Even though Hidan had yielded out of necessity, Simu had still overestimated him.
"I haven't looked at a single book in over ten years. I don't recognize a single word! How could I possibly know where some record room is?" Hidan said aggrievedly, his face swollen and bruised from the beating.
"If you ask me, instead of looking at those things that look like tadpoles, it's better to kill a few more people to honor Lord Jashin!"
"Shut up."
Simu had nothing left to say to this illiterate savage.
Fortunately, while the members of the Jashin Religion disliked studying, they still knew of the record room's existence. Soon, a follower led Simu and Hidan to the front of the records.
"Lord Simu, Lord Hidan, this is the record room," the guide said with extreme reverence.
This was not because he wanted to suck up to the two Divine Sons; he was simply worried his head might be chopped off for no reason. Though only a day had passed, the reputations of Simu and Hidan had already spread throughout the entire Jashin Religion.
Simu was known as the Beheading Demon, while Hidan was called the Immortal Monster.
In truth, people preferred to call Hidan the Immortal Moron, but they lacked the courage. Even if Hidan was frequently beheaded by Simu, his strength was not something they could provoke.
"Thank you."
Simu nodded slightly to the follower, then walked into the record room while carrying Hidan's head. The follower let out a massive sigh of relief, grateful to have survived another day.
When Simu stepped inside, he realized he had not only overestimated Hidan but the entire Jashin Religion as well. Good grief—the record room of the Jashin Religion was essentially a ruin.
Bookshelves lay toppled haphazardly on the floor, covered in spiderwebs. Books were piled in heaps, looking as though no one had tended to them for ages. Simu rubbed the bridge of his nose and said weakly, "As expected of the place that raised a talent like you, Hidan. Truly a land of distinguished people."
Hearing Simu call him a "talent," Hidan raised his chin proudly. "That's right..."
Clearly, with our Lord Hidan's intellect, he couldn't comprehend the sarcasm behind Simu's words. Simu looked at the proud Hidan and sighed. For such a guy to receive such a broken ability from Jashin, one could only say that fortune favors the foolish.
He utilized the power of his [Koukaku · Spider] to spit out silk, hanging Hidan's head from the ceiling. Hidan naturally refused to accept such a humiliating arrangement, but just as he prepared to speak, Simu blocked his mouth with a glob of thick spider silk. He could only make muffled "Mmph mmph" sounds.
Having eliminated Hidan's interference, Simu could finally study the books in peace. It had to be said that while the Jashin cultists were uneducated, the historical longevity of the sect meant their collection contained valuable old volumes.
"It seems there were normal people among the ancestors of the Jashin Religion," Simu muttered. Otherwise, the religion could not have sustained itself until now.
Soon, Simu was drawn to a book titled Ancient Deities. Rather than a formal history, it was more like a collection of stories. It recorded various gods that once existed in the Shinobi World.
The first and, according to the author, the strongest god was naturally the Lord Jashin worshiped by the sect. This deity, who commanded immortality and curses, was praised extravagantly in the text.
Besides Jashin, there was a deity called the Reaper, who presided over death and the Pure Land. Furthermore, there were the Gods of Nature, along with various legends regarding animal Sages and similar mythical figures.
Simu slowly closed the book as a question surfaced in his mind.
With so many deities, why are they all gone?
The book described so many gods, and he had personally met Jashin and felt its power. Even if the Jashin he perceived didn't seem as powerful as the records suggested, it at least proved that such a being truly existed.
Since Jashin existed, Simu could boldly speculate that the Reaper and the animal Sages recorded in the books existed as well. Why, then, did these Sages and deities disappear? Moreover, in the descriptions of these gods, there was no mention of the Chakra power system.
Driven by this doubt, Simu continued to flip through the books. He read for an entire day. It wasn't until the sun set and the world fell into darkness that he finally gained a general understanding of this world.
First, people referred to this world as the Shinobi World. Within the Shinobi World, nations stood in abundance.
Similar to Simu's previous life, this world was dominated by five major powers. They were the Land of Fire, the Land of Lightning, the Land of Water, the Land of Earth, and the Land of Wind. These were known as the Five Great Shinobi Nations.
Each major nation possessed a powerful armed organization called a Hidden Village. These villages were the concentration of a nation's military might, producing a steady stream of powerful war machines every year—Shinobi!
The nominal strongest person of each village was granted the title of Kage. For example, the Kage of the Land of Fire was the Hokage, the Kage of the Land of Water was the Mizukage, and so on.
These Kage were nominally on equal footing with the national leaders, known as the Daimyo. The Kage controlled the nation's armed forces—military power—while the Daimyo controlled the nation's political power and economic tax rights.
In Simu's view, this system was completely incomprehensible. After all, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun; he couldn't understand how a Daimyo without military control could sit securely on the throne.
Of course, considering that only a few decades had passed since this world transitioned from a chaotic tribal society to a formal state, such systemic loopholes were understandable. They were "crossing the river by feeling for stones," with no existing systems to reference.
Regrettably, Simu found no records in the room covering the transition from the Age of Deities to the Warring States Period. Aside from that missing link, information on the Warring States Period itself was scarce. Records being damaged over time or simply never written was perfectly normal.
Many books merely mentioned "The Sage of Six Paths created Chakra" in a vague sentence before moving on. More space was dedicated to how the "God of Shinobi, Hashirama Senju, ended the Warring States Period and established the first Hidden Village."
Only fifty or sixty years had passed since the era of Hashirama Senju. The reputation of the God of Shinobi suppressing an entire era was still passed down by word of mouth.
Putting down the book, Simu tapped his thigh lightly with his finger.
Jashin, the Reaper, Otsutsuki, the Sage of Six Paths, the God of Shinobi, the Senju Clan, the Uchiha Clan...
The secrets hidden within all of this really make one itch with curiosity.
At this moment, Simu was like a player obsessed with a puzzle game, filled with curiosity about what lay hidden behind the curtain of the Shinobi World.