Shazo's Ruined Reputation

Shazo remembered now. Demon Xiazhuo's memories contained this reflection:

"The Emperor Engine is not only the foundation of Swift Style's extreme speed, but also the support of a man's dignity. You won't have to worry about being called the fastest man."

Ah, so that was how it was.

Shazo's heart filled with unshakable conviction. He would definitely succeed in fusing the Swift Style Kekkei Genkai.

What was a little pain?

And what was a little risk?

For a man's dignity, to achieve his ultimate goal, for a happy future, for the happiness of every Shazo, he was willing to bear the risks and endure the pain.

Lord Shazo was a real man. There was absolutely no way he would choose to back down at such a critical moment.

Absolutely not!

Thanks to the memories shared twice before, along with two weeks of continuous thought and practice, Shazo had truly mastered the extraction, shape transformation, and nature transformation of all chakra attributes.

In just one day, Shazo completed the Wind Style and Lightning Release nature transformations required to fuse Swift Style.

But just when he thought he had made every preparation, Shazo suffered a shameful failure during his first attempt at fusing Swift Style.

As the old saying went, once the scar healed, the pain was forgotten.

That described Shazo perfectly.

He thought that since he had endured the pain of kidney stones in his previous life, he would be able to bear it in this life as long as he gritted his teeth.

Shazo was not entirely wrong. He really did endure it and was able to keep circulating chakra through the agonizing pain.

However, he could not control his mouth. His miserable screams blasted through the roof and terrified all his neighbors.

Especially Uchiha Izumi's parents next door.

Startled by Shazo's screams, the two elders rushed to his home as quickly as possible, interrupting both his Swift Style fusion process and the healing of his kidneys.

Seeing Shazo rolling around on the floor, the two elder neighbors concluded that he had been seriously injured. They rushed him to the hospital for emergency treatment that very night.

As a result, Shazo caused quite a stir at the hospital.

As an oversized patient who nearly could not fit on a single bed and whose feet stuck out when he lay down, Shazo drew curious looks from every Medical Ninja who saw him.

Their curiosity prompted them to ask around about what illness Shazo had.

"Have you heard? That guy who's 1.88 meters tall is only fourteen."

"He's already that tall at fourteen? What a freak."

"Hey, do you know why he was hospitalized?"

"What was it?"

"Kidney failure!"

"Huh? So he's just all looks and no substance."

"Poor kid..."

"Maybe he got this middle-aged man's disease because he grew too big!"

"That's not it. The Medical Ninjas said he injured himself by practicing a Secret Technique incorrectly."

"Then he just needs to stop and rest properly, and he'll recover."

"Of course. He's young, after all, and there's no permanent damage."

And then the rumors spread.

Not everyone passing along gossip knew that much, nor was there any authoritative information to confirm it, so the disciples of the Gossip Cult began making things up on their own.

Their imaginative, down-to-earth fabrications quickly turned the rumors concerning Shazo into outright lies.

Inherently unreasonable and fabricated rumors had the greatest power to spread. Once people heard them, they could spot the holes left by the original fabrication and spontaneously embellish them further.

As the rumors were repeatedly reworked, they grew ever more outrageous and spread ever faster.

Bad money drove out good, and rumors snuffed out the truth.

Shazo's reputation was utterly ruined, and he became the laughingstock of everyone in the hospital.

He only had one mouth. There was no way he could explain himself to everyone.

The deadly part was that even if Shazo had a hundred mouths, he could not clear things up, because his illness was real. He really had suffered kidney failure.

He was even thankful that Aunt Miko and Mr. Heishiro were ordinary people. After being awakened, they needed time to get out of bed, dress, and enter Shazo's home.

That gave Shazo a little time. His powerful self-healing ability barely repaired his battered kidneys, at least closing the obvious surface wounds.

Otherwise, after he was sent to the hospital, the Medical Ninjas would not have diagnosed kidney failure, but severe kidney damage.

Moreover, the wounds caused by the clash between Wind Style chakra and Lightning Release chakra could not have been concealed from the Medical Ninjas. They would certainly have realized that something was very unusual, and there was a strong chance the Intelligence Department would have been alerted and launched an investigation into Shazo.

After leaving the hospital, Shazo learned from the pain and dug a basement beneath his own yard.

The basement was vast and deep. He filled and sealed it with all kinds of porous materials, creating a completely soundproof secret chamber.

This time, he would not be interrupted again.

He had to complete the Swift Style fusion. He had to obtain the strongest Emperor Engine.

The Wind Style nature transformation created extraordinarily high fluidity, while the Lightning Release nature transformation became gentle and stable bioelectricity for the nerves. Then Shazo injected the two types of chakra into his left and right kidneys respectively.

Lightning Release and Wind Style each used one kidney as their core, gradually permeating toward the other.

Since he had come close to success before, his body retained the relevant memory, and the fusion process went very smoothly.

But the pain of his old wounds tearing open was far more intense than during his first attempt.

From the very beginning, Shazo could not stop himself from screaming. He screamed at the top of his lungs, but fortunately, the soundproof chamber blocked it all, and his neighbors were not alarmed again.

A few minutes later, his second attempt at chakra fusion succeeded.

The healing of his kidney damage began immediately afterward.

At that moment, the pain did not lessen in the slightest. Instead, an even more unbearable layer of itching emerged. The itch that pierced straight into his heart was worse than the pain.

Shazo desperately clenched his teeth to keep himself from laughing out loud.

This was the true critical moment. The traces left by the healing process would become the structure through which Swift Style chakra operated.

How his kidney wounds healed would determine the quality of the Emperor Engine, as well as the maximum speed Swift Style could achieve.

It would even determine Shazo's endurance.

Thinking of the severe consequences of relaxing at such a critical moment, Shazo found endless courage and willpower welling up within him. He forcibly withstood the assault of pain and itching.

For a happy life, he was going all in!!

The pain and itching grew more and more intense, only to abruptly vanish at the very peak of what Shazo could bear.

It was like when your stomach hurt so badly that cold sweat covered your entire body, only for the pain to disappear the instant you sat on the toilet.

It came as fiercely as it went suddenly.

Then Shazo felt a faint warmth at the rear of both sides of his waist. Surging power poured out from there, first converging in his lower abdomen before extending upward and downward separately.

The warm current passed through his blood vessels and nerves, rapidly spreading through his legs, feet, torso, arms, hands, and even every fingertip.

The current dispersed across every inch of his skin before finally reaching his facial features, especially his eyes and ears.

Deep within his ears was where the sensation was strongest and the temperature highest.

Shazo delightedly felt Swift Style chakra transforming his body: the balance bones in his inner ears, his eyes' dynamic vision, his skin's sensitivity to wind, the speed and sharpness of his neural transmission, and the timeliness and stability of his muscle responses.

Together with his powerful heart and the twin-kidney Emperor Engine pumping away.

All of it filled Shazo with joy. Swift Style truly was comprehensive extreme speed.