Heaven Rewards Diligence was remarkably effective.
Not only had Ruri made tremendous progress with her Transformation Technique, able to become indistinguishable from Kamiya Keiyun, but Kamiya Ishiku had also improved considerably from continuously using the Pipe Technique.
Now, with a single cast, he could create a pipe forty-five centimeters in diameter, with walls five centimeters thick and a length of fifteen meters!
Kamiya Keiyun had originally thought that narrower was fine; at worst, he could crawl out.
But now that there was so much extra room, there was no reason to make things hard on himself.
After reaching a depth of one hundred meters, Kamiya Ishiku stopped digging pipes and instead began constructing corridors one meter wide and two meters high.
Both sides of the corridors were built with stone bricks, while the ceilings were arched to better withstand the pressure of the soil above and prevent cave-ins.
To ensure safety, Kamiya Keiyun also had him create a four-by-four-meter chamber every fifteen meters. Each chamber had a thick pillar in the center, while the corners and walls were all built from the strongest stone bricks. It was essentially a safe room every fifteen meters.
That way, even if a cave-in occurred somewhere, they could hide in a safe room whether moving forward or backward. Once the collapse was over, they could continue digging.
This sort of project might have seemed unfamiliar, but Kamiya Keiyun had actually done plenty of it. Minecraft had been his main game in college; now, he was simply treating reality like Minecraft and remodeling it.
Minecraft had underground passages, lava, and flowing water. Beneath Konoha, there was no lava, only groundwater.
However, this ninjutsu excavated by pushing material outward from the center toward both ends. Unless it struck an underground river directly, the groundwater would simply be pushed aside and could not enter the passage at all.
At the ninja academy, Ruri observed the entire school and her classmates through clothing that was somewhat translucent.
Just as Kamiya Keiyun had said, his daily routine at school was extremely monotonous. Every day, once he arrived, he would slump onto his desk until school ended.
There were no complicated interpersonal relationships or complex social interactions, making him easy to imitate.
"There are only two things you need to watch out for!" After school, Kamiya Keiyun continued passing on his experience. "First, Kakashi. He'll greet me in the morning or afternoon. Just respond the way I did this morning. The other is Inuzuka Hana. That girl seems to like me, but she knows her limits and won't bother me for no reason."
"What about that dog? Gumaru, was it? I keep feeling like he noticed something about me!" Ruri asked.
"It's not a big problem. He may have smelled that my scent is different from before, but I'll bring you around for two days. Once he gets used to it, it'll be fine. Besides, he can't talk!" Kamiya Keiyun said.
"Mm!" Ruri nodded. That was indeed true. Even if Gumaru noticed something was wrong, he could only bark a couple of times.
Who would care about the barking of a little puppy?
On Tuesday, the flowers that had been air-drying in the room for four days were finally dry. The underground project entrusted to Kamiya Ishiku was finally complete as well!
Kamiya Keiyun had prepared all the equipment during those four days.
Flasks, glass tubes, an alcohol lamp, distilled alcohol with a purity of ninety-five percent, saltpeter, and so on.
He filled a flask with water and heated it over the alcohol lamp.
A glass tube was connected to the top of the flask, with its other end connected to a chamber filled with dried, crushed flower petals.
On the other side of the chamber was a cooling tube wrapped in ice, and at the end of that tube was a collection bottle for gathering the liquid.
This equipment was not particularly good, but it was already far better than the conditions Kamiya Keiyun had had when making perfume by hand in his previous life. Back then, he had no money for beakers or flasks and had used mess tins and mineral water bottles instead.
The water vapor heated to boiling traveled through the glass tube into the chamber, then passed through the dried petals. The floral essence within the petals would be carried away by the steam.
Once the vapor entered the ice-wrapped cooling tube, its temperature dropped sharply and it condensed into liquid, dripping through the tube into the collection bottle.
The collected essence needed to sit until the water and fragrance separated. Then, combining it at a ratio of eighty-five percent alcohol, five percent water, and five percent fragrance would produce perfume.
This stuff had an extremely low cost. If produced in large quantities, a jin would probably cost less than two hundred ryo. But if sold outside, one jin could be divided into one hundred bottles, each selling for five hundred ryo.
However, the perfume could not be used immediately. It needed to sit for one to two months to mature. Matured perfume would have a gentler, richer scent without the harsh smell of alcohol.
That was why Kamiya Keiyun could make perfume in a week, yet had told the Yamanaka Clan to return after a month.
The finished perfume was placed into glass bottles. Originally, there had been nowhere to store it, but now there was plenty of space underground, thanks to Kamiya Ishiku's excavation.
Kamiya Keiyun personally carved out a storage room below. Nearly four hundred flowers had been turned into two hundred and sixty bottles of perfume, all stored here where they were safe and the temperature was ideal.
"The environment here seems pretty nice!" Since he was already there, Kamiya Keiyun took the opportunity to inspect Kamiya Ishiku's work.
In truth, whenever Kamiya Ishiku dispersed each day, his memories would be transmitted to Kamiya Keiyun. He knew the project's daily progress clearly, but he had only seen it in fragments and had yet to view the entire underground pipeline project in full.
Kamiya Ishiku had inherited Kamiya Keiyun's obsessive-compulsive tendencies. The entire passage was built perfectly straight without the slightest bend, and every wall was incomparably smooth.
Kamiya Keiyun did not know there was a technical term for measuring smoothness called surface roughness.
But in his opinion, the stone walls created by this technique could already rival marble floors and walls polished by professional equipment!
Even more impressively, this technique produced no noise, consumed no energy, and created no pollution.
"If I could return to the modern world, I'd definitely be the most popular contractor!" Kamiya Keiyun exclaimed as he walked forward.
The safe rooms had originally been designed by Kamiya Ishiku with one pillar. Later, he realized that if the pillar stood in the middle, it would block the view down the passage at a glance!
So he changed the single pillar into four, placing them along the edges of the corridor.
There were even two long tables beside the pillars, and dragon-and-phoenix patterns had been carved into them.
Even the safe room walls were not bare. They had been painted with murals, though they were not famous masterpieces but rather something much less proper.
For example, Erxian Bridge, splitting my melon, and Sarilang.
If a stranger entered and saw those murals, they would definitely be utterly baffled.
"Where is the light here coming from?" Kamiya Keiyun curiously raised his head and saw coin-thick passages dotting the ceiling like stars. The light was coming through those coin-sized channels.
One look at the size of those passages and Kamiya Keiyun understood. Hei Bei had probably dug them.
The principle was simple: light was likely refracted through the stone walls before eventually reaching below.
This was one hundred meters underground, yet the light reaching here was still this bright. There must have been some special arrangement on the surface.
Following the passage onward, he passed through twenty-six safe rooms before finally reaching the end.
At this point, there was only one path leading upward. Yet it was not vertical, but slanted.
Nor was it a pipe, but a stairway passage one meter wide and three meters high.
Kamiya Keiyun walked for nearly two minutes before finally reaching the end.
The exit here was blocked by a huge stone, but although it looked massive, it was actually hollow. Kamiya Keiyun gave it a gentle push and moved it aside!
Opening the entrance, Kamiya Keiyun looked at the lush greenery before him, and his mood instantly brightened!
This was a small hillside hidden amid dense forest. Judging from the growth of the surrounding vegetation, few people came here. It was exceptionally well concealed.
Kamiya Keiyun chose a relatively tall tree, climbed to its crown by stepping against the trunk, then channeled Chakra to adhere himself to the tree while adjusting his balance. He stood firmly atop a branch.
Using the leaves as cover, Kamiya Keiyun looked around.
First was Konoha's wall, close enough to see. The two were only a little over two hundred meters apart, and Kamiya Keiyun's eyesight was decent enough that he could vaguely make out the patrolling ninjas standing atop it.
There was also the translucent barrier that occasionally flashed with hazy light.
Konoha had barriers, both aboveground and underground, but clearly, this barrier did not extend one hundred meters beneath the earth.
He did not know whether it was because the Naruto World had no one capable of going one hundred meters underground, or because there was simply no need to guard against it.
No matter what, I was out!
The book was published on the twelfth. It had been sixteen days so far, and forty-five chapters had been updated—an average of three chapters per day.
I still have twenty-one chapters saved up.
I've been incredibly diligent lately. Maybe it's because the weather is cold, so I have no motivation to go out, and I don't feel like gaming either. Once I start writing, I just can't stop.
Yesterday, I actually wrote eight chapters—eighteen thousand characters.
There shouldn't be any problem with a big release once it goes premium.
The tentacle monster is evolving as usual. I need more monthly votes and recommendation support. Thank you, everyone.
Before you continue