Simultaneous Transmigration: We Level Up Alone Across Multiple Worlds

They are pursuers.

Hinata Chen could guess the gist of what they asked the shopkeeper in the general store without even listening.

Unfamiliar faces, accents from other places, when did they arrive, do they live alone or with someone?

Hyuga Chen dipped the horseshoe into the bucket of water.

The rising steam obscured the lenses of his goggles, and he used this position to look out through the earthen wall of the shop.

Two chakra silhouettes emerged from the general store and headed towards the town's exit.

The amount of chakra is above that of a Chunin.

Hyuga straightened up and stacked the quenched horseshoes into the finished product pile.

The white light reflected from the snow is extremely bright; even people without snow blindness will experience eye strain after prolonged exposure to this light.

As the two men walked past the shop, one of them slowed down slightly and glanced inside.

Hyuga Dust didn't look up; the hammer fell as usual. The sound of his footsteps faded into the snow.

He placed the hammer on the anvil and went into the inner room.

Beneath the muddy floor of the partition is the entrance to the mine shaft, and a branch tunnel leads to the abandoned mine entrance on the back mountain.

I mentally marked the locations of the abandoned mine entrances. If we needed to work outside the shop, the back mountain would be the best option.

There were no witnesses, and the snow was deep enough to bury the body.

He took out two kunai from his ninja tool bag and engraved a Flying Thunder God coordinate on each kunai handle.

After carving, insert them into the hidden pockets on the inside of the left and right trouser legs, and then pull the trouser legs down to cover them.

The snow has stopped, and the road surface has been covered with a layer of ice, which makes a crunching sound when you walk on it.

Hinata Chen was attaching a wooden handle to a hoe when he heard footsteps coming from across the ditch.

He didn't look up.

The chakra outlines of the two people in their field of vision drew closer and closer, stopping at the shop entrance.

"master."

Hinata Dust raised his head.

The brown lenses of the goggles were facing the doorway.

Two people stood in front of the shop, their chins covered by scarves, and the hems of their cotton robes were covered with snowflakes.

My posture was the same as that day, but I was closer, so close that I crossed the invisible boundary between the shop and the street.

"I have something to ask you." The man took half a step forward and entered the shop.

Another person remained at the doorway, their body slightly turned to the side, blocking the exit.

Hinata Chen leaned the hoe against the wall.

There was also a half-finished machete soaking in the bucket, with the blade submerged in the water and only the handle visible.

He was half a head shorter than Hinata Chen, but he stood very steadily with his center of gravity low.

"The landlady said you've been here for less than a month."

"Um."

"Where did you come from?"

Hinata Chen wiped his hands on his apron.

"The country of Taki."

The man nodded, his gaze slowly sweeping around the shop.

Anvil, bellows, tools hanging on the wall, iron bars piled on the ground.

Finally, it landed on Hyuga Chen's face and stopped on his goggles.

"You're still wearing glasses indoors?"

Snow blindness.

"From the mine?"

"I've worked in several mines. I lived wherever the mines were located."

The man did not ask any further questions.

The warmth in Hyuga Dust's eyes, hidden behind his goggles, gradually faded.

That was the silence before action.

"Take off your glasses and let me see."

"One's stalling head-on, the other's blocking their retreat—that's how confident they are."

The person in front of him hadn't yet clearly mobilized his chakra in his right hand, but his fingers were slightly bent inside the sleeve of his cotton robe, at an angle where he could draw out ninja tools at any moment.

The lightning-attribute chakra on the right hand by the door had been fully condensed, reaching a density of at least Chunin level.

The man was silent for two seconds.

He reached directly towards Hyuga Chen's glasses.

Hinata Chen grabbed his wrist with his other hand.

The enhanced muscle density from Hashirama's cells combined with the reaction speed brought about by the synchronization of Yang Shen made the opponent's grappling movements appear as if they were being broken down frame by frame in Hyuga Chen's eyes.

With a wrist snap and a downward press, the man's shoulders were forced to sink, his body lost its balance, and his entire face slammed into the anvil.

The frontal bone and cheekbone struck the edge of the anvil.

The sound of the bridge of the nose breaking was crisp, like stepping on a dry twig.

boom!

Hinata Chen delivered a final blow to the back of his head, the gentle force penetrating the inside of his skull and shattering the vascular network surrounding the brainstem.

His body lay on the muddy ground next to the anvil, his fingers still twitching slightly.

The people at the door realized what was happening.

He pulled out a kunai from under his cotton robe, and lightning chakra exploded on the kunai blade, the lightning flashing blue in the white light of the snowy day.

Hyuga Chen pulled out a kunai with the Flying Thunder God coordinates engraved on it from a hidden pocket in his trouser leg and threw it behind the man.

It brushed past his ear.

At the same instant the lightning spread across the ground, Hyuga Dust disappeared from beside the anvil.

The next time they appeared was behind him.

The landing point was exactly in the center, but there were no coordinates.

Hinata Chen's right hand went around his neck and grabbed his chin, while his left hand pressed down on the top of his head and twisted it.

click!

It slipped through my fingers, which I couldn't loosen.

Hinata Chen released his grip, letting the second body slide down to his feet.

He picked up the kunai that had fallen to the ground and put it back into its sheath.

There was no one on the street.

On a snowy midday, the townspeople stayed huddled at home.

Smoke was billowing from the chimney across the creek; the shopkeeper was probably cooking lunch.

Pull down half of the roller shutter and return to the shop.

Two bodies lay across the anvil.

The first one was face down, blood flowing from under its nose onto the muddy ground, its color a dark red.

Its second eye was still open, its mouth was slightly open, and its neck was twisted into an abnormal arc, lying on the ground like a chicken with its neck broken.

Hyuga Chen squatted down to search him.

Ninja tool kit, kunai, shuriken, soldier rations, and a simple codebook.

Standard for dark areas.

The headband was rolled up in the innermost layer of the ninja tool bag, and the Konoha swirling crest reflected the faint light under the glow of the hearth fire.

He took both sets of ninja tools and all his personal belongings.

Then they grabbed the first person's ankle and dragged them into the cubicle, leaving dark red drag marks on the floor.

The second one is handled in the same way.

The wooden partition was lifted, revealing the entrance to the mine.

The sound of two bodies sliding down the mine's slope echoed briefly in the tunnel.

Hinata Dust went down into the cave last and closed the wooden planks.

In the hollow cavity deep inside the mine, he laid the two bodies flat in the corner and used his shadow clone to shovel a few handfuls of quicklime from the abandoned mine pit and sprinkle them on.

The lime masked the smell of blood, but it wouldn't last long.

This is not a place to hide for long.

He squatted down and opened the password book.

The secret code changes weekly, and this book only has a few days left to be used.

If they fail to contact each other within the specified period, Konoha will mark them as missing.

After the death was confirmed, additional manpower was deployed.

"A few days. At most a few days."

He closed the codebook, stuffed it into his ninja tool bag, and stood up.

The candlelight flickered in the mine, and the Flying Thunder God coordinates on the cave wall gleamed with a faint chakra glow in the Byakugan's vision.

The previous coordinates, plus the ones newly carved tonight, make up several lines, arranged in a row.

"We must speed things up. We need to master all the ninjutsu in the Book of Sealing. The Flying Thunder God Technique coordinates need to be set up far enough away; there's very little we can accomplish in a few days."

He recalled the warmth that surged into his Byakugan on the day of the fusion. When the Yang Release chakra and that strange physical energy were wrapped together and poured into his eyeballs, it felt like his eyes were soaking in warm water.

Then a cool sensation seeped out from my eyes and traveled along my meridians throughout my body.

"That thing wasn't ordinary Yang Release. There was something else inside Hashirama's cells; it was only after the Resurrection Technique was used to extract it that it became clear. My eyesight improved after that."

He can't draw a conclusion yet.

But there is a direction. The evolution of the Byakugan requires the triggering of the Otsutsuki bloodline. If the energy carried in Hashirama's cells is related to the Otsutsuki, it means that this path is feasible.

"The next step is verification. Fuse another tube and observe the White Eye's reaction. If the change is continuous, it means the evolutionary channel has been opened. The remaining task is to find the Toneri."

Blow out the candle and walk back along the side alley.

When I returned to the shop's cubicle, the charcoal fire in the furnace was still burning, and the red light reflected on the anvil, turning the bloodstains on its surface into a dark brown.

Hinata Chen picked up a rag, dipped it in water, and squatted down next to the anvil to wipe away the bloodstains.

He wrung the rag several times in cold water, then picked up the basin and went into the backyard to splash it on the snow.

The moment the blood touched the snow, it spread out in a large patch on the white surface, like a flower unfolding its petals.

Then it was covered by fresh snow.

Standing in the backyard, my goggles were pointed at the sky.

Snowflakes fell on the lenses, and cold air rushed into my lungs.

Slightly awake.