Those Who Walk the Earth

The new moon hung high in the sky as Hui and Chuanhe once again stood at the cave entrance they had come through.

Looking at the distant town and its nighttime scenery, so unlike Konoha's, Hui felt a seed of longing for peace take root in his heart.

One day, he would fulfill his mother's dream and end all conflict in the world.

It seemed the Uchiha clan's geniuses were all cursed in some strange way. Every person who rose to the top of the clan eventually set out, for one reason or another, to pursue what they believed was "peace."

The next day, in class.

Naruto found Hui a little strange as he watched him from a short distance away. Somehow, Naruto could tell that Hui seemed happy, as if he had let go of many of his worries.

The day passed much like any other. In the evening, Hui finished training with Naruto and Sasuke.

His two friends were the only reason he still came to school.

Alone by the river, Hui gazed at the sun's fading light on the horizon.

The Shadow Clone Technique was unusual. After practicing it to a certain level, it seemed that no one but his father could tell which one was the real body.

Even Hui couldn't tell now. His Four-Dimensional Perception could only detect animals without chakra and reserve Genin with as much chakra as Sasuke currently had.

That didn't mean he couldn't sense anything at all. If the chakra was too faint, there was no need to go to the trouble of using Four-Dimensional Perception. A simple ninjutsu probe would do.

How did the Shadow Clone Technique make it impossible for anyone to tell which body was real? According to the records in the study, even the legendary Rinnegan, the Sage Eye, couldn't distinguish the real body.

That day, while using the Shadow Clone Technique to attend school, Hui's real body fell into deep thought.

The soul? Right! The Rinnegan couldn't extract souls from a distance. If someone had gotten close enough to do that, there would be no need to extract a soul to verify which body was real.

If chakra could be converted into the five elemental releases to imitate real matter, did shadow clones imitate souls?

Was the soul also a kind of matter? Since the Rinnegan could "see" it, then by the same logic, the soul was matter.

This brought Hui to another question. If chakra could imitate real matter, why was its destructive power so abnormal?

Aside from the ultimate weapon and antimatter his father had mentioned, Hui had never heard of anything like it.

Unable to make sense of it, Hui thought to himself, Maybe this is something for a later lesson. I've only had two lessons so far, and they've already completely overturned everything I knew about ordinary ninjutsu. What else will come next?

Watching Hui practice Water Release Ninjutsu all day at home, Chuanhe saw that he had acquired the water affinity.

Perhaps it was time to change Hui's perspective. Chakra was indeed the easiest substance he knew of to manipulate precisely, and there was no contest. But with such a vast world open to him, it was clearly unwise for Hui to remain fixated on ordinary ninjutsu.

So Chuanhe asked, "Hui, if you were going to Kage Rock, how would you get there?"

"Take the stairs." Hui looked at him, puzzled.

"Why not just walk up the wall?" Chuanhe asked with a knowing smile.

"Th-that would break the rules, wouldn't it?" Hui looked even more confused.

"Wouldn't the logical thing be to first think of walking up the wall, then realize it would break the rules, and take the stairs instead?" Chuanhe countered.

"Th-that..." Hui was at a loss for words. It did seem that way. Why had he ignored the simpler option?

Clearly, his father had a reason for asking. So where had his thinking gotten stuck in a rut?

Hui thought about how he had spent the whole day practicing Water Release and successfully gained the water affinity. It should have been something to celebrate. His father hadn't objected at the time, either. What was different about it?

"Dimensions?" Hui thought of the word. It seemed like the only possibility.

What had he overlooked? It seemed the only conclusion he hadn't applied was that he could manipulate all matter. But without chakra, directly manipulating matter was incredibly difficult.

Unable to find an answer, Hui decided he might as well try. The last time he had attempted to manipulate matter that wasn't chakra was when he had written in four-dimensional space.

Hui began dispersing his chakra until all the chakra he had extracted was gone.

Then he tried to manipulate the water in the cup in front of him.

The water slowly floated up as he controlled it, taking on different shapes at his command.

Hui frowned at the water. It was difficult, extremely difficult, and he could only control a very small amount. If there were any more, he wouldn't be able to manipulate it so precisely.

"Why are you still controlling it the way you control chakra? It's not even the same thing," Chuanhe said, watching the floating water.

Hui looked bewildered. What did he mean?

"Against an enemy far weaker than themselves, a ninja's ninjutsu and shuriken accuracy can be frightening. That kind of precision doesn't come from nowhere." Seeing that Hui was confused, Chuanhe offered another example.

The way he manipulated... Was there something wrong with how he manipulated chakra? Wasn't he supposed to precisely control every bit of cha—

Hui suddenly understood. So that was it.

In the world of matter, on a macroscopic scale, there was nothing as pure as chakra.

The impurities in chakra also greatly increased the difficulty of controlling it.

That was why the original owner of chakra and other people had different levels of difficulty controlling the same chakra.

Unless they were Jinchuriki, who trained relentlessly to use Tailed Beast Chakra just as they trained to use their own chakra.

Ninjutsu was like a precision instrument. Get even one hand sign wrong, and the technique wouldn't work properly.

That was true of chakra, but not of other substances.

If he stopped striving for precision and instead manipulated matter as a whole...

The ball of water before Hui confirmed his answer. The difficulty of controlling it plummeted, and it began flying all around the room, though its path was still rather wobbly.

"I understand, Father!"

"That's it? What else?"

What else? Hui stared at Chuanhe, completely baffled.

"I want you to understand more than just this."

What else could he do? As far as dimensions went, all he could manage was simple Four-Dimensional Perception. What else was there? Wait—four dimensions?

His thinking had been far too narrow all along. He was already thinking in four dimensions, so why was his approach to problems still constrained to a flat plane? The point of the example had really been to get him to fly straight up to Kage Rock.

Hui looked down at the floor and began manipulating the matter of his entire body as a whole. Trembling, he rose into the air.

Looking at Hui, Chuanhe continued speaking as if to himself. "The thing I understand least in this world is this. A person's self-awareness is like a creator god, able to directly grant matter energy."

"I've always believed in the conservation of mass and energy. But when faced with this reality, I'm the one left confused."

"If the soul exists in a higher dimension, then it's matter too. Should I keep explaining it through yet another higher dimension? It would go on forever, generation after generation."

"I tried thinking about the world I came from in reverse. The brain controls the body by sending out electrical signals. Could that mean the brain controls electrons?"

"Follow that line of thought, and the result is that a person's self-awareness controls matter. Even if it's microscopic matter, it still exists."

"Here's a simple thought experiment: a super-civilization can perfectly predict the four fundamental forces. They predict that a star in a galaxy will explode a thousand years from now. But a thousand years later, the intelligent life in that galaxy manages to prevent the star from exploding through tireless effort."

"Could that mean that human self-awareness played the role of at least a fifth fundamental force in this process?"

After that long explanation, Hui was thoroughly confused. He didn't fully understand all those concepts.

But what he didn't understand was... hadn't Chuanhe already answered his own question? It could be explained by a fifth fundamental force.

Hui told Chuanhe what he was confused about.

"That's a complicated question. I'll explain more when we talk about forces later," Chuanhe said after a moment's thought.

"Anyway, Hui, you've realized it now, haven't you? We don't have to limit ourselves to ordinary ninjutsu anymore. Ninjas with supernatural abilities should be looking to the sky. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of ninjas in the whole world who can fly."

"Those who keep their feet on the ground are missing a dimension in the way they think. How can they ever take the next step?"