Developing a New Water Release!

The Third Hokage.

To encourage the children to study hard, the school had decided to give the top scorer on the final exam a reward, such as a specially made ninja tool or some pointers from a Jonin. Opportunities like this were rare, so I defeated Sasuke and took first place.

No one had expected Lord Hokage to take it into his head to come and deliver my prize himself.

"...I hear you want to develop a new Water Release that requires creating immense water pressure?" After a round of official pleasantries, the Third got down to business.

"Yes, Lord Hokage! I'll use immense water pressure to spray water out like a water gun." I gave him a simple explanation of the principle.

"I see..." Lord Third couldn't think of what use the jutsu would be for the moment. Oh well, he would treat it as a way to nurture a youngster. "There actually are Ninjutsu designed specifically to create intense pressure. Many Sand Release techniques rely on pressure to cause damage, such as this one, Sand Binding Coffin-"

Lord Hokage slowly formed the hand seals, demonstrating them for me.

"For even greater pressure, such as Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral, the seals are a little more complicated, and manipulating the Chakra is more troublesome, but that shouldn't be much of a problem for you."

He demonstrated the seals for Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral as well.

"How much did you get?" The Third Hokage looked at me expectantly.

"Hmm... I think I got most of it. The parts the two jutsu have in common are the combination of seals that creates pressure, right?" As I spoke, I formed the hand seals for the Hokage to see.

"Try using them in Water Release."

This was probably my first attempt at creating a new elemental jutsu, although it was very, very simple. All I had to do was create water, then create intense pressure.

"Tiger-" The first seal was the water seal. Next came the seals for controlling its shape. "Ox-monkey-rabbit-rat-boar-" I only formed the first two, ox and monkey, because I didn't need any overly complicated control this time. A simple sphere would do. Then I created pressure. "Rooster-ox-horse-dog." Done!

A round ball of water hovered over my hand. Though it didn't show on the outside, the water inside was under immense pressure.

A thought stirred in my mind, and an opening appeared in the water ball. A thin jet of water struck the concrete floor and immediately bored a hole in it. Altering a jutsu after completing it was no longer a problem for me at this level. I increased my Chakra output, and the jet grew faster and fiercer. The hole rapidly deepened, and just as it was about to bore through the floor, Lord Hokage reached out and blocked the jet with his hand. Only then did I stop.

I silently estimated that the pressure could probably reach ten or twenty megapascals. Increasing the Chakra output further would bring it to just under thirty at most. Switching to the seals for Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral would at best double it again, topping out at seventy megapascals. I doubted that would even be enough to cut through a steel plate. Once powerful fighters reinforced themselves with Chakra, they could resist a purely physical cutting attack without added Chakra even better than a steel plate. I had to create higher pressure, or I could only use it to catch opponents off guard or beat up weaklings.

The Hokage pondered for a moment. "So that's what you meant. Increase the pressure a bit more, and it might actually pose a threat."

That was right. Once water pressure reached ten megapascals, water became difficult to compress further. At over a hundred megapascals, cutting steel could be as easy as cutting tofu. More importantly, the jet could shoot out at a kilometer per second. If an enemy was only ten meters away from me, he would have just 0.01 seconds to react!

"The intense pressure of Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral is achieved by applying pressure in layers. Study it some more, and you should be able to increase it further."

"Yes, Lord Hokage!"

Lord Hokage's help really did make a difference. He had found the right way to solve my problem in no time. Next, I needed to figure out how to create even greater pressure. With those two examples for reference, what came afterward shouldn't be too difficult.

Once that problem was solved, creating the new Ninjutsu would be a matter of technical details: how much water would be most cost-effective to produce, increasing its viscosity so it wouldn't disperse easily, adding fine sand to improve its cutting power, and how to make a suitable nozzle, among other things.

The principle behind this jutsu came from the high-pressure waterjet cutting technology used in industry in my previous life. When water was pressurized to over 400 megapascals and passed through an opening just 0.05 millimeters in diameter, it could cut all kinds of soft materials. When a small amount of sand, such as garnet sand, was mixed into the water jet, the resulting abrasive water jet could cut practically any hard material, including metal, composite materials, stone, and glass.

My Ninjutsu was essentially an elemental Release Techniques recreation of an industrial waterjet cutter. Its principle was very simple, so it was also easy to explain how I had come up with it. Everyone could see that I played with a ball of water, controlling it with Chakra, every day. So it was perfectly normal for me to occasionally have a wild, far-fetched idea and use it to create a new Release Technique.

As for my new elemental jutsu luckily possessing great power, that would show I was lucky and a genius. Whatever new jutsu I invented in the future would likewise demonstrate my genius, rather than be something of unknown origin. Ninjutsu were vital to a ninja's livelihood and survival and were a very sensitive matter. Suddenly possessing a Ninjutsu of unknown origin was like an official in my previous life having a huge fortune of unexplained origin: it wasn't something one could bring into the open. In serious cases, people might even think you had been bought off and turned into a spy.

That was also one reason I didn't plan to learn the Rasengan. I didn't like sneaking around. In fact, with my current Chakra control, I was confident that as long as Naruto used the Rasengan once in front of me, I could copy the Ninjutsu in a single morning.

But the way things developed afterward caught me a little off guard. The next day, Lord Hokage suddenly sent someone to inform me that I wasn't to practice the Ninjutsu in public or use it in sparring without permission. If I needed help perfecting it, I could ask, and they would do their best to meet my needs. Finally, he also wanted to record it in the village's Ninjutsu archives and hoped to have my consent.

My head immediately started to ache. Obviously, Lord Hokage had probably rated my new jutsu as no more than a C-rank Ninjutsu the previous afternoon. After he returned, he must have tested it himself and realized that the completed jutsu had the potential to reach S-rank, so he had ordered me to keep it quiet.

I had nothing to say about the first two requests and readily agreed. As for the third, that I could ask for anything I needed, I said I had no such needs for the time being. The last one left me a little speechless. You already have the jutsu's core secret, and you're still asking me this? Even if I don't agree, you can just change its appearance and record it anyway... Maybe he was trying to earn some goodwill. Perhaps he thought I was a genius and was making a show of being considerate, giving himself a reason to offer me benefits. That would also count as retaining talent.

I had no idea what was happening among the higher-ups. Getting noticed by them through a powerful jutsu might attract greed, or it might bring opportunity. Still, with Lord Hokage looking after things above me, I was a Konoha Ninja with a spotless background and impeccable roots. I didn't need to worry too much.

The smooth development of my first new jutsu meant I could have a powerful Ninjutsu for breaking through defenses before graduation, an important benchmark on the path to Kage Level. Apparently, Minato Namikaze had once been able to slaughter other Jonin like chickens with just a few Kunai and Flying Thunder God, but he had little recourse against strong physical defenses. So he developed the Rasengan, which excelled at breaking through defenses, and was formally recognized as a Kage Level powerhouse as a result.

Development of the second jutsu, however, ran into a major bottleneck. As I envisioned it, the second jutsu would be the foundation of my future. I could use it to develop a whole range of extended Water Release techniques; it would be the core of my Water Release. Once I completed it, the power of my other Water Release techniques could increase by as much as a hundredfold.

The key to everything lay in a concept that had been purely theoretical even in my previous life.

Ultra-Pure Water.

Few people knew what water would become if purified to the absolute limit. Water had surface tension, which allowed water striders to move across it. If that water were purified to the absolute limit, its surface tension would allow a Boeing 747 to use its surface as a runway. Bending a steel bar as thick as a finger required 9,000 newtons of force, while a column of Ultra-Pure Water of the same thickness would require nearly ten million newtons, over a thousand times the compressive strength of steel!

If I used Ultra-Pure Water for my Water Release, all I would need was a thin layer to form a water shield. Then Planetary Devastation, Susanoo—those supposedly invincible Ninjutsu my roommate had bragged about in my previous life—and other physical-level Release Techniques could all go to hell!

If I used Ultra-Pure Water to form a Water Clone, it would be the most durable Clone Technique in history, with the strongest physical attacks. Chakra itself could drive immense force; it was just that Chakra's vessels, such as Water Clones, Earth Clones, and even Shadow Clones with physical Chakra bodies, were too loosely structured to use it. But my Ultra-Pure Water Clone could unleash one hundred percent of that force without collapsing, and as long as I had Ultra-Pure Water, its Chakra consumption would be no different from an ordinary Water Clone! The cost of a C-rank jutsu could produce the power of a jutsu beyond S-rank!

Or, for another example, if I formed Ultra-Pure Water into a rope and bound someone with it, even if they transformed into the Ten-Tails, they might not be able to break free!

What incredible power! If I could complete a jutsu like that, Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju could come at me together, and I wouldn't even spare them a glance!

But—and both my previous life and this one were full of buts-Ultra-Pure Water never existed in nature. Because of water's solvent properties, many substances dissolved in it to some degree, including the glass container holding the water itself. Even distilled water absorbed trace amounts of gas as it evaporated and condensed again. Despite the advanced technology of my previous life, it still wasn't possible to produce Ultra-Pure Water purified to that absolute limit. Even with the miraculous Chakra I now possessed and Sealing Jutsu to serve as a container, producing water of that purity was still a problem.

Water created by Chakra was merely imitation water, not real water. Obviously, it couldn't be used to produce Ultra-Pure Water.

Under the pretext of improving my first jutsu, I consulted most of the Water Release Ninjutsu recorded in Konoha. As I expected, there really was no one in the Shinobi World with so much time on their hands that they insisted on purifying water to ten decimal places. And with my current knowledge, I truly had no idea how to purify it in a way I could use in battle.

All right, I gave up my dream of producing ultrapure water in large quantities and settled for the next best thing. In fact, hardly any of the Ninjutsu in the Water Release system I had envisioned required large amounts of water. Large-scale, high-consumption traditional Water Release wasn't my thing, so I could simply store the water I made normally and take it out for use in battle.

But even after lowering my requirements that far, the road to ultrapure water was still full of obstacles. After distilling water seven or eight times, I found that it still wasn't pure enough. Obviously, something had gotten mixed in. In theory, distilled water produced with a container, vacuum evacuation, and heating all provided by Chakra should have been completely pure. Unless some ions had bonded with Chakra, becoming extremely similar to water in their properties and stubbornly traveling along with the water vapor.

Developing a new jutsu was painful, and it gave me a particular respect for those webnovel protagonists who developed new Ninjutsu as easily as eating. Apparently, they could somehow develop an entire series of powerful, highly practical Ninjutsu on their own, without any reference material. But the Shinobi World had existed for so long, and countless people had come up with ideas since the Sage of Six Paths. If such Ninjutsu really existed, they would have been developed long ago. Only with the scientific knowledge of Earth behind me could I outthink these ninja, who had no grounding in physics or chemistry—or else one had to be a stunning genius like Minato Namikaze to imitate the Tailed Beast Bomb and develop the Rasengan.

Development of the first new jutsu began progressing by leaps and bounds at the end of fourth grade. After one summer vacation, I had overcome every technical hurdle, and in the first half of fifth grade I finalized a series of new jutsu based on it. From the low-pressure, low-volume water-arrow type, which emphasized speed of activation, to the balanced medium-to-high-pressure water-gun type, and the ultrahigh-pressure, high-volume water-cannon type, which emphasized breaking through defenses, they were all Ninjutsu ranging from A-rank to beyond S-rank based on this principle. I had no artistic talent, so I named them all things like "Water Release: Super Water Arrow Jutsu" and "Water Release: Super Water Gun Jutsu." Speaking of which, although the names made the calibers sound progressively larger, the jets in every version actually had the same diameter. I named them that way to conceal the principle behind the jutsu.

With some of the results and insights from the new high-pressure waterjet series, I finally completed stage one of my second jutsu before the end of fifth grade: producing small amounts of Ultra-Pure Water. I made a permeable membrane with Chakra, then slowly forced distilled water through it under ultrahigh pressure. In one hour, I could obtain one drop of Ultra-Pure Water that met my requirements.

Stage two of the ultrapure water series of Water Release techniques wasn't actually completed until after the Land of Waves incident.

There's another chapter tonight.