At night, before going to sleep, Higashino Makoto routinely began his chakra control training.
At present, he had already entered what he himself defined as the second stage: continuously adjusting the ratio of the two types of energy within chakra, pushing them toward the two extremes of yin and yang.
With every adjustment, not only did he have to fuse the new ratio back into chakra once again, he also had to familiarize himself with the characteristics of that chakra, and then achieve precise control.
It was extremely time-consuming.
But he enjoyed it. Higashino Makoto was very eager to know what kind of surprising results would appear once the ratio was adjusted all the way to the extreme ends.
To give an example, original chakra was formed by mixing physical energy and spiritual energy at a 50–50 ratio—that is, a general-purpose type.
It could be used for both taijutsu and ninjutsu. As for elemental attributes, that was another form of training altogether—those one was born with could be continuously strengthened through nature transformation.
Those one was not born with could be gradually acquired through training. However, Higashino Makoto's focus was not on that for now, because it also required a great deal of time. For the moment, he did not have any need to possess all five elemental attributes.
At present, by adjusting physical energy to 70%, he could use medical ninjutsu. Conversely, by adjusting spiritual energy to 70%, learning and casting genjutsu would yield twice the results with half the effort.
But the further he went, the more difficult it became. He vaguely defined every 10% as one stage, but the problem was that the further he pushed forward, the harder it was to bring the energies into harmony. He could only rely on day-after-day, slow, grinding effort.
Was there any good way to speed up this progress?
There was. Brother, there was.
Dig out a pair of three-tomoe eyeballs from the Uchiha clan and install them on yourself, and yin-attribute training would definitely become as effortless as a fish in water.
Go find Uncle Snake and get a shot of Hashirama cells, and yang-attribute power would explode in a short period of time.
So then—what was the price?
Death.
Either you would be screwed to death by the Hashirama cells and turn into a big tree, or you would be hacked to death by a crowd of red-eyed lunatics and turned into minced meat.
The power you gain through your own hard training is still safe and reliable.
He had already canceled his hand-seal practice before bed. At present, his hand-seal speed was pretty good. In any case, he was not planning to be an obedient ninja. The combat style he had previously set for himself was also not centered on ninjutsu, so for now, it was enough.
In fact, if chakra control were trained to the extreme, then once you had grasped the energy circulation pathway of a certain ninjutsu, you could directly complete it within the meridians using mental power, without needing to use seals to mobilize it.
Clap your hands once—whatever you want, you have it. Not clapping your hands is fine too.
Hand seals were originally developed by Indra so that humans could use jutsu. His whole family were born as chakra "privilege dogs" with admin-level access, so they did not need to form any seals.
In the end, chakra is something that belongs to the Ōtsutsuki clan. It merely spread into human bodies, and through generation after generation of reproduction, it fused into the cells.
It not only made extraordinary power cheap, it also changed the structure of the human body.
Humans were like factories that produced chakra. They could use it temporarily, but they did not possess ultimate ownership of it.
...
After falling asleep, Higashino Makoto's consciousness-body, as usual, floated above his physical body.
He was used to it by now. Every night, as a daily routine, he lured white natural energy into his body. The only difference was that as his training progressed, his consciousness-body had already become much stronger than it had been at the beginning, and now the amount of natural energy he could lure in at once was also more than before.
He thought that tonight would again be an ordinary day of blending with the white mist, no different from before, but unexpected changes quickly occurred.
Although he was already thoroughly familiar with absorbing natural energy, Higashino Makoto had never relaxed his monitoring of his body. He had never forgotten that natural energy was not a gentle sheep—it was something lethal.
Today, halfway through his training, Higashino Makoto's consciousness-body keenly observed that something at his body's forehead flickered once.
It was a circular pattern, faintly appearing and disappearing on the forehead. As the white natural energy poured into his body, the circular pattern finally clearly revealed what it looked like.
He saw that on the body's forehead, there appeared a pattern that was slightly larger than a one-yen coin from his previous life: a circle with an outer ring around it. Above the ring, a small dot was embedded. Overall, it was silver. The contrast with the skin color was not very strong, but it was still quite obvious, as if that patch of skin had undergone some kind of lesion.
"Could this be some kind of pattern under Sage Mode?"
As Higashino Makoto pondered this question in his mind, he found the pattern looking more and more familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before. He immediately began to recall it carefully.
This thing looked a bit like it came from the same mold as the pattern used by a certain naked man.
Jonathan Osterman—known in the streets as Doctor Manhattan, nickname Blue Big Dick—had drawn this symbol on his own forehead. It was the symbol of the hydrogen atom.
That would be impressive—omnipotent, even.
Unfortunately, just thinking about it made it obvious that it was impossible. Higashino Makoto was still a completely ordinary mortal, and he had also noticed the differences between the two.
Doctor Manhattan's pattern was larger overall, but the circle representing the atomic nucleus in the center was smaller. Higashino Makoto's pattern was smaller overall, yet the central circle was larger.
Rather than the symbol of a hydrogen atom, it was closer to the image of a natural satellite orbiting a planet.
Or you could say a planet orbiting the sun.
Looked at that way, it made much more sense. Natural energy—didn't it represent exactly this planet, or even this star system or universe?
Fortunately, it only appeared on this small patch of his forehead. It was nothing like the Sage face markings of the Three Great Sage Regions of the ninja world, which painted the entire face like someone performing on an opera stage.
He also did not know whether it would disappear after he stopped absorbing natural energy.
Even if it did not disappear, it was not a big deal. He would just treat it as having an extra tattoo. After all, there were plenty of people in the ninja world who liked messing around with their faces.
Nohara Rin stuck two square patches of greasepaint on her face. Everyone in the Inuzuka clan painted dog fangs on theirs. Kankurō painted his face to look like a ghost.
So what if Higashino Makoto got himself a tattoo?
Finally, Higashino Makoto reacted—there was already a Sage face marking in the ninja world that looked similar to this pattern.
That was Senju Hashirama.
The difference was that Higashino Makoto's pattern was a bit smaller than the one on the First Hokage's forehead. At the same time, the inner circle was larger, the outer ring thinner, and there was an extra dot on the outer ring.
Most importantly, Higashino Makoto did not have any eye markings. That was great—honestly speaking, eye markings did not really fit his aesthetic.
The current problem was that very few ordinary people should have ever seen Senju Hashirama's Sage transformation. It was classified information.
So how was he supposed to explain the similar markings on his forehead later—markings that resembled Hashirama's?
Explain my ass. I'm already a sage—who the hell would dare demand an explanation?
...
Early the next morning, Higashino Makoto stood in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at his smooth, fair forehead. For some reason, he felt a little disappointed.
Having a tattoo made him worry about being mistaken for a delinquent; losing it made him miss it. Damn—how pathetic.
It seemed that his training with natural energy was still not complete. Higashino Makoto made a decision: if absorbing natural energy counted as the first stage, then the appearance of sage markings now was the second stage—preliminary Sage Mode.
When the day came that the sage markings stabilized and no longer disappeared, that would count as entering the third stage. It should be… constant Sage Mode.
As soon as he thought about having another training goal ahead of him, Higashino Makoto's mood immediately improved. Cheerfully, he went out to carry out his daily training.
Aside from yin and yang, the five elemental chakra natures give rise to all kinds of varied techniques. What is the original intent of these techniques?
It is imitation—mimicking the outward manifestations of all things that exist in nature. By gaining control over these phenomena, they become ninjutsu in a ninja's hands.
Ninjutsu training mainly consists of shape transformation and nature transformation.
Shape transformation is relatively simple. The fact that Higashino Makoto could form a Rasengan already indicated that his control over chakra had reached an extremely high level.
After all, this technique is known in the original work as the pinnacle of shape transformation. On the surface, it looks like a simple ball of chakra, but internally it is extremely complex, formed by countless high-speed, high-density streams of chakra rotating around a central point and converging together.
Nature transformation is far more complex. First, you have to understand what properties a certain elemental chakra possesses and what its outward manifestations are. Only then can you deepen your training in that direction.
On the training ground, Higashino Makoto formed hand seals and unleashed Wind Release: Great Breakthrough. A violent gust surged forward, making the large trees ahead rustle loudly.
This was a simple C-rank Wind Release ninjutsu. The rank referred to learning difficulty and had nothing to do with power; its power depended solely on how much chakra was used.
An ordinary genin could only blow down a wooden house. If you let Senju Hashirama pour all his chakra into it at once, he could blow the entire Konohagakure into the sky.
At the same time, this jutsu only made use of the most basic nature transformation of the wind attribute—rapid airflow.
Did the wind attribute have other properties?
It did, friends, it did—such as air pressure, or cutting formed by high-density wind-attribute chakra undergoing extreme-speed friction.
If one really let their imagination run wild, even more nature transformations could be explored. But a person's energy was limited, and Higashino Makoto did not plan to pursue infinite conjecture. Training the few most commonly used ones would be enough.
His innate chakra attributes were wind, earth, and water.
What nature transformations did the earth attribute have? Far too many—containment, heaviness, gravity, disintegration, and so on.
What nature transformations did the water attribute have? Flexibility, high-speed cutting, impact, and so on.
There were simply too many. No one could fully comprehend them all within a limited lifespan. No wonder Uncle Snake wanted to pursue eternal life.
His ideal was to learn every jutsu in the world. Humanity's short few decades of lifespan were far from sufficient.
Fortunately, Higashino Makoto's ideals were different from his, so he only needed to train a few nature transformations that were useful to him.
As for the others, he could slowly research them later when he had time.
Thinking of this, he once again cast Wind Release: Great Breakthrough, but this time he released it beneath his feet. The powerful airflow slammed into the ground, pushing back and propelling his small body up into the air.
During this process, Higashino Makoto quietly perceived the flow of wind-attribute chakra, deepening his understanding of this nature.
Before long, he split off several shadow clones. Each brought their palms together, holding a leaf between them, attempting to use chakra to split it in two in order to perceive the cutting property.
Immersed in training, unable to pull himself away.
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