Bloodline Resonance

Shinichi woke up at four thirty in the morning.

He hadn't been woken by the matron's booming voice, Little Fatty's teeth grinding, or some nightmare. He had woken from the heat.

He lay on the hard wooden bed as though he had just been hauled out of water. His pajamas were soaked through, his pillow was drenched, and even his blanket was so saturated with sweat that water could have been wrung from it. Strangely, though, he wasn't cold this time. His bones didn't ache, and he didn't feel as though he had been run over by a cartwheel. He was simply hot—hot as though he had slept in a sauna all night. It was less than fifteen degrees outside, yet he felt like he was lying atop a stove.

Shinichi threw off the blanket and sat up. Moonlight leaked through a hole in the window and fell across his arm. He glanced down, then froze for several seconds. Several green spots had emerged from his arm. They were sprouts. Tiny ones, smaller than grains of rice, pale green shoots poking through the surface of his skin. They trembled faintly in the moonlight, like bean sprouts that had just broken through the soil.

He stared at those sprouts for a few seconds.

"I'm done for," he said expressionlessly. "I'm turning into a vegetable."

Then he checked inside his pants. No sprouts. Thank goodness.

Though that discovery reassured him somewhat, the tiny green shoots on his arm still swayed in the breeze, making for a thoroughly surreal sight. He reached out and touched the tip of one sprout. The instant his fingertip made contact, it shrank back like a mimosa. His skin returned to normal, not even a pore visible, as if everything just now had been an illusion.

"Fusion progress: approximately forty percent. Wood Release chakra is establishing compatible pathways with the host's physique. Recommendation: remain calm and await completion of the fusion."

Shinichi read the system prompt twice, then lay back down. The pillow was still wet, but he couldn't be bothered to care. Everyone got wet somehow—either with drool or sweat.

He finally understood the difference between fusing with Hashirama Cells and devouring an ordinary ninja. When he devoured Feng Jian last time, the system had beaten him from head to toe because the wind attribute did not match the Senju Clan bloodline. This time, after devouring Hashirama Cells, not only did the system not beat him up, it was planting flowers on him.

That was the difference between a bloodline match and a mismatch.

It was like an organ transplant patient. If the blood types didn't match, the immune system would treat the new organ as an enemy and attack it viciously. If they matched, the new organ could settle in comfortably. The Senju Clan bloodline in his body was originally a descendant branch of Hashirama's bloodline. Now that Hashirama's own cells had been injected into him, his immune system not only failed to sound the alarm—it threw a welcome party. Those tiny sprouts popping out of his arm were probably the welcome balloons.

Shinichi closed his eyes and tried to sense the changes within his body. Chakra flowed through his meridians at nearly twice the speed it had two days ago. The meridians themselves had widened as well. If they had once been country paths, they had now at least been upgraded to two-lane roads. The chakra reserves in his dantian had nearly tripled—the system's estimate had been three hundred percent. He had thought it was merely an approximation, but it had turned out to be an exact figure.

Could a six-year-old body withstand it? Normally, the meridians of a six-year-old child could not hold so much chakra. But he had the Senju Clan bloodline as a foundation. The core ability of the Senju Clan bloodline was not Wood Release. It was vitality, physical strength, and the talent to cram an enormous amount of chakra into a body without making it explode. Hashirama had been able to take on the Nine-Tails and Susanoo alone not because Wood Release was so powerful, but because his body itself had been the strongest vessel in the ninja world.

Now, the genes of that vessel had been passed down to him. Though they were still in the early stages of awakening, holding this much chakra was more than easy enough.

Shinichi rolled over and pressed his face against the cool, peeling wall to cool down. The wall was cold and felt nice against his skin. He lay like that for a while before a question suddenly occurred to him: how was he supposed to explain awakening Wood Release?

The awakening of the Senju Clan bloodline itself would not be difficult to explain—the Leaf Village already acknowledged the existence of the Senju Clan bloodline, and the orphanage records stated it clearly. The problem was the timing. A six-year-old orphan suddenly awakening Wood Release without anyone guiding him would not be called genius. It would be called suspicious. Anyone would wonder whether some secret lay behind it.

Tsunade was currently away from the village, Jiraiya was wandering the world, and Orochimaru had already defected. The direct descendants of the Senju Clan were either dead or absent. There was no ready authority figure who could vouch for him. If someone asked, he couldn't exactly say, "Oh, I got this by using the system to absorb the First Hokage's cells"—he would be sent to the interrogation department before he even finished the sentence.

He had to hold back for now. Wood Release could not be exposed yet. At least not until he found a suitable excuse.

He picked up the dry spare pajamas at the foot of the bed and changed into them, then rolled up the drenched bedding and piled it in the corner. The matron would take it to be washed tomorrow, most likely cursing while she scrubbed and wondering why this child kept pouring water all over his bed.

As dawn began to break, he heard the matron lighting the stove in the kitchen. Pots and bowls clanged noisily, followed by the matron's unmistakably booming voice—

"Breakfast! Get your asses down here!"

Shinichi climbed out of bed and, as usual, slowly walked downstairs to join the children lining up for porridge. He looked exactly as he normally did—wearing that faded gray short-sleeved shirt, yawning with his eyes half-open.

But when he reached out for a bowl, the matron stared at his arm for a full three seconds.

"Why are there green marks on your arm?"

Shinichi lowered his head and saw that several faint green lines had indeed appeared along the inside of his arm, as if green liquid were flowing through his capillaries. They weren't obvious, but anyone looking closely could see them.

"Paint," he replied without changing expression. "I helped Little Flower draw leaves yesterday, and it got on me. It wouldn't wash off."

The matron gave him a skeptical look and shoved a bowl into his hand. "Don't get it on yourself next time. It looks like you've been poisoned."

"Yes, Matron."

Shinichi carried his porridge over and sat down, silently making a note to himself: he would need to wear long sleeves whenever he went out from now on. Thankfully, the children at the orphanage were not that sensitive to changes in other people's appearance. If this had been the Hyuga Clan or the Uchiha Clan, he would probably have been dragged before the elders for questioning already.

During the morning free period, instead of staying in the backyard to practice shuriken, he went alone to the riverbank.

He needed to test it.

There was a small river south of the Leaf Village. It was shallow and clear enough to see the bottom. The bank was covered in pebbles, with a patch of mixed woodland farther up. Few people came here normally. The village children all went swimming at a farther pond, finding this place too shallow and boring. To Shinichi, it was the perfect secret training ground: open and unobstructed, where he could spot anyone approaching at a glance.

He crouched on the pebble shore and found a dried-out low stump to use as a test subject. He focused and mobilized the new Wood Release chakra within him. Unlike ordinary chakra, Wood Release chakra flowed more thickly and gently, like syrup slowly pushing through his meridians.

He gathered that chakra in his right palm and pressed it against the bark of the dead stump.

Nothing happened.

Five seconds passed. Still nothing happened.

The dead stump remained a dead stump. It did not even grow a mushroom.

Shinichi withdrew his hand and frowned at his palm. This shouldn't have been happening. The amount of chakra in his body had nearly tripled. The fluctuations of Wood Release chakra definitely existed, and the sprouts that had emerged from his arm proved that the wood attribute had begun to overflow. Why was there no reaction when he actively tried to use it?

He changed position and sat cross-legged, seriously recalling the scenes from the anime where Yamato used Wood Release. Yamato never needed many hand seals when activating Wood Release. He usually just brought his hands together, shouted "Wood Release: Some-Such Jutsu," and trees would emerge from the ground or his palms. Hashirama was even more outrageous—he could bring his hands together and summon an entire forest.

Then he would try pressing his palms together.

He closed his eyes and pressed his palms together tightly. Chakra began gathering between them, and the wood-attribute chakra danced between his fingers as if ignited. He focused his intent on the dead stump before him and imagined new life being forced to grow from within it. Scenes of Hashirama's Wood Release replayed repeatedly in his mind—not as deliberate meditation, but as images to guide the chakra's flow.

His palms grew hotter and hotter.

He opened his eyes. A green bud had emerged from the top of the dead stump. It was tiny, about the same size as the one that had appeared on his arm yesterday. Pale yellow with a hint of emerald, it stood unsteadily on the stump's cracked surface. Then its stem stretched slightly, and its leaves slowly unfolded, gleaming golden beneath the setting sun.

Just one leaf.

And it only lasted three seconds before withering and shrinking back into a dry bud husk.

Shinichi remained with his palms pressed together, staring motionlessly at the shriveled bud that had retreated. After a moment of silence, he relaxed his hands and wiped the sweat from his palms on his knees. Fine. It barely counted as a sprouting technique.

He leaned against a rock by the river and looked at the dead stump. After repeated tests, he had updated his understanding of Wood Release with several key points—Wood Release's essence was using water and earth to create trees, but Hashirama's Wood Release had one additional crucial component: yang nature, or vitality. What his Senju Clan bloodline had inherited was precisely that yang nature. Wood Release could stimulate plant growth because it could grant plants life, not because it simply turned water and earth into wood.

The fact that he could now make a bud sprout with Wood Release meant his yang nature had begun to take effect. It was like an engine that had just started. It was turning, but even if he floored the accelerator, all he could hear was the engine roaring while the car remained motionless.

He still needed training. A great deal of training. And more bloodlines of the same origin.

He kicked the test stump into the river to destroy the evidence, patted the dirt from his hands, and headed back. His face showed little expression, but his steps were much lighter than they had been on the way there. The experiment had failed ninety percent of the time, but that remaining ten percent of success had given him confidence.

That evening, when he returned to the orphanage and prepared to sleep, he had just closed his eyes when the system suddenly produced a new prompt.

"Wood Release and Senju Clan bloodline fusion progress has reached eighty percent. New ability unlocked: Seal-less Self-Healing. Current level: Beginner. Effect: minor shallow injuries over a small area can heal on their own within several seconds."

Shinichi opened his eyes.

Self-healing.

He raised his right hand beneath the moonlight and examined his palm, an image surfacing in his mind—Hashirama standing on a battlefield with half his body cleaved open by Susanoo, only to heal within seconds. That had been the ultimate form after the Sage Body had fully awakened. He was still ten thousand steps away from that, but at least he had taken the first step.

He pulled a kunai from beneath his pillow, hesitated for a moment, then lightly cut a shallow gash into the tip of his index finger. A bead of blood seeped out, glinting dark red in the moonlight. A few seconds later, the bleeding stopped. About ten seconds after that, the skin began to heal. Fresh skin spread from the edges of the wound toward the middle, slowly but visibly.

Shinichi watched the wound shrink bit by bit until it disappeared completely, leaving not even a scar.

He tucked the kunai back beneath his pillow and lay down again. The blanket still carried a faint scent of fresh grass—the smell left behind by the sprouts that had emerged from his arm during the day. It wasn't unpleasant. It was a little like a lawn freshly trimmed in spring.

In the darkness, the corners of his mouth curled upward.

First step toward the Sage Body. Seal-less Self-Healing, acquired.