Back when Feiyu first obtained the Demonic Inheritance Tome, he'd actually tried quite hard for a while to pry more information out of it.
Unfortunately, all his efforts had been useless.
That black book floating in his mind simply didn't respond. It didn't interact with the outside world at all, and Feiyu had no idea how to draw anything from it.
"Looks like… it's because I'd never killed anyone before. Otherwise, I probably would've noticed this book's real nature much earlier."
Makes sense. It is called a demonic inheritance compendium. Using human lives as offerings is about as on-brand as it gets.
"The question is… does it have to be humans? Or will any sapient creature do? This world has more than just humans—there's plenty of summoning beasts and other intelligent races."
"The ones I've killed before were just chakra beasts. Smarter than normal animals, sure, but definitely not 'people'—they couldn't even talk."
Thinking this over, Feiyu didn't hesitate and sacrificed all three wisps of black mist on the altar.
The huge dark tome in his mind trembled faintly, and a sliver of information flowed out.
"'Breeding Method for Silver-Scaled Venom Serpents'? What the hell is this?"
He closed his eyes and absorbed the contents. When he opened them again, his expression was… unimpressed.
This time the tome's "reward" clearly failed to meet expectations.
After carefully going through it, Feiyu pieced together where the Silver-Scaled Venom Serpents came from.
They weren't from the shinobi world at all.
They were from Legend of the Condor Heroes—a special venomous serpent cultivated by Ouyang Feng, the Western Venom. The iron staff in his hand was wrapped with two such silver-scaled snakes: bodies as hard as steel, impervious to blades, and venom so fierce that even someone on Hong Qigong's level nearly died from a single bite.
And in terms of resisting poison, wuxia inner power is arguably better than chakra. In pure poison resistance, Hong Qigong would absolutely outclass most Kage-level ninja.
So yes—this monster snake recipe was useful… just not particularly useful to Feiyu right now.
"At best, it's something I could trade to Orochimaru for goodies. If I could connect with Ryūchi Cave, the snake sages there would probably pay a high price for this 'junk paper.'"
The serpents Ouyang Feng raised weren't just poisonous and durable; they were terrifyingly fast and cunning. Otherwise, there'd be no way for them to match his Snake Staff techniques so well.
If you could turn normal venomous snakes into such monsters, and then add chakra into the mix, you could very well raise some kind of terrifying contract beast—a serpent king. If Feiyu put this method on the table, he might actually be able to trade it for a summoning contract with Ryūchi Cave.
"If I remember right, Ryūchi Cave is pure law-of-the-jungle. Every time Orochimaru goes there and fights, at least dozens of snakes end up dead… If I get that contract, I could go to Ryūchi Cave regularly and harvest souls. My body, chakra, and spirit would all skyrocket."
Thinking along those lines, Feiyu's disappointment faded.
He didn't know Orochimaru personally—yet. But making contact with a famous Konoha sannin to propose a transaction wouldn't be that hard.
Compared to Jiraiya and Tsunade, Orochimaru didn't seem very possessive about the Ryūchi Cave summoning contract. Anko, Kabuto, Uchiha Sasuke—they all eventually got contracts to the snake realm.
And Ryūchi Cave didn't care much who its contractors were either.
That, for Feiyu, was excellent news.
If it were Mount Myōboku or Shikkotsu Forest, getting a contract probably wouldn't be as simple as "I'll trade you something cool."
A few soft swish swish sounds cut across his thoughts.
Feiyu's expression shifted. In an instant, his short blade appeared in his hand, lightning trailing along its edge. He slashed forward in a flash of light.
The blade pinned a suddenly appearing ninja by the shoulder.
"Who's there? Identify yourself!"
"W–wait, I'm ANBU! I'm here on orders from the Hokage!"
The animal-masked ninja's face was hidden, but his voice and body language were visibly panicked. Blood seeped from where the blade had skewered his shoulder.
"Oh, ANBU is amazing now, huh? Being ANBU means you don't have to use the door? You can just vault into people's homes through the window?"
"So if I throw on an ANBU mask too, I can wander into anyone's house and rummage through their stuff, is that it?"
Feiyu had zero intention of indulging ANBU habits.
He'd caught one, so he let him have it.
And this poor sap couldn't even argue back—he was just delivering a message. There was no justification for slipping in through the window.
Ordinary shinobi had long grown numb to this kind of ANBU "intrusion." Add fear to that, and no one dared complain.
Too bad this guy had run into an iron plate named Uchiha Feiyu.
"I–I didn't mean it like that…"
"Then why didn't you knock? You're just here to pass on a notice, not arrest me. You can't even be bothered to show basic respect?"
"Uh…"
The ANBU was briefly speechless.
Feiyu just turned cold-faced and kicked the unlucky fellow right back out the window, then grabbed his vest and strode toward the Hokage Tower.
"That old Third again… This is probably about those Sand ninja I killed, huh?"
Feiyu only had to think for a moment to guess why Hiruzen was calling him in.
The power he'd shown in that last battle had been way too much. In the middle of the Third Great Ninja War, there's no way Konoha's leadership would not try to make use of that kind of combat strength.
"Right now, the initial clash with the Sand has already passed. The front is entering a slower phase—the battlefield isn't as deadly as in the beginning."
"If I drag it out, once the other great villages fully commit, I'll get sent to other fronts anyway. Compared to that, the Sand front is actually the safer option."
As he walked, Feiyu quietly talked himself through it.
In truth, he knew perfectly well why his attitude had changed.
The reason he was even considering going to war…
Was because of the change in the Demonic Inheritance Tome.
It could take the lives of sapient beings as offerings and give back knowledge.
That was the real reason Feiyu was willing to get closer to the battlefield.
He didn't care about Konoha at all. If he wanted, walking away from this war was absolutely an option. With his current strength, as long as he stayed cautious, his survival odds were very high.
And Konoha, in the middle of a world war, wouldn't have the spare capacity to obsessively hunt a rogue ninja who didn't know any village secrets and hadn't harmed them directly. A few years later, when the war ended, they'd have even less interest in chasing down Uchiha Feiyu.
The only reason he was giving up the purely safe route—
Was because before, fighting was "for Konoha."
Now?
It was for himself.
If he could gather enough sacrificial mist from the dead, there was a real chance he could draw out some demonic cultivation techniques from xianxia worlds—and from there, completely rewrite his own fate.
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