Interesting.

Along a dirt road leading to somewhere, Madara and Nam had been walking for days now. For some reason, they encountered bandits, spirit beasts, and some cultivators who wanted to kill them and create pills with their remains.

Madara, unbothered, dealt with all opposition in their way swiftly while Nam just watched. There were a few times Madara let Nam fight a little. If only to see how good Nam was.

It was in one of these fights that Nam did something that intrigued Madara. She made a physical illusion instead of a mental one. Nam used her fire as a medium to create said illusion, burning the ground the same way Madara saw at her home's training ground.

Seeing the potential of making illusions physical instead of mental, Madara decided to help Nam train this ability of hers to the limit. Unfortunately for Nam, Madara had seen back on his original world how a master illusionist who made physical illusions made them able to interact with the world as real things.

That was what Madara wanted from Nam. For her to make illusions that could interact with the world instead of just being a mirage that could only be seen.

And that was why there was a small white fox on Madara's head, concentrating hard with its eyes closed.

"That's enough for now, you can rest." At Madara's words, Nam, who was walking beside him, disappeared.

The small white fox on top of his head sighed in relief and said, "I thought you were never going to say that. It's been two days since I started to keep that illusion going."

Yes, the small white fox was obviously Nam. Why was she so small? Spirit beasts and hybrids like her had the innate ability to control their forms at will. And the higher their cultivation, even the size could be controlled. However, hybrids can't fool cultivators or spirit beasts even if they fully transform into humans or spirit beasts. So all hybrids opted to openly display their status by maintaining a form with human and spirit beast features. This also was their best, physically capable, form if done right.

"Endurance training is always good. One way or another, one would find a way to be more efficient with their energy expenditure or their reserves will grow to compensate." Madara's gaze focused on a weird spot further on in the road. 'That looks perfect for an ambush.'

After thinking that, Madara swiftly scanned the place for likely hiding spots. The thick bushes and tall trees were the first places he looked. Even the very ground was a good hiding spot if the ambusher knew the needed techniques for it.

"Nam, it seems like the perfect opportunity to test how far your illusions have come. This is what I want you to do." Madara carefully explained his plan after making sure that there were indeed people waiting to ambush them at the spot he had his eyes on.

"Look here, guys! We have hit the jackpot today! Not one, but two spirit beasts! And one of them appears to be able to take a more human form!"

A group of men dressed in patched up armor came out of the trees and bushes, surrounding Madara and Nam, the latter of which was still on Madara's head.

Carefully looking at each of the would be aggressors and assessing their threat level, Madara said with an even voice, "Move out of my way and I'll forget this even happened."

The men laughed at Madara's words.

"What are you going to do if we won't? Fight us? We have the strength and numerical advantage here!" The men pulled their weapons. "So come with us if you know what's good for you."

Madara sighed, "So you've chosen death."

Placing his open palm in front of his, Madara released a powerful lightning attack that fried all the men surrounding them.

"I told you to fight with the illusion. Not to attack once a be done." Another Madara with Nam on his head jumped down from a tree and stood in the middle of the downed men. "At least they believed they were attacked with lightning and were fried to death."

The Madara who attacked the men, along with the Nam on his head, disappeared in a burst of blue fire. The same fire engulfed the men's fried bodies, revealing that they were fine.

"Using illusions how I'm used to in tandem with what you taught me is harder than I thought," Nam said from Madara's head.

"We'll work on that then." Madara continued to follow the road after taking anything of value from the unconscious men on the floor.

***

At an inn/bar right at the edge of a forest, various hunters celebrated their ample gains for their week of hunting spirit beasts. For some reason unknown to them, they encountered many injured spirit beasts. Easy for them to hunt without much risk. They were very intrigued about what could've injured so many spirit beasts exactly, but they ended up chalking it up to a stronger spirit beast expanding its territory. Nothing new. And not something they should give much thought to when they were the ones benefiting.

Right now, the most important thing in the hunters' minds was celebrating their gains at their favorite bar beside their area of work.

The waiters, who appeared to be the same beautiful red haired woman, took everyone's orders seemingly in the blink of an eye. Alcohol was something in common with all the orders, and so, it was the first thing to arrive at every table. Except one.

"I don't think it is such a good idea to stay at a place filled with spirit beast hunters," Nam said with a worried tone, her eyes jumping from one hunter to another.

"Relax. As long as your illusion is working alright. No one is going to notice anything amiss with us," Madara comforted her while taking a sip of his tea.

Nam gave Madara the stink eye before saying, "What you're having me do here is unheard off! Making everyone here not notice how similar to spirit beasts we are, this should be impossible to do!"

"Hard, not impossible," Madara said. "I've done something similar. But that involved becoming a household item and hiding from a bunch of sensors who could see through everything."

Madara was thinking back to the time he helped Naruto sneak through the Hyuuga compound to visit Hinata.

'Good times,' Madara smiled to himself.

"Moreover, you have it easier. You don't have to inject your energy into someone else to make your illusions work. I would be the one doing this if that were the case," Madara added to his argument.

Nam did a double take at that and asked, "Then why aren't you? You've been making me do this days before we reached this place!"

"You need the training," Madara said simply. "You might be safe beside me, but I have to prepare you for the eventuality of us getting separated by some outside force."

"Here are your orders, Sir and Ms."

Two of the waitresses came with Madara and Nam's orders. After leaving to take care of another customer, Madara looked at all the waitresses with interest. No matter how he looked at them, every single one of them appeared to be the same person. There were none of the tells a clone would give off that his Sharingan would've picked up. None of the imperfections, imbalanced energy, or weight differences. There was nothing.

Madara came to two conclusions. Either the waitresses mastered a cloning technique so well that they were indistinguishable from the original, or they used a fission technique.

The first conclusion told Madara that the waitresses excelled at intelligence gathering. But the second conclusion told him that the waitresses were in some sort of cultivation training because a fission technique could create perfect clones at the cost of halving, or even taking most of, one's energy. A perfect technique for long-time training.

Madara was leaning more on his second conclusion. All because this was a world of cultivators and multiplying oneself to advance in their cultivation was something right up their alley.

'But there is no reason for both intelligence gathering and cultivation training to be happening at the same time,' Madara smiled. 'Interesting, indeed.'