Inoichi's Test

It was the weekend, at the Yamanaka Clan compound.

Senju Shinichi stood at the entrance to the Yamanaka residence and straightened his collar. Today, he wore the dark blue student uniform specially approved by the Third Hokage, with the Senju diamond crest printed on its back—not the faded gray short-sleeved shirt from the orphanage. Dressing formally when visiting a classmate's home was basic courtesy—especially when that classmate's father was a core member of the Konoha Intelligence Division and had silently appeared behind him in the cemetery with his mental power the night before.

The Yamanaka residence was more than twice the size of the orphanage, with white walls, gray tiles, and a row of neatly trimmed osmanthus trees by the gate. Hanging beneath the porch was the Yamanaka Clan crest banner—a blooming chrysanthemum. Shinichi rang the bell, and Ino answered the door.

"You're here!" Ino was wearing a light purple house dress today, her golden ponytail tied higher than usual. Her eyes lit up when she saw Shinichi, but she immediately suppressed that sparkle and put on an expression that said, "You're thirty seconds late, but I'm generous enough not to hold it against you." She stepped aside to let him in. "Come on in. My mom made some snacks. My dad's in the study. He said he wants to meet you."

Her tone on that last sentence was casual, but Shinichi's ears had already perked up. Inoichi Yamanaka wanted to see him. Ino probably thought it was just, "My dad says that to every classmate who comes over," but Shinichi knew another version—the man who had appeared in the cemetery holding chrysanthemums and used the metaphor of "threads and blades" to expose the core principle of the Yamanaka secret technique would not simply be making small talk.

The inside of the Yamanaka residence was warmer than he had expected. A vase filled with fresh flowers stood beside the entryway, the coffee table in the living room was covered with a beige cloth woven by Ino's mother, and the air carried the scent of red bean paste and matcha. Ino's mother was a blonde woman with a gentle smile. She peeked out from the kitchen holding a tray of snacks, glanced at Shinichi, and smiled. "Oh my, so you're the child Ino said has chakra that smells like mint honey?" Then she pressed a freshly baked red bean cake into his hand. Shinichi thanked her and followed Ino down the hallway to the study door.

The study door was half-open. Ino knocked and called, "Dad, Shinichi's here," then pushed the door open and went in first. Shinichi followed behind her and swept his gaze across the room—bookshelves lined all three walls, packed tightly with scrolls, notebooks, and bound intelligence files. A wide wooden desk stood in the center, with a half-finished structural diagram of a mental perception network spread across it. Beside it sat a steaming cup of green tea. Inoichi Yamanaka sat behind the desk. Today, he wore formal shinobi attire, his hair neatly tied behind his head. He looked more serious than the man in casual clothes visiting the cemetery last night. But the smile at the corner of his mouth had not changed.

"Welcome." Inoichi set down his brush and gestured for him to sit. "Ino, go help your mother arrange the snacks. I'd like to have a few words with Shinichi."

Ino looked from her father to Shinichi, a flicker of curiosity crossing her face—What are you talking about that I can't hear?—but she obediently answered and left the study. As she went, she pulled the door shut behind her. Once it closed, the atmosphere in the study subtly changed. It did not become tense—Inoichi's posture remained relaxed, leaning back in his chair with his fingers interlaced on the desk, his expression mild. But Shinichi could sense an extremely faint mental fluctuation spreading through the room. It was neither an attack nor suppression. It was more like a transparent spiderweb descending from above and covering the entire study. No emotional ripple, inclination of thought, or even the slightest subconscious fluctuation could escape its detection. A sensory barrier.

Shinichi maintained a relaxed posture, his hands resting on his knees and his breathing even. The vitality of the Senju Clan bloodline within him automatically withdrew, and his chakra flow slowed by more than half. This was not a deliberate defense—it was the Sage Body's instinctive response to sensing a mental scan.

Inoichi spoke, his tone still casual, as if they were chatting about household matters. "Ino said your chakra is unusual. She could sense several distinct attributes in it. The new sensing method she developed is still in the experimental stage. It translates chakra traits into scents and tastes. She said your scent was 'mint tea with honey'—mint is Wind Release, tea is Earth Release, and honey is some sort of Yang-nature vitality she can't identify. To be honest, that description interested me."

He paused, folding his hands on the desk and leaning forward slightly.

"But when I met you today, I discovered that there are more than those three within you." Inoichi's gaze did not sharpen, but Shinichi could feel the spiderweb-like sensory barrier tightening. It was not pressure, but focus. Its range had narrowed from covering the entire room to a radius of several meters centered on him. "There's also a faint Fire Release lingering on the walls of your chakra pathways, as though it fused only recently. And there is another kind of chakra texture entirely different from ordinary attributes—more like fluctuations on the level of the soul. It resembles the Yamanaka Clan's mental secret techniques, but it is not our clan's style."

Shinichi's vigilance silently tightened in his heart, then silently relaxed. Inoichi's mental perception was stronger than he had estimated—even the residual Fire Release he thought he had completely absorbed, as well as the faint mental fluctuations attached to the nascent Explosion Release he had gained from devouring Crow Face, could be read by him. That level of sensory precision could not be summed up by the title of intelligence division ace. It was the bloodline sensory talent accumulated by the Yamanaka Clan over generations.

He had not planned to lie. Before a sensory shinobi of this level, any lie would leave a flaw in the web. But he did not need to reveal the entire truth either.

"I ran into a small problem during training recently," Shinichi said steadily. "I have too many chakra attributes, and I failed to control the rhythm when fusing them. My chakra pathways overloaded. The Fire Release awakened on its own during that period—after the Senju bloodline activated, attributes sometimes develop spontaneously. As for the mental fluctuations..."

He paused, seeming to organize his words, then looked directly into Inoichi's eyes.

"I previously found records of a slug contract and located the place it had been left outside the village. I underwent a mental trial there. That area also contained relics of the First Hokage's Sage Body, and I obtained the Senju Clan's inherited cultivation notes from those ruins. The notes recorded the seven stages of the Sage Body, from awakening to maturity. Some of the content involves the fusion of mental perception and vitality. I've been practicing according to it recently." Having said that much, he leaned back slightly, his tone softening. "Put simply, I used my Senju bloodline as a filter to absorb the inheritance I found in the ruins. During that process, my mental power changed along with it."

Inoichi fell silent. It was not the silence of an interrogation, but the silence of an experienced sensory shinobi carefully distinguishing truth from falsehood. After a long while, he lifted the teacup from the desk, took a sip, and set it down.

"Senju Clan notes. Lord Hashirama's belongings?"

"With Lord Tobirama's annotations as well."

Inoichi's fingers lightly rubbed the rim of his teacup. The words "Lord Tobirama's annotations" were clearly beyond his expectations. Tobirama Senju—the Second Hokage, master of forbidden techniques, developer of soul-related forbidden techniques—if an inheritance involving mental fluctuations had been personally annotated by Tobirama, then it was no ordinary mental fluctuation. It was the prototype of a soul-based technique with a complete theoretical foundation.

"That explains it." Inoichi placed the teacup back on the desk, and the sensory barrier silently dissipated. The air in the study returned to normal—the shadows of the osmanthus trees outside slanted across the bookshelves, while faint bickering between Ino and her mother drifted in from the kitchen next door. It sounded as though Ino had tried to sneak a snack and gotten her hand smacked with a spatula.

"I didn't call you here to interrogate you." Inoichi stood and walked to the window, his back to Shinichi. "That girl Ino mentions you at home more often than all her other classmates combined. As her father, I wanted to see for myself what kind of person you are."

Shinichi said nothing.

"To be honest, you have more secrets than I expected. But when you explained yourself just now, your eyes didn't evade mine, and your chakra frequency did not fluctuate as it would when someone is lying. That means that at least what you said was true. As for whether you held anything back selectively, that is your own business." Inoichi turned around, that smile appearing again at the corner of his mouth. "Real secrets are meant to be kept by their owner."

Shinichi lowered his head slightly. "Thank you, Mr. Inoichi."

Inoichi waved a hand, returned to the desk, and sat down. He picked up his brush again and added a few strokes to the diagram of the mental perception network. Once he finished, he seemed to want to say something else. After hesitating for a moment, he finally set the brush down.

"When you have time another day, I can properly explain the basic principles of mental defense to you. Lord Hashirama's Sage Body leans toward vitality. Although Lord Tobirama developed soul-related forbidden techniques involving mental power, notes are still only a written inheritance. They cannot teach you, as practical training can, how to use layers of chakra to cushion the backlash when mental power rebounds." His voice was gentle and steady, as if he were simply discussing a class schedule rather than offering private instruction.

Shinichi raised his head and met Inoichi's gaze. The meaning was clear. Inoichi had seen that his chakra flow automatically slowed under the sensory barrier's scan, but it was only a passive instinct without an active defensive structure. In other words, he could block prying eyes, but not an impact. And the defense system the Yamanaka Clan had honed over centuries was precisely what could make up for that weakness.

"I really need this opportunity," Shinichi said.

Inoichi smiled and was about to continue when the study door was slammed open with a bang. Ino entered angrily, holding a tray of snacks. "Why are you two still talking? The snacks are getting cold!" The red bean cakes on the tray gave off their last wisps of warmth. Though she spoke in a complaining tone, the first thing she did upon entering was check whether Shinichi was still sitting there unharmed. Once she confirmed that he was fine, she set the tray on the desk, clasped her hands behind her back, deliberately widened her eyes, and put on the expression she often used in class. "And what were you talking about just now? I think I heard 'mental fluctuations' outside the door—were you talking about my sensing method?"

"We were talking about how you mistook the chakra of the neighbor's Shiba Inu for fluctuations of appetite last time, then got chased three streets by it." Inoichi picked up a red bean cake without changing expression.

"That was an accident! That dog really did want to eat something that day!"

Shinichi also picked up a red bean cake and took a bite. The red bean filling was sweet, and the glutinous rice skin was soft and chewy. It was the kind of home-cooked flavor he could never have tasted in his previous life, even after working overtime at the company until dawn. Outside the window, the shadows of the osmanthus trees slowly shifted beneath the afternoon sunlight, while the scent of freshly brewed matcha drifted through the living room. This visit had appeared to be weekend leisure, but in truth, it had been a silent negotiation between him and a core member of the Konoha Intelligence Division. He had passed. With the reasonable degree of reserve expected from a six-year-old child, he had gained Inoichi Yamanaka's basic trust, as well as a valuable promise—mental defense training.

When he was leaving, Inoichi walked him to the front gate.

"Oh, right." Inoichi leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed. "Tell the Third Hokage for me—forget it, that old man probably already knows. Tell that deskmate of yours that next time he goes to the Death Forest, he should bring rations instead of eating my family's offerings."

"...He didn't eat the offerings. He picked persimmons from that wild persimmon tree outside the cemetery," Shinichi said.

Inoichi froze for a moment, then laughed. It was a quiet laugh, but a genuine one. Beside him, Ino covered her face with a cushion and muttered, "Wild persimmons are bitter," though her ears had quietly turned red.