Hand Seals

After Jiraiya began teaching them in earnest, the first thing he asked the boys to do was focus and gather chakra. The days that followed were dull and monotonous.

Meditation took a great deal of mental energy. Unlike the fatigue of physical training, after every session the boys felt dazed and muddle-headed. Fortunately, they had all endured hardships from a young age, so they were able to hone their mental strength at an exceptional pace.

In less than three weeks, Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan had each sensed their own spiritual energy. After that, they naturally sensed their cellular energy and began to draw chakra for the first time. Yuehua Ai's progress was even more noticeable. His mental strength was far beyond that of an ordinary person, which made it much harder for him to hone his mind. But he had an adult's way of thinking, and he was more willing to endure hardship and persevere in his training. As a result, his progress in refining his mental strength was no slower than anyone else's.

The most immediate benefit of honing his mental strength was a tremendous increase in the amount of chakra Yuehua Ai could draw. He now had over five times as much chakra as before, and its density had improved beyond comparison.

Once everyone had learned to draw chakra, Jiraiya began a new round of training. Unlike the mental exhaustion of meditation, this time they were subjected to nothing but physical torment. It was painful, but compared with the tedium of meditation, they still preferred this. They even found themselves enjoying the training.

Taijutsu was the most basic and indispensable skill for every kind of shinobi. Now that the boys had successfully drawn chakra, Jiraiya began training them in taijutsu.

Taijutsu stood alongside ninjutsu and genjutsu as one of the three main disciplines. A shinobi's strength wasn't determined just by how powerful their ninjutsu was or how invincible their genjutsu seemed. What mattered was their overall ability. Many ninjutsu and genjutsu had to be used in combination with taijutsu. In a fight, an enemy wouldn't just stand there and let you form Hand Seals without interfering. So even a shinobi who didn't specialize in taijutsu couldn't afford to be weak at it.

Taijutsu gave shinobi greater speed and quicker strikes. Only by keeping up with taijutsu training could they create better opportunities to use the other techniques they excelled at. Take Madara Uchiha, for example. He had peerless ninjutsu and genjutsu, yet during the Fourth Shinobi World War, he could fight his way through the Allied Shinobi Forces with nothing but his bare hands. That showed just how important taijutsu was to a shinobi.

Taijutsu's importance wasn't limited to supporting ninjutsu and genjutsu. As one of the three basic disciplines of a shinobi, taijutsu was also a path to the pinnacle of strength in its own right. When fighting Six Paths Madara, the taijutsu specialist Might Guy was hailed by Madara as the strongest.

Taijutsu covered a broad range of skills. A shinobi's movements and combat techniques could all be called taijutsu. The movements of the body combined with the use of chakra were, in essence, taijutsu—but those were only the basics. The Hyuga Clan's Gentle Fist, the Eight Inner Gates developed by the Second Hokage, and Tsunade's Strength of a Hundred were all forms of taijutsu, though they were advanced techniques built on its fundamentals.

Children like Yuehua Ai couldn't possibly learn advanced taijutsu at this stage. For now, Jiraiya had them doing little more than running, carrying weights, frog jumps, and squats. They had only started training halfway through their lives, after all, so they had to make up for all the basic skills they'd missed.

"Pant, pant..." The boys gasped for breath, sprawled all over the tatami. Sweat blurred their vision, and they were so exhausted they didn't even want to move a finger. After all, running twenty-five kilometers was no easy feat, even with chakra.

"All right, all right, get up and sit down. It's only twenty-five kilometers. You don't need to act like this. When your body is exhausted, that's the best time to train your chakra. Only then can you better tap into your cells' potential and sense the energy hidden deep within them."

"Sit down and keep drawing chakra. I'm going to teach you something new!" Jiraiya slapped the table and instructed them.

"What's this new thing? Ninjutsu, genjutsu, or something else?" The moment they heard Jiraiya would teach them something new, the boys perked up and hurriedly sat upright.

Seeing how quickly they settled down, Jiraiya nodded in satisfaction.

"This kind of training will be essential from now on, so you must keep it up without interruption. Remember, the first thing you need to become a powerful shinobi is a strong body. Your body is the foundation of everything."

After stressing the importance of physical training, Jiraiya paused to gauge their reaction. When he saw them nodding in agreement, he didn't press the point and continued with his new plan. "Keep up your physical training. As long as your chakra keeps growing at the rate it is now, you'll soon become capable shinobi."

"Shinobi are still shinobi, and a capable shinobi can't go without ninjutsu. So I've decided to teach you some ninjutsu when you're resting after your physical training."

"Ninjutsu? We're really going to learn ninjutsu!" Yahiko and the others were excited, and so was Yuehua Ai. Were they finally going to learn ninjutsu?

Seeing their excitement, Jiraiya laughed. Then he couldn't help tempering their enthusiasm. "Ninjutsu isn't easy to learn. There's still a lot you need to study first. Don't expect to master everything overnight. Learning ninjutsu takes sweat—more than all the rain in the sky. All right, we'll still start with the basics. Today, I'll teach you Hand Seals!"

Although Jiraiya had tried to warn them by comparing sweat to rain, the boys weren't discouraged. They feared their own helplessness far more than sweat and physical pain. They were sick of being unable to do anything when their companions were in danger. Compared to that despair, they much preferred their current lives, where they sweated every day and could feel themselves growing stronger.

"Hand Seals for ninjutsu?" Yuehua Ai murmured to himself. He knew a little about the Hand Seals shinobi used. They were the foundation of ninjutsu, the means of turning chakra into a "technique." In his previous life, he hadn't paid much attention to Naruto, so although he knew a few Hand Seals, he didn't know them very well.

After his chakra reserves grew, Yuehua Ai had also tried forming Hand Seals on his own. He didn't know many of them and had no idea which exact seals were needed for any given technique, but that hadn't stopped him from experimenting. After all, he had been an obsessive researcher in the field of cellular biology in his previous life.

After several private experiments, Yuehua Ai hadn't made much progress in studying ninjutsu, but he hadn't come away empty-handed, either. He had once managed to summon a ball of water about the size of a basketball.

The water ball had no power and was only good for washing his face or hands, but it still counted as a ninjutsu, because it had genuinely transformed chakra into a "technique."

That success had given him some insight into the role Hand Seals played in ninjutsu. The reason shinobi used Hand Seals wasn't to look cool or to show off their power and mystery. They were simply a way to change chakra, transforming pure chakra energy into other forms of energy.

Through Hand Seals, chakra flowing through the body's pathways passed through the arms and made contact, forming a large external loop distinct from the internal circulation. The chakra's speed, frequency, path, and intensity all differed within this larger loop. The chakra flowing through each side of the body converged at the hands. Its nature changed, and when the two streams met, they produced a powerful interaction. This transformed pure chakra energy into various other forms of energy.

If chakra was like electric current, then the hands were like electrical appliances. Different Hand Seals were like different appliances. Each appliance produced different energy, which then acted upon a different field.

After several experiments, Yuehua Ai had already seen through the nature of Hand Seals. Simply by studying them, he had begun to uncover the secrets of ninjutsu, and the mysterious field was gradually lifting its veil before him.

"Hand Seals!" Yahiko and Nagato blinked. Hand Seals were an incredibly impressive part of being a shinobi in their eyes. Ordinary people tended to remember just two things about the mystery and power of shinobi: their ninjutsu and their Hand Seals.

"The most basic Hand Seals used in ninjutsu are the twelve signs. They're called Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar."

"Now watch carefully as I form them. For Rat, overlap your thumbs, with the right thumb on top. For Ox, hold your right hand horizontally and your left hand vertically. For Tiger, straighten both thumbs. For Rabbit, make a loose fist with your four fingers on the right hand, leaving the little finger straight. For Dragon, overlap your thumbs, with the left thumb on top. For Snake, interlock all five fingers. For Horse, spread your elbows and bring your index fingers together to form a triangle. For Goat, point your thumbs upward and overlap them, with the left thumb on top. For Monkey, keep your little fingers parallel to your thumbs. For Rooster, pay attention to the angle of your thumbs and how your fingers overlap. Don't get them mixed up. For Dog, place your right fist in your left palm. For Boar, pay special attention to this hand sign. It requires flexible wrists, so be careful not to hurt yourself."

"All right, I'll do them a few more times, slowly. Make sure you remember them. You'll be practicing them over and over in a moment. If you forget, ask one of your companions first. If none of you are sure, come ask me. Now, focus. Here I go!"

With that, Jiraiya performed each of the twelve Hand Seals a few more times, repeating the key points as he went.

The boys copied him as he formed the Hand Seals, so it didn't take long for them to memorize all twelve.

Once they had learned them, Jiraiya had each of them form the Hand Seals in turn. When their movements were becoming more precise, he clapped his hands to get their attention.

"My students really are clever. You only needed a few tries to remember them. That's good. But this is only a shallow memory. Hand Seals are the foundation of ninjutsu. If you can't even form them properly, you're not fit to call yourselves shinobi. I don't want you to just memorize these signs. I want them to become instinct."

"Instinct is more reliable than a companion. Making Hand Seals instinctive is difficult, but that's exactly why you'll need to put in more effort and spend more time on it."

"I'm giving you a week. During that week, aside from drawing chakra and physical training, you'll spend all your free time practicing Hand Seals. After a week, I'll teach you ninjutsu. But if anyone fails my inspection and can't form the seals properly, heh, I'll show you what cruel really means!"

At first Jiraiya spoke seriously, but by the end his voice had turned mischievous. His expression was mockingly fierce, but his earnest gaze made it clear that if they failed to meet his expectations in a week, he would punish them severely.

"Yes!" the boys replied loudly. Yuehua Ai was no exception.

They started practicing Hand Seals at once, filled with excitement and nervousness. Hand Seals, Hand Seals—so long as their hands weren't crippled and their fingers weren't broken, all they had to do this week was repeat them over and over. Once they finished one set, they would start again!