Talent

After saying goodbye to the past, returning to Kirigakure, and changing his household registration, Qi Shuang began a new life.

Although this body belonged to an orphan who had nothing to his name, it had not left him with absolutely nothing.

At the very least, it had left him with a Kekkei Genkai: Ice Release.

This was also one of the reasons Kirigakure was willing to train him and let him attend the Ninja Academy.

Once he matured, he would definitely become a Kekkei Genkai ninja. With this talent, he could surpass the vast majority of ordinary ninjas with ease.

Unlike ordinary ninjas, whose resources and talent were limited, Chunin was not his ceiling.

He was fully qualified to grow into a Jonin and become one of Kirigakure's elite pillars.

In the shinobi world, Genin were merely cannon fodder on the battlefield, Chunin were a village's elite, and Jonin were a village's standard top-tier combat force.

As for those above Jonin—the Kage-level powerhouses—they were strategic-level weapons.

Every one of them could directly alter the situation on the battlefield, so they would not be deployed casually.

After all, every major village had powerhouses of this level. If you used yours and I used mine, it would only cause the scale of the war to escalate.

Therefore, unless absolutely necessary, the villages would not deploy them.

However, powerhouses of this level could not be mass-produced through education. Their emergence was far more random.

Consequently, the major villages could only train their talents up to the level of Jonin.

The profession of ninja had developed for hundreds of years, and everyone understood the path to advancement as clearly as day.

Aside from the established and mature inheritances of clans, holders of Kekkei Genkai were the ones most likely to advance.

That was what people called foundation and talent.

They were also things countless ordinary ninjas could never hope to reach. That was fate!

It was therefore not difficult to understand why Kirigakure would look after a talented orphan like him.

After beginning his new life, Qi Shuang started studying with exceptional seriousness, which greatly surprised the teachers who had taught him before.

They even thought he had been spurred into hard work by Zabuza slaughtering all the examinees.

It was merely a beautiful misunderstanding.

With this body's former foundation, Qi Shuang quickly became proficient in the basic use of chakra. Then, he set his sights on the next stage of his training: his Ice Release Kekkei Genkai.

That was his talent. As long as he could master the power of Ice Release, he would be able to use Ice Release Ninjutsu.

Compared with those Genin who had to wait until after graduation and slowly learn Ninjutsu under the guidance of their assigned teachers, he was undoubtedly much luckier.

Mastering a Ninjutsu in advance could greatly increase his chances of survival on the battlefield.

Unfortunately, none of the few teachers at the Ninja Academy knew Ice Release.

That meant he had to explore the use of Ice Release on his own. No one would be there to teach him.

Fortunately, Ice Release was, after all, his innate ability—a natural instinct his body possessed.

He did not need to slowly sense the Nature Transformation of chakra as others did when learning basic Ninjutsu, then use that to master a technique.

He only needed to follow that faint feeling in his heart and control his chakra as it changed. Then he could create ice.

Although it was somewhat inexplicable, talent was talent. Others could only envy it.

When other people learned Ninjutsu, they first understood it and then mastered it. A natural Kekkei Genkai, on the other hand, was used first, then gradually mastered through understanding.

Compared with learning a Ninjutsu from scratch, a natural Kekkei Genkai was undoubtedly far more convenient!

Or rather, this was the legacy left behind by one's ancestors!

However, enjoying this ancestral legacy required one to meet a harsh condition.

That was awakening the Kekkei Genkai!

People who had not awakened a Kekkei Genkai were essentially no different from ordinary people. But once they awakened one, they could rely on their ancestors' legacy to soar into the heavens and leave most ordinary people far behind.

This was also why Kekkei Genkai ninjas were always envied.

Qi Shuang was an exceptionally lucky fellow.

This body's Kekkei Genkai had awakened three years ago. Only after awakening it had Kirigakure sent him to the Ninja Academy.

Unfortunately, the original owner of this body had been a child not yet ten years old.

Children were rather playful, so during his three years at the Ninja Academy, he had done little beyond completing the basic courses taught by his teachers and had not developed his potential much at all.

By the time Qi Shuang arrived, the original owner of this body could only simply condense one or two lumps of ice to play with.

If he wanted to perform a specific Ice Release Ninjutsu, that would have been asking far too much of him.

Standing beside the pool in the training grounds, Qi Shuang snapped his fingers. Chakra that had undergone Nature Transformation flowed from beneath his feet into the pool, and a layer of ice rapidly formed across the water's surface.

The ice was not very large, measuring only about two meters square. One end was connected to the edge of the pool, while the other vanished into its center. In the misty weather, it even looked somewhat gray and dim, without the slightest appearance of ice.

This was the result of Qi Shuang's dedicated Ice Release training over the past month.

By now, he could rapidly turn water into ice.

However, he was only a little over nine years old, and his body had not fully developed. His chakra reserves were not very high, so it was impossible for him to create a large amount of ice from nothing with his own chakra.

He could only produce a considerable quantity of ice by borrowing a water source.

Therefore, whenever he practiced, he would look for a place with water.

He then lifted his leg and stepped onto it. With a sharp crack, a huge fissure appeared in the ice on the water's surface.

Immediately afterward, web-like cracks spread in all directions from beneath his foot. In the blink of an eye, they covered the entire sheet of ice.

"Is the strength too poor?"

As the ice shattered and his body suddenly sank, Qi Shuang let out a faint sigh.

Fortunately, at the instant he realized the ice was breaking, he circulated chakra into the soles of his feet. The moment his foot touched the water, he immediately stabilized himself and avoided sinking into the pool.

He bent down and picked up a piece of ice floating on the water. He found that it was not very thick overall, measuring roughly one centimeter. With a little force, he snapped it into two pieces again.

"Looks like I need to work harder on the ice's hardness!" He tossed the ice in his hand away, sighing with emotion.

Because of his limited chakra reserves, he planned to condense the ice into spikes and turn it into the Ice Spike Technique, using it as his current long-range attack.

As for other large-scale Ice Release Ninjutsu, it was not that he had never considered developing them. However, his chakra reserves were limited. Even if he had ideas in mind, he had no way to execute them.

For now, he could only use this simple Ice Release technique for self-protection.

But judging from the current hardness of the ice, it was impossible for it to inflict any effective damage on an enemy.

If it struck an enemy, it probably would not hurt at all.

He had to increase the ice's hardness further!