Inside the scroll Sarutobi Hiruzen had given him were not only the Flame Bullet series of ninjutsu he had developed, but also a series of Shuriken techniques.
The Flame Bullet series consisted of the C-rank Flame Bullet, along with the B-rank Great Flame Bullet and Fire Dragon Flame Bullet.
The Shuriken series consisted of the C-rank Shuriken Body Manipulation Technique, the B-rank Shuriken Giant Body Technique, and the A-rank Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique.
All of these had been developed by Sarutobi Hiruzen himself. The scroll also contained general-purpose ninjutsu.
For example, it included the Contract Seal and Contract Sealing, which were related to the Summoning Technique, along with models for setting up a Space-Time Warehouse, basic procedures for selecting, raising, and breeding summoning beasts, and some simple medical ninjutsu.
It even included the Ninja Ape Staff Technique, a style originating from Flower Fruit Mountain, the home of the Ninja Ape clan. It was the same staff technique Sarutobi Hiruzen himself used.
From this, it seemed that Sarutobi Hiruzen had initially wanted to cultivate his cheap father into an all-around ninja.
Unfortunately, his cheap father never fulfilled his obsession with becoming a Chunin before leaving the two of them behind.
Touma was also overjoyed to receive the scroll. It wasn't that he particularly liked the ninjutsu; he was just glad he could now explain where those entries had come from.
During his few days of leave after returning to the village from the border, Touma swept through the training grounds several more times and gathered all the chakra natures.
Originally, his chakra natures leaned toward Wind and Water. After the chakra purification brought about by the Wood Release construct, he awakened Earth and Yang.
Now he had also obtained Lightning and Fire from Cloud Village shinobi and the training grounds. Yin was the only nature he had yet to awaken.
Touma hadn't awakened these chakra natures out of nowhere. Under normal circumstances, anyone capable of molding chakra had all seven natures within them.
It was just that their innate constitution made their chakra lean noticeably toward certain natures. Training in jutsu aligned with those natures was far more efficient and powerful than training in jutsu aligned with other natures.
Some people chose to develop all five basic natures so they could use ninjutsu of every nature. Sarutobi Hiruzen and his student Orochimaru were examples.
Sarutobi Hiruzen's primary natures had originally been Fire and Earth. He later trained to develop the other three. Orochimaru, on the other hand, had initially leaned toward Wind alone and only gradually developed the other four under his teacher's guidance.
This wasn't just Touma's guess. His predecessor had witnessed it firsthand. As a child, whenever he played ninja with the neighborhood kids, he often saw Orochimaru training his chakra natures alone at Training Ground C.
For a while, the boy had even mistaken Orochimaru for a girl, calling him "big sister" and peppering him with questions. Eventually, unable to stand it any longer, Orochimaru started talking to him.
Because of Orochimaru's hoarse voice, the boy had cried for an entire night after his first love was shattered!
The only C-rank Wind Release ninjutsu the original owner had mastered, Wind Style: Gale Palm, had been taught to him personally by Orochimaru. He had taught him everything from the hand seals and chakra pathway diagrams to how to incorporate Gale Palm into his own fighting style and develop it further.
Perhaps Orochimaru had wanted to see whether his ideas could be successfully applied to someone else.
Unfortunately, the original owner learned slowly and couldn't handle Orochimaru's cram-style teaching, which treated him like a genius. By the time Orochimaru had been promoted to jonin and sent to the border for a long-term assignment, he still hadn't managed to use Gale Palm properly even once.
But the Touma of today was completely different. Not only had his chakra reserves increased by an entire order of magnitude, he had also completed the initial nature transformation of his Wind chakra. With Gale Palm, a C-rank Wind Release technique, he could now skip all the hand seals without weakening the jutsu at all.
Using Gale Palm as a foundation, Touma had incorporated the Nintaijutsu principles of Thunder Motion Fist and developed his own Wind Style Chakra Mode. He didn't notice that Orochimaru had silently appeared beside the secluded, empty Training Ground C.
About two hours earlier, Orochimaru had returned to the village from the border after being urgently summoned by the Hokage.
One reason for his return was to report the latest situation at the border to the higher-ups, including plans for subsequent border defenses.
The other was to check on his "little brother." When he'd heard the guards' report about the Cloud Village incident, he'd immediately remembered little Touma, who used to call him "big sister."
Orochimaru's feelings toward Touma were complicated.
After both his parents had died in battle, he had shut away his emotions completely. Even after graduating from the Ninja Academy and being assigned teammates and a teacher, Orochimaru had never opened his heart to anyone.
Then little Touma had suddenly appeared, sitting beside him every day and pretending to train, like a little shadow. As time passed, Orochimaru had gotten used to his presence, and little Touma had gradually melted his icy heart.
He still remembered how little Touma had burst into tears the first time he heard Orochimaru's voice. Nothing could console him, so Orochimaru had taken him to eat plenty of ginger dumplings until he finally smiled through his tears.
Orochimaru never said it aloud, but when he saw Touma's name in the guards' report, he wanted to find out how his "little brother" was doing.
He hadn't expected to see something astonishing when he reached the training grounds.
For starters, Touma had used no hand seals at all, relying solely on chakra control to unleash Gale Palm from both hands along two separate paths at once. It was an improvement Orochimaru had devised at the age of thirteen to make Gale Palm more versatile.
Next, Touma drew the short staff from his back and extended it. Then, using the same ninjutsu model as Gale Palm, he coated the staff in Wind chakra and produced an amplified version of the technique.
Though this kind of ninjutsu enhancement wasn't common among Ninja Academy students, there were certainly examples of it.
As far as Orochimaru knew, he himself, as well as his contemporaries Hatake Sakumo and Hatake Inami, could optimize and upgrade existing ninjutsu models.
But the next moment, the somewhat clumsy image he had of his "little brother" was shattered completely. Touma had gone a step further and refined the ninjutsu model, turning a C-rank Wind Release technique with supposedly no room for improvement into Wind Style Chakra Mode.
Watching Touma use Wind Style Chakra Mode so awkwardly, Orochimaru was certain his "little brother" had only just finished developing it. That was astonishing.
The so-called "Chakra Mode" was generally a special state brought about when a chakra nature underwent deep nature transformation, activating that nature throughout the body.
In this state, not only did a ninja's three basic physical attributes—strength, speed, and stamina—increase noticeably, but the cost and delay of using ninjutsu of the corresponding nature also fell to a minimum. One step beyond that lay the legendary "nature transformation of the body," a field few people knew anything about.
This "nature transformation of the body" was when chakra nature transformation affected the physical body. For example, the Hozuki Clan's inherited Hydrification Technique was a manifestation of "Water Release nature transformation of the body." The Iburi Clan's Kekkei Genkai, Smoke Style, was another actual example of "Smoke Style nature transformation of the body"!
In Orochimaru's eyes, Touma developing his own Chakra Mode at the age of eleven meant he had a real chance of reaching the highest level of chakra nature transformation within his lifetime!
Before you continue