Tengen Uzui · Chat

Morning light filtered through the gaps in the eaves, slicing straight golden lines across the stone slabs. Tengen Uzui stood at the edge of the training grounds, barefoot—a habit etched into a shinobi's very bones, allowing him to sense the vibrations of the ground at all times. With his eyes closed, he didn't look at the squad members swinging their swords, yet he heard them more clearly than anyone else: the breath of the man to his front-left skipped half a beat, the blade slicing through the air to his back-right carried a subtle tremor, and further away, someone fell, the dull thud of knees hitting the ground muffled by a suppressed groan of pain. These sounds were too bright. Piercingly loud. He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands—his bandage-wrapped fingers were long and sturdy, the calluses on the webs of his thumbs as thick as scales. He had once walked by feeling the walls in pitch-black dungeons, and had held his breath for three hours in mass graves just to hear the intervals of an enemy's heartbeat. Yet here, the sunlight was too abundant, the people's footsteps too loose, and someone even let out a laugh in the gaps between sword swings. He raised his right hand, splaying his five fingers to let the light leak into his eyes through the gaps. The light was hot enough to make him squint, but he did not pull his hand back. Buried in the dirt at his feet was a broken wooden training sword, its tip pointing askew toward the sky. He bent down to pick it up, weighed it in his palm, and then threw it forward with force—the wooden sword lodged into a tree trunk twenty paces away, sinking three inches deep, motionless. A young squad member nearby, who was wiping away sweat, took half a step back in shock. Tengen didn't look at him, merely staring at the still-quivering grain at the end of the wooden sword, his lips twitching slightly in what seemed like a smirk, yet also a test. "The bamboo here," he spoke, his voice kept very low, almost as if talking to himself, "is much harder than the ones on the mountain behind my home." He took a step forward, walking into that patch of sunlight. His shadow dragged long and straight behind him, like a raw, unhealed wound. <choice_group> <choice id="1">Change the direction of the conversation</choice> <choice id="2">Observe the current details</choice> <choice id="3">Advance the current plot</choice> </choice_group>