Time slipped quietly by; the sun sank in the west, and the dusk grew ever deeper.
A full day of high-intensity training thus came to a close.
Genshin loosened his limbs at will, and the faint golden Hamon clinging to the surface of his skin slowly withdrew back into his body.
The weariness throughout his frame was quietly soothed away by his continuously running Breathing Method.
In a little while he’d be as good as fresh off the factory line again—a veritable perpetual motion machine of the Shinobi World.
After Tsunade’s targeted corrections in the morning and the real-combat honing of the afternoon, his command of Chakra Enhanced Strength had grown ever more refined.
Both his physical strength and the precision of his Chakra control had climbed more than a full tier above where they’d started.
Waving goodbye to Shisui Uchiha and Itachi, Genshin turned and took the hand of little Hinata, who stood obediently at his side, and set off at a leisurely pace toward the Hyuga compound.
The evening breeze drifted gently the whole way, and the Konoha streets along the route were gradually steeped in twilight.
Having safely delivered Hinata to the gate of the Hyuga estate, Genshin rubbed her soft crown of hair and watched the little steam princess, her whole face flushed red, dash into the courtyard.
Only then did he turn back and head toward his own little cottage.
By now the sky was darkening, and the streetlamps flickered on one after another, lighting up the forest paths and the alleys of the residential district.
The training field and streets, so lively by day, gradually fell quiet, leaving only the scattered sounds of children at play drifting faintly over.
Yet mixed into that playful noise were a few grating notes of mockery and abuse—strikingly out of place.
He looked up and—hoh.
A familiar alley, familiar jeers and insults ringing in his ears.
Don’t tell me you lot dare to come back?
You really think I won’t give you another thrashing?
Genshin strode off toward the alley with great, purposeful steps—but as he walked and walked…
Hm?
Something seemed off?
There he saw the three bully brats he’d disciplined before—the ones who’d run laps down the street confessing their wrongs—now huddled in a corner of the alley, faces full of grievance, trembling.
And surrounding them were seven or eight other children of roughly the same age, every one of them wearing a mocking grin, jeering without restraint.
“Hahaha, three good-for-nothings!
You set out to bully someone and end up getting schooled by a little kid instead—how shameful is that!”
“And you actually ran laps down the street confessing your sins—you’re the laughingstock of the whole village!”
“Losers are losers—you can’t even mess with some newcomer brat!”
The filthy language rose and fell in waves.
This gang of children, just like the bullies before them, had turned around and started bullying the three who’d done wrong earlier, making them the new targets of ridicule and outlets for their venting.
Weren’t you the ones getting bullied before?!
It was laughable enough to make him seethe.
Genshin was genuinely stumped by this Konoha culture.
Good grief—what kind of Konoha-exclusive rules-horror story was this?
Whether it was your looks, your bloodline, your talent, or even having a slightly broad forehead—or getting schooled and losing face running laps—as long as you showed a weak spot and ended up in the weaker position, you’d be reduced to the next target of bullying.
A few days ago, because Naruto was the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki and shunned by the entire village—an “outcast weakling” in everyone’s eyes—they’d bullied Naruto without any restraint.
Then the moment they stumbled and lost face, becoming the “failures, the losers” in others’ eyes, they instantly went from bullies to victims targeted by everyone.
Don’t tell me every last one of you is a card-carrying devotee of cruelty?!
Watching the absurd scene before him, the amusement in Genshin’s eyes slowly faded, and the air around him chilled by a few degrees.
Step by step he advanced toward the alley, gradually closing in from behind on the children who were cursing away with such gusto.
Probably too absorbed in their bullying, they hadn’t even noticed Genshin approaching from behind.
Smack!
A crisp sound rang out.
Genshin raised his hand and, palm laced with Hamon, brought it down against the back of the head of the bully brat standing at the very rear.
The last kid’s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull, but to his terror he found he couldn’t utter a word—couldn’t even move his body.
Smack!
Smack!
Smack!
Genshin never broke stride, transforming into a Slapping Sage—one smack per kid, and each fell silent.
The kid at the very front was still cursing, but bit by bit he realized something was wrong—it seemed… the only voice still cursing was his own.
“Hey, why’d you all stop cursing—”
He turned to look and found a figure blocking his view, the setting sun blazing from behind that figure so that he couldn’t quite make out the face.
“You’re—”
Smack!
That was the loudest slap yet—the head had turned around at just the right moment, and a slap that lands square on the face is the only way to really hit the spot.
Genshin walked to the very front, turned around, and pointed at the seven or eight little terrors.
“Now, you lot can start bullying each other.”
And so the three unlucky souls sprawled on the ground witnessed a scene that felt oddly familiar—the seven or eight children stood in a circle and took turns slapping the one beside them, giving off the distinct flavor of a game of pass-the-slap, drumbeat and all.
The unlucky trio stared blankly at the scene, watching the ones who’d wantonly bullied them just moments ago get punished one by one and confess in public.
The grievance and frustration bottled up in their hearts instantly dissolved, and an explosively satisfying wave of relief surged up in them.
One of the brats couldn’t hold it in and blurted out: “Yeah!
That’s right!
This is exactly the feeling!”
The moment the words left his mouth, all three froze, abruptly meeting the gaze Genshin cast their way.
Instantly mortified enough to curl their toes into the ground, they hastily waved their hands to salvage things, voices utterly flustered: “Ahaha… B-big bro, we—we just really, really hate bullying, that’s all!
Honest!”
Watching the three of them scramble to cover themselves in such embarrassment, Genshin neither teased nor scolded them—there was only a crystalline clarity in his heart.
Yes—he was gradually coming to understand it all.
Genshin had seen through the truest, cruelest underlying rules of this village called Konoha, and had slowly worked out the core survival logic that ran through the entire Shinobi World.
Everyone sang praises of Konoha’s Will of Fire, of protection, bonds, and devotion.
But Konoha had never been a peaceful village that simply cherished warmth and tenderness.
It was, through and through, a militarized combat collective.
Every rule here had always revolved around combat strength and survival.
In the world of shinobi, a shinobi’s worth was equal to nothing but combat strength.
The strong could win respect, status, and the adulation of all, while the weak, the clumsy, the ones who dragged others down, the outcasts—they would only be shunned, treated as dead weight, and might even, through their own weakness, burden their comrades and get their teammates killed.
This mindset was instilled from childhood.
The children imitated the adults’ standards of judgment, instinctively shunning the “weak, clumsy, drag-you-down” sort.
This ethos passed from adults to children, and from children onward to every corner of the village.
They bullied Naruto not because they were irredeemably evil by nature, but because they’d been domesticated since childhood by the village’s ethos, taking for granted the unspoken rule that “to be weak and an outcast is itself the original sin.”
But… just because it had always been this way—did that make it right?
Right my ass!
There’s no damn way I’m gonna indulge this rotten habit!
Genshin knew perfectly well that his own power was limited for now, that there was no way to root out overnight this deep-seated malady that had persisted for countless years.
But that didn’t mean there was nothing he could do.
If he couldn’t cure it at the root, then he’d start with the fundamentals.
Since shinobi worshipped strength above all, then he would use the way of the strong to lay down brand-new rules.
Starting today, Genshin too would shoulder the load—catch one bully, thrash one bully, winning them over through reason, thrashing them into anti-bullies until the anti-bullies made up the majority.
Ethnic divides, the legacies of war, notions of class discrimination—Genshin was going to solve them all, one by one!
Glancing at the children who’d stopped their slapping, Genshin jutted his chin.
“Done slapping?
Now every one of you, go run your laps!”
“Remember this.
From now on, no bullying anyone, and absolutely no piling on to kick someone when they’re down.
If I ever catch you pulling this crap again, I’ll go right back to thrashing you!”
And so, the evening streets of Konoha gained one more curious sight—seven or eight children running along with grief-stricken faces, chanting, “Bullying others shames the village.”
____
👻🔥Read More: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Naruto: Is it reasonable to beat up an Otsutsuki with Hamon, right?
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