It was nearing noon when Higashino Makoto set down the scroll in his hands and began preparing lunch for himself.
Not long ago, Higashino Megumi had finally agreed to her son's request and no longer insisted on getting up early every morning to painstakingly prepare a full day's meals before going to work.
First, Higashino Makoto did not want his mother to work herself so hard; second, reheated food always tasted noticeably worse.
Having lived a second life, Higashino Makoto's thinking was very simple: he trained desperately so that he could enjoy the wonders of the ninja world without being casually killed by others, and live a life different from his previous one. But that did not mean he had to become an ascetic and shortchange himself when it came to living and enjoying life.
Today, he planned to eat steamed fish.
Higashino Makoto fished a live fish out of the kitchen's water bucket and immediately hurled it forcefully onto the ground. The fish, which had been lively and thrashing about just moments before, instantly suffered a fatal blow and felt the call of death.
After placing the fish on the cutting board, Higashino Makoto did not begin processing it right away. Instead, he extended his right hand and held it above the fish's body, as green chakra gradually appeared on his hand.
This was a simple healing technique, a preliminary technique of the A-rank medical ninjutsu, the Mystical Palm Technique.
The green chakra was the legendary medical chakra. It could serve as energy to stimulate the regeneration of tissue cells at injured areas, thereby achieving the effect of healing wounds.
However, not all chakra could be used to perform medical ninjutsu. Only chakra biased toward the Yang attribute could achieve a healing effect.
As for how to train it, that involved precise control over chakra.
As everyone knows, chakra is energy produced when a ninja combines physical energy extracted from the body's cells with spiritual energy in roughly equal proportions. If the proportions are off, it cannot be refined at all—the two types of energy simply will not fuse.
But that is only the general standard.
If one wanted their chakra to reach a medical grade and produce a healing effect, they had to precisely regulate this ratio.
To become a medical ninja, when refining chakra, one must control things so as to increase the proportion of physical energy and reduce the proportion of spiritual energy, making the fused chakra possess abundant vitality—this is the simplest Yang-attribute training.
The higher the proportion of physical energy, the stronger the vitality, and the better the healing effect.
A contradiction appears: reducing the proportion of spiritual energy will naturally weaken a ninja's control over chakra, but the problem is that medical ninjutsu just so happens to require precise chakra control.
A requirement that demands both at once—so advanced medical ninja are so rare.
If you flip the ratio around, with spiritual energy taking the larger share, that is simple Yin-attribute training, suitable for casting genjutsu and certain secret techniques.
So, genjutsu ninja and medical ninja both require extremely high chakra control: they must be able to refine chakra even when physical energy and spiritual energy are imbalanced, and then control it with even greater precision.
This is not something ordinary people can handle; it takes quite a lot of patience.
Of course, this refers to ordinary ninja—those born with good genetics are exceptions.
For example, the Uchiha clan is naturally born with extremely high Yin attributes, while the Senju and Uzumaki clans are naturally born with extremely high Yang attributes.
Tsunade was able to become the number one medical ninja in the ninja world, and it was not because her chest was big.
In the ninja world, training in chakra control is all about striving to achieve precise control: the deeper the control, the less chakra is wasted when using jutsu, the faster one can learn ninjutsu, and the greater its power.
This is the first stage; the vast majority of people train extensively at this stage.
The second stage is being able to steadily refine chakra even after changing the ratio between physical energy and spiritual energy. The greater the disparity between the ratios, the deeper the development of Yin and Yang attributes.
Higashino Makoto was at this stage. This knowledge of Yin and Yang attributes is very hard to find in Konohagakure's publicly available materials; most ninja do not have this concept at all. He had organized it based on the information about the Naruto world that he understood from his previous life.
As for the third stage, he already had a hypothesis, but it was still too far off to talk about now. Just deepening the second stage alone was already a long-term training.
On the cutting board, there was no auxiliary scroll placed under the fish's body.
It was the kind of scroll drawn with special formulas that was placed underneath when Haruno Sakura apprenticed under Tsunade and treated a fish—used to help apprentices refine stable medical chakra. Higashino Makoto had used it when he first started, but he no longer needed it now.
Under Higashino Makoto's treatment, the fish came back to life once again and began hopping about cheerfully. It felt like it was good to go again.
Then it was smacked on the head with a knife and lost its life.
Fish: "???"
No, bro—do you think this is funny? Couldn't you at least give me a clean death?
Chickens, ducks, geese, and rabbits that had once received the same treatment at the Higashino household: "Fish brother, you're absolutely right."
...
After finishing his meal, Higashino Makoto headed out, used his mother's reading permit, and plunged straight into the Konohagakure Library.
The books at home were always limited; the library was far richer. Recently, Higashino Makoto generally spent his afternoons here studying chakra-related knowledge.
Konohagakure's library did have such materials, including the characteristics of various chakra attributes, the operating principles and analyses of different types of genjutsu, and so on.
All of them were experiential works summarized by predecessors.
Back when the little rich girl was constantly trapped in the Infinite Tsukuyomi, she had come here to consult all kinds of theoretical books on genjutsu.
Although it was a genjutsu world, she had known her own situation at the time. The fact that she could rush to the library at the first opportunity to look up information showed that such materials definitely existed in the real world, and that she had been here before.
What was kept here was all basic theoretical knowledge. There were no ninjutsu or genjutsu techniques that could be practiced directly.
Any training methods for ninjutsu, genjutsu, or taijutsu were the secrets of individual clans and villages. To obtain them, one had to exchange merit, or apprentice under a powerful master.
Most ninja believed that as long as they learned powerful ninjutsu, they could become formidable ninja, yet they happened to ignore these most fundamental theories.
Especially those little brats who dreamed of becoming Hokage—they always felt that as long as they mastered a few powerful ninjutsu, they could become like the Hokage.
Higashino Makoto, however, believed that the theoretical knowledge summarized by predecessors was the most valuable thing of all. As for those techniques, they were merely the fruits borne by the great tree of that knowledge.
Time flew by as Higashino Makoto instinctively trained the second stage of chakra control while reading and studying. Before long, the sky gradually grew dark.
Higashino Makoto did not go home. Instead, he went and devoured several large bowls of ramen, then headed toward the Konohagakure Hospital to attend class.
All along, his mother, Higashino Megumi, had several days each week when she got off work relatively late.
That was because, aside from being busy treating patients during the day, she also worked part-time teaching at night, cultivating rookie genin who aspired to become medical ninja.
The Ninja Academy offered basic courses in medical knowledge, but after graduation, anyone who wanted to pursue further training had to register at the hospital, studying while practicing at the same time—this was also the method originally proposed by Tsunade.
Lay a solid foundation at the academy, then have veterans guide newcomers at the hospital.
...
The classroom was inside a conference room at the hospital. It had been specially converted into a teaching space—similar to a Ninja Academy classroom, but more compact.
At this moment, there were already more than a dozen students inside, with more girls and fewer boys.
The classroom was not full, which showed that people with talent for medical ninjutsu were truly not many. The students were basically crowded toward the front rows. After all, those who could come here all wanted to study seriously—no one wanted to sit in the back by the window and slack off.
These students were generally not very old, but they all wore Konohagakure forehead protectors and looked like they had graduated a year or two earlier. When they saw Higashino Makoto enter, they were somewhat surprised by his age, but no one said anything.
Being able to come here meant that hospital approval had already been granted.
Higashino Makoto looked around and noticed that at the desks in the front row on the left, there were three seats but only two people: one male and one female. The girl sat in the middle, and the boy sat on the outside.
He unceremoniously slipped into the empty seat on the inside.
"Hey, kid, someone's already sitting here."
Higashino Makoto glanced at the person who spoke and froze for a moment. It was a boy who looked about ten years old, with short black hair. Aside from the forehead protector on his head, he also wore goggles on his face.
'No way, right?' Higashino Makoto muttered to himself. He then leaned back slightly and, sure enough, saw the large fan emblem on the back of the boy's clothing.
With that getup, there was no doubt about it—it was you, Uchiha Obito.
He then looked at the girl sitting in the middle. Sure enough, just like his own mother, she had brown hair, with a stripe of face paint on each cheek, and a pure, cute appearance.
It was Nohara Rin, without question.
Where there was Rin, there was Obito. This really was a loyal flower-guarding simp.
Obito coming to study medical ninjutsu? Give him a break—he was just afraid his goddess would be snatched away by someone else.
"Come on, Obito, don't be so fierce. He's just a junior, after all." Nohara Rin gently stopped her companion's rude behavior.
But Higashino Makoto was not about to indulge him. "Am I not a person? Am I human or not, exactly?"
"Kid, you're pretty arrogant. Judging by your looks, you haven't even entered the Ninja Academy yet. Coming here at such a young age—do you even know what medical ninjutsu is?"
Seeing that Higashino Makoto was not afraid of him, Obito tried again to expose him from a professional angle, claiming he had sneaked in.
"Then do you know?" Higashino Makoto shot back. "Do you know how many types of blood vessels the human body has? What differences there are in bleeding characteristics? What the differences are in hemostatic methods?
"Do you know how a wound caused by a kunai piercing the palm should be cleaned? And after cleaning it, what precautions must be taken when using a healing technique?"
"Uh… what???" Obito was a pure academic underachiever—how could he possibly know any of that? Still, it did not matter much. He quickly found a new angle. "So what if you know? You're too young. Who allowed you to come in here and attend class?"
"My mom allowed it."
"Your mom? You're killing me, Obito-sama. Who is your mom, that she can even meddle with the Konohagakure Hospital?"
"My mom is the teacher who's giving you lessons. Her name is Higashino Megumi. My name is Higashino Makoto."
"Uh…" Obito finally got stuck. He could not keep talking. If he offended the teacher and caused Rin to lose her chance to study, what then?
Whenever Nohara Rin was involved, Obito immediately became cautious and restrained.
"Oh? So the junior is Teacher Megumi's child? Now that you mention it, you really do look quite alike," Nohara Rin said, curiously sizing up this junior who seemed to have a solid grasp of basic medical knowledge.
"Yes, senpai. My name is Higashino Makoto. I look forward to your guidance in the future."
"My name is Nohara Rin. Beside me is my partner, Uchiha Obito. It's nice to meet you."
"Mm. Same here. I hope we can make progress together and become excellent medical ninja," Higashino Makoto said, raising his eyebrows at Obito as he spoke.
"…" Obito was already furious beyond words. This brat not only dared to chat intimately with his Rin, but even remembered to provoke him.
He definitely wanted to beat him up hard.
But it was only a thought. He would not actually lay hands on a child. Before his fall to darkness, Uchiha Obito was in fact a very warm-hearted and kind boy.
He was just a bit awkward in personality.
---
I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
---