After Kagami left, Shanks continued drinking his little bottle of liquor and humming to himself.
“I didn’t expect Brother Kagami to be getting married soon.”
Then again, it made sense.
Based on the timeline, Shisui should be around two or three years older than Itachi.
That meant Shisui’s father should be around the same generation as Uchiha Fugaku.
The father of Fugaku, the young clan heir of the Uchiha, had probably married young as well.
Kagami being close to marriage now was not strange.
“Ugh.
By the time Naruto is born, won’t I already be an old man?”
Shanks felt depressed.
No one liked being called an old man.
Unfortunately, he had already asked Mito about it.
The Strength of a Hundred Seal, or Yin Seal, could only be trained by women.
Men could not use it.
Unless, of course, someone developed a Yang Seal one day.
A while later, a string of popping sounds rang out.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!
One shadow clone after another ended the day’s training.
Shanks collapsed flat on the ground.
A sharp, sour sensation surged through his mind.
His nerves twitched so violently that he nearly fainted on the spot.
Only after more than ten minutes did he finally recover.
Then he sensed the flood of training experience pouring into his mind.
A satisfied smile appeared on his face.
“So I really am someone with a cheat now.”
After returning to the village, Shanks was about to head to the Akimichi barbecue restaurant to replenish his body when he passed by a bathhouse.
“Shanks!”
A childish voice called out to him.
“Hm?
Tsunade, did you sneak out again?”
Shanks walked over and placed Tsunade on his shoulders.
“I did not!” Tsunade said loudly.
“I came out with Auntie Keiko.
She started chatting with a bunch of aunties, and it was boring, so I came out by myself.”
She sat on Shanks’s neck and spoke halfway before suddenly pointing toward the bathhouse roof.
“Huh?
Shanks, what’s that?”
Shanks followed the direction of her finger.
Sure enough, there was a small white-haired object on the roof.
The little brat was about the same age as Tsunade and was staring downward without blinking.
“Is that kid peeking?”
Shanks and Tsunade exchanged a look.
“That’s awful!” Tsunade immediately exploded.
“Did he see me taking a bath earlier too?
Shanks, catch him!
I’m going to beat him to death!”
“Who would peek at a tiny brat like you?” Shanks said, speechless.
“He was obviously looking at the adults beside you.”
He jumped onto the roof, grabbed the white-haired little brat by the back of his collar, and vanished from the rooftop.
“Kid, what’s your name?” Shanks asked, holding him up.
“You’re already peeking at your age?
Can you even understand what you’re looking at?”
He had a pretty good guess about who this little brat was.
In the future, Konoha would have three great menaces: Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru.
This should be one of them.
Jiraiya.
“My name is Jiraiya!” the white-haired brat protested.
“And I wasn’t peeking.
I was researching human anatomy!”
He looked like someone whose secret had been exposed, yet he still tried to force an explanation.
Shanks looked up at the sky.
This kid was even more shameless than him.
“You white-haired little pervert!” Tsunade shouted angrily.
“Did you peek at me just now?”
“Who would look at a flat little kid like you?”
“You bastard!
Say that again!”
Tsunade jumped down and immediately tried to beat Jiraiya up.
“All right, all right.
Even if he saw something, there wasn’t anything to see.”
Shanks quickly held Tsunade back.
Tsunade had already learned Chakra-Enhanced Fist.
With Jiraiya’s current tiny body, one punch from her might really beat him half to death.
Unfortunately, Shanks’s comfort only made things worse.
“What do you mean there wasn’t anything to see?” Tsunade turned her anger toward him.
“Shanks, explain yourself!”
“I mean you’re still young.
When you grow up, that’ll be different.”
Shanks immediately changed the subject.
“Come on.
Let’s go gamble a few rounds.
If we’re late, the gambling house will close.”
As expected, Tsunade’s attention shifted.
“Kid, I’m leaving,” Shanks said, glancing at Jiraiya.
“Stop peeking.
If someone catches you for real, you’ll get beaten to death.”
Shanks dragged Tsunade away toward the gambling house.
He only gave Jiraiya a casual warning and did not take it too seriously.
After all, some things were simply inborn.
A three-year-old brat was already “researching human anatomy.”
It was just like Tsunade grabbing dice when she was still a baby.
“Tch.
Stupid blond brat.
I’m too great to argue with you.”
After Shanks and Tsunade left, Jiraiya muttered under his breath and went to another bathhouse to continue his so-called research.
There was no helping it.
He was still too young to enter the bookstores that explained human anatomy properly.
“Big!
Big!
Big!”
Inside the gambling house, Tsunade had completely forgotten that she had almost been seen in the bath earlier.
Her entire world now consisted of the dice in front of her.
The Senju Clan’s gambling talent truly was powerful.
They lost every time they gambled.
Tsunade bet one hundred ryō on big.
Shanks bet one hundred ryō on small.
In the end, he neither won nor lost.
The casino, however, was the one suffering.
After all, Tsunade was already becoming a famous guiding light.
The other gamblers were not stupid either.
Once they saw her bet, they followed the opposite side.
After Tsunade had played enough, Shanks noticed the casino owner’s face was turning ugly and quickly carried her away.
Cutting off someone’s source of wealth was no different from killing their parents.
“Tsunade, are you hungry?
I’ll take you to eat something.
I heard a new ramen shop opened in Konoha recently.
It’s really good.
A lot of people line up for it.”
Seeing Tsunade still looking reluctant to leave, Shanks changed the topic.
There really was a new ramen shop in Konoha recently.
The famous Hand-Pulled Ramen.
Of course, Teuchi was still a child right now.
The person making the ramen was his father.
Their family was just an ordinary civilian family, not some legendary branch of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
“Is it really that good?” Tsunade asked suspiciously.
“Why would I lie to you?
Come on.”
When Shanks and Tsunade reached the ramen shop, there was already a long line outside.
Shanks bounced Tsunade lightly on his shoulders.
“See?
I told you.”
Then he walked straight inside with her.
“Shanks, don’t we have to line up?”
“A famous Four Emperor never queues.”
Shanks raised his chin proudly and shouted toward a white-haired boy at the front.
“Sakumo!
Order two bowls of pork-rib ramen with egg for me!”
“…”
Hatake Sakumo’s face darkened.
Tsunade gave Shanks a silent look of contempt.
A little while later, Sakumo carried the ramen over.
Since the shop was too crowded and there were no seats inside, the three of them sat outside and ate together.
“Shouldn’t you be training at home?” Shanks asked.
“You know, I’ve learned a lot of amazing ninjutsu recently.
Don’t lose to me next time.”
Ever since he started training with Multiple Shadow Clones this month, Shanks had become a little inflated.
“My father said training requires both tension and relaxation,” Sakumo answered seriously.
“So I came out for a walk.”
Starting last year, Shanks and Sakumo had stopped going to school regularly.
There was no real point anymore.
They only kept their names registered because the ninja academy had just been founded and the rules could not be broken casually.
Sakumo and Shanks still maintained their habit of dueling.
Every month, they would fight for several days, with wins and losses on both sides.
The main problem was that Sakumo’s speed kept getting faster.
Shanks did not have many good answers for it yet.
Lightning Release could stimulate the activity of body cells, but Shanks did not know Lightning Release.
He had thought of the Six Powers techniques, Soru and Geppo, but he still had no real clue how to develop them.
“Shanks, this ramen is amazing!”
In the blink of an eye, Tsunade finished an entire large bowl and patted her round little belly.
“If you stop gambling, I’ll buy you ramen every day.
How about that?”
Shanks tried to tempt her.
“No.”
Tsunade rolled her eyes at him.
Not long after, Shanks finished eating too.
“All right, Tsunade, let’s go.”
With that, he grabbed Tsunade and left.
“That bastard didn’t pay, did he?”
Only then did Hatake Sakumo react.
After returning to the Senju compound, Shanks went to visit Senju Hashirama.
Hashirama had become very thin.
Even so, he still looked carefree as he played with dice.
“Yo, little brat.
Come play a few rounds with me!”
Hashirama grinned the moment he saw Shanks enter.
“Gambling with you isn’t challenging at all.”
Seeing Hashirama grow thinner and weaker, Shanks felt a dull ache in his chest.
The man who had once been called the God of Shinobi had truly become a frail old man.
Sensing the change in Shanks’s emotions, Hashirama stood up and rubbed his red hair.
“Hahaha!
Little brat, are you about to cry?”
“I’m not.
Sand got in my eyes.”
“Shanks.”
For once, Hashirama’s voice became serious.
“A man has to be strong.
Everyone dies one day.
Even the Sage of Six Paths could not defeat time.”
He looked at Shanks quietly.
“After I die, you have to help me take good care of Konoha.
This village is the life’s work of both me and Madara.”
“Don’t worry,” Shanks said, curling his lip.
“Konoha will keep existing.
Who knows?
Maybe one day you’ll come back and be able to walk around it again.”
“Hahaha!
How could a dead person come back?”
Hashirama thought Shanks was comforting him.
After keeping Hashirama company for a while, Shanks returned to his own room and continued training Observation Haki.
After two years, his Observation Haki had reached the point where he could sense things within about two hundred meters.
“I wonder if I can train it to the point where I can see five seconds into the future.
That would be amazing.”
The One Piece manga had never said that Shanks could see the future.
But if even Katakuri, one of the Sweet Commanders, could train Observation Haki to that extreme, then there was no reason Shanks couldn’t.
Before Armament Haki and Conqueror’s Haki awakened, he would focus mainly on Observation Haki.
After all, the three types of Haki were the foundation he would rely on to stand firm in the Naruto world.