Chakra Nature

Rain had fallen all day.

The Third Training Ground was a muddy mess. The soil still carried the dampness of spring rain beneath their feet, and their boots made squelching sounds whenever they sank into it.

Bai Ye disliked that sound. Walking with it sounded like he was stepping on loaches, and stepping on loaches itself carried a strangely inexplicable sort of stupidity.

"You look hilarious when you walk." Minato popped up behind him.

Bai Ye ignored him.

"Seriously, you're limping along like a cat with mud stuck to its paws. You know, the kind that clearly hates mud but still has to keep moving forward, every step carrying this air of 'I cannot coexist under the same sky as this patch of earth'..."

"If you say another word, I'll make sure you get mud on you too."

Minato immediately shut up, but the smile on his face did not lessen in the slightest. Bai Ye had noticed that this person's silence was never true silence. He merely transferred his voice from his mouth to his eyes and the corners of his lips. His silence was louder than other people's shouting.

Hatake Sakumo had only returned to the village yesterday.

This outing had lasted nearly a month, longer than any of his previous ones. Bai Ye had noticed that on the night Sakumo returned, he had changed two rolls of bandages. There was a scar on his exposed wrist that had yet to fully heal, dark red with faintly pale edges, like a mark left by a grazing wind-style ninjutsu. He did not ask, and Sakumo did not say.

Hatake Sakumo stood in the center of the training ground, the morning light falling over his silver-white hair like cold light reflected from a blade.

"We won't be practicing with blades today."

"Today, we'll test your chakra natures."

Fugaku's expression did not change much. He was a genius the Uchiha clan had focused on cultivating, and they had long since tested his chakra natures—fire and lightning, two natures. To him, testing them again was like watching the same movie a second time. He already knew the ending, so there was nothing to look forward to.

Minato's eyes, meanwhile, lit up. "How do we test them?"

Bai Ye said nothing, but there was an added focus in the way he looked at Hatake Sakumo.

Hatake Sakumo took three slips of paper from his pocket.

Each was about two fingers wide, made from what appeared to be specially treated paper. A faint fluorescent layer covered the surface, shimmering with a weak iridescence beneath the morning light. The edges curled slightly, as though they had been handled over and over by countless hands.

"Chakra test paper," Hatake Sakumo said. "Infuse it with chakra, and it will change according to your nature. Fire makes it burn, wind cuts it apart, lightning makes it wrinkle, earth makes it crumble, and water makes it wet. The principle is simple."

He handed them the test papers.

"Give it a try."

Minato took his paper, excited as though he had received a new toy. He pinched it between his fingers and turned it over several times before finally starting to circulate his chakra.

The paper changed.

A long, thin cut suddenly split across its surface, the edges neat, as though sliced by an extremely thin blade. Then the paper burst into flames, burning with a bright golden-yellow glow. The tongues of fire licked at its edges and consumed more than half the slip. Then, after the flames went out, the paper abruptly crumpled, its edges curling as tiny wrinkles filled its surface, as though countless miniature bolts of lightning had struck the same spot at once.

Wind, fire, lightning.

Three natures.

Minato lowered his head to look at the marks remaining on the test paper, blinked, then raised his head with a trace of confusion on his face.

"Three? Is that a lot or a little?"

Hatake Sakumo fell silent for a second.

"...A lot."

A subtle change finally appeared in Fugaku's expression. The way he looked at Minato now carried the confusion of this guy who never stops asking questions actually has this kind of talent?

It was Bai Ye's turn.

He took the last test paper and held it in his hand. It was thin—far thinner than he had expected—like a fallen leaf that could be carried away by the wind at any moment.

The test paper crumpled.

It crumpled severely. The entire sheet looked as though it had been struck by lightning, its surface covered in lightning-shaped patterns. Its edges curled inward toward the center with faint crackling sounds. The reaction was far stronger than the lightning-nature reaction on Minato's paper, and the patterns were denser, as though someone had drawn a miniature thunderstorm map on that tiny piece of paper.

Then there was nothing else.

No burning, no cuts, no crumbling, no dampness.

Only lightning.

Bai Ye lowered his head and stared at the test paper crumpled in his hand without speaking. Minato leaned over to take a look, then looked at his own triple victim that had been cut, burned, and wrinkled. Suddenly, an enlightened expression appeared on his face.

"So in the future, you can focus on lightning style and don't have to learn everything like me?"

"That's called talent, not 'having to learn everything,'" Fugaku could not help saying.

"But with three natures, isn't it exhausting to learn them all?"

"You can choose one as your main focus."

"Then wouldn't the other two be wasted?"

Fugaku took a deep breath and decided not to discuss this topic with Minato any further. He had discovered one thing about talking to Minato: this person always said the most impossible-to-answer things in the most sincere tone, and he himself did not think there was anything wrong with them. Reasoning with Minato was like reasoning with a waterfall. The water would only rush past with a roar, completely ignoring whatever you said.

Hatake Sakumo took the test paper from Bai Ye's hand, his gaze lingering on it for several seconds before he turned it over to examine the back.

"What's on the back?" Bai Ye asked.

"The crumpling patterns." Sakumo held the test paper up to the sunlight and narrowed his eyes. "The way lightning-nature test paper wrinkles can reveal the purity of the chakra. The denser and more even the patterns, the higher the purity."

He turned the paper back over and handed it to Bai Ye.

Bai Ye took it and held it up to the sunlight. The crumpling patterns resembled a miniature tree, extending outward from the center. Every branch was clear and even, without breaks or disorder. Sunlight passed through the paper, casting those patterns in pale gold.

"The purity is very high," Sakumo said.

Only four words.

But Bai Ye heard much more in those four words. He had known Hatake Sakumo for over half a year, and this man had a pattern when he spoke: he never praised people directly. Instead, he used declarative sentences. The shorter the sentence, the weightier the meaning. If he said, "The purity is very high," that was equivalent to someone else saying, "I've never seen lightning-nature chakra this pure in my life."

"Chakra nature is only a tool," Sakumo said. "It is not the entirety of strength. Someone strong in fire style may not necessarily defeat someone strong in lightning style, and someone strong in lightning style may not necessarily defeat someone strong in wind style. Nature countering does exist, but combat is not a matter of comparing sizes."

He paused, as though weighing his words.

"You'll understand someday."

The statement was a little abrupt. Minato tilted his head, clearly having already generated three follow-up questions in his mind, but Hatake Sakumo did not give him the chance to speak.

"But since we tested your natures today, I'll teach you something else while we're at it."