If it had to be classified, the "Shadow Control" Hanyu was using now would probably fall under high-speed taijutsu within a composite ninjutsu framework. It could be called the Body Flicker Technique... After all, any ninjutsu that allowed someone to cover a great distance in a short time could be called the Body Flicker Technique. However, it was absolutely not the same thing as Space-Time Ninjutsu.
No matter how fast he was, he was still crossing continuous space over continuous time. He wasn't leaping between points in space-time the way the Flying Thunder God did.
Furthermore, although Hanyu said that the technique he was using was called "Lightning Release: Shadow Control," that wasn't actually the case. Lightning Release was merely the technique's outward appearance. Its true substance and essence lay in the hidden water-release pseudo-meridians, which were the crucial foundation.
The pseudo-meridians weren't actual meridians, so Hanyu called the ninjutsu used to construct them "Water Style: Great Ancestral Record."
Hanyu's special Lightning Release state was the product of combining two types of ninjutsu. Therefore, the correct name for the technique he was using now should have been "Lightning Release-Water Release: Shadow Control Great Ancestral Record."
Without a doubt, this was an S-rank ninjutsu of extreme difficulty. In practice, however, that difficulty ranking was meaningless. Regardless of how hard or easy it was, this composite ninjutsu could only be used by Hanyu himself.
In the end, it all came back to the same problem—the inability of a ninja's single life structure to simultaneously sustain two types of chakra, despite allowing them to be fused.
At present, Hanyu seemed to be the only special case capable of breaking through this limitation. So even if he wrote down every step of the technique's training in full and personally guided someone through it, no one else could learn it.
Even if someone made some progress in such training, what they learned would be "Kekkei Genkai: Storm Style," not "Shadow Control Great Ancestral Record."
Compared to Shadow Control Great Ancestral Record, Storm Style naturally had greater destructive power and efficiency. But it lacked the high-speed movement granted by Lightning Release's ability to stimulate the body. All things considered, even if Hanyu had a choice, he would pick his own "Shadow Control" over Storm Style... Even if Lightning Release was weaker than Storm Style, it was hardly lacking in destructive power.
When fighting ninja, there was little difference in the results produced by five million tons of TNT and fifty million tons... Most of the time, both simply killed the target instantly.
But a ninja with speed and one without were practically two different species.
Lightning Release was a wild, unruly force. Most of the time, ninja could only control it crudely. Along with its immense destructive power, it also placed a tremendous strain on the user's body. The Lightning Blade and Chidori Current, both highly similar to the Shadow Control technique Hanyu had developed, suffered from the same problem.
Compared to the Lightning Blade, Hanyu's Shadow Control had obvious advantages.
First, the Lightning Release Hanyu used had drastically reduced the physical strain that Lightning Release was conventionally known to inflict on ninja. Its negative effects were almost nonexistent.
Second, Shadow Control was fundamentally a cyclical form of Lightning Release, unlike the Lightning Blade's dispersive form. This made its chakra usage highly efficient. Combined with the lack of strain on the user mentioned above, Hanyu could maintain the technique for a long time. It had the lethal power of a pure one-hit-kill Lightning Release technique, while also serving as high-speed taijutsu during prolonged battles.
Third, because Hanyu's Lightning Release was controllable and cyclical, it had a gentle side beneath its turbulent nature. He could further adjust his output by increasing or decreasing its frequency, thereby changing the technique's power and speed. This gave him far greater flexibility while maintaining his incredible speed. Hanyu wouldn't be limited to the straight-line charges Kakashi could manage when he first used the Lightning Blade. With that simple method of movement, speed lost much of its advantage. No matter how fast you were, how useful was it if the enemy could predict your path?
Finally, when Hanyu used Shadow Control Great Ancestral Record, the chakra inside him flowed in two orderly cycles. This doubled the efficiency of his chakra circulation and further enhanced his physical abilities, greatly increasing both his strength and striking power. It was a benefit of simply running two processes at once. Because of this, Hanyu had even decided to keep his second set of pseudo-meridians active in his daily life.
Of course, Hanyu's Shadow Control shared the common problems of high-speed taijutsu. The most notable was that using the technique required exceptionally keen perception. Hanyu had neither the Byakugan nor the Sharingan. No matter how excellent his dynamic vision was, it was still within the normal range... When you moved too fast for the spectators to follow, your own eyes could struggle to keep up as well.
Fortunately, Shadow Control Great Ancestral Record was only a foundation. It hadn't been fully developed yet.
"The first-stage test seems to have succeeded. Now I'll try taking it a step further." As he spoke, Hanyu moved away from Koga and the others again, heading farther off.
"There's a second stage?" Hatake Sakumo was even more astonished.
The training Hanyu had supposedly been doing over the past few days had amounted to nothing more than turning himself into a water-filled pig, then struggling to restore his original shape... Could such a process really give a ninja an epiphany and lead to the development of such a powerful technique?
Could pigs really be that valuable?
Hatake had clearly never seen an outbreak of swine fever cause pork prices to skyrocket across the entire Land of Fire. So, to answer his question plainly... yes, pigs really were that valuable.
Hanyu paid no attention to Hatake's astonished remark. He thought, Did I really go to all this trouble just to stick a Lightning Release wire inside myself? Is that supposed to be enough?
Standing on the lake again, Hanyu began to draw on the special Water Release within his pseudo-meridians. Before, it had remained inside his body. Now he intended to spread it throughout the ten meters surrounding him... The Great Ancestral Record had been developed as a special kind of Water Release, with exceptionally high conductivity and extraordinary sensory sensitivity.
Afterward, the blue electric arcs that occasionally flickered across Hanyu's body became brighter and more frequent.
The Water Release dispersed around him was nowhere near as concentrated as it was in his pseudo-meridians. In fact, to the naked eye, there appeared to be nothing around Hanyu at all. Yet his Lightning Release spread through the surrounding ten meters along the arrangement he had created.
Once that was done, Hanyu tried moving in the same way as before, and...
He moved even faster than before!
The others couldn't see the difference with their naked eyes. They hadn't been able to follow him even at the start. But Hanyu could feel the improvement clearly.
What he had just done seemed simple, but it produced an astonishing effect. Through that arrangement, Hanyu had created a weak electric field around himself, filled with faint Lightning Release. This "preheating" and harmonization with the environment allowed his high-speed Lightning Release to break through its previous speed limit as he moved through the field.
This undoubtedly increased Hanyu's chakra consumption. But the benefits went far beyond another increase in speed—using the chakra he had spread out also greatly enhanced his perception. As he moved at high speed with Lightning Release, the gaps in his eyesight could be made up for by a much finer sense of movement.
This was inspired by the Hidden Mist Technique he had used earlier. Hanyu's Water Release: Great Ancestral Record had far more refined and powerful sensory abilities than the Hidden Mist Technique.
And so, in the blink of an eye, Hanyu no longer had to be blind.
Compared to Lightning Release Ninjutsu in the Lightning Blade and Chidori family, the drawback of Hanyu's Shadow Control was that it lacked their intense paralysis effect. Shadow Control had no controlling effect, but Hanyu didn't need Lightning Release's paralysis anyway... To paralyze someone, you first had to invest points into resistance to paralysis. Put simply, it was a desperate measure that hurt you almost as much as your enemy.
They used Lightning Release as a weapon precisely because they couldn't avoid its paralyzing effects.
But Hanyu was different. He could avoid Lightning Release's negative effects, discard the dross and keep the essence. All he needed was the extreme speed Lightning Release provided.
So...
If asked: "Between you and Kakashi, who is faster?"
The answer could only be: "You are faster. How could Kakashi ever hope to match you?"
Lightning Release-Water Release: Shadow Control Great Ancestral Record was a far superior ninjutsu to Lightning Release: Lightning Blade.
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