Hanma's Future Path

Putting his arm around Utage and walking to the entrance of the hotel, Hanma gently kissed her hand and said, "Alright, you can just walk me this far." With that, he shoved a stack of banknotes into her hand and blinked. Utage showed a surprised expression, her face flushed slightly, and she said bashfully, "Actually... actually, I really like you." Petting her hair and saying nothing more, he returned to the room alone, leaving her standing in the wind, utterly flustered. This really was not a case of him remaining calm while holding a seductive woman in his arms; rather, if Hanma wanted to get intimate with her, it would be no different from killing her. This was also a point that troubled Hanma greatly. Ever since he accumulated his strength and managed to pull off six entries in one breath, his physique underwent a heaven-shaking transformation, bidding farewell to everyday stress-relief activities from that day onward. After all, Utage and her peers were ordinary people. If he did not want to cause any casualties, he just had to let it go. Actually, in the Shinobi World, a mere Chunin could be completely in their element in such izakayas and red-light districts, acting like a newlywed bridegroom every single night. Although feudal lords might view ninja as ruthless tools, in the eyes of commoners, ninja were real, living deities, the arbiters and protectors of life. In this deformed world, becoming a Jonin was comparable to Fan Jin Passes the Imperial Examination back in his old hometown. Lying on the bed and crossing his legs, Hanma was pondering his future path. Hanma's development of his nintaijutsu path had gradually pushed him close to the limits of a conventional ninja. If he wanted to continue improving and maintain a suppressive stance in the later stages of the Shinobi World and even during battles against the Otsutsuki Clan, he had to find a path of transcendent evolution. However, judging from Boruto's performance, choosing nintaijutsu definitely held great promise. By the time of the Six Paths level of combat, chakra had already degenerated into something resembling a bowl of plain rice. Various ninjutsu formed from chakra could be directly and casually absorbed, and the only way to actually hurt the enemy was to stuff them until they could not take any more and burst? If one wanted to make it to the later stages of the Shinobi World, space ninjutsu, fuinjutsu, and senjutsu were absolute must-haves. Or else, one had to be like Hanma and Might Guy, mastering the most primitive and fundamental violence. Regardless of whatever fancy skills the enemy had, his attacks were simply straightforward kinetic energy equations. Hanma's nintaijutsu was also a bit different from Guy's. Future Guy walked the path of high offense and low defense, burning himself away to attain the greatest attacking power. Meanwhile, Hanma walked a path where hardness and softness complemented one another, with soul and flesh mutually reinforcing each other, balancing offense and defense—even prioritizing defense over offense. This was also influenced by his life before crossing over. Throughout the entire Naruto world, there were two things he could never wrap his head around. One of them was how his current ancestor, old Uchiha Madara, got his chest pierced by a mere kunai. This simply shocked him for a hundred years, as an extinction-level ninja fell to a fifty-tael kunai produced right in the village. Could stat allocation really be that unbalanced? Could you not just raise your defense a little bit? Looking at it this way, the title of Rose of the Battlefield was truly well-deserved. I touch you, you die; you touch me, I die. What they played was pure heart-pounding danger. There was also the strongest genjutsu possessed by the future generation of Hanma's own clan, Uchiha Shisui's Kotoamatsukami. The mechanism of action for this dojutsu was unknown to the absolute extreme, and he had to guard against it. To avoid becoming the two "disgraces of the Uchiha," Hanma established two major principles from the very beginning of his training. One: Although he was a nintaijutsu ninja, he had to strictly train his genjutsu resistance to avoid becoming someone else's puppet doll. Two: As a nintaijutsu ninja, high offense was not his defining trait, but high defense was the absolute truth! These two requirements were actually quite extravagant, and people with such capability in the Shinobi World could be counted on one hand. However, as someone possessing a system, training was much easier for Hanma, and accumulating experience allowed him to exchange for corresponding entries. Thus, starting from his graduation from the ninja academy at age nine, joining the Anbu, and fighting all the way through until he unlocked "Savage Growth," Hanma began his path of crazy elevation. Savage Growth bestowed upon him out-of-spec regenerative powers, while granting him corresponding damage immunity after healing. Hanma began actively trying to take various Five Elements Ninjutsu with his face, arms, thighs, and all sorts of other body parts. At first, his Anbu colleagues mocked Hanma mercilessly, telling him that no nintaijutsu ninja trained like that, and continuing down this path would lead to disability sooner or later. Gradually, however, everyone realized something was wrong. From Hanma barely enduring C-rank ninjutsu like the Great Fireball Jutsu while sustaining minor burns on his arms, to facing major B-rank ninjutsu like Fire Style: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet and Earth Style: Earth Dragon Bullet without changing his expression—caring only about whether his clothes got scorched—the mindset of his Anbu colleagues had already shifted. Was this guy an Uchiha, or was he from the Yotsuki Clan? If Hanma hadn't lacked crackling Lightning Release chakra swirling around him during combat, people might have long suspected that the Third Raikage of Kumogakure had sneaked over to Konoha to pick up a part-time job! Similarly, to deal with genjutsu, the genjutsu-using ninja within the Uchiha clan were also tortured thoroughly by Hanma early on. From initially demanding that his clansmen test him with genjutsu—where he could only struggle in dreams and sit dumbly on the ground, listening to his smug fellow clansmen proudly lecture him, "What's the use of nintaijutsu? It can't withstand a single glance of the Sharingan!"—things changed. It evolved into Hanma proactively welcoming the genjutsu, remaining completely unphased, flashing close to the caster, opening his eyes wide, pressing face-to-face, and asking in confusion, "Seriously, what's going on? After all these years, your dojutsu power hasn't grown at all? What is happening here?" He successfully broke the mental defenses of a large group of Uchiha genjutsu users. Recalling past cultivation, a trace of a smile surfaced on Hanma's face. Those were truly happy times of training. Come to think of it today, if someone had to be used to compare against Hanma's battle prowess, the Third Raikage was the most suitable choice. He possessed more genjutsu resistance than the Third Raikage, and his speed and defense should be about on par. However, when it came to offensive lethality, Hanma's strongest jutsu might genuinely fall short of the Third Raikage's current One-Finger Nukite. After all, the Raikage's utilization of chakra was still much more refined than his own. This was also related to Hanma's philosophy. He believed that using chakra for defense always had flaws, and true armor could only be one's own physical body! Up to this point, Hanma belonged to the tank archetype, boasting an extremely high fault-tolerance rate along with impressive single-target damage. However, like most nintaijutsu ninja, figuring out how to handle group combat was actually a huge difficulty. The two major nintaijutsu ninja in the original work, the Third Raikage and Guy, perfectly illustrated this problem. Take Guy's area-of-effect nintaijutsu—Morning Peacock. Frankly speaking, there was no more foolish move than that. Using speed to friction-burn the air and then blasting the flames out using air currents—wasn't the energy loss in the middle a bit too high? Moves like this only highlighted the powerlessness and poverty of nintaijutsu ninja when it came to ranged attacks. When speed was not an advantage, a nintaijutsu ninja could not engage in toe-to-toe brawls with opponents, making it very easy to land in a troublesome predicament. Just like the Third Raikage, when facing human-wave tactics, nintaijutsu ninja similarly lacked large-scale means of dealing with enemies. How to clear out low-tier fodder over a wide area, how to maintain close combat with opponents, and how to master spatial attributes or senjutsu power— these were all problems Hanma had to solve next. Hanma narrowed his eyes, calculating the ninjutsu in the Shinobi World that suited him best. Thinking it over and over, space ninjutsu was still the optimal choice. If he had Obito's Kamui, Hanma could instantly teleport behind anyone. With his close-quarters combat capabilities, against ninja of the Third Kazekage or Tsuchikage type, as long as he could close the distance, Hanma would have a high probability of assassinating them forcefully. If it were the Flying Thunder God Technique, the effect would be slightly inferior, but it could still yield decent results. Thinking of this, Hanma helplessly covered his face, a mask of agony emerging on his features. Right now, Minato was just a kid who only knew how to ask him for money to eat roast meat and pick up girls. As for Obito, he should still be drinking milk powder in the clan compound, right? There was no help for it; who told spatial attributes to be so rare in the Shinobi World? Hanma muttered silently in his heart, "Space ninjutsu, senjutsu, large-scale anti-personnel methods." Even with Hanma possessing a cheat, mastering the power of space was not something that could be done so easily... "Swish—" He abruptly tore off his upper garments, and with a wave of his right hand, the wind from his palm blew out the bedside oil lamp. "Stop thinking about it! When the boat reaches the bridge, it will cross! Time to slack off and sleep!" "Perhaps one day when my physical body evolves once more, I will naturally acquire these powers..." "Save up energy and build up spirit; that's the only way to properly deal with those old guys from the Jonin Squad tomorrow. This is what I should care about right now." "Good night." Tucking himself comfortably and snugly under the blankets, Hanma told himself.