Milestone Results for the New Ninjutsu

If someone like Mizuki can betray Konoha, what good can he possibly be? -- Don't assume Mizuki has always been a bad person. At least when he passed the political vetting and was allowed to become the teacher of strong characters like Naruto, his political score was on par with Iruka! (Note 1)

Thinking about these things was pointless, and she sighed helplessly. After being promoted to Chunin, her rank and authority had increased, but it also meant that many unpleasant things that Kakashi had protected her from before would now be happening to her.

There were also happy things.

With Tsunade's support, the development of the new Ninjutsu went relatively smoothly; within a week, the new technique had basically taken shape.

In today's routine sparring session, she applied this technique to actual combat, and the new technique performed brilliantly: it remained stable even in intense combat, reducing reaction time by 0.01 seconds.

This number may not sound like much, but its effect in battle is immediate—her record today is a long-awaited perfect 10-0, with Naruto and Sasuke each losing five times.

On her way home after training, she was still feeling quite excited. It had been a long time since she had crushed those two with such a large advantage—well, mainly Sasuke. Naruto had always won more often than he lost against her (only when her stamina wasn't too depleted).

This also served as a wake -Sasuke for Sasuke, who had recently become a bit arrogant. He had become too engrossed in the power boost brought by the Sharingan and neglected his basic training. Sakura had advised him several times that the essence of the Sharingan was a power multiplier, not power itself. Only when his basic strength was strong enough would the enhancement brought by the Sharingan be truly significant. Therefore, blindly exploring the abilities of the Sharingan was actually putting the cart before the horse.

When the Sharingan's prized dynamic vision advantage was partially negated by the near-instantaneous effect of Sakura's new Ninjutsu, Sasuke was completely overwhelmed by Sakura. This was followed by five consecutive defeats.

Sasuke had previously ignored Sakura's advice, but after this series of defeats, Sakura saw that he looked thoughtful and had resumed his basic training, which he had stopped for a while, instead of practicing the advanced Ninjutsu he had been so engrossed in. She knew that he had already reflected on his actions.

That being said, the fact that the new Ninjutsu can be applied to actual combat already signifies a minimum level of success.

"Then it's time to give it a name," Sakura muttered to herself as she walked home. "We can't keep calling it 'Body Pathway Derangement' or 'New Ninjutsu' all this time."

The Body Pathway Derangement was merely the prototype of a new technique. After Sakura significantly modified it, this technique is now completely different from the Body Pathway Derangement and can no longer be confused with it.

"How about calling it Ninja Art - Cherry Blossom Impact - Stage One?" As she passed over the rooftop of a house, she saw a cherry blossom tree in the courtyard and had an inspiration—it just so happened that her name was also "Cherry Blossom."

Yi Yi, this name is already an exceptional achievement for Sakura, who is not good at naming things.

The term "Stage One" expresses Sakura's ambition for the new technique. Through the generous sacrifice of countless Ice Clones, the girl has now accumulated enough lessons from both failures and successes, and has learned to safely and effectively inject Chakra into and enhance her nervous system.

It's actually not difficult—just as no one who has learned to ride a bicycle thinks it's a difficult thing. The problem is simply that if every fall while learning to ride a bicycle meant certain death, then probably very few people could learn to ride a bicycle, which is supposedly not difficult at all.

"Anyway, it's decided. The new technique will be called 'Cherry Blossom Impact'! Stage one is simply using Chakra to enhance the nervous system, crudely increasing reaction speed and thinking speed. Next are stages two, stages three..." She nimbly leaped on the rooftop, talking to herself.

When Sakura was reading manga in her previous life, she once complained about the ninjas' behavior of jumping on rooftops, "Why not walk on the road instead of jumping on the roof? It can't be explained except that they are extremely chuunibyou (adolescent delusions of grandeur)."

After she became Jonin, she discovered the advantages of jumping off rooftops: those who walked on main roads were mostly ordinary people, forming a slow and crowded flow of people, making it impossible to run fast. Therefore, jumping off rooftops was the right choice when traveling: it not only avoided being blocked by crowds, but also allowed her to Earth Flow in a straight line without having to take detours. This wasn't some kind of childish behavior, but rather a practical necessity.

For Sakura, this high-flying movement style also has a parkour-like fun.

For example... when the girl saw a very tall telephone pole on the street ahead, she had an idea.

She quickened her pace and leaped onto the low house in front of the telephone pole.

The roof, which had been in disrepair for many years, wobbled precariously when run, and seemed on the verge of collapsing at the slightest exertion.

White sandals glided lightly across the roof beams, the half-heeled shoes making a crisp sound as they tapped the tiles. Chakra flowed through the soles of the shoes into the roof, deftly reinforcing the dilapidated wooden beams, making them worthy of being walked on.

A tall wooden pole stood right in front of me.

The girl took a deep breath.

"Ninja Art - Cherry Blossom Impact - Stage One."

All emotions faded. Thoughts seemed to drift away, leaving only a blank space.

The most refined Chakra manipulation ability, honed through countless trials, instinctively controls the Chakra, guiding it according to the requirements of Ninjutsu, flowing into the delicate nervous system—

Then, in Sakura's eyes, the world seemed to slow down.

You can clearly feel every step you take, the contraction and undulation of your muscles, as if it's all playing in slow motion. You can see dust splashing up and settling on your fair feet, leaving a light layer of fine ash.

Sandals touched the rooftop, each step landing with deliberate precision in slow motion, finding the most stable position. Then came a high leap; the girl's figure was as light as a swallow, soaring several meters and landing gracefully on the wooden pole.

Standing at this height, half of Konoha lay beneath her feet: from the candy store selling sweets to the hot spring inn with wisps of smoke rising in the distance, from the children playing ninja games as they passed the pole to the fiery red sunset, an endless panorama unfolded before her eyes.

It is refreshing and invigorating.

After a while, she stopped her Cherry Blossom Impact Technique and jumped off the wooden pole.

The first stage of the Ninja Art - Cherry Blossom Impact, only barely met the minimum requirements, but the effect was already quite good.

The conduction speed of human motor nerves is only about 100 meters per second. With the enhancement of Stage One Chakra, it can reach about 150-160 meters per second. Previously, when Sakura used Ice Clone in her experiments, at its peak, she could digitize her entire nervous system, achieving the transmission of nerve signals at the speed of light (300 million meters per second)—although it only lasted for less than a ten-thousandth of a second before overload and collapse. If Cherry Blossom Impact could maintain this state for Ninjutsu longer period...

However, that's all too far in the future! Sakura chuckled self-deprecatingly, thinking, "Don't try to run before you've even learned to walk."

Phase Two development has already been put on the agenda: the safest approach is to use Chakra to warm the nerve fibers, thereby increasing their temperature, which in turn increases the conductivity of the nanoparticles, accelerates the depolarization process, and ultimately increases the conduction speed—simply raising the temperature by 16 degrees can increase the nerve conduction speed by several times (note).

Next, she experimented with an even more radical method—after all, the lives of her Ice Clone didn't matter—directly constructing micro-electric fields within nerve cells to forcibly increase conductivity and crudely accelerate the conduction speed of action potentials. After sacrificing several clones, the girl was surprised to find that this approach was actually quite successful. Compared to conservative methods that often involved raising the temperature to tens or even hundreds of degrees Celsius, risking burns to the nerves at any moment, directly strengthening the electric field was more feasible, and with practice, the risks were also lower.

Of course, Phase Two is more complex than Phase One, and we're only just getting started. To fully complete Phase Two, we'll probably need another month or two of continuous experimentation.

Actually, Sakura was already quite satisfied with completing this first stage of Cherry Blossom Impact before the Land of Snow mission.

This Ninjutsu significantly enhances her combat abilities, as evidenced by her ten consecutive victories. With this technique, she feels much more confident about her mission in the Land of Snow.

In fact, she had a bad feeling about this seemingly simple task: perhaps she had heard of it in her past life? But she really couldn't remember where this country was mentioned in the comics. Maybe she had seen it in some fanfiction, but unfortunately, she had almost completely forgotten these unimportant things after so many years.

In short, the name "Land of Snow" sounds like a den of dragons and tigers.

Get up, that fat director... seems a bit suspicious.

Well, Sakura was a little skeptical at first. But then she thought about it and realized there was really no need to doubt this or worry about that.

He's just a die-hard fan. In her past life, Sakura had seen many middle-aged men who were equally fervent fans. A famous author even caused quite a stir on Weibo because of this!

Being overly suspicious and paranoid will only lead to needless worry in the end.

To put it bluntly, even assuming he has some kind of scheme, do you think he can mobilize the entire army or ninjas of the Land of Snow to deal with Sakura Haruno? And even if he could mobilize the entire military force of the Land of Snow to fight them, would he be able to subdue all three of them?

This tiny country, with its entire national strength, is nothing special; it would struggle even to deal with a slightly stronger Jonin.

Sakura shrugged, indicating that she was not under any pressure.

Since that's the case, there's no need to delve into any secrets here. Sakura also doesn't want to judge others with prejudice all the time. Often, suspicion of others is nothing more than a case of "a neighbor's suspicion of an axe"—presuming something is wrong with the other person before observing their behavior, making everything seem suspicious. The most dangerous are those who, after a lucky guess, think their suspicions are perfectly justified. In reality, this is called "even a fool's thousand thoughts may have one stroke of genius"...

On the way home, the girl kept her mind wandering in a cheerful mood.

However, the girl's smile did not last.

When she was almost home, she suddenly stopped in an alley.

The setting sun cast her long, slender shadow across the deserted alley, where all was silent.

"What can I do for you two?"

The girl's indifferent voice broke the long silence.

(Note 1: I've already accepted the movie's premise.)

Note: This is not nonsense; it's true. Increasing the temperature can indeed increase the speed of nerve signal transmission.

(I added an extra chapter last weekend, and I should add another one this weekend if I don't experience writer's block...)

(I've been thinking for a long time but still haven't come up with a catchy chapter title... so I need everyone's brainstorming.)