Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms

Hyuga Shin speculated.

Hyuga Shin had also thought about creating his own ninjutsu, but he still knew too little about it. If he could come up with something now, that would be ridiculous!

He thought so hard his head nearly exploded, but still couldn't come up with a single idea. In the end, he simply stopped trying. It wasn't as if he absolutely needed ninjutsu.

Sitting on his bed, Hyuga Shin began refining chakra. It was something he did every day.

After refining chakra for an hour, Hyuga Shin lay down and went to sleep.

Chapter 13: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms

Early the next morning, Hyuga Shin got up, washed, and prepared his breakfast.

After finishing breakfast, Hyuga Shin didn't immediately go to train. Instead, he sat on the tatami in the living room and refined chakra.

Today was the day the clan handed out its allowance, and Hyuga Shin didn't want to miss it because of training. He had already spent almost all the money he had.

He was counting on the clan allowance and his father's compensation to tide him over!

A little after seven, Hyuga Shin abruptly opened his eyes. "They're finally here."

Not long afterward, the door to Hyuga Shin's home opened, and a Hyuga Clan Chunin in his twenties walked in.

Without changing expression, he took out Hyuga Shin's allowance and said with an air of distaste, "Here's your allowance."

"And one more thing!" The Chunin reached into his tool pouch, took out a scroll, and handed it to Hyuga Shin.

"This is the Chakra Refinement Technique, along with our Hyuga Clan's Gentle Fist. You might not be able to get anywhere with them, but we won't shortchange you."

After saying that, the Chunin left without a moment's hesitation.

"Am I really that hated?" Hyuga Shin said, rubbing his nose.

Then he opened the scroll. Besides the chakra refinement scroll, it also contained the Gentle Fist Art: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms.

"Not bad. Better to have it than not." Hyuga Shin put away the scroll and left home.

He returned to the mountains behind the village. This time, Hyuga Shin still made ten Shadow Clones and gave them the Gentle Fist technique to study.

He began his own training. In the afternoon, the Shadow Clones suddenly burst into clouds of smoke, and by then Hyuga Shin had learned the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms.

Standing in front of a large tree, Hyuga Shin took a Gentle Fist stance. An Eight Trigrams formation appeared and enveloped the tree. Then he shouted, "Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms!"

"Two Palms!"

"Four Palms!"

"Eight Palms!"

"Sixteen Palms!"

"Thirty-Two Palms!"

"Sixty-Four Palms!"

Hyuga Shin's hands moved at full speed, leaving countless afterimages in the air. Chakra blazed around his small palms as they struck the tree.

With a thunderous boom, the tree—which was too wide for one person to wrap their arms around—exploded. Wood chips flew everywhere and scattered across the ground.

"No wonder the Hyuga Clan doesn't practice ninjutsu. This Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms is the real deal. Its power is at least in the A-rank range."

"But the people in the Hyuga Clan probably never thought I could master it! Otherwise, they wouldn't have given me the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms so readily."

"Even though I've mastered it, I absolutely can't let anyone find out. If I do, those people in the Hyuga Clan will definitely cause trouble."

Hyuga Shin sighed inwardly, then spoke.

Suddenly, an idea flashed through Hyuga Shin's mind. "As long as I don't show that I can strike tenketsu, using the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms should be fine."

"Who says you have to strike tenketsu to use Gentle Fist? I don't have the Byakugan. As long as it can deal damage, that's all that matters. As long as I don't reveal the Tenseigan, there won't be a problem."

Hyuga Shin smiled, inwardly praising his own cleverness. Using Gentle Fist this way would make it half as threatening, but being able to use it openly was what mattered.

"But I should still avoid using it for now. I'll wait until I've graduated from the Ninja Academy."

Hyuga Shin made ten more Shadow Clones. This time, he didn't have them train; he had them spar with each other instead.

In the Ninja World, strong combat experience was the most important thing. Plenty of powerful ninja had still died at the hands of people with greater combat experience.

Take Kaguya Otsutsuki, for example. Her combat experience was poor. She had all those powerful, heaven-defying techniques, yet she still ended up defeated.

Hyuga Shin didn't want to end up like Kaguya Otsutsuki, with a mountain of power but no idea what to do with it—swinging the Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion at the air would be a joke.

Since they were Shadow Clones and weren't afraid of dying, every attack was a killing move.

Hyuga Shin trained while watching the Shadow Clones battle. He wasn't just watching for fun; he was improving his combat experience by observing their fights.

"People who work as hard as I do and do everything they can to get stronger must be rare in the whole Ninja World!"

Hyuga Shin wasn't bragging. He was certain that not even Might Duy and his son, or Rock Lee, could compare to him.

And so Hyuga Shin kept training, going from home to the mountains behind the village and back again. His life was peaceful, with the same routine every day.

The only exception was when Hizashi Hyuga decided he was strong enough to get revenge and came looking for Hyuga Shin.

But Hyuga Shin smacked him in the face with the harsh truth and knocked some sense into him. Hizashi had arrived full of himself and left with a swollen face.

Other than that, Hyuga Shin mostly had to put up with people giving him the Byakugan—the genuine Byakugan.

Hyuga Shin was perfectly happy with things that way. Every day, he was tired as a dead dog, but feeling his strength improve day after day made it all worthwhile.

Another year passed in the blink of an eye. Over the course of that year, Hyuga Shin had grown quite a bit. He was at least half a head taller than the others his age.

And it wasn't just his height that had increased. His strength had grown too.

Hyuga Shin's chakra reserves had now reached Kage Level, putting him among the very best at that level.

However, the purity of his chakra was only at the Elite Chunin level. In other words, although Hyuga Shin had Kage-level reserves, the ninjutsu he unleashed was nowhere near as powerful as a Kage's.

His Taijutsu, on the other hand, had improved considerably. Hyuga Shin was confident that his Taijutsu alone could defeat a Jonin.

Hyuga Shin felt that his raw strength was probably on par with an Elite Jonin, but because he lacked combat experience, he figured he wouldn't be able to win.

And a ninja's strength in Naruto should be measured by chakra purity and combat ability. Otherwise, if it were measured by chakra reserves, wouldn't the Senju Clan and Uzumaki Clan be full of Kage-level ninja?

"No matter how you measure it, combat ability is what matters most. With the abilities I have, even someone at Kage Level can't do anything to me," Hyuga Shin said confidently.

Hyuga Shin wasn't being arrogant. The Glint-Glint Fruit's abilities really were outrageous. If I can't beat you, can't I at least run away?