End of the First Day

Facing the roar of questioning from the audience outside the arena, the sensory squad in the barrier control room immediately projected the footage captured by the Hyuga clan's Byakugan onto the barrier's dome.

Kurama Mion, who had been blasted out of her mental space by the explosion of the mental construct, suffered no actual damage; instead, it was possible that the large-scale explosion within her mental realm had purged the deep-seated negative emotions from her body.

Although the image on the dome was black and white, Touma could clearly see that the brightness in Mion's eyes had undergone a heaven-shaking change compared to before.

With the interference of negative emotions removed, Mion's previously scattered focus returned in full, and her bloodline limit, which had been growing slowly, suddenly experienced a leap-forward breakthrough.

Mion traced her index fingers in front of her for a moment before suddenly vanishing into a mist, a feat that even the Hyuga clan's Byakugan could not penetrate; this technique was, without a doubt, the Kurama clan's "ultimate genjutsu," Genjutsu: True Reality.

Through the extreme nature transformation of Yin Release, she completely erased her objective existence from the real world, and this disappearance at a conceptual level could not be detected by ocular techniques or sensory perception.

If one had to find a similar method for comparison, this technique of erasing one's objective existence in reality was somewhat similar to the Rinnegan ocular technique "Limbo: Border Jail" used by Uchiha Madara during the Fourth Great Ninja War!

Unless one was proficient in Sage Mode and could utilize its unique ability to perceive natural energy to distinguish the anomalies in natural energy caused by this disappearance, it was impossible to track her.

Yet, Mochi, unable to perceive Mion, made a shockingly wrong decision!

For some reason, he believed that even after detonating his mental clone, he was still trapped in a genjutsu, and he attempted to detonate his mental energy a second time to completely purge the genjutsu's effects from his body.

Little did he know, just as he began to agitate his mental energy, Kurama Mion suddenly appeared behind him and struck him while he was completely oblivious.

This accident directly caused Mochi to lose control over the scale of his mental energy detonation; not only did it fail to clear the genjutsu effect he imagined, but the runaway mental energy backlashed into his own primary consciousness.

Fortunately, Mion, seeing that something was wrong, intervened quickly, using Yin Release chakra with extreme nature transformation to limit the scale of the mental energy explosion, preventing any fundamental harm to Mochi.

Otherwise, the Kurama clan would have had to pay a heavy price to appease the Mitarashi clan; after all, the Mitarashi clan did not have many members, and with such a small base, the number of geniuses born was surely limited—losing even one would be enough to shake the foundations of the family!

The two matches following Mion's were those of Mebuki and Tsume.

There were no surprises in their matches, as the genin they faced were very young civilian ninja.

Although they were highly proficient in the Three Basic Jutsu and shurikenjutsu, and possessed decent combat experience.

Lacking a decisive trump card, they simply could not be compared to top-tier students of that age like Kazamatsuri Mebuki and Inuzuka Tsume.

Not to mention that the Kazamatsuri and Inuzuka clans were long-standing ninja families; while their scale might not be massive, they certainly possessed their own family trump cards.

The Inuzuka clan went without saying; their Inuzuka-style taijutsu, performed in coordination with their ninja dogs, formed a unique system of combat, and the taijutsu prowess of their members was outstanding even among genin of the same level.

Furthermore, Tsume's ninja dog, Kuromaru, was an extremely rare natural ninja beast—one born with the ability to use chakra—and combined with his half-wolf-king bloodline, his individual combat power was enough to rival an average chunin.

The inherited ninjutsu of the Kazamatsuri clan was, naturally, Wood Style.

Of course, this "Wood Style" was not that Wood Style; the Wood Style cultivated by the Kazamatsuri clan through the precise ratio of Water and Earth nature transformation chakra did not possess the astonishing vitality of the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama.

One had to realize that the Wood Style creations left behind by the First Hokage decades ago were enough to allow Touma to awaken a preliminary Yang nature transformation; the distance the First Hokage himself had traveled on the path of Yang nature transformation was far beyond what Touma could imagine.

In fact, some of Orochimaru's notes mentioned the Second Hokage's speculation regarding why Wood Style could not be replicated, with the core issue lying in the Yang nature transformation.

It was just that his older brother had poor expressive abilities while alive and had never explained clearly to his younger brother how to achieve that level of Yang nature transformation.

Senju Tobirama had also attempted to investigate Wanren Cliff, the Tianyun Altar, Shikkotsu Forest, and other places where his brother had long resided for training, but ultimately found nothing.

Therefore, he speculated that there must be some unknown external factor that influenced his brother's constitution, allowing him to easily complete such profound Yang Release chakra nature transformation.

He was indeed correct; Touma estimated that the First Hokage was able to achieve this because he had awakened the "Power of Yang" within the reincarnated chakra of Asura.

In Touma's view, the "Power of Yang," a force that could be called the source of Yang Release chakra, was not something that could be obtained through mere training.

Because, in the final analysis, this power did not belong to Asura or the Sage of Six Paths, but originated from the true progenitor of chakra, the guardian of the God Tree, the Rabbit Goddess—Otsutsuki Kaguya!

Conversely, the Wood Style cultivated by the Kazamatsuri clan, lacking vigorous vitality, was not only small in scale but also incapable of creating rapidly growing super-plants out of thin air; they could only conduct combat in spaces dense with vegetation or prepare seeds and spores with vigorous vitality in advance.

Mebuki was accustomed to using spores as a means of attack, and her trump card was a B-rank Wood Style ninjutsu called "Wood Style: Spore Mist," which could rapidly catalyze spore proliferation to form a colorless, transparent, and highly toxic mist, killing enemies invisibly.

Fortunately, the genin she faced was not enough to force her to use such a lethal move; Touma knew that once one inhaled too much of this toxic mist, even if an antidote were taken in time to suppress it, it would leave behind indelible sequelae!

The matches for Touma and his two companions were scheduled around the thirtieth bout and would not take place today, so after Mebuki and Tsume finished their battles, the three of them left the stands, preparing to join them for a celebration at Yakiniku Q.

This was not "popping the champagne" early, because according to information obtained from Shibi, in order to ensure that the second day of the exam went smoothly, the Hokage's office had redrawn the list for the next day.

The genin and chunin on the list were all randomly selected replacements from the border defense forces of Kikyo City.

Although these border defense ninja, who had long been on the front lines, were stronger and more experienced, their basic loyalty was at least guaranteed, and the proportion of enemy spies among them was definitely lower than it was today.

Touma had just sparred with Orochimaru, and Orochimaru had evaluated his strength as being between a chunin and a special jonin; if he accumulated enough mission experience, he would be qualified to serve as a special jonin responsible for exclusive missions.

Using himself as a standard, Touma evaluated the strength of Aburame Shibi and Haruno Kizashi; they would face no surprises against the genin among the border defense forces, and even if they were randomly matched against a chunin, they would be capable of putting up a fight with their current strength.

As long as they could drag out the duration of the battle when facing a chunin, the assessment result would be a direct pass!