Sage Body Advancement

The oil lamp flame in the study flickered twice. Yuhi Kurenai's signature was not even dry yet when the changes within Chiba's body began.

The power of Yang Release rose from the base of his spine. It was life energy accumulated over several weeks from the fusion of the Senju Clan's Wood Release and the Snake Sage Body, scorching like underground magma as it surged upward through his meridians.

The spiritual power of Yin Release poured down from the crown of his head, cold as the first meltwater of snow falling into a spring in deep winter, carrying the pure density fed back by Yuhi Kurenai's contract.

The two forces collided at his dantian.

Chiba's body jolted violently. His hand unconsciously tightened around Yuhi Kurenai's fingers as the dark green glow of Wood Release chakra and the indigo glow of Yin Release spiritual power alternated in his palm, faster and faster, before finally merging into an immaculate jade-green radiance.

Yuhi Kurenai's fingers had gone numb from his grip. She raised her head, wanting to say something, but swallowed the words when she saw Chiba's expression.

Chiba's eyes were closed, his eyeballs moving rapidly beneath his lids. The muscles of his face were taut, and a fine layer of sweat beaded across his forehead, the droplets gleaming with a faint jade-green light beneath the oil lamp.

"Chiba, what's wrong?"

"Don't talk. Don't move."

Chiba forced the words through clenched teeth, short and forceful. Yuhi Kurenai immediately shut her mouth and froze in place.

Inside his body, the fusion of Yin and Yang entered its most critical stage.

His sea of consciousness expanded, growing from the size of a small lake into a boundless deep sea. Yang Release's warm radiance floated upon its surface, while Yin Release's profound stillness rested at its depths. The two layers of energy supported and permeated one another in perfect proportion and density.

The system panel flickered wildly in his mind.

[Perfect Sage Body, third stage. Yin-Yang balance. Fusion complete.]

[Current host combat power assessment: officially surpassed the Kage-level threshold.]

[Spiritual perception range: village-wide coverage level. Activating.]

His perception surged outward in every direction like floodwaters breaking through a dam.

Every beam and tile of the Senju ancestral estate, every current of moisture within the Wood Release plants in the courtyard, every rate of photosynthesis in their leaves—all of it poured into Chiba's awareness.

Outside the walls, someone was snoring in an apartment building in the southern district. A baby was crying in the second unit on the east side of the third floor. Four streets away, the owner of a barbecue stall was brushing sauce onto skewers.

Farther away, in the direction of the Konoha Administrative Building, two Chunin on night duty were secretly playing cards in a second-floor corridor. In the Hokage's Office on the third floor, Hiruzen Sarutobi sat behind his desk, his pipe resting at the corner. The old man's breathing was deep and slow, but his heartbeat was too fast—the rhythm of suppressed anger.

He probed deeper.

Ten meters underground. Twenty meters. Thirty meters.

The entrance to the Root Organization's secret passage lay within the mountain behind Hokage Rock. Its corridors spiraled downward, with a hidden sentry every thirty steps. Their breathing rhythms had been specially trained, unlike those of ordinary shinobi.

In the deepest stone chamber was Danzō.

That old bastard's chakra pattern was highly unusual. The chakra flow on the right half of his body was entirely different from that on the left. At the location of his right arm was a cloyingly dense mass of life energy, a concentration and purity Chiba knew well.

First Hokage cells.

Chiba opened his eyes.

A flash of jade-green light passed through his pupils. At that same moment, the oil lamp in the study swayed, its flame rising two inches before falling back down.

"It worked."

Yuhi Kurenai had been staring at his face the whole time. The instant Chiba opened his eyes, she let out a breath of relief, and her tense shoulders finally relaxed.

"Your chakra fluctuations were too intense just now. Even my sea of consciousness was shaken by the resonance several times."

Chiba turned to look at her, the curve of his lips carrying the ease of someone in an exceptionally good mood.

"Kurenai, do you know what you just helped me accomplish?"

"Yin-Yang balance. You told me about it."

"Right, but you don't know what those four words mean to the Senju Clan."

Chiba rose and walked to the study window, pushing it open with one hand.

The night breeze rushed in, carrying the fresh scent of vegetation from the Wood Release plants in the courtyard. He braced a hand against the window frame and looked beyond the walls at Konoha's nighttime scenery, scattered lights shining through the gaps between rooftops.

"The First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, could suppress Madara Uchiha and his Perfect Susanoo with his strength alone because of the Perfect Sage Body born of Yin-Yang balance. Wood Release is the outward manifestation of Yang Release's life force, but what truly allowed Hashirama to stand at the pinnacle of the shinobi world was the perfect one-to-one ratio between his spiritual power and life force."

Yuhi Kurenai rose from her chair and walked over to stand beside him, three centimeters separating her shoulder from Chiba's upper arm.

"Have you reached Hashirama's level now?"

"Not yet, but I'm headed in the right direction."

Chiba turned to face her, leaning back against the window frame. Moonlight streamed in from behind his shoulders, casting a long shadow across the floor.

"Kurenai, come here."

"Hm?"

"Come feel it."

Chiba extended his right hand, palm up.

Yuhi Kurenai looked at that hand, hesitated for a beat, then placed her own in it.

Chiba closed his fingers around her palm. Wood Release chakra seeped from his hand into her meridians, but this sensation was entirely different from when their hands had brushed by the table earlier.

There was a layer of coolness within the warmth, and a warm current wrapped within that coolness. The alternating rhythm of the two temperatures perfectly synchronized with her own heartbeat, each pulse precisely caught and answered by that power.

Yuhi Kurenai's breathing turned unsteady.

Her knees weakened, and her body tipped uncontrollably toward Chiba. Her shoulder pressed against his chest, and her cheek brushed the fabric beneath his collarbone.

"This is chakra resonance after Yin-Yang balance."

Chiba's voice came from above her head, the vibration in his chest passing through his clothes to her cheek.

"The Yin Release chakra in your body is responding to me. Because you signed the contract, your spiritual power will automatically lean toward mine."

Yuhi Kurenai wanted to pull away, but Chiba's left hand had already moved behind her shoulder, his palm pressing against her back. Wood Release chakra seeped from all five fingertips into her meridians, traveling down along her spine and triggering a faint chakra tremor at every acupoint it passed.

"Chiba, what are you doing?"

"Helping you adjust the direction of chakra flow through your meridians. Three branches of your Yin Release chakra are blocked. If they stay clogged for too long, it will affect the speed at which you cast genjutsu."

"You have to adjust them now?"

"What do you think?"

Yuhi Kurenai buried her face in Chiba's collar. The fresh grass scent of the Wood Release plants mingled with the clean warmth unique to a young man, filling her nose.

She closed her eyes.

Not because she had given up resisting, but because she had chosen to trust him.

Chiba lowered his head to look at Yuhi Kurenai leaning against his chest. Several strands of red hair had slipped loose from her wooden hairpin and fallen over his arm. Her breathing gradually slowed from hurried to steady, eventually becoming the deep, relaxed rhythm of someone at ease.

"Chiba."

"Hmm. If Lady Tsunade finds out that you held someone in your arms on the very first day of signing a contract, you're going to die horribly tomorrow."

"Kurenai, you're a Genjutsu Jonin. You can help me come up with a reasonable excuse."

"Handle your own troubles. I'm not participating in your harem management."

The corner of Chiba's lips curled upward.

The moonlight outside was just right. The Wood Release plants in the courtyard of the Senju ancestral estate stretched their branches and leaves in response to the chakra overflow from his Yin-Yang balance, rustling softly.

Chiba's perception pierced through the entirety of Konoha, from the southern district to the northern district, from above ground to below it. From ordinary residents sleeping soundly to the shift-changing rhythm of ANBU patrols, everything lay within his sea of consciousness.

In Danzō's stone chamber, the old bastard was putting a dossier back into an iron cabinet.

Separated by thirty meters of rock and half of Konoha, Chiba could still sense the lingering chakra mark on the dossier's cover.

It concerned the Senju Clan.

"Kurenai, I have some good news."

"What is it?"

"From today onward, no one in this village can make any secret moves beyond the range of my perception."

"Including the Third Hokage?"

"Especially the Third Hokage."

Yuhi Kurenai's eyelashes lightly brushed against the fabric over Chiba's chest, a touch so delicate it was like a butterfly wing brushing a flower petal.

"What can you sense now?"

Chiba's gaze passed through the window, through the courtyard walls, through the night over half of Konoha, and settled in the direction of the third-floor office in the Hokage Building.

"The old monkey didn't go home tonight. He's been sitting behind his desk, smoking seven bowls of tobacco. He's thinking about today's exchange meeting."

"And?"

"There's an ANBU carrier pigeon beside him. It just flew back from the Root Organization, and the note in the bamboo tube tied to its claw is still wet with ink."

Chiba's voice lowered, carrying the calm of a hunter who had discovered his prey's den.

"Danzō sent him a message. I can guess the contents. Nothing more than Senju Chiba being too high-profile at today's exchange meeting and needing to be suppressed or eliminated as soon as possible."

Yuhi Kurenai stepped half a pace out of Chiba's embrace and looked up at his face. The dependence in her red eyes shifted into seriousness.

"How do you plan to deal with it?"

Chiba tucked Yuhi Kurenai's loose hair behind her ear. His fingers brushed over her ear, the warmth of Wood Release lingering for a second behind it.

"No rush. Let the rats scurry around first. I can see exactly where every one of their moves is going now."

Yuhi Kurenai's ears reddened, but she did not dodge.

"Chiba, you're really awful."

"Kurenai, you've only been under contract for one day and you're already personally attacking me?"

"I'm merely stating a fact."