Setting out again, Neji deliberately fought several Summoned Beasts along the way to hone his practical combat skills and become more proficient with various ninjutsu and taijutsu.
One Earth Spider had lurked underground, targeting Neji as prey. At first, Neji truly had not noticed it. Using the Byakugan to see five meters beneath the ground consumed a great deal of chakra and offered only a narrow field of vision. Unless he had already identified a target, he generally would not stare into the earth.
Neji had recognized this flaw of the Byakugan long ago and had thought of many solutions. However, the truly viable methods all required profound research into Earth Release. Forget deep research—Neji could not even use Earth Release yet!
Fortunately, even if an ambush lay underground, there would be some movement when the enemy burst from the soil. That was enough. As long as he remained vigilant and prepared countermeasures in advance, he could avoid most potential risks.
This Earth Spider was exactly such a case. At first, Neji had indeed failed to notice it lying in ambush seven meters underground.
When Neji came within five meters of it, the Earth Spider, whose legs stretched nearly six meters long, suddenly burst from the ground. The seven-meter layer of earth had blocked Neji's perception, but it had also delayed the Earth Spider's attack.
That brief delay gave Neji time to defend. He opened with Kaiten, and a truly omnidirectional chakra shield spanning above, below, left, right, front, and back instantly formed. It blocked the Earth Spider's attack and sent it flying. To a certain extent, Kaiten combined offense and defense.
The main purpose of Neji's recent work on Lightning Release nature transformation had been to attach it to Kaiten, replacing ordinary chakra with Lightning Release chakra to strengthen Kaiten's offensive power.
But while the idea was wonderful, putting it into practice was even harder than simply using Lightning Release nature transformation. Even now, he had not truly mastered it, and in battle, he could only use the ordinary version of Kaiten.
Still, that was more than enough to deal with an Earth Spider.
Once exposed to view, the Earth Spider posed little threat. A few Empty Palms easily finished it off.
Before coming to the Summoning Realm, Neji had studied some of the habits of flying birds of prey. He knew that most preferred to build their nests on high mountains and sheer cliffs, where it was convenient to take off and land.
So he had been heading toward a nearby mountain all along. He had now reached the middle of the target range, and one or two birds of prey occasionally appeared in the sky. However, they flew too high to capture. He would stick to the original plan and go straight to their nest to wait for the prey to come to him.
With the Byakugan's extraordinary vision, Neji's searching ability was formidable. Before long, he found a potential target: a cave on a cliff roughly eight kilometers away.
He had just seen a bird of prey fly into it. It had been too fast for him to make out its appearance clearly, but that was enough.
With a target in sight, Neji raced toward the cave at full speed. In only a few minutes, he reached the base of the cliff. Looking up, he saw that the cave was about two hundred meters above the ground.
After waiting several minutes and seeing no movement from the cave, Neji stopped hesitating. He gathered chakra in his feet and ran straight up the vertical cliff face.
Neji covered the two hundred meters in less than thirty seconds and arrived at the entrance. The opening was huge, over twenty meters wide and more than ten meters high, while the cave extended roughly fifty meters deep. The walls were covered in cuts and claw marks. Clearly, it had not formed naturally; the bird of prey had carved it out or expanded it itself.
There was nothing to conceal him, so the bird of prey inside spotted Neji the moment he climbed to the entrance. Neji was not afraid. After killing several Summoned Beasts, he no longer feared these creatures that possessed enormous amounts of chakra but used it crudely.
But he quickly changed his mind. Once he got a clear look at the bird of prey, even he shuddered in alarm.
Its whole body was black and gold, its feathers reflecting a metallic sheen. It stood nearly four meters tall with a wingspan of fifteen meters—a true giant. The Black Roc contained nearly six thousand Ka of chakra, surpassing the Kage Level standard for humans. Judging from its chakra traits, it should possess Wind and Lightning Release, just like him. Overall, it looked imposing and handsome, and Neji was very satisfied.
But behind Neji was a cliff, in front of him was the roc, and rock walls stood to either side! There was no way out. His position was somewhat passive.
The roc looked ready to devour him, and it did not seem like the type that could be reasoned with!
One slight advantage was that a group of young roc chicks stood behind it. If they fought, the creature would probably have some reservations.
Just as Neji took the opportunity to adjust his condition, a shrill cry rang from the roc's beak. At the same time, Lightning Balls gathered around it and shot toward Neji at high speed.
There were rather too many Lightning Balls, and they were of decent quality. The cave was too narrow to dodge in, so he could only raise his hands and prepare to defend.
Without further hesitation, Neji gave a soft shout. "Great Rotation!" The evolved technique of Kaiten activated. Chakra instantly erupted from every acupoint in his body and spun at high speed along with his rotating body, forming a twenty-meter sphere that even shaved away part of the cave ceiling. It blocked every Lightning Ball released by the roc and reflected some of them back.
Seeing its attack fail completely, the roc's viciousness flared. Fearlessly gathering its full strength and Lightning Release chakra, it pounced toward Neji like a Thunder God.
Seeing its momentum, Neji increased the chakra output of Great Rotation again. In an instant, the spinning chakra sphere collided with the Thunder Roc.
A muffled bang filled the entire cave. The Thunder Roc was thrown back and slammed into the cave wall, but Neji had it worse. He was blasted straight out of the cave, his internal organs shaken as blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
Fortunately, to prevent himself from falling off the cliff, Neji had wrapped metal wire around a kunai beforehand. At the critical moment, he drove the kunai into the cliff wall and climbed back into the cave.
Seeing that the roc had also risen and did not appear seriously injured, Neji knew he could not remain passive any longer. Having thought it through, he did not hesitate and directly opened the Eight Gates to the fifth gate, the Gate of Limit. Pale red chakra flooded his body.
Power exploded beneath his feet, and Neji reached the roc in an instant. The roc had not even fully reacted before Neji's fist smashed into its head. It was a pure, violent Steel Fist, leaving the already dazed roc even more disoriented.
Using the recoil from that punch, Neji flipped onto the roc's back. "Gentle Fist—Acupoint Collapse!" He drove a massive amount of chakra directly into the major acupoints of the roc's right wing and blasted them apart.
That palm strike dealt more damage than the punch to its head. The dazed roc immediately let out a shrill scream, while its right wing would not rise no matter what it did. Having lost its balance, it rolled across the ground.
Without pausing, Neji activated the Eight Trigrams Formation, slightly suppressing the fallen, rolling roc. Then, drawing upon the surging chakra within him, he unleashed "Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Empty Palms!" Every palm carried a large amount of condensed chakra, striking the roc's major acupoints and sealing them. By the time the One Hundred Twenty-Eight Empty Palms ended, the roc lying on the ground could barely move. Its major acupoints had all been sealed, cutting off its chakra supply. Like a dead bird, it twitched on the ground from time to time.
Neji secretly breathed a sigh of relief and hurriedly closed the Eight Gates. Looking at his own dwindling chakra, as well as the cracks in some of his meridians and internal organs, Neji knew he had pushed himself too hard. After all, his body had not fully matured yet, and he had not accumulated enough chakra. He still needed to keep a low profile and continue tempering himself.
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