Ability Test

Three days later, the recovery speed Xing Ran displayed seemed wildly optimistic even to the Medical Squad ninja, but in reality, he recovered even faster than expected.

After being hospitalized with severe injuries, Xing Ran had nearly fully recovered in just four days.

Hai Yi had accepted a mission and left the village yesterday. Today, Xing Ran quietly completed his discharge procedures and returned home alone.

Originally, Hai Yi had intended for his wife, Yamanaka Sae, to pick Xing Ran up from the hospital tomorrow. However, Xing Ran knew that Aunt Sae still had to care for two-year-old Ino. Since he was being discharged early anyway, he did not want to trouble her.

Xing Ran's home was located on the street where the three Konoha families of Ino-Shika-Cho gathered. It was not a large house, but it was more than spacious enough for a family of three.

Next door was Yamanaka Hai Yi's home, and both were detached houses with their own small courtyards.

Though they were detached homes, among the other two clans collectively known as Ino-Shika-Cho, the Yamanaka Clan ranked at the bottom economically. Few members of the Yamanaka Family lived in large houses or mansions.

The three Ino-Shika-Cho clans were families that wielded extremely rare secret techniques and held enormous influence in Konoha. However, that influence could only be achieved through the three clans working together. Any one clan on its own was merely somewhat better off than ordinary civilians, far inferior to the Uchiha Clan and the Hyuga Clan, both of Otsutsuki bloodline.

Of them, the Akimichi Family, representing the "Cho" in Ino-Shika-Cho, operated a highly influential barbecue chain throughout the Land of Fire. This was partly because the Akimichi Clan's secret techniques required them to constantly eat in order to meet their enormous Chakra consumption, but as a result, their clan was especially gifted at running food businesses and possessed formidable financial strength.

Then there was the Nara Family, representing the "Shika." Their members were generally very intelligent. Even if they did not devote their minds to economic development, money had never been a weakness for these clever people. In the original story, aside from Uchiha Clan Head Fugaku's home and the Hyuga Clan, the Nara Clan was one of the few families that could afford Japanese-style courtyard residences.

Finally, there was the Yamanaka Family, representing the "Ino." Apart from their extraordinary achievements in intelligence gathering and mental secret techniques, they held no particular economic advantage. Thus, although the Yamanaka Clan had many members, most lived little differently from Konoha's civilians.

The moment Xing Ran returned home, he could no longer suppress the excitement in his heart and began testing his ability to fly.

Other abilities could wait for now, but flight had been one of humanity's earliest dreams. Xing Ran could not wait to experience the feeling of soaring freely through the sky.

He guided his body slightly upward and felt his weight growing lighter and lighter. Gradually, starting from his heels, he slowly broke free from gravity's restraints, followed by the soles of his feet, and finally his toes.

He was flying!

Xing Ran looked down in delight and saw that both his feet had left the ground. He was completely suspended in midair.

In the entire ninja world, the only known people capable of flying solely through their own abilities without relying on any tools were a tiny handful, such as Tsuchikage Ōnoki. That little old man could fly through Earth Release alone, and not just anyone could reach that level.

But from this day onward, there would be one more person in the ninja world capable of flying without relying on any external force.

Xing Ran was overjoyed and planned to find an empty place after nightfall to properly experience the sensation of speeding through the vast, boundless sky.

Unfortunately, it was still daytime. Since he did not want to be dragged into a laboratory for research, he could only fly around inside the house.

Xing Ran had only just gained the ability to fly, and the novelty had yet to wear off. He did not walk around the room at all, flying wherever he wanted to go. Before long, a new problem arose.

Less than three minutes later, Xing Ran landed on the sofa, panting slightly with an ugly expression. He was exhausted. Was this really the stamina Superman was supposed to have? He recovered so quickly, so he should have Superman's Steel Body. Why could he only fly for such a short time?

Moreover, he was not flying very fast. Floating would have been a more accurate description. In other words, not only could he fly for only a short time, but his flight speed was also painfully slow. Other than sightseeing while traveling, this ability had no practical combat use at all.

Sensing that something was wrong, Xing Ran hurried to the backyard. This was where he usually trained, and it contained plenty of exercise equipment.

Superman possessed a Steel Body, and his strength and speed were his main selling points. Since Xing Ran had awakened Superman's power, just how strong was he?

He picked up the barbell in the courtyard and lifted it effortlessly. It could not serve as a basis for testing at all.

But Xing Ran quickly thought of something. He grabbed both ends of the barbell, exerted strength through both arms, and prepared to bend it.

"Hah!"

With a shout from Xing Ran, the barbell in his hands instantly became a piece of scrap metal folded in half.

It looked as though his strength had increased greatly, but in truth, many taijutsu-focused ninja could easily accomplish this as well. He still needed to test his lifting strength to obtain a relatively accurate value.

There were no suitable testing tools at home, so Xing Ran switched to testing his speed. This test was much simpler. Holding a stopwatch, he measured the longest stretch of the small courtyard at ten meters. Ten round trips made one hundred meters. Though this would not be perfectly accurate, it could still give him a rough estimate of his speed.

Five seconds for one hundred meters.

That speed was not particularly fast. It was only seventy-two kilometers per hour, not even as fast as a car. Ordinary ninja could exceed that figure when traveling by using Chakra to enhance their running.

The speed of sound was 1,224 kilometers per hour, and it was explicitly stated that opening the Fifth Gate, the Gate of Limit, in the Eight Gates had already achieved supersonic speed.

Therefore, if each opened gate of the Eight Gates further increased strength and speed, then by the Fifth Gate, they would have been enhanced five times. Assuming each enhancement doubled the previous one, the First Gate, the Gate of Opening, would grant a speed of 244.8 kilometers per hour.

Judging by Rock Lee's speed after opening the First Gate in the original story, it was at most Chunin-level combat speed.

With this speed as a reference, the size of the Naruto world and the speed at which ninja normally traveled could also be roughly estimated.

Ordinary ninja could probably maintain speeds between one hundred and two hundred kilometers per hour while traveling.

This was also one reason ninja did not use horses for travel. Even the fastest horses could only run at around sixty kilometers per hour.

When Konoha's support force went to rescue Gaara, it took them three days to travel from Konoha to Sunagakure. Their speed at the time definitely would not have been below Chunin level. Excluding rest time, if they traveled ten hours a day at two hundred kilometers per hour, the distance between the two places would be roughly six thousand kilometers.

The expressway from Shenzhen to Harbin was 3,342 kilometers, roughly the distance from south to north across China.

That travel speed of two hundred kilometers per hour might contain some margin of error, but it definitely would not have been below one hundred kilometers per hour. At the very least, Konoha and Sunagakure were separated by a distance spanning the width of China.

Looking at it this way, the Naruto world was truly enormous. The main continent was roughly comparable to the entire Eurasian continent.

(PS: The worldbuilding is not finished yet; further proof will come later. Also, Xiaoran already has a completed novel of over one million words, so readers can rest assured and add it to your collections. And please send in some recommendations while you're at it. Thank you!)