"Yang Release... so this is what it feels like."
"Give form to life."
Four or five hours passed before Uchiha Xiu gradually regained consciousness.
The whole process had been far gentler than he'd imagined. It was nothing like those cultivation stories where you shat out your impurities, with bone fragments and waste blood gushing from your pores.
In fact, what he could sense most clearly was the chakra in his body slowly rebuilding. As it flowed like rippling water, a new power known as Yang Release grew stronger within him.
Compared to the spiritual power of the Uchiha, it was much purer.
As expected of Senju Hashirama.
The reincarnation of Asura.
The God of Shinobi who'd returned to his ancestral roots all the way back to the God Tree!
If he had to make a comparison, only Uchiha Madara, the reincarnation of Indra, could match him in status through the Yin Release power of his eyes.
"I'm an Uchiha, yet I've got an excess of Yang and a deficiency of Yin. This is completely upside down! Hahaha!"
"What a delightful problem to have!"
His heart brimmed with joy.
The Yang Release in his body was now exceptionally abundant. Even that evil old Senju Tobirama would be shocked if he saw it—
The true Senju inheritor is an Uchiha?
Big Brother, what on earth were you hiding from me and that old Madara?
After Uchiha Xiu absorbed the last of the high-energy nutrient solution, he reined in his racing thoughts and said, "Main God, display my six stats."
[East Sea Team Captain Uchiha Xiu's six attributes: Intelligence: 355 Mental Strength: 681 Neural Reflexes: 749 Muscle Strength: 777 Cellular Activity: 811 Immunity: 853]
The increase was indeed significant.
In particular, his attributes related to vitality had improved greatly. Before injecting the modified Hashirama Cells, Uchiha Xiu had checked his initial base stats:
Intelligence: 350
Mental Strength: 569
Neural Reflexes: 531
Muscle Strength: 493
Cellular Activity: 508
Immunity: 522
His Intelligence, which affected information analysis and combat IQ, had barely increased. But even his Mental Strength, which was tied to his Sharingan's level, had risen by over a hundred points. He could clearly feel his eye power growing!
He was one step closer to the Three Tomoe.
"Combined with the second-stage Gene Lock unlocking my body's potential, I could easily take down an ordinary jonin with Taijutsu alone."
"My chakra has increased more than tenfold, and I can extract it just as quickly."
"I'm almost as good as Kakashi now."
"The Uchiha naturally have large chakra reserves, and now I've gained the traits of the Senju Clan through Hashirama Cells... Do you even understand the value of a mini-Hashirama?"
If he hadn't been overwhelmed with joy so many times in such a short span, and hadn't already laughed his heart out in the Alien World not long ago, he would've been tempted to laugh out loud again.
The Main God Space was a great place!
He was grateful to the Great Light Sphere.
"For someone like me, coming here was a genuine surprise."
He could become stronger without suffering a major trauma and turning into a lunatic.
The Sharingan grew stronger because Uchiha clan members already possessed great love. When they lost that love, special chakra welled up in their brains and affected their optic nerves, changing their eyes. The first Tomoe appeared in the iris, symmetrically in both eyes!
By the same logic, the more Tomoe in the eyes, the stronger the Sharingan...
Lying naked in the bathtub, Uchiha Xiu tilted his head back to look at the ceiling as his thoughts gradually wandered.
Little by little, he recalled something from his previous life: one time, while idly browsing the Infinite Terror Tieba forum, he'd stumbled upon an unorthodox approach.
It was a truly earth-shattering, god-defying move!
"Seems like you hypnotize yourself into being a narcissist."
"Then create a person, pull off a Dream-Shattering Blade one-shot, and close the loop. Achieve enlightenment through getting cuckolded and break through the heavens on the spot..."
If he applied the logic, the Sharingan could indeed serve as a substitute.
After all, when the dead-last Obito saw Rin Nohara die right in front of him, the intense shock had made him jump straight from Two Tomoe to Mangekyo, awakening the prestigious space-time eye technique: Kamui.
Cuckold Emperor? The phrase flashed through his mind, and Uchiha Xiu shuddered.
Instinctively, he wanted nothing to do with such a bizarre system!
His very soul recoiled from it!!
"With two D-rank side stories and 4,870 reward points left, I can't use a high-quality exchange to steadily raise my Sharingan to the Three Tomoe for now."
"I'll put off restoring the Gunbai's glory... Senju Xiu actually sounds pretty good."
He couldn't help thinking of another phrase: farming points during the intermission.
It was one part of the East Sea Team's overall rapid-growth plan: spend one D-rank side story and fifty reward points a day to revisit a horror-movie world they'd already experienced, triggering an extra hidden Easter egg in the process.
The corresponding difficulty would be higher than that of the official trial.
Going to other worlds in the meantime wouldn't trigger any missions.
Even so, Uchiha Xiu would still return to the Ninja World often, gradually securing benefits and gaining enough time to train.
"The sooner I master the secrets of Wood Release techniques, the better."
"I don't even need the techniques implanted in my mind. Exchanging knowledge about them with the Great Light Sphere would feel like a waste."
[Scroll of Seals, Rating: 91. A forbidden book kept by successive Hokage. The scroll records jutsu that can cause the user great harm or even death. Requires two C-rank side stories and 3,000 reward points.]
"The right move is to pay the entrance fee, then use all sorts of maneuvering to get things for free in the Naruto World."
"My clan has a vast inheritance of jutsu. I can openly study Konoha, Kirigakure, and Iwagakure's ninjutsu, genjutsu, Sealing Jutsu, forbidden jutsu..."
"Right, if the clan's hidden collection doesn't include any Wood Release scrolls, I could find a good opportunity to ambush Anbu Yamato and use genjutsu to interrogate him. That would be a good place to start. I could even secretly copy his techniques with my Sharingan while fighting him."
The First used Wood Release to conquer the world.
Yamato used Wood Release to do landscaping.
Without time to build up his strength, the target wouldn't be very powerful yet.
Before returning to the Naruto World, Uchiha Xiu would strengthen himself with another round of resources. If he could gather the right intelligence, he felt he'd probably succeed.
Splash.
The water rippled as he climbed out.
A large pile of specially made balls had silently appeared beside the bathtub.
They'd cost less than one reward point—only two points!
One point was worth a thousand points.
In the real world, a kilogram of illegal drugs—enough to get someone executed several times over—was worth only five points.
Of course, Uchiha Xiu had never needed such cheap, ugly anesthetics. He had a stable enough core to face one crisis after another.
"Let's try to work out how to perform the hand-sign-free Rasengan."
"The anime explained the principle in detail. It's simple: gather chakra in your hand, make it flow continuously in irregular directions, and compress it into a ball of chakra without elemental affinity, about the size of your palm and spinning at high density. Then hit your enemy with it."
"Now that I have more powerful chakra, sharper perception, and greater mental strength, there's no reason I can't build on all my accumulated experience and get even better!"
That's right, Uchiha Xiu had secretly trained in the Fourth Hokage Minato Namikaze's signature technique too.
He'd started after becoming a Genin and awakening the One-Tomoe Sharingan. It had taken him more than two whole months and over a thousand balloons just to squeeze half his body inside one.
He'd made no further progress after that.
Not enough chakra!
He lacked fine control!
"The trick is to keep increasing the output... and spin it faster."
Longing to grow stronger and unwilling to waste time, Uchiha Xiu murmured as he gathered chakra in his palm.
His Sharingan clearly reflected the chakra's path through his arm. The chakra spiraled and compressed like a whirlpool—the inner layer tore counterclockwise while the outer layer twisted clockwise, and the two forces collided violently at the core of the sphere.
Pop~
The balloon burst into powder. He'd done it on his first try.
So he'd finally reached the point where those high-level jutsu that had once seemed unattainable weren't such a big deal after all.
A faint blue sphere, like the eye of a typhoon, spun gently in his palm.
"Heh. Guess I prepared those balloons for nothing."
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