"Wait, Mother."
Uchiha Cheng interrupted timidly.
"Is there something you don't understand?"
Uchiha Mika paused her enthusiastic instruction.
"I think I've already managed to mold chakra."
Uchiha Cheng spoke uncertainly.
How was that possible?
Mika found it hard to believe. Then a thought occurred to her: could she have made a mistake in her judgment, leading him to think he'd molded chakra?
With that in mind, she instructed Uchiha Cheng to release the chakra he'd produced along the pathways in his arm.
Blue-white light surged from Uchiha Cheng's left hand. There was no doubt about it—this was chakra.
"You really did manage to mold it?"
Mika could hardly believe it. Molding chakra was only a basic skill for a ninja, but it was still exceedingly rare for someone to learn it after just half an hour of instruction and succeed on their very first attempt.
She vaguely remembered that she'd trained hard for a full year before she finally molded chakra, and that was already considered fairly quick for someone her age. Some children trained for two years and still couldn't mold chakra, and in the end, the Ninja Academy turned them away.
Just because it was a basic skill didn't mean it was easy. For three- and four-year-olds, what was spiritual energy? What was physical energy? They couldn't even see the spiritual and physical energies inside their bodies, so how could they combine them?
These were the hurdles hidden in the process of molding chakra.
The Ninja Academy made chakra molding part of its entrance exam, and every year, countless children hoping to get in were eliminated.
Could my child really be a genius?
Mika wondered to herself. Although she was Uchiha Cheng's mother, she'd never thought her child might be a genius. After all, neither she nor that bastard had much talent.
But learning to mold chakra a little faster didn't prove anything. People who could mold chakra quickly were rare, but they did exist.
"Now that you've learned to mold chakra, you need to keep practicing and increase the speed at which you produce it. This is a skill you can work on forever."
Mika taught him sternly.
"I'll remember!"
Uchiha Cheng nodded. He understood how important this skill was. After all, even the Nine-Tails had to produce chakra in the later stages of Naruto.
"So, am I going to learn ninjutsu next?"
"No. What comes next is the key. You need to produce a large amount of chakra and spread it throughout your body, activating every cell.
Only after you've activated your cells will you have crossed the threshold into being a ninja."
Cell activation? Wasn't that what Chidori did? He'd only just learned to mold chakra, so why was this about activating his cells?
Uchiha Cheng was baffled. Still, he dutifully followed his mother's instructions, producing large amounts of chakra and spreading it throughout his body.
Blue-white light appeared all around Uchiha Cheng.
As he continued molding chakra, Uchiha Cheng realized that the chakra inside him seemed endless.
By all rights, at just three years old, his body and mind were still developing. His chakra reserves should have been meager.
Yet his body seemed like an erupting volcano, spewing out chakra in torrents. To him, chakra was like magma beneath the earth—an inexhaustible supply.