Kaido's Physique Begins to Show

Ignoring the chatter around him, Zi Xu focused his attention on the wooden post in front of him. Though he hadn't fused Observation Haki or possessed special eyes like the Uchiha or Hyuga clans, his physical reflexes and dynamic vision were already on par with Chino or Gen at this point.

"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh." Several sounds of cutting air came from around Zi Xu. The first five shuriken were steady, hitting the target in an ordinary manner—barely passable, mediocre performance.

"Shing." The sixth shuriken veered slightly off course but still barely struck the target.

"This kid's about to give out, he's clearly struggling." Nohara pointed at Zi Xu and talked with his companions, but was that really the case? At least the struggling part was true—for him, grazing the target was harder than hitting it dead-on. He carefully controlled his strength, barely managing to deviate from the bullseye and still land the hit.

The sixth and seventh were both grazing hits. By the eighth, his expression grew increasingly serious. Whether from nerves or a mistake, he actually threw the remaining three shuriken in his hand all at once, and Zi Xu put on a "panicked" look, as if he'd really fumbled and tossed them out by accident.

"Oh ho, it's over." Takeshi Goda had already guessed the outcome. He glanced at Zi Xu with some regret and was about to write down their team's score on the scoreboard.

"Huh? No way..."

"This kid!"

"What insane luck."

Hearing the exclamations around him, Takeshi Goda lifted his gaze from the scoreboard in his hand and looked at Zi Xu's target. Of the three shuriken he'd just flung out, two had stuck into the target, and the last one had missed—two out of three hit!

"Huh? Lucky break, hahahaha." Zi Xu broke into a delighted grin, as if it really had been an accidental hit.

In truth, all of this was part of his plan, including the trajectories of those three shuriken, which he'd calculated down to the last detail. Kaido's physique gave him not only a formidable body and superhuman reflexes but also immense computational power.

As the most resilient creature in the world of pirates, the enhancement to his brain was unparalleled—it was just that Kaido mostly solved problems with his raw strength and force, so his intellect was rarely used.

Setting that aside, Zi Xu's unexpected performance genuinely delighted Chino and Hatsumi. This way, their score had actually overtaken Uchiha Gen's team.

"Awesome! Zi Xu-kun won!" Hatsumi, who had been blaming herself for her earlier mistake, joyfully hugged Zi Xu as he returned from the arena. Even the usually cold Chino cracked a rare smile and patted him on the shoulder.

"Lucky break..."

"Pure luck, pure luck," Zi Xu scratched his head with an awkward laugh, a bit flustered by the warmth of these kids. In the adult world, such pure emotions were rare, but that wouldn't stop him from leaving Konoha and changing it.

"Tch, just stepped in dog shit." Nohara wore a defiant expression, sneering at Zi Xu. But Uchiha Gen walked up and offered his congratulations—well, what else would you expect from a major clan kid? His words and actions were perfectly proper.

After the initial surprise, Takeshi Goda wrote down Zi Xu's team score in his notebook. None of the subsequent teams scored higher than Zi Xu's, so they took first place in this round.

Since this was just a class-level team competition, Zi Xu's performance didn't draw much attention. The only thing that might have stood out was how lucky this kid seemed.

"Everyone, get ready. Next up is team taijutsu combat. Please prepare yourselves..." Takeshi Goda announced the upcoming activity, and the children's attention was drawn in, chattering excitedly about their own taijutsu skills.

"Listen up, you won't be so lucky this time. I'll show you the gap in our strength. The weak don't deserve to be ninja..." As usual, Zi Xu ignored Nohara's trash talk and started thinking about how much force he'd need to use without killing the guy. After mulling it over, he still wasn't confident about the other students' constitutions, afraid they couldn't withstand a single blow from him.

He decided to avoid fighting whenever possible. With his body, even if they stood there hitting him, they couldn't break his defense. Even ninjutsu would only tickle him.

"Taijutsu combat will use a knockout draw system. Send one person from each of the 16 teams to draw lots. The winning team will receive a Mystery Gift." As mentioned before, the Ninja Academy encouraged competition and conflict, so Takeshi Goda added some prizes to boost the students' motivation.

Zi Xu wasn't particularly impressed. In his past life, many big companies used similar tactics—offering bonuses or other rewards to spur employee productivity and create more value for the company.

"Alright, I'm going all out!"

"Our team will definitely win this fight!"

"We won't lose!"

The children's enthusiasm was easily ignited, and Zi Xu naturally had to act like he was eager for the prize.

"We drew number 4. Number 1 fights number 16, number 2 fights number 15, so we should be fighting number 13..." Hatsumi returned with the slip and glanced at Uchiha Gen's team—they had drawn number 8.

"Stop staring, get ready for the match. If we keep winning, we're bound to run into them." Zi Xu patted Hatsumi's head, reminding her to prepare.

In truth, Zi Xu's team was very good at taijutsu combat. Setting aside Zi Xu, who was hiding his strength, Chino was from the Hyuga Clan, and the Hyuga were famous for two things: the Byakugan and the Gentle Fist.

The so-called Gentle Fist was a taijutsu style that injected one's own chakra into the opponent's body, damaging the chakra pathways—the "meridian system"—and internal organs. It was usually used in conjunction with the Byakugan. Although Chino hadn't awakened her eyes yet, she had been studying the human body's meridians since childhood and could now roughly locate an opponent's acupoints in actual combat.

Since Zi Xu had always insisted he was in poor health, he'd basically never sparred with Chino or Hatsumi. He took on a support role in the team, lurking and waiting for an opportunity to sneak a hit on the opponent like a sneaky bastard.

The first few fights were easy for Zi Xu's team. Zi Xu supported, Hatsumi pinned the enemy down, and Chino led the offense. Eventually, their team met Uchiha Gen's team in the finals.

Both sides had expended considerable stamina in the previous battles and were now panting heavily.

"Chino-san, I hope we can have an enjoyable fight." Uchiha Gen wiped the sweat from his forehead and tightened his slightly messy ponytail.

"Less talk, more fight." Though Chino was also out of breath, she didn't let up on her sharp tongue.

"Both sides, ready!" Takeshi Goda raised his whistle, eager to wrap up the match quickly.

"Begin!"

With a sharp whistle, both sides shot toward each other like arrows from a bow. Chino and Gen clashed, fist meeting flesh in a back-and-forth exchange of offense and defense, while Zi Xu and Hatsumi held off Nohara and the chubby kid Maruyama on the side.

Gen pressed his left hand's fingers together into a palm, bent his knees, and lunged toward Chino's abdomen with the momentum of a spring. The movement was clean and crisp—Takeshi Goda nodded silently. As expected of the Uchiha Clan.

Facing Gen's lightning-fast strike, Chino spread her hands flat. Just as Gen's palm was about to touch her body, her left hand swiftly latched onto his, and using the momentum from his charge, she struck his lower abdomen hard with her right hand, sending him flying. Seeing this, Nohara grew anxious and wanted to support Gen, his footwork turning sloppy.

Hatsumi seized the opportunity. She bent low, tucked her leg, and landed a precise elbow strike on Nohara's ribs. But Nohara grabbed her forearm in return, bending his other leg to build power. If that attack landed, Hatsumi's arm would likely suffer irreversible damage.

"Weakness is a crime. Die, insect." Nohara's cold words accompanied a merciless kick as it came crashing down. Hatsumi tried to break free but couldn't—the Aburame Clan wasn't skilled in taijutsu. She could only watch helplessly as Nohara's attack drew closer.

Takeshi Goda made no move to intervene. As Nohara said, weakness was a crime. Konoha's Ninja Academy was relatively gentle. Harsh as it was, at least lives weren't at stake. In places like the Bloody Mist Village's Kirigakure, graduates had to fight to the death, with only one survivor. Compared to that, they were fortunate.

"Boom~" A cloud of dust kicked up as Hatsumi was sent flying backward by Zi Xu's push. Zi Xu appeared at Nohara's side, meeting his kick with a plain, straightforward straight stomp.

The sound of muscles colliding and compressing rang out. Zi Xu's kick used no force at all—it was entirely Nohara's own kicking power.

Force was mutual, meaning all the strength Nohara had put into his kick rebounded back onto his own ankle.

Zi Xu pretended his leg hurt and hopped away, but what he didn't know was that Nohara's shinbone had already emitted a fine "crack" of splintering, with tiny fissures appearing on the shin itself.

"AAAAHHHH!" Nohara let out a pained scream, the cold ruthlessness from a moment ago still not faded from his face. Maruyama tried to help him up, but Nohara shoved his hand away, struggling to rise and continue fighting.

The airborne Source flipped midair to absorb the impact, glanced at Nohara's direction, and seeing he was fine, pressed the attack against Chino. In a ninja's world, the mission came first—everything else was secondary. So they still intended to fight.

Zi Xu, on the other hand, was perfectly fine. Kaido's physique was far more brutal than he'd imagined. Though he put on a show of enduring some pain, he actually felt nothing at all—it didn't even qualify as an itch.

"What's this? Turns out I'm pretty strong after all... No, no, can't get cocky like that. Those real ninjas have all kinds of bizarre techniques—poisons, insects, even soul-based jutsu. Can't get carried away just because the enemy in front of me is weak. At least until I unlock Haki and a Devil Fruit ability, I'd better not think about how to kill Hiruzen Sarutobi..."

In an instant, countless thoughts flashed through Zi Xu's mind, but he quickly reached a conclusion—he was strong among his peers, but still far behind those true ninjas. Twenty-plus years of experience from his past life told him: caution never hurts.

He felt no sympathy for Nohara whatsoever. He hadn't used any power himself, so Nohara's own strength had rebounded fully onto him. The man had only himself to blame—after all, if that kick had landed on Hatsumi, she'd be in worse shape than Nohara. Zi Xu didn't want to lose any combat strength among his future organization members.

He helped up the dazed Hatsumi beside him, ignored Maruyama and Nohara sprawled on the ground, and sat down pretending to be exhausted, blatantly slacking off as he watched Chino and Source fight.