The Bottleneck of Jutsu

Ninjas' pursuit of combat jutsu truly far surpassed their interest in medical ninjutsu...

Jutsu with the five nature transformations had the most direct destructive power. Although studying medicine and mastering Medical Ninjutsu could also grant tremendous strength, compared with the simple, straightforward power of the five nature transformations, hardly anyone was interested in Medical Ninjutsu, which involved Yang Release and biomedicine.

So unlike the other libraries, which were nearly deserted, the Ninjutsu Archive, filled with countless records on jutsu, was often frequented by visitors.

As soon as Yuehua Ai entered the Ninjutsu Archive, he noticed how different it was from the medical reference room. The room stood on the sunny side of the library building and was well lit. It was five or six times larger than the previous room, with far more orderly bookshelves, clearly labeled sections, and plenty of tables and chairs by the windows.

After a quick look around, Yuehua Ai saw that, like jutsu itself, the archive was divided into three sections: ninjutsu, genjutsu, and Taijutsu. The sections varied in size, but the genjutsu and Taijutsu sections combined were still smaller than the ninjutsu section.

Although Yuehua Ai had always been greatly interested in genjutsu, he didn't head there first now that its reference materials were right in front of him.

He walked into the ninjutsu section and carefully searched the rows of shelves. Though he had long been eager to learn about genjutsu, he was now far more desperate to find information on Chakra Nature Transformation.

Yuehua Ai's strength primarily came from combining ninjutsu with Taijutsu. His sensory talent still mainly served to support reconnaissance. Although it could give him a degree of foresight in battle, letting him anticipate attacks, he was still far from the state of reacting instantly to every attack with perfect accuracy.

At this stage, ninjutsu remained the strongest part of Yuehua Ai's combat ability. But after he had perfected the Spirit Light Jade and developed the simplified Spirit Light Bullet, he had made almost no progress in ninjutsu for a long time.

Yuehua Ai understood his own situation far better than anyone else. In the years he had spent training under Jiraiya, he had built up potential through learning and modifying jutsu, and had now converted nearly all of it into strength. Without more accumulation or potential, of course he couldn't make much progress.

After a long period of steady growth, Yuehua Ai had finally reached a bottleneck.

Though he hadn't slacked off in refining his chakra lately, his progress in chakra reserves had remained painfully slow, limited by his age and constitution.

The potential for increasing one's chakra reserves depended heavily on one's physical constitution. A ninja's physical and mental attributes accounted for eighty percent of their total chakra; only the remaining twenty percent depended on how diligently they trained.

So no matter how much time a ninja devoted to refining chakra, the increase in their reserves could never match the gains that came from improving their physical constitution. That was because in the Naruto World, chakra had to be produced by the human body and was based on physical energy.

For example, one's physical constitution was like a mineral deposit, while chakra was the resources contained within it. A ninja's training was the process of mining that deposit.

No matter how thoroughly a small deposit was mined, it could hardly compare to even a little digging in a large one.

Just look at Naruto. By the time he was in his teens, his chakra reserves were already four times Kakashi's—and that didn't even include the chakra of the Nine-Tails inside him. Otherwise, the gap would have been a hundredfold.

Refining chakra wasn't cultivation in some immortal martial arts world. Thinking that you could make your chakra grow without limit by constantly refining it was a joke!

The amount of time spent refining chakra didn't mean much. Consider why the Third would eventually die at Orochimaru's hands. The main reason wasn't his age or declining stamina. It was simply that he ran out of chakra during the battle.

Even after decades of refining chakra, the Third had never shown any particularly impressive results in battle. From that, it was clear that refining chakra had little effect on increasing one's upper limit. Its greatest benefit was improving the rate at which chakra recovered!

Slow chakra growth was Yuehua Ai's greatest weakness, but there was nothing he could do about it. It wasn't something he could change through hard work alone.

In terms of ninjutsu training, he had nearly reached his limit. Developing the super-A-rank jutsu Spirit Light Jade meant he had already pushed his training in chakra shape transformation beyond its limits.

If he wanted to further improve his ninjutsu using the chakra he already had, the only viable path left was to train in Chakra Nature Transformation.

Think of the Wind Release: Rasenshuriken Naruto created after mastering the nature transformation of wind chakra. How many levels did that single jutsu raise Naruto's combat ability!?

So, in Yuehua Ai's view, whether he mastered the nature transformation of water chakra or, like Naruto, that of wind chakra, mastering any one nature transformation and incorporating it into the Spirit Light Jade would bring an unprecedented, explosive increase in his strength!

Unfortunately, reality was far less rosy than the ideal.

On the way to Konoha with Jiraiya, Yuehua Ai had asked him for guidance. Unfortunately, of the five elemental releases, Jiraiya was only proficient in Fire Release and Earth Release. He understood the nature transformations of fire and earth chakra thoroughly, but when it came to wind and water, he knew only their basic characteristics and little about anything deeper.

Though disappointed, Yuehua Ai had still asked Jiraiya about the nature transformations of fire and earth, hoping to learn by analogy. He couldn't train in them himself, but learning more could only help. After all, who knew whether he might meet a ninja skilled in the nature transformations of fire or earth in the future?

He wrote down some of Jiraiya's insightful explanations. As he studied the nature transformations of fire and earth, he also summarized their characteristics and used his own unique understanding to make some conjectures about the other three elements.

He already had some fairly reasonable theories, but he was still eager to learn the most orthodox explanations from the ninja training system.

And today, thanks to this archive, which contained nearly every theoretical foundation of ninjutsu, he finally had the chance to get to the bottom of it!

He searched the tall bookshelves one by one. After a long while, Yuehua Ai finally found what he had been looking for:

Basics of Chakra Nature Transformation!

The title was simple and clear!

Yuehua Ai excitedly took out the slightly worn book, which looked as though countless people had read it.

He hadn't even opened it yet. Just glancing over it, he noticed something that thrilled him.

In an inconspicuous spot on the back of the book was a small signature, and the name was Senju Tobirama!

Senju Tobirama was Konoha's Second, the younger brother of the First, and one of the founders of Konoha. During his lifetime, he had made unparalleled contributions to the village's prosperity.

Senju Tobirama excelled at researching and developing jutsu. He was the most inventive ninja of his era. Not only had he developed countless standard combat jutsu, he had also left behind many forbidden techniques.

The Flying Raijin Jutsu, which had made Namikaze Minato famous; Impure World Reincarnation, which would cause a stir in later generations; and the Shadow Clone Technique, which Naruto was best at—all were his creations.

There was no doubt that Tobirama had reached an unprecedented level in the study of jutsu. People would flock to read anything he had written, even if it wasn't a forbidden technique or a jutsu, and merely covered the basics of ninja training. After all, his name was Senju Tobirama. Even on the most basic topics, his insights would far surpass the understanding of ordinary ninjas.

Unable to wait, he went to sit in a chair by the window. Carefully placing the book on the table, he opened the cover and began reading without skipping a single word. Before long, Yuehua Ai was completely absorbed.

The Ninja World had, after all, accumulated a thousand years of history. Even as a transmigrator, he had to approach it with respect. Just this one simple book had already humbled Yuehua Ai's pride in being a transmigrator.

The book not only offered a detailed introduction to the ninja system, but was also full of ingenious ideas about training in jutsu, with plenty of thought-provoking insights. From the text alone, he could tell that the author's understanding of chakra was in no way inferior to his own.

The intersection of two cultures, the collision of different civilizations—in just a short time, reading the book had made Yuehua Ai feel his previously drained inspiration surge back to life. Countless new ideas and possibilities were taking shape in his mind.

"Creak—"

Just as Yuehua Ai was lost in the world of the book, a sharp scraping sound suddenly jolted him awake. He looked up and saw that the young man who had been sitting across from him and sharing his table was getting up. The sound had come from him pulling out his chair.