Seimei wasn't in any rush on the way back.
He cruised through the sky slow as hell, kicking back and taking in the view like some tourist. Only when the sun finally bled out and night swallowed everything did he roll back into the village.
First thing he does the second his feet hit Konoha dirt? Sync up with the shadow clone he left babysitting the place and download the last ten days of intel.
Figured it'd be the usual nothing-burger, but nah; Minato's golden-ass boy decided to poke him again about becoming a jonin sensei for the new batch of fresh meat about to graduate.
The clone punted the decision back to him like a little bitch instead of handling it.
Seimei's brow twitched. Hard.
Look, the dude's got way too many skeletons in his closet and a training schedule from hell; he's got zero interest in playing babysitter to some snot-nosed genin.
But Minato's asked twice now. Guy's not being subtle. He wants an Uchiha face out front so the clan can crawl back into the village's good graces without everyone reaching for kunai the second they see the crest.
Probably also wants to leash Seimei a little tighter to the village while he's at it. Can't blame the guy; Seimei's real body is basically never home. Looks shady as fuck from the outside.
Problem is, Seimei doesn't give a damn if the Hokage's feeling uneasy. If Konoha doesn't want him, cool; there's a thousand places a monster like him can crash without looking over his shoulder. He ain't scared.
Only headache? Losing a stable supply line. Soldier pills by the truckload don't grow on trees, and nobody else can hook him up like the Leaf can.
So unless they really piss him off, flipping the village the bird isn't on the menu.
Rejecting a genin team, though? That ain't war; Minato's not gonna declare him a missing-nin over it.
He'll just turn the blond pretty-boy down again. Politely. Ish.
Last time he used the "I'm too young and green" excuse. Worked like a charm at seventeen.
Now he's pushing twenty; in a world where the average shinobi is pushing daisies by thirty-five, that excuse is deader than the First Hokage.
Gotta come up with something new. Worst case, he pulls a Kakashi: say yes, then fail the little shits on day one and boot them back to the Academy for another year of hell.
Plenty of ways to skin this cat.
Seimei shook the thoughts loose; small-time bullshit. Right now his stomach was screaming louder than his brain.
Ten straight days of nothing but tasteless super-soldier pills; his tongue was about to file for divorce.
Time to treat himself.
Gear tossed in the corner, quick shower to wash off the sweat and sulfur, then straight to Food Street for the usual rampage. BBQ, ramen, dango; everything got annihilated.
Finished it off with a two-hour soak at "Leaf's Cauldron" in the village outskirts until the place was damn near empty, then dragged his ass home sometime past midnight.
Next two days? Pure vacation mode. Slept like the dead, ate like a tailed beast, didn't touch a single hand seal.
Third morning he finally warped back to Moon Island and got back on the grind.
Four more days of straight torture later…
Fifth day, inside the volcano under the island.
Seimei finishes another brutal cycle of "Body Extreme" training.
Checks his gains… nothing. Zero. Zilch.
Most people would panic. He just smirks.
No progress means he's slammed face-first into the wall; the bottleneck before the next transformation.
No hesitation. He kills the training, one thought and Flying Raijin; gone from that roasting hellhole straight to the cool surface of the island.
Couple minutes for all the burns and heat damage to knit themselves shut, then he pops every single shadow clone still grinding away, on-island and off.
Less than an hour of memories this time; digested the whole flood in under five minutes.
Peak condition restored, heart calm as a frozen lake, he starts the breakthrough.
Same ritual as always: first, fire up "Human Imperial" and slap it on himself like a guiding beacon.
Then, hyper-focused, he slams wave after wave of heavily upgraded Palm Sage yang-charged chakra straight into his own cells, forcing them to evolve or die.
He expected the usual twelve-plus-hour slog.
Reality laughed and said "hold my beer."
By mid-afternoon the transformation was already done.
Seimei was fucking stunned; then it clicked. Rinnegan juiced the hell out of his Human Imperial template. Less wrong turns, way faster evolution.
That crystalline crack echoed in his skull like someone shattering a mirror made of his own limits.
The invisible shackles chaining his flesh? Gone.
For the first time in forever, when he reached inside himself he couldn't find a ceiling. Just endless sky.
But the real money shot was still coming; the post-breakthrough metamorphosis.
He closed his eyes and waited.
Didn't take long. That warm, familiar current ignited deep in his core, surged through every chakra pathway, flooding every cell with liquid sunlight.
"Mmmph~"
He let out a low, shameless groan, eyes rolling back a little as the warmth rebuilt him from the ground up.
Thirty whole minutes of pure euphoric remodeling.
When he finally snapped his eyes open again, the world looked sharper, the air tasted sweeter, and his body felt like it had shed ten tons of dead weight.
Every stat across the board had taken another monstrous leap.
Seimei cracked a feral grin.
This; this right here; is why he keeps dragging his ass through hell every single day.
Harvest season, motherfuckers.