The Path of the Sage Body

On the way back from the Death Forest, Shinichi let out the most undignified yawn of his life.

He was not sleepy—it was his body forcibly shutting down. From sneaking into the underground cave at three in the morning, to driving back the giant centipede alone, to passing the Slug Sage's mental trial, he had been running nonstop for nearly the entire night. Dawn had only just begun to break, and the morning mist in the forest had yet to disperse, but the birds were already making a racket. He dragged forward two legs that felt filled with lead, his knees threatening to buckle with every step. Naruto Uzumaki, on the other hand, was full of energy, hopping ahead to clear the way with the last red bean bun clenched between his teeth. He waved a branch he had picked up like a ninja blade, occasionally turning back to see whether Shinichi was keeping up.

When they returned to the orphanage, the matron had not gotten up yet. Shinichi climbed in through the kitchen's back window, skipped over the third stair that creaked, returned to his room, and face-planted onto the hard wooden bed. He fell asleep without even taking off his coat.

He slept deeply. There were no dreams, no synthesized system voice suddenly popping up to announce progress bars, and no shadows from Root swaying beyond the window. It was pure, blank, deep sleep, like a server that had been running continuously for months finally being allowed to shut down for maintenance.

When he woke up, it was afternoon. The sunlight had moved from the eastern window to the western one, casting a long slanted strip of golden light across the floor. Shinichi's first reaction upon opening his eyes was—nothing hurt anymore. Every bruise, scrape, and muscle strain left behind by last night's fight with the centipede had vanished without a trace. Even the wound on his shoulder, where the tip of a centipede leg had sliced him open, had healed so completely that he could not feel even a mark. He sat up and rolled his shoulder. His joints gave a crisp crack, not from fatigue, but from the loose ease of being thoroughly lubricated.

Then he saw the green lines on his arm. The pale green vein-like markings that had appeared when the Senju Clan bloodline awakened had originally been only a few faint, unremarkable threads. Now, they had turned emerald green, extending from the inside of his wrist all the way to the crook of his elbow, branching into even finer veins. The markings gave off a faint glow beneath the sunlight. They were no longer the vague sensation of "something glowing inside his blood vessels," but clear and stable, and he could feel them pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

Fusion complete. Slug Sage Chakra fully adapted. Sage Body initially awakened. Current state: Beginner. Abilities unlocked: Seal-less Self-Healing upgraded, healing chakra generation, greatly increased vitality reserve limit, enhanced poison resistance.

Shinichi took a deep breath and focused on his right palm, drawing upon the newly fused Sage Chakra within his dantian. Unlike the warmth of ordinary chakra flowing out from his dantian, this power was cooler, like mint water seeping through his chakra pathways. A pale green chakra glow appeared in his palm, its edges gently rippling. It lacked the sharpness of artificially refined chakra. Instead, it carried the natural scent of moss on tree bark, ferns by a stream, and freshly turned damp earth.

The foundation of medical ninjutsu—healing chakra.

He rolled out of bed, pulled a kunai from beneath his pillow, and lightly cut the tip of his left index finger. The moment a bead of blood emerged, the pale green glow in his right palm covered it. The wound did not close directly like Seal-less Self-Healing. Instead, wrapped in healing chakra, it repaired itself in a gentler, more complete manner—first the capillaries drew together on their own, then the epidermal cells grew from both sides toward the middle, and finally even the horny layer returned to normal. The entire process was as quiet as spring rain nourishing the soil, leaving behind not even a scar. Reaching this speed with ordinary medical ninjutsu was already considered competent, yet he had never studied medical ninjutsu such as the Mystical Palm Technique. This was purely the instinctive talent brought by the Sage Body. This was probably the underlying mechanism that had allowed Hashirama to heal himself while fighting.

He spun the kunai around his fingers and made another discovery. Holding the kunai felt different. It was not an increase in strength—his strength was still roughly normal for a six-year-old boy—but his endurance had clearly taken a leap. Before, his forearm would start shaking after two continuous hours of kunai throwing practice. Now, he had the feeling that he might not get sore even after four hours straight. It was not an increase in offensive power, but a qualitative change in staying power.

This was the Sage Body. It did not let you kill someone with one punch. It let you finish a battle and keep running, then fight another battle after the run, and still be standing after everyone else had collapsed. When Hashirama fought Madara in the Valley of the End for an entire day and night, what he relied on was not the destructive power of Wood Release, but the recovery and endurance of the Sage Body.

Shinichi put the kunai back beneath his pillow, sat cross-legged on the bed, and began to sense the changes in his body more systematically. The range of his chakra perception had expanded from twenty meters to nearly thirty-five. He could even perceive the rhythm of the matron chopping vegetables in the kitchen downstairs through faint vibrations. He could now hear Little Flower's footsteps as she chased butterflies in the yard, count at least three sparrow nests in that old locust tree, and sense the dampness of groundwater slowly seeping along the outside of the well wall. All his senses seemed to have been raised by a notch—not in a glaring way that made him uncomfortable, but as if the world had suddenly gone from standard definition to high definition.

He had no way to test the increased poison resistance for now—he could hardly go to the kitchen and drink a bottle of dish soap. But he remembered that the slugs in the original story were summon beasts renowned for poison resistance and healing. During the Fourth Great Ninja War, Tsunade had saved hundreds upon thousands of ninja through the slugs' remote healing, relying on healing abilities created by converting Sage Chakra transmitted through the slug contract. Now that ability had appeared in him. In the future, it would become an enormous tactical advantage in medical units or team battles. If a teammate suffered severe injuries, he would not need to rummage through a first-aid kit for iodine. He could simply place his palm over the wound to stop the bleeding and speed healing—though he could not reveal that trump card casually, absolutely not while he was still at the Ninja Academy. He already had to hide Wood Release. Add healing chakra to the mix, and Danzo's recruitment letter would probably be upgraded straight into a kidnapping order.

He lay back down, folded his hands beneath his head, and began planning the direction of his training. His chakra control had reached the point where he could steadily maintain three Shadow Clones training at once. In ninja tool throwing, he could further increase the distance for consistently hitting moving targets. As for taijutsu, with the endurance advantage provided by the Sage Body as a foundation, he could take on a greater training load. Wood Release's vine binding had already proven effective in actual combat, so the next step was to work on precise control. But the most important thing was—senjutsu. He had only absorbed the seed of a single drop of Sage Chakra. He was still as far from true Sage Mode as the distance from Konoha to the Sand Village. What the slug fragment had given him was not a finished product, but a seed. A seed needed time to sprout, vast amounts of chakra to water it, and repeated tempering in real combat.

But it did not matter. Spring had just arrived, and he had plenty of time.

The matron's shout came from downstairs. "The sun's already shining on Hokage Rock, and you're still not up!" Then came the steady rhythm of a spatula striking the stair railing, each blow even and measured. Little Flower shouted downstairs, "Shinichi, come eat!" A Zhu shouted too, her voice soft and thin, mostly drowned out by the matron's booming voice.

Shinichi sat up in bed. Lunch today was rice and grilled fish, and the matron was unusually generous, giving him an extra half a fish. She had probably found the bloodstains on his sheets while washing them yesterday and assumed he had been training too hard. He finished the fish, arranging the bones neatly along the edge of his plate, then took the initiative to help the matron wash the dishes. His afternoon training schedule had already been set—first, he would take Naruto Uzumaki to the riverbank to reinforce water-walking and Shadow Clone practice, then spend an hour working on the nature transformation of his Sage Chakra.

There were still two days until formal lessons began at the Ninja Academy. He would not waste that time.