Exploring the Summoning Realm

The Summoning Realm was enormous. Because its environment was poorly suited to human survival, few ordinary people ever set foot there.

Neji had only found scattered references to the Summoning Realm in his clan's records, with no detailed guides. The Hyuga Clan truly did not care much for Summoning Beasts, completely immersed in the power granted by their own Gentle Fist and Byakugan. In a sense, the Hyuga Clan was just as arrogant as the Uchiha Clan.

With no systematic intelligence, he had waited until his strength reached the standard of an Elite Jonin before choosing to explore the Summoning Realm. The unknown was always the most dangerous.

Not long after entering the Summoning Realm, Neji sensed a faint, strange scent in the air. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that it carried mild toxins. Poisonous insects occasionally crawled through the towering trees around him, along with traces left behind by savage beasts.

This really was not a friendly place. It was practically an enlarged Forest of Death!

Neji formed a layer of chakra around himself to filter the air, then activated his Byakugan to survey his surroundings!

He had not known until he looked, but the sight gave even Neji a fright. Within a five-kilometer radius, there were seven or eight Summoned Beasts with at least 3,000 units of chakra, and nearly twenty more with between 1,000 and 3,000 units!

He only had a pitiful 1,400 units! Compared to them, he instantly felt ridiculously weak.

Still, it would be a little too humiliating to run away like this. He decided to find a Summoned Beast to test his skills on. If things truly went south, pride was not edible, so what was the point of keeping it!

He selected an Azure Wolf roughly eight hundred meters away. It was alone, with no other Summoned Beasts within several hundred meters. It stood about three meters tall and six meters long, with roughly 2,000 units of chakra inside its body.

Judging from its chakra, it seemed to lean more toward Wind Release. It should be an Azure Wolf that used wind-nature chakra.

After observing the situation, Neji cautiously approached the Azure Wolf. The wolf was highly alert. Though it lay resting, it would occasionally raise its head to examine its surroundings, ready at any moment to spring up and attack or flee.

When Neji came within roughly two hundred meters of the Azure Wolf, it detected something amiss. It immediately rose warily and swiftly scanned its surroundings before finally locking onto Neji.

After discovering that Neji was alone, the Azure Wolf did not show any fear. Instead, it assumed an attacking stance, baring its fangs, bending its forelegs, and lowering its body, looking ready to pounce at any moment.

Neji stopped advancing and stood where he was, taking the opening stance of the Gentle Fist. Using his Byakugan, he examined every chakra point on the Azure Wolf's body and committed them to memory. When it came to human chakra points, Neji could locate them accurately even without the Byakugan. But the Azure Wolf's body differed from a human's, so carefully studying the locations of its chakra points was necessary to inflict greater damage in battle.

Thus, the two sides faced off! Neither made a rash move.

The maximum range of Neji's Eight Trigrams Formation was one hundred and fifty meters. Every time he reduced its range by a certain amount, the formation grew stronger. Its power was greatest when compressed to within ten meters of its center, nearly reaching the level of a domain. However, maintaining a domain at that level consumed an extremely terrifying amount of chakra. For now, he could only use it as an unexpected trick to occasionally set someone up. Zabuza had been one of those who suffered badly from it.

Neji prepared to use the same trick again. He withdrew the Eight Trigrams Formation, secretly gathered his strength, and occasionally launched an Empty Palm to provoke the Azure Wolf.

Though the Azure Wolf possessed some intelligence and knew to avoid danger and seek fortune, its wisdom was ultimately limited. After being struck several times by Neji's Empty Palms from nearly a hundred meters away and finding them neither painful nor irritating, it gradually lost patience.

With a forward leap, it dodged an Empty Palm. Its hind legs gathered strength, and it instantly accelerated toward Neji. The distance between them had not been great to begin with, and it rapidly closed at terrifying speed.

As it ran, the Azure Wolf opened its massive jaws, gathering a ball of azure energy within them.

Wanting to test the Azure Wolf's strength, Neji did not interrupt its attack,

Instead, he assumed the opening stance of Kaiten in preparation for defense. In just two breaths, the fully charged Azure Wolf let out a roar, and clusters of azure wind blades shot toward Neji.

Watching dozens of enormous wind blades fly at him, Neji instead breathed a sigh of relief. Although the Azure Wolf possessed an astonishing amount of chakra, it was slow to activate ninjutsu. In two breaths, Neji could have interrupted its casting three times! And though the technique looked imposing, it wasted a tremendous amount of chakra and was poorly condensed.

Against wind blades like these, Neji simply used Gentle Fist—Kaiten and easily blocked them.

He no longer wished to test the Azure Wolf's strength. At this point, it was less than thirty meters away.

Neji bent slightly at the waist. His right hand gathered a massive amount of Lightning Release chakra and instantly completed its nature transformation. A piercing sound rang out, like ten thousand birds crying in unison!

With the Byakugan's assistance, he firmly locked onto the Azure Wolf. Stimulated by Lightning Release chakra, Neji's speed surged. He rapidly closed in on the Azure Wolf and fearlessly collided with the massive paw coming at him.

With a sharp hiss, the incomparably condensed Lightning Release chakra sliced through the massive paw without obstruction and continued into the Azure Wolf's heart.

The Azure Wolf turned its head and saw its already-pierced heart. Its simple mind struggled to understand what had happened. How could this be? Yet, whether it understood or not, with its heart no longer supplying blood, its rapidly fading life force soon brought death.

Neji, drenched in spurting blood, felt extremely uncomfortable as well. This was why he had been unwilling to engage in close combat before. Leaving aside whether close combat was dangerous, merely the possibility of being splattered with blood and chunks of flesh if he was not careful made Neji, who had transmigrated from the modern world, deeply resistant to it.

But this was the wilderness, and the danger had not yet passed. Neji did not fuss over it too much. He found a water source, wiped himself clean, and continued searching around for his next target.

After fighting the Azure Wolf, Neji felt somewhat relieved. Although Summoned Beasts generally possessed enormous amounts of chakra, that was built upon their huge bodies. Their huge bodies provided vast physical energy, which, combined with a certain amount of spiritual energy, allowed them to extract immense quantities of chakra.

However, Summoned Beasts generally lacked intelligence and had not systematically learned chakra control. As a result, they possessed huge amounts of chakra but could not use it flexibly. When activating a ninjutsu, they often put in twice the effort for half the result. It was difficult for them to threaten ninjas of equal strength. Still, combined with their massive size, it was truly hard to say who would win in a battle against a ninja of equal strength.

Neji felt that the danger was still within his control. As long as he did not encounter those systematically trained Summoned Beasts from the Three Great Sage Lands, the pressure would not be too great.

The technique Neji had just used in battle was Kakashi's famous ninjutsu, Chidori. During his recent training in Lightning Release chakra nature transformation, Neji had copied it through repeated experimentation and recollection.

Neji planned to avoid using this technique against enemies in the future. It was too disgusting!

The Gentle Fist was still better. It could strike someone without drawing blood and directly shatter the enemy's internal organs! Clean, efficient, and more chakra-efficient than Chidori. The Rasengan also seemed fairly good and could be properly developed later.

Thus, techniques like Chidori and Lightning Cutter were shelved, leaving Sasuke to develop them himself.

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