Chidori's Cultivation

Once Duanmu had more or less recovered, Kakashi brought him and Sasuke to a rocky area. This was the place outside Konoha Village specifically used for high-intensity ninjutsu training. The ground was covered in gouges of varying depth, and faint ripples from chakra collisions still lingered in the air.

Kakashi tossed each of them a scroll filled with specially made Shuriken. "Duanmu, your Lightning Release chakra refinement training starts today. Every day, you must coat your Shuriken with Lightning Release chakra and pierce the bullseyes of twenty C-rank-hardness stone targets within the time it takes one stick of incense to burn. Sasuke, you'll start by practicing dynamic tracking with your Sharingan. Use ordinary Shuriken to hit targets whose movement speed will gradually increase. Once Duanmu completes his basic training, the two of you will spar."

As he spoke, he took an hourglass from his ninja tool pouch and set it off to the side. "The timer starts now."

Duanmu took a deep breath and gripped three Shuriken in his right hand. Fine blue arcs of electricity began gathering at his fingertips, and the crackling current sounded especially clear in the silent training ground.

He closed his eyes and compressed and refined his chakra according to the method Kakashi had taught him, feeling that violent yet sharp Lightning-attribute power flowing through his palm. Then his eyes snapped open, his wrist flicked, and the three Shuriken wreathed in lightning shot out like meteors, striking the distant stone bullseyes with precision. There came three soft sounds: puff, puff, puff.

Tiny fragments instantly burst from the stone surface, and three charred holes appeared clearly in the bullseyes.

Kakashi's gaze shifted slightly, and he said in a low voice, "Not bad. Your Lightning Release chakra attachment is fairly stable, but the penetrating power isn't enough. C-rank stone isn't very hard, but it's effective for testing how condensed your chakra is. Your attack just now only pierced the surface. You're still a ways off from completely punching through the bullseye. Remember, the essence of Lightning Release lies in 'focus'—gathering all your power into a single point, like the tip of a knife piercing paper, not a fist smashing through a wooden board."

Not far away, Sasuke formed a one-handed seal, and his Sharingan quietly activated. Black tomoe slowly turned within his scarlet pupils.

He did not rush to throw his Shuriken. Instead, he stared fixedly at the distant targets as they began moving slowly, imprinting every tiny change in their trajectory into his mind.

When the first target moved into the optimal angle, his wrist lifted lightly, and three Shuriken flew out in a triangular formation, nailing themselves into the bullseye with flawless accuracy. Even the depth at which they embedded was almost identical.

Duanmu paid no attention to Sasuke's movements. He focused his attention back on his palm.

Kakashi's words just now had awakened him—when he had condensed Lightning Release before, he had pursued coverage too much, which had diluted the destructive force at a single point instead.

He took a deep breath and mobilized his chakra again. This time, he deliberately compressed the lightning in his palm, causing the blue arcs that had originally scattered outward to gradually draw inward, forming only a thin, almost transparent film of light along the edges of the Shuriken.

"Ha!" Duanmu shouted under his breath, and the Shuriken tore through the air once more.

This time, there was no piercing crackle of electricity, only an almost imperceptible hiss cutting through the air. The instant the Shuriken struck the stone, no fragments exploded outward; instead, it pierced straight through the bullseye and kicked up a small puff of dust on the ground behind the rock.

"That's more like it." A hint of approval finally entered Kakashi's voice. "Continue. Maintain that state and complete twenty effective penetrations within one incense stick's time."

The fine sand in the hourglass continued to fall. In the training ground, only the soft sounds of Shuriken slicing through the air and the faint hum of flowing chakra remained.

Sweat gradually seeped from Duanmu's forehead. Condensing Lightning Release chakra consumed an enormous amount of mental strength, and every throw felt like an overdraft on his nerves.

But his gaze remained sharp. Each time a Shuriken left his hand, he carefully sensed the trajectory of his chakra flow, constantly adjusting the angle and strength of his condensation.

When the sand in the hourglass was about to run out, Duanmu threw the last three Shuriken.

This time, the three Shuriken almost simultaneously struck three different bullseyes. The stones cracked with a sound, revealing the holes that had pierced through to the other side.

Kakashi glanced at the hourglass, then at the distant stone targets, and said flatly, "Seventeen penetrations, three failures to meet the standard. You've improved compared to earlier, but you're still far from 'meeting the requirements as soon as possible.' Same time tomorrow. Gather here. The target increases to twenty-five."

Sasuke also stopped moving at this point. The moving targets in front of him were already filled with Shuriken, every one of them nailed precisely into the center.

He looked toward Duanmu. There was no mockery in his eyes, only a faint competitive edge that was hard to detect—this guy's progress was faster than he had imagined.

Duanmu shook out his somewhat numb right hand. Sweat dripped onto the dry ground, instantly darkening a small patch.

He knew this was only the first step in training Chidori. The real difficulty still lay ahead.

After returning home, Duanmu continued studying the Rasengan and Flying Thunder God, and he gradually began dabbling in some sealing techniques as well. These were all things he had previously obtained from the Scroll of Sealing.

Duanmu had already mastered quite a lot of Flying Thunder God. Only this sealing technique left him with no clue at all even after reading through it once.

Had he failed to copy everything down when he transcribed it before, or did these sealing techniques themselves contain complex hand-seal logic and chakra-guidance pathways, while his current store of knowledge was still insufficient to fully analyze their mysteries?

He flipped to the section of the scroll concerning the Four-Symbols Seal. His fingertips brushed across those snake-like twisted runes, and he felt as though every stroke was depicting some profound energy cycle. Yet as for exactly how to mobilize chakra to activate these runes, he still could not grasp the key.

Perhaps he lacked the support of basic sealing theory. It was like a child who had not learned the alphabet trying to read a foreign text; even if he recognized a few scattered symbols, he still could not piece together their complete meaning.

He thought of the dust-sealed ancient texts in the Third Hokage's office. Perhaps only by finding systematic sealing technique textbooks could he truly push open this door.

So that night, Duanmu secretly slipped out of the house and, under the cover of moonlight, entered the Hokage Building again.

He knew the way well. Avoiding the patrolling Anbu ninja, he went straight to the secret chamber where the forbidden technique scrolls were stored.

What he did not know was that Hiruzen Sarutobi had known about his infiltration long ago. The smooth progress Duanmu believed he had achieved was merely the result of Hiruzen Sarutobi deliberately allowing it.

The Third Hokage sat before the crystal ball in his office, watching Duanmu's figure carefully search through the ancient texts in the secret chamber. A complicated gleam flashed through his aged eyes.

He saw the shadows of too many people in Duanmu—the desire for knowledge of Tobirama, the research spirit of Orochimaru, and even the persistence Minato had hidden beneath his calmness.

"This child... just how many secrets is he hiding?" Hiruzen Sarutobi murmured to himself, his fingers tapping lightly on the desktop. "The changes during the Chunin Exams, Jiraiya's appearance, and his guidance of Naruto and Sasuke... every step seems to be deliberately pushing something forward."

He could have stopped Duanmu directly, even listed him as a target for close surveillance, but his many years of experience in governance made him choose to observe instead.

Although this young man acted mysteriously, he had never truly endangered Konoha. On the contrary, he had invisibly resolved several potential crises.

"Perhaps only by letting him come into contact with more knowledge can I see his true purpose clearly." Hiruzen Sarutobi closed the crystal ball and picked up the pipe on the desk. Amid the curling smoke, his gaze turned toward the quiet Konoha Village outside the window. "I only hope you don't walk the same path as Orochimaru."

At the same time, Duanmu, who was in the secret chamber, was fully focused on copying an ancient text titled Basic Analysis of Sealing Runes. The writing on the scroll was obscure and difficult to understand, and every symbol had to be interpreted together with the trajectory of chakra flow.

He did not dare stay here too long, so he could only select the most basic theoretical sections and record them quickly.

When he turned to the last page, a yellowed slip of paper tucked inside the book suddenly drifted down.

On it, a childish hand had drawn a crooked fox pattern, and beside it were several blurry small words: "Dad said this can protect me."

Duanmu's heart gave a violent jump. This pattern... was clearly a simplified version of the Nine-Tails! He quickly put the slip away, stormy waves rising in his heart—could this be something Minato had left behind? Why would it appear here?

Countless questions surged into his mind, but he knew now was not the time to investigate them.

After putting the copied ancient text back where it had been, Duanmu silently left the Hokage Building just as he had come, but he did not notice that after he departed, a tiny Flying Thunder God mark on the title page of Basic Analysis of Sealing Runes was slowly fading away.