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"First of all, l would like to tell you that you almost killed me back there," Houren said sighing.
They stood in the snow covered ground now. Sasuke couldn't help but wonder how his amaterasu didn't seem to have burned anything in the woods. The snow didn't melt. The trees didn't turn to coal.
It was just as if nothing happened.
"If Sakura didn't tell me about what you can do, I wouldn't have survived it," Houren said.
Sasuke glared at him. "Who are you?" Why would Sakura tell him anything?
Houren looked at Sasuke for a moment. "They call me the Snow Spirit," he said. "But my name is Houren. And just to answer your unspoken question, we are standing on my holy ground. I can erase any damage you make in this part of the woods."
"Hn," Sasuke said looking at him more guardedly. "What makes you the real Houren?"
"Let me start with who I really am, shall we?" Houren said. "I come from a place that is far different from yours. And by that I mean I come from…a different…world. I know you're familiar with people who don't age, and people who don't die. Based on what Sakura told me, your own Hokage found a way to stop her body's aging process. And you've supposedly defeated an immortal."
Sasuke scoffed. At least this Houren knew how powerful Sasuke was. Well Naruto helped in defeating the "immortal" but the dobe wouldn't be able to defeat Madara without a significant help from Uchiha Sasuke.
"I myself am immortal," Houren said. "…By birth. I've stopped aging more than five centuries years ago."
Sasuke just stared at him. He's supposed to believe that? Sure he's powerful but to be immortal by birth? What is he? A deity..?
"A group of thieves plundered our temple a long time ago," Houren said. "They took several valuable artifacts and took them here, in your world. I was tasked to get those artifacts back. As my body is not accustomed to your world, I can only survive here for a limited period of time. To keep me alive, I was given an artifact that made it possible for me to stay here for thirty days. I spent those days searching for the culprits and retrieving 2 of the 7 artifacts that were stolen from our temple."
Sasuke crossed his arms. Should he believe this lunatic?
"But I was devious," Houren said. "Seeing how different this world is from mine, seeing how powerful I become when I am in the midst of your people, I sought of a way to extend my stay here. I thought of leaving a part of me here that would live in the conditions of this land. I planted a seed here, on this very mountain, which was at that moment secluded from any human civilization. I left the seed here to see if it would live. I came back to see a maiden tending to that seed which had then become a bud – a small white flower."
Maiden…Is he telling him the real story of the Snow Spirit?
"The maiden seemed to have been tending to my seed since I left," Houren said, his grey eyes looking past Sasuke…to the image of the black haired maiden kneeling down and talking to the small bud on the hard stony ground. "An old drunkard had settled somewhere in the mountain. She lived with him as his slave. Every night, he would force her to pleasure him. And every night, she would find a way to escape him. She would spend the night next to the bud. When she went back to their house the next morning, the old man angrily gave her a beating."
Sasuke stared surprised at Houren. So the girl in the story didn't live in the mountain with her father like what Keiko told him.
"The old man went down the village at the foot of this mountain every morning to drink, and came back every night to force her to submit herself to him," Houren said. He remembered spying on the man – hearing the old man curse and blabber about how he took the maiden from her family as a payment for what her family owed him. The drunkard wanted the maiden as his wife. "I owed the maiden for caring for my plant. So I watched over her. I revealed myself to her one day while she was watering the bud. She was…very aloof," Houren said smiling at the image of a scowling lady standing defensively in front of him. "She didn't give me her name. I kept seeing her since then in that same spot – by the bud. We became friends."
Sasuke wanted to talk about another topic – a topic that involved saving Sakura's life. But he felt that the story was going to answer some of the questions he had about what was going on in the village.
"The thirty days ended," Houren said. "And I had to go back to my world. I told her I would come back to see her, and I was really planning to. With the bud growing, I knew I would be able to come back to see her and I would eventually be able to stay longer with her. Hours before I came back here, a group of men hunted her down. The old man gambled and lost. He gave his creditors the maiden as payment."
The men who pursued the maiden…who killed her…
"She put up quite a fight," Houren said recalling how bloody the maiden was when he cradled her in his arms. "It wasn't until one of the men hit her head with a rock that they had a chance to pin her down."
Sasuke watched Houren's face. His grey eyes were gazing at some distant memory.
He was telling the truth.
Did he kill the men?
"She was able to run to the bud before they caught her," Houren continued. "And with her own blood, she wrote down her name on the ground. I came in time to see one of them about to violate Keiko."
Sasuke's eyes widened. The name of the maiden was really Keiko?
Houren smirked. "That was the first time I took a life," he said. "And I ended up taking five. When I held her, she was nearly dead. And by nearly, I mean she still had a faint pulse – a very faint one that if ignored would immediately mean her death." He looked at Sasuke. "You see, like you and other ninjas, some people in my world understand the relationship of the physical body with energy or what you usually call, 'chakra.'"
Sasuke kept his eyes at Houren.
That was how Houren threw those icicles at him, how he evaded his attacks, how he vanished from his sight…
…How he absorbed the Kirin?
"Unlike you, however," Houren said. "As I've observed from you, Sakura, and your Anbu ninjas, I do not use the chakra inside my body to do what I want. I instead use the chakra of other things and beings around me to do my bidding."
"…We, or rather a specific clan here that I unfortunately don't belong to, wield the chakra of everything around us. That's why when someone tries to find us using chakra signatures, they get nothing but the things around us – plants, trees, animals, insects…no humans."
Sasuke stiffened.
"I am an expert in pulling someone else's chakra to be my own, just as I am an expert in pulling my own chakra out so it can be used by another person," Houren said watching Sasuke's minute expressions. He knew Sasuke had figured something out. "Keiko having a very faint pulse meant that she still had chakra left. But obviously it was too little to keep her alive for any treatment. So I pulled some of my chakra out of my body and fed it to her chakra to empower it. Once she had enough chakra to sustain a steady and regular pulse, I used my chakra to access the core of her chakra circulatory system.
She would eventually use up her remaining chakra so I made an invisible pathway between my chakra system and hers. So when her body needed chakra and her own chakra circulatory system was too weak to provide it, her body drew chakra from me. It worked even at a distance.
And it's irreversible. And for an ordinary human being, even for an ordinary ninja, this technique is fatal," Houren said.
Sasuke narrowed his eyes. That was probably what happened earlier – Houren devoured the chakra from his Kirin, then he released the chakra from the lighting back in the sky and the chakra that Sasuke used back to Sasuke.
This Houren was powerfull. And he had a feeling this same technique had been used to conjure the illness.
"I am immortal," Houren said. "And that immortality is because time had long stopped the deterioration of everything in my body. It had also protected my cells from any harm, quickly reviving everything in my body in case it befalls any damage. This makes my body produce chakra easily.
So even when Keiko used my chakra to live the rest of her life it didn't harm me. Imagine though, if an ordinary human performed the technique. The person he or she would save would eventually gain enough chakra to sustain his or herself. But because the pathway can no longer be severed once it was made, the body of the person that was saved with the technique will still consume chakra from the one who performed the technique. He or she would be a parasite, and the person who performed the technique the host. The connection will not be cut until the host is dead."
The technique though interesting was undoubtedly a suicide.
"So she didn't die," Sasuke said. "What's that got to do with–"
"She lived, yes," Houren said. "And she bore me five sons and one daughter. The bud grew to become a flower bush that oddly grew on a boulder. As punishment for my deviance, for my extended stay in this world and for having a family of my own with humans, I was ordered to bring one of my descendants in every generation back to my world. That descendant will serve my people the way I should have while I stayed here. And that descendant was to spend the last of his days in that world. My family understood the condition. My third son, bearing the potential to perform my duties, was the first sacrifice I brought to my world. I stayed with him until he died. I paid a visit with my family here once in a while. And when I came back here to stay for good, my sons and daughter had grown to have their own families.
The house we built on this mountain gained a set of neighbors. And the group of neighboring houses grew to become a village. The descendants of my eldest son became the head family of the village. His last descendant is the Houren you met in the village."
Sasuke stared incredulously at the Houren in front of him.
The blonde Houren he met in the market, was a descendant of an immortal who looked like him?
"His name is Yoake," Houren continued. "He had blonde wavy hair, like his mother. But he didn't look like me before. It was his father, the previous chief of the village who made him look like me. His eldest son, even at a very early age, showed signs of being a prodigy. Afraid that I would choose him as my sacrifice – my 'heir' as the called it to whom I would teach everything I learned in exchange for taking him away from his family forever, the chief impregnated another woman who bore him Yoake.
Yoake and his mother were scorned by the village, since they believed his mother tempted the chief. In truth however, she was forced into bearing the chief's child. She was a good woman though. She cared for the child because it wasn't his fault that he was born. When Yoake reached the age of seven, the chief had him kept away from everyone including his mother. It drove her insane. She committed suicide a year later.
Yoake was forced to learn everything and anything they believed I was supposed to teach my heir. He read the journals of the previous heirs, constantly perfecting every technique that an heir performed. Though he was an exemplary learner, he was not enough to be my heir. He was full of hatred. And though I could not blame him, he was still unfit to take on the role.
When his father presented him to me, I told him my concern that heirs were chosen by me, and not by the village chief. My descendant ignored me. He forced Yoake to look like me, thinking it would convince me to take the child as my heir.
Yoake eventually changed his name to 'Houren,' hoping that I would take him under my wing. I wanted to, but not as my heir. I told him I want to take him in as my grandson. He thought it was an insult to his skills. He thought I was looking down on him, like his father and the villagers did.
He came upon one of the missing artifacts I was tasked to retrieve. It was from there that he learned the techniques that made him powerful enough to kill his own father."
Sasuke sighed. The Houren in the village did cause the illness. Somehow, he couldn't help but feel sorry for him. He knew the feeling – the disappointment, the pain, the need for vengeance.
But Yoake was including Sakura in his list of victims. And he wasn't going to let him kill her without a fight.
"The first strain of the illness was a basic chakra manipulation technique," Houren said. "By that I mean a basic step to manipulating another person's chakra. Yoake planted some of his chakra into the chakra circulatory system of many of the villagers by tapping their shoulders in greeting while he walked down the street, by brushing his hands with their own when he helped them carry heavy things, by holding the children while playing with them. He then activated the chakra he planted one evening.
He tested the technique with his father, activating the chakra he planted on him when he embraced him. The chakra he planted acted like a parasite, replacing the chakra of its host and devastating body functions until its host's death.
The only way to cure it was to use chakra to confine the parasitic chakra. And Sakura used the Anrui flower behind you to do that," Houren said.
Sasuke stiffened. Behind him..?
He slowly turned his head to see what was behind him.
He froze.
Behind him was a boulder with a wilting bush. The bush had only one white flower on it – a small white lily-like flower that had the ends of its petals in a shade of brown.