Reborn in Konoha; I Think I’m Cultivating Immortality

During Hui's first evolution, he awakened a divine art that he named the Celestial Eye.

It was an extremely powerful ability, one that made his eyes even stronger than the Sharingan and the Byakugan, and now it also granted him mastery over life and death as well as spatial capture.

Now, with his third transformation, Hui had gained a second divine art.

How to best describe this new power...

Hui walked out of the room. 

The weather outside was sunny and clear, not a single cloud in the sky, truly a beautiful day.

Sensing something, Hui's body suddenly gave a light leap. 

He was as weightless as a butterfly as if he had only three feathers on his person.

He landed on the rooftop without making the slightest sound.

Once on the rooftop, he jumped again and performed a few agile flips, arriving atop another house.

This was a residence belonging to someone from the Senju Clan, with an upper-level jonin living inside.

Hui appeared right there on the man's rooftop, and yet as a jonin, the occupant did not notice a thing.

"What should I eat today?"

"Dango? Barbecue? Ramen 'Three Forty-Seven'? Chicken?"

"I want them all!"

"Maybe I'll eat each one in turn?"

"But if I do that, I'll go broke!"

"No, I've gotta pick up a mission!"

"But which mission should I take? Feels like there aren't any interesting missions, and those other guys always snatch them up so fast!"

"Man, that's so annoying!"

Hui had just landed on the rooftop and activated his new divine art when a string of chatter began pouring into his ears. He could not help smiling wryly.

This jonin was rumored to be the "cold-faced" type, difficult to get along with. 

Yet it turned out he was so indecisive, so fond of good food, so prone to rambling, just that it was all in his own mind. 

He rarely spoke to others simply because he was too busy talking to himself inside his head. It was truly unexpected.

Hui shook his head with a smile, then slipped away, vanishing swiftly.

Before long, he arrived somewhere quite familiar.

He activated his divine art again, and suddenly a series of new "voices" bubbled up in his mind:

"I'm so bored… Wonder when Brother Hui will come back. And Sis too, she vanished out of nowhere."

"Maybe I'll go hang out with Minato? But that's too dull—his Flying Thunder God isn't polished yet, so sparring him is like kicking around a rookie."

"Or maybe I should go bother that smelly fox, the Nine-Tails? No, no, no… Every time I play games with him, I lose."

"Imagine me, the future great em,peror of trees, losing to a fox at a game of wits. How humiliating! So outrageous."

"The last Chunin Exams were so fun, though. Completely destroying my teammates and opponents felt amazing!"

"They must've been totally stunned!"

"The name 'Nawaki' is probably spreading through the ninja world by now."

"A legend, born just like that~!"

Another litany of internal ramblings reached Hui's ears, making him laugh out loud.

So that little rascal Nawaki, who on the outside appeared calm, cool, and powerful, was in fact a closet chatterbox deep down.

Quietly mocking Nawaki in his head, Hui once again moved on. 

Throughout it all, Nawaki never noticed his presence—even though Nawaki was at elite jonin level by now, and within him, the Nine-Tails was completely a Kage-tier entity.

Even with Hui so close, Nawaki failed to detect him. Only the Nine-Tails, in Nawaki's mental realm, sensed Hui's presence and exhaled in relief once Hui left.

Even though Mochizuki Hui bore no malice toward it, the Nine-Tails still felt enormous pressure around him.

This little monster… He's already grown to the Sage of Six Paths' level! This is… an utterly unprecedented kind of terrifying.

The Nine-Tails muttered to itself, feeling lingering fear. From Hui's body, it sensed an aura on par with the Six Paths Sage. For Hui, at only twenty-four years old, to become that powerful was almost beyond belief.

Of course, Hui himself knew the Nine-Tails had spotted him, but he simply did not mind. Right now, to him, the Nine-Tails was nothing but a slightly larger pet.

That was the perspective of someone at the Six Paths level—seeing one of the strongest beings in the ninja world as a mere pet.

Meanwhile, Hui returned to his room. 

He had tested the new divine art's capability, and its effectiveness surpassed expectations. Presumably, everyone realized by now what new divine art Hui had awakened.

In Daoist terms, it might be called the ability to know others' minds and intentions.

In Buddhist terms, it might be called the Divine Ear or Telepathy, though more traditionally, it would be called Reading Others' Hearts.

Hui himself referred to this divine art as simply, "Divine Art of Mind reading."

The conditions for activating this ability were practically nonexistent, because it was a divine art differed from his celestial eye's active abilities.

These abilities usually require specific triggers and consume certain types of energy. 

However once a person possessed this kind of ability, he coud use it was an extension of his own limps

It is like how the human heart automatically beats to provide energy, and how the stomach digests food. Once a divine art awakens, it becomes a bodily instinct. This instinct consumes almost no energy, and whatever it does use recovers easily.

Hui's Celestial Eye worked the same way: if he wanted, he could keep its passive abilitiesd active indefinitely.

Actually, it was more accurate to say that suppressing the Celestial Eye cost him more effort, as he had to forcibly seal it back into an ordinary appearance.

Now, Hui's second divine art—Mind reading—operated likewise. Switching it off likewise demanded conscious effort, because he had to suppress that instinctive function.

Such was the nature of his evolution, of his metamorphosis. Hence, the divine art of mind reading placed almost no burden on Hui.

However, there were still distance limitations. Just as eyes can only see so far, ears can only catch certain sounds, and a nose can only discern so many smells, every sense and ability has a limit.

Hui's mind-reading could only extend so far. Beyond that range, thoughts from other people grew hazy in his mind until he lost them entirely.

But ten meters was more than sufficient, especially in close-quarters combat, ten meters covered the entire danger zone.

"If Jiraiya learned about this divine art, he'd probably be green with envy,"

Mochizuki Hui mused with a grin, thinking of his friend.

Combined with the Celestial Eye's x-ray vision and long-distance sight, plus the brand-new ability to sense what others were thinking, these two divine arts were practically the ultimate tools for flirting and picking up women, surely, it was Jiraiya's lifelong dream!

Smiling wryly at the thought of Jiraiya, Hui sighed inwardly. 

Unlike Tsunade and Orochimaru, Jiraiya had never shown the slightest desire to "serve" the village in an official capacity. He had no interest in holding any position.

Hui had once brought it up, and Jiraiya flatly refused.

Furthermore, to ensure Hui never got the chance to rope him into any official duties, Jiraiya claimed he needed to travel for "inspiration and research," so he'd already left Konoha.

Hui, who had hoped Jiraiya might shine in Konoha, had to give up that notion.

It was truly a pity.

"So this sums up the changes in my body. Next… I'll be taking another step forward!"

Hui murmured, eyes gleaming faintly.

Eight years ago, he had used Qi within himself to assimilate the power of life force, originally estimating it would take at least ten years to succeed. 

But his recent bodily evolution caused that entire process to accelerate dramatically.

At present, Mochizuki Hui had completely assimilated the power of life. In other words, from now on, he no longer needed to absorb life force from other living beings to sustain his immortality.

Now, any form of energy he possessed—be it light energy, chakra, or natural energy—could be converted into life force.

This meant Hui could even grant eternal life to everyone else, if he so wished, because light energy was inexhaustible.

It was precisely through this assimilation of life force that Hui now surpassed the Otsutsuki Clan, acquiring an insane regeneration that allowed him to rebirth from a single drop of blood!

And now, he could assimilate three new kinds of energy…