Chapter 298: Memories
Disclaimer: Naruto and all of its characters belong to Shueisha and Masashi Kishimoto. I own nothing but the original characters I create.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 298: Memories
He could not remember the last time he felt so disoriented.
On the one hand, he had never seen this place before, but on the other, this was very familiar. Or it felt that way at least.
"Oi, boy!" an older male voice called for him.
When he turned to look at the person in question, he found a middle-aged man with short black hair and a long beard. He spoke in a strange language, but he had no trouble understanding what was being said.
"Help me get the sheep back home. It will start to get dark very soon," the man told him.
"Yes, father," he answered without thinking and began to perform his task as he had done before a thousand times. He skillfully guided their animals back to their enclosure and made his way along with his father to a very modest wooden cabin.
"Your mother must be finishing dinner. Let's not tarry," the father said as he walked towards the cabin.
But then...all of a sudden, he stopped.
Naruto took a moment to look around, and it wasnt just his father, but everything around him seemed to have frozen in place.
But that was not the part that he found strange. It was all of the memories that continued to flow into his mind.
"This is… was first life." He was sure of that. There was nothing before this… his soul was new at this point in time.
There was no way for him to tell how long ago this was, or if it even took place in the same world.
There was no concept of cultivators here. People only prayed to the Sun God, the shiny ball of fire in the sky, and lived simple lives...taking care of their crops and animals.
His family had been taking care of sheep for a few generations now, and that's all they did.
He would later on find a wife and father three children before dying at the age of thirty-eight.
That life had been simple, but it was just the beginning of his journey.
The landscape dissipated and everything went dark for a moment.
Then he found himself in a different location. A large wooden house with two stories was in front of him, and endless farms could be seen beyond the house.
In his next life, he was the son of a wheat farmer. The world had changed quite a bit. Technology had progressed, and they now had tools made of metal at least.
But he still had a simple life.
"First a sheep herder and now a wheat farmer?. Is this truly how my journey began?." Naruto could not help but feel disappointed. He had hoped for a more grandiose past life.
His consciousness continued to move through all of his lifetimes.
He found himself being reborn as some sort of peasant dozens of times, although in a few of his past lives, he had a bit of a higher standing as the son of some merchant or a lower noble like a knight or a baron. But overall, all these lifetimes had been very mundane.
It wasn't until his fiftieth life that he caught a glimpse of something extraordinary. As the heir of the town's blacksmith, he was able to meet for the first time some cultivators who would come to buy basic tools and weapons for their sect.
He could tell they were weak, and their methods were yet underdeveloped, but it was still miles ahead of what normal humans could achieve.
However, it would take him many more lifetimes before he was reborn as someone with a talent for cultivation and had the chance to join a sect.
Naruto continued to assimilate the knowledge of all these lifetimes. They were very short on average...maybe around forty or fifty years. Even the ones where he started cultivating, he never seemed to get far enough to increase his lifespan.
After his one hundredth life, Naruto was noticing one pattern. He would only be reborn in the same world two or three times, and the next life would happen in a different one.
Some of the worlds he was born into didn't have any sort of mystical background.
Others would have different sets of powers. While some worlds relied more on martial arts and cultivation, others seemed to lean towards magical abilities and spells.
Naruto had to put a lot of effort into not getting lost in this river of memories he was experiencing and losing track of who he was now.
He had to admit to being a bit dissatisfied with his accomplishments during his previous lives. It seemed that in most of them, he was just one more mortal among billions… nothing special.
But this was not going to discourage him from his final goal. Perhaps this is why he had always been so driven to achieve greatness… because he came from nothing, and even deep in his soul, he was determined to change his fate.
It was in his one hundred and fifty-first life… when he was finally born as Zheng Yun. This was the life he actually remembered.
He had once more been born as a commoner, son of simple mortals. But the Heavens gave him a small favor and granted him some decent talent for cultivation.
Later on, thanks to his fortuitous encounter with the Golden Scripture, he would go on to become a powerful figure on the continent.
Alas, that was not enough, and he ended up dying at the hands of a greedy man who was trying to seal his Divine Treasure.
And it was thanks to this same Divine Treasure that he called the Golden Scripture, that he was able to retain his memories for his next life.
"Meaning that this one should have been the last."
Or at least that's what he thought… something strange happened next.
More memories began to flow into his mind, but these were not as clear as all of the previous ones he had experienced so far.
These memories were fragmented… incomplete.
Memories of a boy named Asura Ōtsutsuki… the son of the Sage of the Six Paths.
A.N: - Remember to comment, vote, and/or leave a review if you have the time. Those things help me a lot and I would really appreciate it.
You can Support me on P@treon if you like and get 20 advanced chapters.
-.com/Kriogenix
For donations and commissions, go to .com/kriogenix