relevant records about these places.