The Gentle Fist joins...
"The Rasengan?" Hearing the shadowed figure's words, even Orochimaru, battle-hardened as he was, froze on the spot.
The Gentle Fist and the Rasengan?
That was an utterly impossible combination.
From what he knew, leaving aside the Hyuga Clan's tendency to reject ninjutsu and whether they could even learn the Rasengan, the Rasengan itself represented the pinnacle of Shape Transformation. Let alone combining it with the Gentle Fist, "pinnacle" meant it could no longer be altered. It was practically a singular form—or rather, its final form. There was no room for further changes.
Even a genius like Minato Namikaze, the Rasengan's creator, had never managed, as far as Orochimaru knew, to incorporate Nature Transformation into the Rasengan.
And the Gentle Fist was, after all, a taijutsu. Nintaijutsu, the fusion of ninjutsu and taijutsu, was exceedingly rare in the Shinobi World. The most famous example was naturally the Raikage family's Lightning Release Chakra Mode. However, the Lightning Release Chakra Mode was an application of the nature of Lightning Release Chakra: using Lightning Release Chakra to activate one's own cells, while adding a certain degree of Shape Transformation. In other words, the lightning armor formed from Lightning Release Chakra offered tremendous defense, while also reducing the air resistance created by the extreme speed gained from activating cells with highly concentrated Lightning Release Chakra. In essence, though, it had not reached the pinnacle, whether in the Nature Transformation of Lightning Release Chakra itself or in the Shape Transformation layered upon that Nature Transformation.
Of course, incorporating Shape Transformation into high-density Lightning Release Chakra Nature Transformation was already an extremely advanced Chakra technique.
Still, setting power aside, compared with the Rasengan, the Lightning Release Chakra Mode was itself a fusion of Shape Transformation and Nature Transformation. Combined with its supportive traits