Starting with the Uchiha clan, they began cultivating demonic arts.

Chapter 1 The Boy Who Poached Souls

In the dead of winter, all was quiet, and apart from the ninjas on duty, there was hardly a soul in the entire Hidden Leaf Village.

In the forest outside Konoha, the snow-covered landscape almost completely concealed everything. A cold wind swept through the forest, causing snowflakes to flutter from the treetops and fall to the ground, forming tiny snowdrifts.

"It's so cold here... but that's alright, if it were the middle of summer, I wouldn't dare go into this Death Forest!"

A boy of twelve or thirteen, dressed in white, moved through the jungle like a ghost.

As Konoha's training ground, the Forest of Death not only contains many ferocious wild animals captured by ninjas, but also has a lot of surveillance devices installed throughout the forest. Even though there are no Chunin Exams or similar events taking place now, and most of the cameras are turned off, they are still not entirely undetectable.

However, there is no need to worry about this during heavy snowfall in winter, as the snowflakes will automatically cover all the cameras.

Although the training the boy was undergoing didn't actually involve much that needed to be concealed, he had no doubt about the ninjas' ability to see through subtle signs. In order to avoid attracting attention in the future and to preserve his trump cards, he chose to act directly in winter.

"roar!!"

With a deafening roar, amidst the earth-shaking tremors, a giant bear, already three meters tall, crawled out of a tree hole, its limbs barely touching the ground.

These gigantic animals are all imbued with chakra, ferocious beasts somewhere between ninja beasts and ordinary animals. They lack the human-like intelligence and chakra manipulation skills of ninja beasts, but they use chakra brutally to strengthen their bodies, and their combat power far surpasses that of ordinary wild beasts.

Large and ferocious beasts such as lions, tigers, bears, and boars are already quite powerful in combat. After being enhanced by chakra, they become even more ferocious. In the era of cold weapons without supernatural elements, this giant bear alone could destroy several villages or even small towns.

"Good heavens, as expected of a ferocious beast from the Naruto world, it hasn't completely gone into hibernation?"

With an excited expression on his face, the boy looked up at the ferocious beast in front of him and casually pulled a kunai from his pocket.

Seemingly sensing the boy's threat, the giant bear in front of it let out two muffled roars and stood up directly from the snow.

When it was on all fours, the giant bear was already nearly three meters tall. When this enormous beast stood upright, it was six or seven meters tall, almost the height of a three-story building.

Faced with such a colossal beast, an ordinary person would have almost no chance of winning without using firearms, but the boy in front of him showed no sign of tension. Instead, he raised his head and stared directly at the giant bear.

In an instant, the boy's eyes turned blood red, and a tiny tomoe appeared in his eyes. The enormous bear and the boy's eyes met slightly, and the bear's body trembled, and the entire bear seemed to lose its senses.

Just as the giant bear was distracted, the boy threw the kunai in his hand without hesitation. With a hiss, it pierced the giant bear's throat and slit its trachea.

"Roar..."

Amidst the intense pain, the giant bear quickly regained its senses, letting out a strange roar as if its trachea had ruptured, and suddenly pounced on the boy in front of it.

However, the boy no longer had any intention of fighting the giant bear. A ruptured trachea was a fatal injury to the bear in front of him. However, given the beast's vitality, it could retain its full fighting ability for at least a few minutes. He had no desire to engage in hand-to-hand combat with such a dying beast.

In terms of pure strength and physique alone, even a regular Chunin would probably be no match for this ferocious beast. Not to mention that this giant bear, severely injured, has become even more ferocious in its final moments. As a ninja, one should naturally avoid such a meaningless battle if possible.

With a flash of movement and aided by chakra, the boy instantly leaped onto a large tree, watching the giant bear frantically ram into it. As the tree swayed and fell, he jumped directly onto another large tree.

After running away with the giant bear for a few minutes, the massive bear crashed to the ground with a thud, its bellows-like breathing gradually subsided, and finally disappeared completely.

The boy standing in the tree waited a moment, and seeing that the giant bear had finally breathed its last, a smile appeared on his face, and he stretched out a hand:

"Come here!"

As soon as the boy finished speaking, tiny specks of light, invisible to the naked eye, appeared on the entire giant bear. They eventually coalesced into a ball of light that only the boy could see, and with a whoosh, it flew into his hand.

The ball of light was not large, about the size of a ball. Inside the ball of light, the head of the giant bear that had been killed was exposed, twisting and roaring.

Looking at the ball of light before him, the boy patted his chest, narrowed his eyes slightly, and felt the roaring soul within him, as well as the power that the soul brought him. He sighed somewhat helplessly.

"There was no real improvement, just a slight increase in my strength and physique, and a small increase in chakra..."

"This kind of spirit has such low aptitude that it's practically useless except as a consumable for increasing chakra!"

As he spoke, the boy pulled out the giant bear's soul orb again, glanced at it, and then took a bite out of it!

The soul orb trembled, emitting chaotic mental fluctuations, like a mournful scream. However, the boy ignored it and swallowed the entire soul orb in a few bites. A warm feeling emanated from his abdomen. The boy clenched his fist and felt his chakra increase slightly.

"The energy drain from the Spirit Absorption Technique is truly enormous. That giant bear's chakra was no weaker than mine, yet the chakra it gained was less than a fraction of mine!"

"At this rate, who knows when my chakra will finally turn into chakra!"

Besides increasing his chakra, the giant bear soul that the boy consumed also caused a trace of hatred and resentment to entangle his spirit. However, as the tomoe in the boy's eyes rotated, the foreign hatred and resentment were quickly worn away and instead became the foundation for the growth of Sharingan power.

However, the resentment and hatred of the beasts were obviously not very high in either quantity or quality. This little bit of cold emotional fluctuation was not only useless to the Sharingan in the boy's eyes, but also a drop in the ocean.

It was precisely because he used the Spirit Absorption Technique multiple times that the resentment entangled in the boy's body exceeded a certain range, which caused him to directly awaken the one-tomoe Sharingan. Obviously, even more resentment is needed to advance the Sharingan.

After dealing with the giant bear's soul, the boy glanced at the enormous corpse at his feet. After a moment's thought, he prepared to cut off the two huge bear paws. Just then, a voice suddenly came from behind him:

"Uchiha Touya, you've come to the Forest of Death to poach again!"

The boy named Uchiha Tou turned his head and saw a child with white hair, about eight or nine years old, standing on a tree, looking at him speechlessly.

"These animals in the Forest of Death were all captured with great effort by other ninjas! Some are used for ninja training, and some are even used to breed ninja beasts and ninja insects! They're not for you to just kill randomly here!"

Uchiha Touyu rolled his eyes and snorted:

"You're the only one who shouldn't say that to me, Kakashi Hatake... The destruction you caused in the Forest of Death wasn't any less than mine!"

Kakashi shrugged and didn't answer. In fact, he often trained in the Forest of Death and didn't really care about this. He was just looking for an excuse to criticize the other person.

Kakashi leaped down from the tree and glanced at the giant bear lying on the ground:

"Even a regular genin squad would have a hard time dealing with this thing! You took it down all by yourself, Fei Yu. In terms of strength, you're probably no less than a chunin!"

"I really don't understand. With this kind of strength, what are you still studying at the ninja academy for? Why don't you graduate sooner and become a full-fledged ninja?"

Uchiha Touyu rolled his eyes and said irritably:

"Forget graduating from the ninja academy, I didn't even want to be a ninja. To be honest, I was forced into this, okay?"

"I was living a perfectly good life until I awakened these Sharingan eyes. I was forcibly dragged into this Uchiha clan and forced to go to the Ninja Academy to become a ninja!"

"My goal is to do less and get more, to reap without sowing, not to go to the battlefield to kill and set fires!"

Kakashi was speechless for a moment. The guy in front of him didn't seem to have any ninja mindset at all; he was more like an ordinary villager.

Since our values ​​are completely different, it's natural that we'd be talking past each other.

Thinking of this, Kakashi sighed helplessly:

"I really don't understand... why do you have such great talent? Logically speaking, none of your ancestors awakened the Sharingan, and given that you only have 1/4 Uchiha bloodline, awakening the Sharingan is almost impossible..."

Uchiha Touyu touched his eye socket and immediately recalled the scene when he first awakened his Sharingan.

When he first transmigrated to Konoha, he also activated his cheat ability—a black book called the Complete Book of Demonic Path Inheritance in his mind.

Although it's called the Complete Collection of Demonic Path Inheritance, in reality, Uchiha Touyu only obtained the ability of Spirit Binding and Commanding from the Eight Extraordinary Techniques of the Under One Person world.

This extraordinary skill allows one to manipulate the souls of others, and even directly devour souls to increase one's power. Therefore, even though the Soul Binding and Condemning Generals is called one of the Eight Extraordinary Skills and appears in the lineage of demonic cultivation, it is not at all out of place.

After Fei Yu devoured many animal souls using the Soul Binding Technique, he unknowingly awakened a pair of single-tomoe Sharingan.

However, there was no mirror at the time, so he didn't see the change in his eyes and had no idea what had happened.

His lack of preparation and concealment led to the leak of information about his awakening of the Sharingan, which ultimately resulted in him being brought to the Uchiha clan.

After all, he wasn't a member of the Uchiha clan at the beginning, and he didn't know that his grandfather's generation actually had Uchiha blood. So when he felt the change in his eyes, he didn't even think about the Sharingan.

As a result, he, a commoner, suddenly became famous in Konoha Village. Without saying a word, the Uchiha clan captured him and brought him back to their clan's territory, giving him the name Uchiha.

In reality, while the vast majority of Konoha's bloodline clans practice endogamy, some members who do not become ninja do intermarry with other clans. However, once they awaken their bloodline limit, they must return to their bloodline clan.

Of course, such precedents are extremely rare. Those who would normally engage in intermarriage with outsiders are usually those with thin bloodlines, weak strength, or who are not even ninjas at all. If they reproduce for another generation, their bloodline will decline even further.

Someone like Uchiha Tou, who only has 1/4 of the bloodline remaining but is still able to awaken, is a rare breed in the entire Uchiha clan, appearing only once in a century. Of course, he should be brought back to the clan.

However, what Touya himself thought after being recruited into the Uchiha clan was completely irrelevant.

"I can't really do anything about it... Who told the bloodstains to awaken like that? Otherwise, I wouldn't need to be training my courage in this Death Forest!"

"Training courage? Most ninja academy students who enter the Forest of Death probably don't train their courage; they just die here!"

"If you want to train secretly here, then train secretly! Why make up such an excuse?"

Kakashi Hatake scoffed at Uchiha Hiu's words.

Although this eccentric Uchiha was completely out of step with the values ​​of a ninja and was essentially even less suited to be a ninja than Might Guy, that rare beast, Uchiha Touya was by no means inferior in terms of strength.

The so-called "training courage" is just an excuse. You should know that when I joined the Ninja Academy, the only person I couldn't beat was this boy in front of me!

Of course, although the two joined the Ninja Academy around the same time, they were quite different in age. Fei Yu had never intended to become a ninja. It was only after awakening his Sharingan that he had no choice but to join the Uchiha clan and become a student at the Ninja Academy.

Therefore, among the many students who enrolled early at the Ninja Academy, this student who joined at the age of ten is quite an anomaly.

Therefore, neither the teachers nor the students at the Ninja Academy at the time thought that Kakashi's fight with Uchiha Touya was a stain on his reputation, since Kakashi was only five years old at the time, while Uchiha Touya was already ten.

However, Kakashi, who often sparred with Uchiha Tou at the Ninja Academy, understood that although Uchiha Tou might be much older than him, he had been training under his father's guidance for two years, while Tou was basically starting from scratch. The difference in their conditions was not as great as he had imagined.

Uchiha Touyu is a genius who is by no means inferior to himself!

In Kakashi's eyes, Uchiha Tou's various acts of slacking off were just a facade. He, who frequently entered and exited the Forest of Death, was clearly just like Kakashi himself, a master of deception!

"Yes, yes, yes, good, good!"

Uchiha Touyu gave a few perfunctory replies, which successfully made a vein pop out on Kakashi's head.

"You idiot... if you really want to train, why waste the animals in the Death Forest! Why don't you let me be your opponent instead!"

Uchiha Touyu's face showed a hint of annoyance:

"So, Kakashi, is that all you wanted to say?"

"Of course... I've been wanting to spar with you again for a long time! I'm much stronger now than I was back in the Ninja Academy!"

"I've heard you're quite famous now. You're the youngest genin and also the youngest chunin since the village was founded... Do you really have the nerve to fight a student from the ninja academy like me?"

Kakashi was speechless after hearing this. In fact, he often encountered Touyu after graduation, but whenever he had any idea of ​​challenging him, Touyu would just change the subject and simply refused to fight him.

However, at this moment, Fei Yu's tone changed:

"However, if you'd be willing to introduce me to your father, I wouldn't mind having a few rounds of fighting with you!"

(End of this chapter)