Sealing Jutsu

Although every nation had suffered devastating losses and it seemed there were no winners, Konoha had actually come out ahead.

The Second Shinobi War was essentially a war launched by the Four Great Nations to seize resources, and Konoha had been the main target of the four nations' plundering.

So although many people had died, Konoha had ultimately held its ground. From a strategic standpoint, Konoha had won.

However, although Konoha had won, it had been on the defensive and lacked the ability to counterattack. Thus, while the four nations had lost, they had not signed any unequal treaties.

Although the ninjas at the front had yet to return, the war was nearing its end. Life within the village was slowly recovering, and it had become much livelier than before.

Yichen found this somewhat hard to adapt to. The war had broken out soon after he transmigrated, and after living through four consecutive years of wartime, it was only natural that he could not immediately keep pace with the peaceful era.

But such trivial matters could not distract Yichen now. All his attention was focused on learning Sealing Jutsu.

As he grew older, Yichen's physical fitness was rapidly improving. His Chakra Amount had now Reached around 15D.

Around 10D was enough to cast C-rank Ninjutsu, so Yichen's Chakra Amount could also be recorded as 1.5C.

However, Yichen had not learned any C-rank Ninjutsu so far, simply because he had no time.

Taijutsu training and physical conditioning took up half his time, while all the remaining time was spent practicing Sealing Jutsu.

Thus, Yichen had no time to practice C-rank Ninjutsu, and the Chakra he had was exhausted during his Sealing Jutsu studies anyway.

After studying for so long, Yichen had learned roughly half of the Sealing Jutsu in the Barrier Team's archives. This did not mean he was particularly skilled at Sealing Jutsu; rather, Iwagakure simply had too few Sealing Jutsu, and those it had were too low-level.

Because of his exceptional talent in Chakra Control, Yichen received excellent treatment in the Barrier Team. Most importantly, he had gained the qualification to study Sealing Jutsu.

Among the dozens of bookshelves in the archives, several were sealed with Sealing Jutsu and required authorization to access.

Most of their contents consisted of conjectures and deductions regarding the enemy nations' Sealing Jutsu. Next came insights and experiences concerning the Sealing Jutsu possessed by Iwagakure itself. Only the remainder contained detailed descriptions of Sealing Jutsu and various data records.

Yichen had counted them. There were seventeen C-rank Sealing Jutsu and six B-rank Sealing Jutsu. There were no A-rank ones at all. Rumor had it that Iwagakure possessed only two A-rank Sealing Jutsu, both kept in the Tsuchikage's Office Building.

Yichen had already learned and could perform most C-rank Sealing Jutsu.

Though he had not learned the rest, he understood their principles. The reason he could not use them was because their attributes did not match his own.

As for B-rank Sealing Jutsu, Yichen had already thoroughly studied two of them.

Since he lacked sufficient Chakra, Yichen could not perform them directly. However, he had innovatively divided the Sealing Jutsu into three parts and practiced each separately.

Though he could not combine the parts to perform B-rank Sealing Jutsu himself, some ninjas had indeed followed Yichen's method, learning the Sealing Jutsu in three stages before combining them and successfully performing B-rank Sealing Jutsu.

Because of this, Yichen had received special approval to study all B-rank Sealing Jutsu. After all, with his method, Iwagakure had suddenly gained seven or eight masters of B-rank Sealing Jutsu.

This might have been nothing special in Konoha, but it was a tremendous matter in Iwagakure. Iwagakure had only three Jonin who could use A-rank Sealing Jutsu in total, and one of them was Ōnoki himself.

Thus, Yichen was credited with an A-rank mission and permitted to study every Sealing Jutsu in the archives.

This was no small matter. Yichen had learned all the C-rank Sealing Jutsu long ago, yet he had never been able to access B-rank Sealing Jutsu.

Later, he had only gotten the chance to study a single B-rank Sealing Jutsu after shamelessly requesting an audience with Ōnoki and receiving his special approval.

Even that had cost him all the Contribution Points he had saved over more than a year.

Over the past year or so, he had made many Storage Scrolls and occasionally filled in as a Sensory Ninja, working shifts at the Barrier Center. His monthly income was around 600 Contribution Points.

After expenses, he had saved a little over 6,000 Contribution Points.

Fortunately, the rewards were generous as well. C-rank non-combat missions awarded over 10 Contribution Points, B-rank missions over 100, and A-rank missions over 1,000.

Combat missions often rewarded twice as much as non-combat missions.

Since Yichen had gained the qualification to learn the remaining five B-rank Sealing Jutsu, the Contribution Points had been calculated at the lowest rate, namely 1,000 points.

In any case, after everything was accounted for, Yichen had essentially exchanged over 5,000 Contribution Points for six B-rank Sealing Jutsu, along with the other accompanying rewards of an A-rank mission.

For instance, he received one million ryo.

D-rank Missions paid from 5,000 to 50,000 ryo, C-rank missions paid from 50,000 to 200,000 ryo, B-rank missions paid from 200,000 to one million ryo, and A-rank missions paid from one million to three million ryo.

Yichen had received the minimum A-rank mission reward of one million ryo. He had not lost out on this deal.

Over the past year or so, most of Yichen's spending had gone toward training. Every month, he invested several hundred Contribution Points and tens of thousands of ryo.

(Since the war had dragged on for too long and the village's finances were strained, monetary rewards for non-combat missions had been drastically reduced.)

Because Yichen had recognized the importance of Contribution Points early on, he paid in ryo for anything that could be bought with ryo. Thus, although he had managed to save over 6,000 Contribution Points, he had almost no ryo left over.

So when one million ryo suddenly arrived in his account, Yichen found it somewhat difficult to adjust.

It was worth mentioning that the pension payments for Yichen's parents had stopped a year ago.

It was not just him. As the war continued to expand, pension payments for all children who had a chance of becoming ninjas had been suspended for a year. The village promised that once these children met the requirements in the future, they could learn one C-rank Ninjutsu for free.

The village would also arrange for a Chunin to provide one hour of instruction.

This arrangement benefited Yichen. He had entered the Barrier Team early and had a stable income. Moreover, because of his outstanding performance, his income was actually higher than that of an ordinary Genin.

Although the monetary rewards had decreased, the Contribution Points remained. He was not short on money at this stage, so exchanging the pension payments for future benefits was feasible.

But for many children, it was miserable. Their immediate financial pressure had suddenly increased greatly, directly slowing their progress on the path to becoming ninjas.

Yichen had recently learned five Sealing Jutsu that he could study but did not yet meet the requirements to perform. Rather than practicing them directly, he began summarizing the Sealing Jutsu he had already learned.

Since his memories from his previous life contained some information about Sealing Jutsu, Yichen wanted to combine the two and innovate.

There was not much direct knowledge of Sealing Jutsu in his previous-life memories, but his broader perspective still gave Yichen plenty of inspiration.

For example, the archives contained information on the Four Symbols Seal, but not the Five Elements Sealing Jutsu. Yichen remembered that both Orochimaru and Jiraiya knew the Five Elements Sealing Jutsu.

There were also no records related to the Fire Sealing Method.

All of these could point Yichen toward new research directions. Compared with others constrained by the village's collection of books, Yichen's thinking was far more open-minded.

Thus, during this period, Bunji, the Jonin Captain in charge of Sealing Jutsu within the Barrier Team, had been constantly discussing the Five Elements Sealing Jutsu with Yichen.

The Five Elements Sealing Jutsu had extremely high requirements for a ninja. To perform it alone, one had to master five Chakra Nature Transformations at the same time.

Those capable of doing this were generally Kage-level, so Bunji had initially been somewhat disappointed.

But Yichen proposed that five Jonin could each perform the partial Sealing Jutsu of one attribute simultaneously, then merge them together to form a complete Five Elements Sealing Jutsu.

Leaving aside whether they could find five Jonin who met the requirements, merely figuring out how to maintain the stability of five Sealing Jutsu performed by five different people and prevent internal rejection stumped both Yichen and Bunji.

In the end, Meishe, who had spent his entire life making scrolls, suggested preparing five scrolls beforehand and reinforcing the points that needed to connect by Drawing Talismans, thereby reducing rejection.

Thus, after the pace of war slowed, the Barrier Team allocated a large number of personnel to research the talisman patterns for the Five Elements Sealing Jutsu. In the end, under Meishe's leadership and with the aid of many new materials, they theoretically succeeded in creating such scrolls.

The matter should have ended there. There might not even have been an opportunity to put the technique to use, so they had not actually made any Five Elements Sealing Jutsu scrolls.

But no one had expected its first use to come so quickly and so suddenly.

The ninjas at the front had begun returning in batches, but one group encountered an unexpected development.

The incident had been caused by a special ninja named Katsuragi.

As an old-guard Jonin of Iwagakure, he was special because a Tailed Beast had been sealed within him: the Five-Tails Kokuō.

As a Jinchuriki, Katsuragi was like the other Jinchuriki of this era. He was not a Perfect Jinchuriki and did not coexist peacefully with the Tailed Beast. Instead, he remained constantly wary of it and suppressed it.

With Katsuragi's strength and the power of the seal, there would normally have been no issue. But during the war, at the village's request, Katsuragi had drawn on the Five-Tails' power twice.

This had caused the seal, which had not been particularly profound to begin with, to loosen.

Katsuragi had been selected as one of the earliest batches of ninjas returning to the village precisely so the sealing problem could be resolved as soon as possible. Yet just as he was about to reach the village, the Tailed Beast still went berserk.

Perhaps the Five-Tails had also realized that this was a rare opportunity, so it was attacking the seal with all its strength.

When Yichen received the notice, he was cultivating at home. It was currently the Ninja Academy's vacation, and there were still several days before school resumed. He had planned to further familiarize himself with Water Release Chakra transformation before classes began.

That was right. Over the past year or so, Yichen's other major improvement had been learning Water Release Chakra transformation.

However, unlike the near-instant enlightenment he had experienced when learning Earth Release, his Water Release Chakra cultivation had progressed little by little.

Although Yichen had now grasped Water Release transformation, it was still very immature. Put simply, if Yichen had enough Chakra now, he could learn Earth Release at any time. But he could not learn Water Release, because he was not proficient enough.

When the Anbu found Yichen, he was staring blankly at a cup of water. When he was told to immediately follow them out of the village on a mission, he was still somewhat slow to react.

By the time the Anbu carried him on their back to the scene, he was utterly stunned by what he saw.

Although the Five-Tails had not fully broken free, Katsuragi's Partial Tailed Beast Transformation was still enormous.

He was rampaging everywhere. Fortunately, the casualties were not severe, because Ōnoki's Earth Release had him firmly suppressed.

But even Yichen, a quasi-Genin, could see that this suppression was only temporary. Katsuragi's condition was deteriorating, the Sealing Jutsu trapping the Five-Tails was being destroyed, and it was only a matter of time before the Five-Tails broke free.