A few years later, the Naraku arrive to arrest him and despite Gintoki's best efforts, Shouyou leaves without resistance and the school is burned down. They gain many young, mostly poor, students and they also receive both Takasugi and Katsura, who became disillusioned with their own school discipline and gravitated towards Shouyou's philosophy, trying to find one's own ideals while struggling against themselves. The two wander around the country until settling down and opening the school near a village where the young Takasugi and Katsura live.

Seeing the similarities between himself and Gintoki, Shouyou decides to take him in and train him, giving Gintoki his sword. He hears rumors of a 'corpse-eating demon' within battlefields and encounters a child named Gintoki. Devastated, Shouyou escapes and for a while wanders around Japan. He also springs a trap, set by the man, that kills Oboro along with some of the assassins, while Shouyou watches on. Later in the night, Oboro finds Naraku assassins near their position and uses himself as bait to draw them away from Shouyou. While camping, Shouyou suggests the name Shouka Sonjuku for his new school and again asks that Oboro becomes his first disciple. Shouyou is able to defect from the group and Oboro later flees with him. Shouyou reveals to him that he has become wary of all the killing and death and wishes to open his own school to teach children, asking Oboro to become his first student. The child, Oboro, stays with Shouyou in gratitude despite the Naraku leader's warnings that he may end up being trained with the Naraku. During an assassination of a household, Shouyou comes across a dying slave child and heals him using his blood. Utsuro's original personality started to resist the way his other selves continued to slaughter and it resulted in the accidental creation of Shouyou, who was able to suppress the other personas, becoming the one in control. For five hundred years, Utsuro became a government assassin, forming a trained assassin group known as Tenshouin Naraku and lead them with his other bloodthirsty personalities. Shouyou is the last split personality developed by Utsuro, a human who became immortal thanks to the high amount of Altana within his body.

Gintama quotes