The outskirts of Tanzaku Street.
Inside a remote, deserted dead-end alley.
Tsunade held Shizune by the back of her collar and landed smoothly on the ground.
She panted heavily, her chest heaving violently.
“Tsunade-sama…” Shizune asked with a tearful face, her voice trembling.
“Where are we going now?”
In her arms, Tonton had rolled her eyes back and fainted.
“Where else can we go?” Tsunade spat crossly.
“Switch to another town to lay low!”
Suddenly, she stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes sharpening into needles.
Under Shizune’s bewildered gaze, Tsunade slowly turned toward a dark patch of shadow at the alley corner.
“Are you coming out yourself, or am I going to beat you out?”
As her voice echoed, tap, tap, tap—a series of crisp footsteps emerged from the shadows.
Disguised as a stray samurai, Chiba stepped into view.
“It’s you?”
Recognizing him, Tsunade’s brows twisted into a tight knot.
It was this bastard who had relentlessly bet against her at the gambling table and cleaned her out of ten million ryo!
“Are you sent by the casino boss to collect debt?” Tsunade sneered, her knuckles cracking loudly as she clenched her fists.
“Or are you an assassin hired by an enemy who holds a grudge?”
Regardless of who he was, she was taking that ten million ryo back today!
Chiba stopped at a safe distance ten paces away.
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, his sensory chakra spread out like a spiderweb, sweeping a full kilometer around them.
No Anbu chakra signatures.
No cold, sinister aura from Root.
Once he confirmed the area was completely secure, Chiba opened his eyes and formed a single hand seal.
Poof!
A cloud of white smoke erupted and dissipated, shedding the rough exterior of the stray samurai to reveal Chiba’s true youthful face.
“A Konoha ninja?”
Tsunade stared at the forehead protector on his brow, slightly startled before her vigilance deepened.
“Did that old man finally lose his patience and send Anbu to drag me back?”
The “old man” she referred to was, of course, the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
“No, Senpai, you misunderstand,” Chiba replied in a calm tone.
“I am not here on orders. I defected from the village on my own.”
Tsunade’s surprise grew.
A teenage Chunin, barely sixteen or seventeen, had the nerve to become a rogue ninja?
“Oh? Fled Konoha?” Tsunade scoffed, turning her back to him.
“Then run far away. What do you want with me? I severed all ties with that rotten village long ago.”
“I need Senpai’s protection,” Chiba’s voice echoed through the narrow alley.
Tsunade paused, as if she had just heard a ridiculous joke.
“Protection?” She turned back around, her face full of mockery.
“Who do you think you are to ask for my help? Just because you won ten million ryo from me in a casino?”
Shizune stood quietly to the side, barely daring to breathe.
She knew all too well how terrifying Tsunade-sama could be when pushed.
Chiba stood firm and straight.
He knew that when negotiating with a veteran who had survived wars, words alone meant nothing.
Slowly, Chiba raised his right hand, palm facing up.
The chakra within his body underwent a profound transformation.
Water and Earth natures fused under the catalyst of Yang Release, sending a wave of vibrant, pure life force surging through his meridians.
Without a single hand seal, driven purely by instinct, a soft yet vibrant green light bloomed in his palm.
At first, Tsunade looked on with disdain.
But the moment she felt the distinct nature of that chakra, her body froze as if struck by lightning.
“Thi… this is…”
The mockery in her eyes vanished instantly, replaced by sheer, overwhelming shock.
Right before Tsunade and Shizune’s eyes, a tender green sprout pushed out from Chiba’s palm.
The thumb-thick sapling radiated a powerful, thriving vitality that seemed to freeze the very air around them.
Shizune covered her mouth, her knees trembling so badly she could barely stand.
And Tsunade—a Sannin who had witnessed countless battlefields—stopped breathing altogether.
Her pupils contracted violently, her gaze glued to the tiny sapling swaying in Chiba’s hand.
Even from ten paces away, she felt it clearly.
This was the miraculous power that had once belonged solely to her grandfather, the “God of Shinobi”!
“Mokuton…” Tsunade muttered, her voice raspy and trembling.
How many monstrous human experiments had Konoha’s leadership conducted just to recreate this power?
Yet here stood an ordinary youth, wielding Wood Release flawlessly.
More importantly, he hadn’t formed a single seal!
This wasn’t something an experimental subject could accomplish—this was a miracle that could only awaken in a true descendant of the Senju bloodline!
“Who… are you really?!”
Tsunade took a step forward, a suffocating aura of chakra instantly blanketing the alley.
The stone pavement beneath her cracked under the immense pressure.
If she didn’t get answers right now, she would not let him leave this alley alive.
Chiba smoothly reabsorbed his chakra.
The small sapling instantly withered, dissolving into a handful of fine ash.
“Senpai,” Chiba said, meeting her intense gaze directly.
“My name is Senju Chiba.”
The moment she heard the name Senju, Tsunade’s tense shoulders trembled.
She bit her lip hard, her eyes swirling with shock, confusion, anger, and a faint, buried trace of hope.
“Impossible…” Tsunade gritted out.
“The Senju clan is long gone. If you truly possessed the bloodline and awakened Wood Release, how could that old man and Danzo possibly let you wander off out here?”
Konoha’s leadership possessed an almost morbid obsession with Wood Release.
If someone in the village had awakened it naturally, they would have risked everything—Anbu and Root combined—to lock him away in the deepest depths of Konoha to cultivate him as the ultimate living weapon.
“Because they don’t know,” Chiba answered softly.
“I only awakened this power a few days ago. I know better than anyone what fate awaits me if this strength is exposed to the light.”
“I would either be brainwashed by Danzo into an emotionless killing machine for Root, or put under house arrest by Hiruzen Sarutobi as a bargaining chip to secure his power as Hokage.”
“So, I ran.”
Chiba looked straight into Tsunade’s eyes.
“And in the entire shinobi world, the only person who can shield me from Konoha’s Anbu… is you, the blood granddaughter of the First Hokage.”