"LEEEEEEEE!!"
Neji's frantic shout ripped through the air. The reason for the scream became clear a second later.
As the boys tried to sneak past the clerk, Lee—who was already sweating inside his tight green jumpsuit—moved too fast. His foot caught on a loose floorboard, and his perfect balance vanished.
THUD
It wasn't a normal trip. It sounded like a ton of iron hitting the floor. One of Lee's massive training weights had slipped off his leg. It smashed through the wood like a cannonball.
But the real problem was the small paper charm pinned to the side of the weight.
It was a live explosive tag.
The clerk's eyes went wide. He saw the smoking tag and Lee's bright green jumpsuit. "EXPLOSIVES?! THEY ARE INTRUDERS FROM KONOHA! GUARDS! TO THE NORTH HALL!"
"LEEEEEEEE!!" Neji screamed in pure rage. "Why are your weights ARMED, and why are you wearing that STUPID GREEN SUIT?!"
"I wanted to be prepared for a workout!" Lee wailed, scrambling to grab the weight before it blew up the building.
Young Sasuke didn't waste time. He grabbed Lee's collar and pulled him hard. "Run, you idiots!"
But the path was closing. Ten Samurai from the City and the Border whirled around. They leveled their katanas and charged. "Capture them! Kill the intruders!"
Up in the corner, Namikaze Minato's playful look vanished. His 'decoration' disguise disappeared, replaced by the sharp focus of the Yellow Flash. He didn't use a kunai or try to show his face. To the boys and the Samurai, the world simply turned into a blur of gold.
Whoosh.
One second, the swords were inches from Lee's chest; the next, a violent gust of wind swept the three children off their feet.
Young Sasuke felt a firm hand on his shoulder—a touch that was impossibly fast—and then the hallway turned into a spinning streak of light.
Before the Samurai could blink, the three boys were gone. They were safe at the far end of the kitchen corridor. They looked back, but the hallway was empty except for some swirling dust.
Back in the main hall, the Samurai found their path blocked by a man who had finally lost his patience. The 'Beautifully Intelligent' traveler was gone. The 'Black Devil' was now very real.
"I believe," Sasuke said, his voice low and vibrating, "you were told to look at the trees. You should have stayed there."
"Get out of the way!" the leader roared. "That boy had explosives!"
"Now, now, Sasuke-kun," Orochimaru giggled, his face twisting into a terrifying grin.
Hundreds of tiny white snakes crawled out of his sleeves, snapping at the boots of the soldiers.
"Don't have all the fun while being prone to getting hurt. After all...no one harms my Sasuke-kun."
One Samurai, pinned to the wall by a snake, sobbed in terror. "I knew it! The mother-in-law is a demon witch! Run for your lives!"
Sasuke closed his eyes, his jaw tightening. Internally, he was screaming. Externally, he just stood there—the most dangerous man in the room—being 'protected' by a Sannin in a kimono.
"I'm killing him," Sasuke whispered to the air. "When this mission is over, I am definitely killing him."
The Samurai leader, with a scarred jaw, didn't back down. He leveled his katana, and the tip glowed with chakra. "Witchcraft or not, you stand in the way of peace! Formation! Steel Serpent Strike"
The five remaining Samurai moved together perfectly. Two swung low at Sasuke's legs, while the leader and two others stabbed forward. Their swords whistled through the air.
Sasuke didn't flinch. He didn't even draw his sword. Under his hood, his eyes transformed. The three-tomoe whirled and grew into a mysterious, runic web—the celestial star of the UCHIHA LEGACY.
The leader's sword was an inch from Sasuke's throat when the air folded.
To the Samurai, it looked like the world stopped and then skipped. The sword didn't hit Sasuke. It passed through a rift in space and came out three feet to the left, almost hitting the leader's own man.
Sasuke stepped into the 'fold' and appeared instantly behind the two low-striking swordsmen. With two lightning-fast palm strikes, he sent them sliding across the wood, their armor sparking against the floor.
"How—?!" The leader swung his katana in a huge circle to hit Sasuke's ribs.
Sasuke didn't move. He just stared at the blade. The star in his eye pulsed. Suddenly, the distance between the blade and Sasuke's side seemed to stretch forever.
The leader swung with all his strength, but his weapon moved as if it were traveling for miles, never actually touching Sasuke.
"You are fighting a ghost," Sasuke said coldly.
"Oh, ignore him," Orochimaru's voice drifted over the noise, sounding like a disappointed parent. The Sannin weaved through the other Samurai, disrupting their chakra points with icy fingers.
He leaned toward the terrified leader, his golden eyes glowing. "You'll have to forgive my boy. He's always so dramatic when he's trying to impress his wife's family."
Orochimaru shrugged his shoulders gracefully. "Though, as his mother-in-law, I keep telling him that silence is much more attractive. Don't you agree?"
The Samurai leader's face went pale. His brain was spinning. "My boy? Wife? Mother-in-law? "My boy...?" he stammered. "The mother-in-law... she's lecturing the Black Devil in the middle of a battle!"
"RUN!" another Samurai screamed, dropping his sword. "IT'S A CURSED HOUSEHOLD! THE MOTHER-IN-LAW IS INSANE AND THE DEVIL IS LISTENING TO HER!"
The troops scrambled over each other to escape the hallway. Sasuke stood in the wreckage, his chest moving slightly as his Sharingan faded back to black.
Orochimaru adjusted his hair, looking pleased. "Well. That went smoothly. The 'household' husband scene really works for crowd control. Let's try this another time."
Sasuke turned his head slowly, his expression dark enough to swallow the sun. "My boy, Your husband? Make up your mind, Orochimaru, before I help you choose a grave."
"I think the confusion adds flavor," Orochimaru said with a sharp grin. "Besides... you did look very 'precious' folding space like that."
At the far end of the kitchen corridor, the air was thick with the smell of old grease, spices, and absolute bewilderment.
Neji slammed his back against the stone wall, his breathing ragged as his Byakugan slowly deactivated. The veins around his temples receded, but his face remained completely pale.
"What... what just happened?" Neji whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of adrenaline and pure shock. "One second we were facing ten katanas, and the next... we are all the way by the service exit?"
Lee was sitting on a sack of potatoes, looking down at his remaining leg weight with wide, round eyes. He looked completely unbothered by the near-death experience, his mind focused entirely on the mystery.
"It was a miracle of youth!" Lee declared, pumping a fist into the air. "A guardian angel in a golden cloak saw my dedication to a high-intensity workout and decided to give us a lift!"
"Shut up, Lee!" Neji shouted, rubbing his temples. "There are no golden angels! I was using my Byakugan. I didn't see a hand, I didn't see a body, and I didn't see a hand sign. The world just turned almost like a flash, and our coordinates completely changed. It's impossible!"
"Maybe it was a very fast delivery man?" Lee suggested loudly, scratching his bowl cut. "The kitchen is right here! Perhaps he was delivering noodles at the speed of light!"
"Are you insane?!" Neji snapped, his usual calm completely broken. "Nobody delivers noodles by breaking the laws of ninjutsu!"
While the two of them argued back and forth, making increasingly wild guesses, Young Sasuke stood completely still near the shadow of the pantry door. He wasn't listening to them. His dark eyes were locked on the high glass window at the very end of the corridor.
Standing outside on the roof ledge just beyond the glass, a man was looking back into the corridor. He wasn't hiding in the trees like a ghost; he stood out in the open, his long cloak catching the light, his bright spiky hair shimmering like gold.
Even from this distance, Sasuke could see a soft, reassuring smile on the stranger's face before the man suddenly vanished into thin air.
Sasuke's breath hitched in his throat, his heart beginning to hammer violently against his ribs.
'Don't tell me...'
The pieces began to click in his mind in small, rapid successions. A gold blur. Speed that defied logic. A strange savior out of nowhere.
It triggered the exact memory of the unbelievable conversation he had with Mini Sasuke when they first met.
His younger self had looked him in the eye and told him about a completely altered history.
In Mini Sasuke's original time, Uchiha Shisui was supposed to fall at the Naka River. He was supposed to die. But the child had explicitly said that a strange, white-haired man riding a giant toad had dropped out of nowhere and saved Shisui's life, changing the timeline completely.
Sasuke stared at the empty space outside the window where the golden-haired man had just been standing. The realization hit him like a physical blow, making his eyes widen in pure shock.
'Just like my younger self told me... in his time, Shisui-niisan was saved by a white-haired man on a toad,' Sasuke thought, a chill running down his spine as the truth settled in.
'Then what if... what if someone from a completely different timeline has come to save us right now?'
"Hey! Sasuke! Are you even listening?!"
Neji's sharp voice finally shattered Sasuke's thoughts. Sasuke blinked, his eyes snapping away from the empty window ledge and back to his teammates.
Neji's face was dead serious. "We don't have time to stand around debating about what's possible or not or looking out at windows. The guards down here are alerted...."
"...Our best bet is to move upward. We need to reach the upper floor—the Grand Pavilion—and get everyone out of the Frozen Crane Hotel before the entire place goes on lockdown."
"Right!" Lee agreed, instantly dropping into a running stance, his previous panic completely forgotten. "A tactical retreat to higher ground is a highly youthful strategy!"
Sasuke forced the thoughts of timelines and golden-haired men to the back of his mind. He tightened his grip on his kunai pouch. 'Focus on the mission first,' he told himself, giving Neji a firm nod.
"Let's go."
The three of them burst out of the kitchen corridor, their soft ninja boots making no sound as they moved down the hallway toward the central grand staircase.
The architecture changed rapidly, transitioning from plain wooden service halls to high, antique walls adorned with paintings of frozen landscapes.
Lee took the lead, his physical speed pushing him a few paces ahead as they rounded the final corner toward the massive, sweeping staircase that led to the Grand Pavilion.
But just as Lee's foot hit the first step, something went wrong.
It happened in a fraction of a second. The air around the base of the staircase suddenly grew heavy—not with chakra, but with a bizarre, unnatural cold that made them hard to breathe.
Neji's Byakugan activated automatically, his pupils contracting. At the exact same moment, young Sasuke's two-tomoe Sharingan spun violently.
Both boys saw the invisible danger right away. It looked like a tight net of razor-sharp wires stretched across the stairs. The wires were glowing with chakra and shaking so fast they could slice a person to pieces.
"Lee, wait—!" Neji yelled.
But they couldn't grab him. The sudden spike of killing intent in the air forced both Neji and Sasuke to stop midway, their bidy felt heavy and couldn't move further because of low chakra.
They were forced to a dead stop at the base of the steps.
Lee, however, was already moving with too much forward momentum. He couldn't stop.
"LEEEEE!" Sasuke shouted.
Lee who was unaffected by the atmosphere landed hard on the upper part of the staircase.
"Neji! Sasuke-kun!" Lee called out, turning around at the top, but the heavy iron security gates above the staircase suddenly began to slam down with a deafening CRASH, threatening to cut him off from them completely.
"Neji! Sasuke! Come on! Jump!" Lee yelled from the top of the stairs, waving his arms frantically as the heavy iron security gate began its rapid, automated descent.
"We can't!" Neji shouted back, his voice strained as his Byakugan locked onto the space in front of them. "The space here... it's completely warped!"
It wasn't an enemy trap. As Sasuke's two-tomoe Sharingan tracked the vibrating air, he realized the terrifying truth. The immense power his older self had just used against the Samurai in the main hall was so strong that it had rippled through the walls.
Adult Sasuke had never intended for the aftershock to reach them, but the sheer gravity of that ancient Uchiha legacy had bent the very atmosphere of the stairwell, creating a dangerous grid of distorted space.
One wrong step, and they would be crushed by the sheer weight of a folded dimension.
"Lee, go!" Sasuke ordered, his teeth gritted as he tried to find a safe path.
The iron gate was inches from the stone floor.
"Darn it! I have to hurry up!" Lee yelled.
With a burst of raw speed, Lee threw himself forward, sliding flat on his stomach across the polished floorboards.
He squeezed through the remaining gap just as the heavy iron gate came down with a deafening, building-shaking SLAM!
The iron bars locked into the floor with a heavy click, completely sealing Lee on the upper side.
Below the stairs, the distorted air finally began to settle, returning to normal as the aftershock of the Sharingan faded away.
Sasuke and Neji stood in the sudden silence, staring at the solid iron wall separating them from their teammate.
On the other side of the gate, Lee scrambled to his feet, his fingers gripping the cold iron bars as he looked through the small gaps. "Neji! Sasuke-kun! Are you guys okay?!"
---
MESSAGE TO THE READERS !! 📢
Author's Note — ❄️
This chapter is literally:
💣 chaos
⚡ speed
🐍 family drama
😭 and Neji losing his sanity in real time
OKAY EVERYONE 😭😭😭
Before anything else...
CAN WE PLEASE DISCUSS THE FACT THAT ROCK LEE WAS WALKING AROUND A HOTEL WITH EXPLOSIVE TAGS ATTACHED TO HIS TRAINING WEIGHTS 💀💣
LIKE HELLO???? 😭
Neji was fighting for his LIFE in this chapter 😭🙏
❄️ "WHY ARE YOUR WEIGHTS ARMED?!" ❄️
I am sorry but that line took me OUT 💀
And Lee answering with:
🟢 "I wanted to be prepared for a workout 😊"
SIR.
YOU ARE THE SECURITY THREAT 😭😭😭
And please notice how Young Sasuke didn't even question it anymore 😭
At this point bro has accepted that Team Gai functions on pure madness 💀
ALSOOOOO ⚡
MINATO 😎😎
One second:
🧍 decorative wall ornamen
Next second:
⚡ FASTEST MAN ALIVE ⚡
The way everybody just got YEETED across the hallway before the Samurai could blink 😭🙏
Poor Neji was genuinely trying to apply science to this situation.
🧍 "That speed is impossible."
🧍 "No hand signs."
🧍 "No visible body movement."
Meanwhile Lee:
🍜 "Maybe it was a noodle delivery man."
NEJI WAS TWO SECONDS AWAY FROM EXPLODING 😭😭😭
AND THEN—
THE BLACK DEVIL STOPPED PLAYING 😭🔥
Please understand the difference here 👇
Before:
🖤 mysterious traveler
🖤 intelligent man
🖤 tree philosopher
After:
💀 SPACE FOLDING DEMON 💀
This man literally bent SPACE ITSELF while standing there like:
❄️ "You are fighting a ghost." ❄️
EXCUSE ME??? 😭😭😭
And meanwhile Orochimaru was NOT helping AT ALL 😭
Bro entered the battlefield and immediately started roleplaying family drama in front of traumatized Samurai 💀
🧍 "my boy"
🧍 "wife's family"
🧍 "mother-in-law"
THE SAMURAI WERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES AND THEIR BRAINS 😭😭😭
PLEASEEEE the way one of them screamed:
❄️ "IT'S A CURSED HOUSEHOLD!" ❄️
I AM GONE 💀💀💀
Also Sasuke internally throughout this entire chapter:
⚡ trying to protect children
⚡ trying to control timelines
⚡ trying not to murder Orochimaru
And failing at the third one VERY badly 😭🙏
AND CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE GOLDEN FLASH DETAIL 👀✨
Mini Sasuke's altered timeline...
Shisui surviving...
a mysterious savior...
and now THIS chapter 👀
My little detectives 🔎 better start connecting dots because the timeline is shaking again 🤯⚡
BUT WAIT—
THE ENDING 😭😭😭
LEE GOT SEALED OFF LIKE A DLC CHARACTER 💀
The poor boy just:
🟢 slid under the gate
🟢 survived dimensional distortion
🟢 got separated from the team
🟢 and STILL had enough energy to ask:
❄️ "ARE YOU GUYS OKAY?!" ❄️
LEE PLEASE 😭💚
And finally...
Please appreciate the fact that Adult Sasuke accidentally caused spatial damage so insane that his younger self had to dodge the AFTERSHOCKS of his Sharingan 😭🔥
Bro is literally his own environmental hazard 💀
And yes...
before anyone asks...
Neji's patience officially died in this chapter ⚰️😭
OKAY NOW 😭✋
On a slightly serious note because my readers are already throwing questions at me like angry Uchihas—
YES 👁️✨
The power Sasuke used in this chapter is related to his Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan 😭🔥
And yes...
I KNOW I never directly mentioned it inside the chapter 😌
But come on guys...
THE CHAPTER TITLE WAS LITERALLY:
⚡ THE CELESTIAL STAR OF THE ETERNAL MANGEKYO ⚡
I practically handed you the spoiler gift-wrapped with snakes and trauma 😭🎁🐍
Now let me explain what actually happened 👇
Most people noticed that Sasuke wasn't fighting normally.
He wasn't dodging.
He wasn't blocking.
He wasn't even moving much.
And yet nobody could touch him 😭
That is because his Eternal Mangekyo ability here does NOT work like simple teleportation.
It manipulates:
❄️ SPACE ❄️
❄️ DISTANCE ❄️
❄️ POSITION ❄️
❄️ DIMENSIONAL FOLDING ❄️
Basically imagine reality itself becoming cloth 🫴🖤
Sasuke "folds" that cloth.
So when the Samurai attacked—
Instead of dodging the sword...
he folded the space around the sword 😭🔥
That is why:
⚡ attacks suddenly changed direction
⚡ distances became unnaturally long
⚡ movement looked broken
⚡ and the hallway itself started becoming distorted
HE WASN'T MOVING NORMALLY.
THE SPACE AROUND HIM WAS 😭💀
And please notice something VERY important 🔎
The distortion became SO intense that even AFTER the fight—
the stairwell upstairs was still warped 😭
That dangerous dimensional pressure trapping Neji and Young Sasuke?
YEAH 💀
THAT WAS BASICALLY THE AFTERSHOCK OF ADULT SASUKE'S ETERNAL MANGEKYO.
Bro used his Sharingan so hard that the BUILDING ITSELF started suffering 😭🙏
And another important detail 👀
When the Samurai attacked Sasuke...
he never once looked panicked.
Why?
Because from Sasuke's perspective—
they were never actually reaching him.
To the Samurai:
⚔️ they were one inch away.
To Sasuke:
🌌 they were miles apart.
That is why he said:
❄️ "You are fighting a ghost." ❄️
Because technically...
they were 😭🔥
And no...
this is NOT Kamui.
My little detectives 🔎 better not mix them up 🧐
Kamui transfers things between dimensions.
THIS ability folds and distorts the CURRENT SPACE around Sasuke itself.
Which honestly makes it even scarier because the battlefield literally stops obeying logic 😭💀
And the funniest part?
Adult Sasuke himself was probably trying NOT to overdo it because:
⚡ Minato was nearby
⚡ the kids were nearby
⚡ timelines are already unstable
⚡ and Orochimaru was busy roleplaying family drama instead of helping 😭🐍
Imagine how terrifying this ability becomes when Sasuke ACTUALLY stops holding back 💀
Your evil author who keeps traumatizing Samurai with cursed family dynamics and enjoys bending space more than emotional stability
— Shinomiya Sakura 🌸✨
⚡ NEXT CHAPTER ⚡
The peaceful morning inside the Grand Pavilion is suddenly shattered.
Rock Lee bursts through the doors in complete panic, speaking as if disaster has already begun.
But before anyone can understand his warnings—
the sound of running footsteps echoes through the corridor.
A torn wall.
A glimpse of a blood-red eye.
And a boy in a yukata standing silently in the doorway.
Then comes a single command—
"EVERYONE… JUMP!"
👉 Chapter 21: The Grand Pavilion Incident — Beneath the Weight of the Fifth Floor
Some warnings come too late.
SNEAK PEEK LINES 💬
"I will distract everyone here for as long as I can! Just take the chance and go!"
"Where are we going and...? Why did he jump?"
---
—With love, one forehead poke away from collapse,
Sakura Shinomiya 💫
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