Naruto sat on the floor with a leaf on his forehead. Arata sat nearby, sleeping with his leaf sticking to his head, while Kaori and Kohinata stood a short distance away, watching the children and Ryu.
Ryu thought, "I really need to try that myself. Not that I haven't trained myself in my sleep. But this is different from that."
Ryu set the thought aside and asked, "Did your tug-of-war chakra control exercise go smoothly?"
Kaori and Kohinata both nodded.
"Yes, it did," Kohinata said.
Kaori crossed her arms. "It is efficient. It's more accessible than most high-level chakra control methods and much cheaper than the flower bloom method, which needs costly ingredients, not that it matters to you, boss."
Kohinata said, "It has everything needed to be treated like a secret jutsu."
Kohinata studied him for a moment. "When did you even train in this method? I never saw you do it."
Ryu smiled and replied, "I trained in my sleep."
Naruto snorted from the floor and dropped his leaf, hearing the joke. While Arata was already sleep training beside him, Naruto did not believe it.
Kaori narrowed her eyes in that quiet way she had whenever she suspected Ryu had hidden a truth inside a joke.
Kohinata let out a breath through his nose and did not press further.
Ryu looked at Kaori. "What is the update from the company?"
She shifted at once, smooth and practical. "The new digging and lifting equipment arrived in the village. It was assigned to the team working on the Iburi clan's new housing."
*
"Iburi clan?" Kushina exclaimed inside of Naruto, "Minato dear, was there such a clan in the village?"
Minato shook his head sideways. "No, it must be a new addition to the village!"
*
Kohinata then said, "That new clan is a significant addition to the village… Their bloodline is valuable, and they have the numbers to be treated as a proper ninja clan after a few years of training. You should use this fact as an advantage."
He looked at Ryu before adding, "The chakra control method you gave them stabilised their bloodline. Politically speaking, they owe you."
"I did not save them to make them owe me," Ryu said.
"No," Kohinata replied. "You did not."
Kaori stepped in with her usual flat clarity. "But it does not change the fact that you contributed greatly by bringing a new bloodline ability to the village."
Naruto's leaf fell again.
*
"A new clan with a bloodline?" kushina gasped.
Minato said, "I would like to know what this bloodline ability is."
*
Naruto caught it, stuck it back onto his forehead, and glared at it as if the leaf had betrayed him on purpose.
Kaori kept her voice level. "Not just bringing it to the village but also stabilising it and weaponising it. If the village learns this, then they will treat the Ibuiri clan as allied to the Hamura clan, and the influence of the Hamura clan will rise."
"You are right," Ryu said. "But there is one thing you missed."
Kaori waited while Ryu finished the thought.
"A new clan helps the village as a whole," he said. "But every new clan also reduces the relative control of the clans already sitting at the table. One more voice means less weight for the others. And this achievement of the Hamura clan will do more harm in this meeting than good."
Kaori's expression hardened in thought, and Kohinata gave a small nod at once.
"Do not overthink it," Ryu said. "I have my plans ready."
Naruto's leaf slipped sideways and dropped into his lap. He groaned, picked it up, and slapped it back onto his forehead.
"Being well-known is different from being understood and impossible to ignore. My influence is not yet strong enough to deter ninja clans just by name alone but the Daimyo's name does. I need to show them I hold grudges and it is not in their best interest to make me their enemy. Even though I had already decided what to say, Danzo would be there, which meant presentation mattered just as much as arguments."
Ryu continued in the same calm tone. "Those who opposed me will find it harder to do so again. I will show that anyone who threatens me and my family will bring my wrath."
Kaori replied, "Boss, you cannot threaten them."
"Ohh no... it will be subtle and things will speak for themselves," Ryu said.
Ryu looked at Kaori and Kohinata and asked, "What did you both train in before?"
"Yang chakra control," Kaori answered.
"Then do Yin chakra control this time," Ryu said.
Ryu lifted one hand, and a sphere of Yang chakra formed above his palm, bright and dense, pushing a faint warmth into the air around it. He moved it forward until it hovered between Kaori and Kohinata.
Naruto blinked at the sight before saying, "That was cool."
"Ohh yes, that was cool," Arata said.
"Go back to sleep already," Naruto said jokingly.
Both Kohinata and Kaori placed their hands forward and tried to attract it with the opposite Yin chakra.
The effect was immediate, and the Yang sphere trembled the moment their Yin chakra gathered in their palms. It shifted a little toward Kaori, drifted back when Kohinata corrected, and then shook harder as Kaori refined her pull.
That was the difference between chakra thrown like force and chakra shaped like material. While most shinobi viewed chakra as energy, Ryu had advanced to manipulate it beyond its basic form. In skilled hands, chakra could be held, pressed, balanced, directed, and made to keep its shape under pressure. It could behave like an obedient substance.
But to shape chakra like Ryu and the Otsutsuki clan, they need to keep training their yin and yang chakra control to the extreme.
As Kaori refined her pull further, the sphere shook harder, and Kohinata compensated at once, his corrections so small that only the motion of the sphere revealed them.
Then, inside Naruto, two other pairs of eyes watched the same lesson.
*
Minato watched the sphere strain between the opposing pulls. "That is the same technique he used against the Nine-Tails," he said quietly.
Kushina followed the motion a little longer. "Solid chakra shaped to hold form… They are both training their chakra control using the opposite attractive nature of yin and yang. It's like lifting weights and training their yin-muscles and yang-muscles alternatively. This method is so brilliantly simple yet advanced. How did the boy build this method?"
"Yes," Minato said. "Maybe it's because of this chakra control he managed to pull chakra directly from the nine tails."
"Maybe", Minato said, "this is not the only chakra control method he has. He also has the Senju method."
*
Outside, the Yang sphere still trembled between Kaori and Kohinata under their opposing pulls, its surface rippling each time one of them adjusted and the other answered.
Ryu's attention was back at Arata and Naruto.
Arata tried once. His leaf slid off almost at once, while Naruto's held for a few seconds, tilted, and fell again.
"This leaf hates me," Naruto muttered.
For the next hour all of them trained and Ryu also trained on the side in his own methods.
*
Kushina watched Naruto reset the leaf yet again. "My boy really does not tire out."
Minato smiled faintly. "With that much chakra, stamina was never going to be the difficult part. But to not give up and stick it out that long even after multiple failures, that takes more than just chakra."
"He got that from me," Kushina replied.
Minato smiled, "You agree to it finally after all those years."
Kushina smiled at Minato's jab and said, "Our son has enough stubbornness for three children."
Minato replied, "Maybe it is a good thing."
*
Naruto and Arata were both asleep after an hour of tiring exercise. Both were snoring.
"I am also tired, boss," Kaori said.
Ryu said, "You can also both take a nap. Take these."
Ryu gave them the [Anchor Seals]. Both of Yin and Yang nature. Ryu had also given a few encrypted ones to Toshiro for his private training.
Both Kohinata and Kaori said their goodbyes and left.
Ryu then resumed his [Diamond Release] exercise again now that there was no one watching. Ryu wanted to keep this a secret, even from his allies for some more time. His carbon control was already known to his allies but not the advanced version of it.
Ryu gathered fine dust particles using [Carbon Control].
*
"What is he doing now? What is that ... dust?" Kushina said.
*
Ryu shaped the dust into a cluster and made it bigger this time and put uniform pressure around it using his yin-yang chakra control. Outer opposite layers were putting pressure on inner layers. And Ryu, this time, used multiple alternating layers to increase the pressure even more as he was trying it on a bigger carbon cluster.
*
Kushian asked, "Is he trying to make something? Or is it a new chakra control method?"
Minato replied, "Don't know... Let's keep watching. Good thing Naruto is sleeping with half an eye open."
*
Ryu put the final chakra impulse of Senju's chakra control from all sides of the cluster.
The size of the cluster immediately decreased a little bit and layers of Yin-Yang chakra coiling around it tightened further.
The bright-gold yin-yang chakra layers subsided, and a black final layer around the cluster cracked, revealing a piece of diamond large enough for a massive ring. It was shaped like a radiant-cut diamond.
Ryu smiled and said, "That's another 100 million Ryo."
A/N:
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