That evening, Uchiha Cheng returned to his room after dinner.
Since he had learned all the ninjutsu so quickly, he had spent the entire day practicing and reinforcing what he had learned.
His progress was impressive. It was as if he had a natural talent for it: chakra responded to his control like an extension of his own hands, allowing him to perform even the most precise maneuvers with ease. That was probably one of the reasons he had mastered the techniques so quickly.
But no matter how vast his chakra reserves were, the toll on his stamina and energy was real. He was exhausted. The moment he entered his room, he threw himself onto the bed.
Then he remembered his mother's instructions. With a groan, Uchiha Cheng sat back up.
He still needed to continue his cell-activation training. Since it didn't require the kind of open space that other ninjutsu did, he had left it until last.
A pale blue glow appeared around him as Uchiha Cheng patiently sent chakra throughout his body, bit by bit.
The training was tedious and monotonous, and it required his complete concentration.
Chakra was a mixture of spiritual and physical energy. Losing focus often threw the spiritual energy into disarray, causing the chakra to disperse.
Ninja had to endure this tedium and train for a long time to improve their abilities.
Uchiha Cheng was beginning to understand what it meant to be a ninja.
A ninja was someone who could endure: the tedium, the pain.
As time passed, he felt vitality gradually returning to his tired body. The cell-activation process was easing his fatigue.
But his eyes, which were being continuously flooded with chakra, began to feel strange.
At first, they only itched a little. Then it was as if something were stirring inside them.
As the owner of those eyes, he could clearly feel their hunger. It was like the feeling of wanting food when your stomach was empty. The message his eyes were sending him was clear: they needed chakra.
Uchiha Cheng decided to give his body what it was asking for. He continuously circulated chakra into his eyes. But they were like a bottomless pit: no matter how much chakra flowed in, they swallowed it all.
He stopped his cell-activation training and focused all his chakra on supplying his eyes.
With chakra reserves that seemed just as bottomless, Uchiha Cheng was able to satisfy their need.
His eyes had swallowed chakra equal to everything he had expended that day before they finally felt full.
Uchiha Cheng could clearly feel that his eyes had grown. And a new power had awakened within them.
Could the Six Paths ninjutsu of the Rinnegan have awakened? he wondered.
He tried to call upon the newly awakened power. Suddenly, everything before him turned blood-red, as though he were looking through red-tinted glasses.
Could this be...
Uchiha Cheng opened the cabinet beside his bed and took out a small mirror, then held it up to his eyes.
In the mirror, he saw blood-red irises marked with a single black tomoe.
The One-Tomoe Sharingan!!