Hyuga Yu stood by the sea,
Waves rolled ashore one after another, washing over the sand and lapping at his feet.
The icy seawater brought his tense mind, troubled by the looming crisis, back to calm,
and Hyuga Yu began to think—
He didn't waste time wondering how Root would use him as bait, nor did he speculate about what rank of ninja Kirigakure would send after him.
He was thinking,
How should a ninja improve their strength?
This was a very broad question,
Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, Senjutsu, Kekkei Genkai—
Any of these abilities, trained and developed to their utmost limits, could grant power beyond the wildest imagination,
but the question was, how could he rapidly improve his strength in an extremely short amount of time?
Hyuga Yu quickly identified the deadline—
Before the Kusagakure Incident!
According to the original timeline, the Kusagakure Incident would break out sometime next year, between spring and summer of Year 50 of Konoha,
After that, Minato Namikaze would instantly kill fifty Iwagakure elite ninja, forcing Iwagakure to seek peace. Following two rounds of negotiations, the Third Shinobi World War would end, and Minato Namikaze would become the Fourth Hokage.
Root's operation against Kirigakure would undoubtedly take place before then,
By the time the events of Hatake Kakashi killing Nohara Rin unfolded, Kirigakure would already be on its last legs. With no other options, they would pin their hopes on the highly unstable weapon that was a Jinchūriki bomb.
Hyuga Yu estimated that, from today, October 12, Year 49 of Konoha, he had less than ten months before Root's mission to assassinate the Third Mizukage.
In other words, in less than a year,
Hyuga Yu needed to become strong enough to take part in a Kage Level battle—and not as a mere spectator on the sidelines, but at a level where he could play a truly crucial role.
So, what should he do?
Hyuga Yu had already tested the usual methods of training in Ninjutsu and Taijutsu,
He had spent thirteen years completing his basic training, and only with outside help had he managed to force his strength to the point where he could briefly exchange blows with a Jonin.
From here on, whether he trained Wind Release, Gentle Fist, the Eight Inner Gates, or Medical Ninjutsu step by step,
Even though he had already overcome his severe lack of chakra,
one year would only be enough for Hyuga Yu to raise his basic abilities to the level of a Special Jonin.
(PS: According to the databooks, ninja with a total score above 49 across the eight stats, individual scores exceeding 8 in a few areas, and an overall score below 61—such as Gekko Hayate and Yūhi Kurenai—fall into this category. Against a Kage Level ninja like Uchiha Itachi, they'd basically be taken out the moment they showed their faces.)
So—
Hyuga Yu made his decision at once:
He absolutely couldn't take the conventional route!
And in the Shinobi World, the fastest way for a ninja to improve their strength was to master a Ninjutsu.
An ordinary Ninjutsu wouldn't do. It had to be an overwhelmingly powerful, absurdly strong technique!
He would build a complete combat system around its abilities, compensate for its weaknesses and shortcomings, and reach the point where even an enemy who knew its weaknesses would be utterly helpless against it.
There were many Ninjutsu like that, such as Wind Release: Rasenshuriken paired with Senjutsu, the all-around offensive and defensive Lightning Release: Chakra Mode, and Ninjutsu: Creation Rebirth paired with the Yin Seal...
But the signature techniques of those famous ninja didn't fit Hyuga Yu's own style,
He could only start with what he himself possessed—Byakugan, Medical Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, and Wind Release—and develop an S-rank Ninjutsu uniquely his own.
Fortunately,
Hyuga Yu had already been considering this—
Lightning Release could activate the body's cells. When developed to its peak, Lightning Release could be wrapped around the body, forming Lightning Armor that increased its durability and speed.
So,
what about Wind Release: Chakra Mode?
Unlike Lightning Release, Wind Release had difficulty stimulating cellular activity. It couldn't make the user faster or let them fly through the sky,
At most, fully applying Wind Release to an individual could produce a variant of Magnet Release, like the Third Kazekage of Sunagakure,
or allow someone to control Wind Release to its utmost through ninja tools, like Seimei, the founder of the Land of Artisans. He could unleash Wind Release: Chakra Cannon and create a Wind Wall around himself to deflect incoming weapons.
Judging by this, it wasn't that no one in the Shinobi World had thought of developing a Wind Release equivalent of Lightning Release: Chakra Mode. Rather, even if such a mode could be developed, it would be pretty useless.
But Hyuga Yu was different.
The Byakugan of the Hyuga Clan could see all 361 of the body's chakra points, as well as its entire network of pathways,
The Hyuga Clan's physiology allowed them to release chakra from any chakra point or pathway in their bodies,
And,
Hyuga Yu possessed the most advanced knowledge of Medical Ninjutsu and biomedical science.
The reason Lightning Release enhanced the user's physical abilities was that it accelerated cellular metabolism. Hatake Kakashi had made this clear while teaching Sasuke Chidori.
So, if the mechanisms of cellular metabolism were broken down further, it wasn't hard to see that metabolism consisted of numerous pathways, such as glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, the pentose phosphate pathway, glycogen synthesis, gluconeogenesis, fatty acid synthesis, and others.
Hyuga Yu deduced that the heightened metabolism caused by Lightning Release was based on intermediary metabolism—in other words, metabolism within the cells.
This metabolism could be divided into two processes: catabolism and anabolism. In between, a series of enzyme-catalyzed reactions took place.
These biochemical enzyme reactions not only ensured that the body's metabolism proceeded normally, but also greatly facilitated the release and capture of energy during the process.
And the part Hyuga Yu was interested in was the enzyme-catalyzed reactions.
Before crossing over, he had read a paper titled Advances in the Design of Energy Metabolism in Cell Factories, from which he learned:
Substrate-level phosphorylation is the most direct way to supply energy to cells. Through simple enzyme-catalyzed reactions, it can transfer the high-energy phosphate bond of a high-energy phosphorylated compound to ADP to synthesize ATP. Therefore, simple gene knockouts, downregulation, or overexpression can directly control ATP synthesis and consumption...
In short,
If chakra could be refined down to the molecular level and used to precisely perform surgery on all the body's cells at the microscopic level, Hyuga Yu could also stimulate his body and activate it with chakra,
and even turn himself into a super cell factory!
But what did any of this have to do with Wind Release?
As everyone knew, the essence of Wind Release: Rasenshuriken was to use changes in the form and properties of Wind Release Chakra to create countless molecular-scale chakra blades, which attacked an enemy's cells and chakra pathways directly at the microscopic level,
In other words,
Once Wind Release Chakra was refined to its utmost, it could be combined with the Byakugan and Ninjutsu: Chakra Scalpel to perform microscopic surgery at the molecular level.
Of course, that was only one of the Wind Release: Chakra Scalpel's abilities. By cutting, stimulating, restricting, or regulating the generation and release of energy from microscopic substances inside cells, Hyuga Yu could do many, many other things...
But to perform this microscopic surgery,
and develop his very own [Byakugan: Wind Release: Chakra Mode],
he needed to master and break down four Ninjutsu—
Rasengan,
Wind Release: Rasengan,
Mystical Palm Technique,
After breaking down the first three,
he would finally master Wind Release: Chakra Scalpel at the microscopic level!
Hyuga Yu's gaze sharpened. He slowly raised his head and looked toward the Konoha Medical Unit's camp, twenty kilometers away.
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