How About Calling It Blue Steel Shadow?

Jiraiya was right. His Flash Step had been getting faster, from half a meter at the start to over ten meters now. Its charging time had shrunk from one or two seconds to under 0.2 seconds. But the speed of his draw after each Flash Step really was a step slower than the Flash Step itself. That half-beat delay did not matter against genin, because they could not react in time. But against chunin or even jonin, that half-beat was a fatal opening.

Bai Ye sheathed his blade.

"Thank you, Lord Jiraiya."

Jiraiya waved a hand.

"I've told you the problem," Jiraiya said. "Figure out how to train yourself."

Bai Ye nodded, turned, and walked back to the edge of the gravel lot. He stopped, rain streaming down his cheeks. He narrowed his eyes and shook the water from his lashes.

His body dipped slightly. Rain exploded behind him as his blade left its sheath at the same instant his body moved. The edge swept through the curtain of rain, carving out a fan-shaped blank space. The severed droplets burst into an even finer mist along both sides of the blade, briefly forming a translucent arc in the air.

Stop.

Bai Ye stood where he was, staring at the unsheathed blade in his hand. That strike had been drawn a little earlier than usual. The Flash Step had propelled him less than five meters, but the slash had been completed at the exact moment his body arrived at the target position.

Still not enough.

His drawing speed had caught up with the speed of Flash Step, but the quality of the slash had dropped. It lacked force, and its angle was less precise. The blade was faster, but the strike did not land solidly.

Bai Ye sheathed his blade and started over.

Again and again.

Minato crouched at the edge of the gravel lot. The rain had soaked him through, but he did not move, resting his chin on his hand as he watched Bai Ye repeat the same set of movements.

Jiraiya stood at the tent entrance with both hands in his pockets, watching the small figure dart back and forth through the rain. The downpour muffled every other sound, leaving only the sharp shrieks of the blade tearing through the air, piercing the rain curtain one after another.

"That kid really works hard," Jiraiya said to Minato.

Minato nodded. "He's always been like this."

"Do you know what kind of person I hate most?" Jiraiya lowered his voice, though the sound of the rain drowned out most of his words.

Minato shook his head.

"This kind." Jiraiya's gaze followed Bai Ye's blurred figure through the rain. "They're talented, yet they work harder than anyone else. People like that exist just to make everyone else feel like trash."

Bai Ye practiced on the gravel until nightfall. The rain never stopped. His clothes were soaked, his hair plastered to his forehead, and his boots were full of muddy water. Yet his drawing speed had increased by about ten percent from when he began, while the precision of his slashes had dropped by nearly thirty percent. It was a trade-off—if he wanted speed, he had to sacrifice accuracy. But accuracy was the foundation of his combat system. If he gave that up, speed meant nothing.

He needed to find a way to increase his speed without sacrificing precision.

Bai Ye sheathed his blade and turned back toward the tent entrance.

Jiraiya was no longer outside. Light shone through the flap. Bai Ye lifted it and stepped inside, finding Jiraiya once again sitting cross-legged on his cot and reading. Minato sat in a folding chair, still holding that kunai, though several new scratches had appeared on it.

"That's enough for today." Jiraiya did not even look up.

Bai Ye nodded without saying anything more, then lifted the flap and walked out.

The rain was still falling as he returned to the tent assigned to him. It was small, with room for only one cot. A puddle of rainwater had collected atop the canvas roof, and every so often, a drop fell and punched a tiny pit into the mud beside the bed.

Bai Ye placed his blade beside his pillow, took off his soaked clothes, dried the rainwater from his body with a cloth, then lay down and stared at the tent roof. Rainwater dripped from above in a chaotic rhythm, like a song with no score.

Bai Ye raised his right hand and looked at his palm. It was callused from gripping a sword, its knuckles thick and broad, unlike the hand of a seven-year-old child.

Holding the blade in a reverse grip, he swung it absentmindedly through the air. Bai Ye felt the rhythm of the blade, but his thoughts began to drift.

That feeling of resistance... is it the air?

Flash Step used Lightning Release chakra erupting beneath his feet to generate propulsion. It was incredibly fast.

But drawing the blade relied on muscle strength. The two movements drew power from entirely different sources, and between two different sources of power, there was naturally a time gap.

What if I use Lightning Release chakra to accelerate the draw?

Bai Ye's eyes lit up. His focus snapped into place as he sat bolt upright. Chakra flowed from his palm into the hilt and into the blade. A layer of pale blue lightning flickered across its edge, exceptionally bright in the dim tent, dyeing the canvas roof a faint blue.

Bai Ye watched the lightning still faintly dancing along the blade.

Unlike before, Bai Ye deliberately controlled the chakra to cover the blade as evenly as possible. Then he tried swinging it.

The blade cut through the air a trace faster than usual, accompanied by a faint tremor.

If Lightning Release chakra covers the blade and remains in a state of high-frequency vibration, then the vibration itself can generate cutting force. It can make the blade sharper while reducing the air resistance against it, increasing its speed.

Bai Ye closed his eyes and tried to imagine that state.

The Lightning Release chakra would not be injected into the blade. Instead, it would form an even layer over the blade's surface, and he would control it to vibrate at high frequency.

He opened his eyes and tried to maintain the chakra in that state.

The first time, the chakra dispersed after only two seconds. The lightning on the blade flickered twice like a lamp with a loose connection, then went out.

The second time, it lasted five seconds. It was more stable this time, but the lightning on the blade was still uneven—bright in some places, dim in others.

The third time, it lasted ten seconds. As the pale blue lightning continuously flowed across the blade, it produced an extremely faint hum, like a bee beating its wings beside his ear.

Bai Ye swung his blade.

A sharper, denser sound came from the weapon, as if the blade itself were giving off a high-frequency shriek. A pale blue afterimage lingered in the blade's path through the air. Its edges were blurred, as though even the air had been sliced apart by the high-frequency vibration. The strike churned the air in the tent into disorder, even deflecting the paths of falling droplets.

Bai Ye looked at the flowing lightning on the blade, and a thought surfaced in his mind—if he could stabilize this state and make it the norm, then every one of his strikes would carry high-frequency vibrations.

By then, the wounds inflicted by his blade would not merely be cuts made by an edge, but wounds torn apart by a high-frequency vibrating blade. The cutting force would not simply double—it would increase by an entire order of magnitude.

But that was for the future.

Right now, he could not even keep the chakra stable for more than ten seconds.

Feeling that he did not have much chakra left, Bai Ye put down the blade and lay back on the bed.

His mind kept turning over those things—the chakra's flow path, the frequency of the vibrations, the blade's cutting angle. Slowly, the world was reduced to nothing but the sound of his own breathing. Then, for no particular reason, a hazy thought drifted into his mind. How about... calling this technique of covering the blade with chakra Blue Steel Shadow?