Barrier Complete, Training

The Shadow Clone Technique wore casual clothes and slippers, his hair still a little damp and a lazy expression on his face. He looked exactly like an ordinary genin who had just finished the housework, taken out the trash, and was about to head back to sleep.

He slowly walked down the stairs, passed the trash bin below the apartment building, and tossed the garbage inside.

Throughout the entire process, the ANBU's gaze remained firmly fixed on the Shadow Clone Technique.

After taking out the trash, the Shadow Clone Technique stretched, yawned, then slowly made his way upstairs, returned to the room, turned off the lights, and slipped under the covers. Within two minutes, he was breathing evenly.

If an ANBU member leaned close to the window and listened, they would hear the faintly nasal breathing rhythm unique to a sleeping teenage boy.

Naruto's Shadow Clone Technique had precisely simulated this with Absolute Control. The interval between every breath and the rise and fall of his chest were identical to the original's.

Meanwhile, the moment the trash bag landed at the bottom of the bin, Naruto's original body silently transformed back.

He lay on his side amid a pile of waste paper and expired milk cartons, holding his breath and suppressing his chakra fluctuations to nearly zero.

After waiting around thirty seconds and confirming there was no unusual movement, Naruto silently climbed out of the trash bin. Keeping to the shadows beneath the apartment building, he followed the drainage channel and left the area like a shadow melting into the night.

He had ultimately chosen the great waterfall at the end of the river.

Although no one went near the trap training ground, the words "No Entry" were too conspicuous. That made it all the more likely to attract curious brats or reckless genin looking to sneak in and explore.

Besides, there were an outrageous number of traps in that area. Clearing them all would take time.

The Chūnin Exams were close at hand, and he did not have that kind of time.

The waterfall area, on the other hand, met all his requirements.

First, it was far enough from the center of the village, with no homes or farmland nearby.

Second, the waterfall was deafening. Even standing beside the pool, people would have to shout to talk. This natural white noise could perfectly conceal any sounds produced during training.

Third, the waterfall was surrounded by a dense primeval conifer forest. The canopy was thick enough that the ground was nearly impossible to see from above, making conventional aerial reconnaissance unlikely to spot anyone hiding beneath the waterfall.

That was why Naruto had chosen this place.

Crossing Konoha's streets under the cover of night, Naruto avoided the main roads with streetlights as much as possible and followed the riverside path upstream.

The night wind blew in from the river, carrying the fishy scent of aquatic grass and the dampness of evening dew.

The closer he drew to the waterfall, the louder the rushing water became, gradually changing from a soft murmur into a deep roar.

When he finally reached the river's end and looked down from the cliff, moonlight shone upon the mist thrown up by the waterfall, forming a faint milky-white archway in the dark canyon.

Naruto took a deep breath and leaped.

His toes lightly touched a protruding rock midway down the cliff. Borrowing its force, he changed direction and drifted down to the pool beneath the waterfall like a leaf carried by the wind.

The spray struck his face with bone-piercing cold, while the roar of the water made his eardrums buzz.

Naruto looked around.

The pool was encircled by a round clearing carved out by the waterfall's endless erosion. The ground was smooth stone and fine pebbles, while dense conifer forest lay beyond the clearing.

Moonlight poured down from the top of the waterfall, shattering across the pool into countless dancing slivers of silver.

This place was practically the perfect training ground.

Near the right side of the pool, beneath a recessed rock wall, Naruto found a naturally formed semi-open cave. It was not large, but it had just enough room for one person to sit cross-legged with some space left over. The entrance was shrouded in mist from the waterfall, making it impossible to see what was inside from outside.

He stopped at the cave entrance and formed hand seals.

"Shadow Clone Technique."

Poof! Poof! Poof! Poof!

Four Shadow Clone Techniques appeared before him.

The four Naruto clones exchanged a glance. Without any unnecessary conversation, they shot off in four directions, stopping roughly fifty meters from the cave to the east, south, west, and north.

Then they began forming hand seals at the same time.

The seals for the Perception Isolation Barrier were not particularly complicated. They were far simpler than major sealing techniques like the Four Symbols Seal, which required more than a dozen hand signs. The subtle part was the need for the chakra frequencies of several casters to synchronize with absolute precision.

For clones, precise synchronization was no challenge at all.

As the final four hand seals froze in place at the same instant, the air trembled slightly.

Four translucent chakra barriers rose simultaneously from where the four Shadow Clone Techniques stood and extended toward the center. They joined overhead, ultimately forming a hemispherical barrier roughly fifty meters in diameter.

The barrier was extremely thin, nearly invisible in the moonlight. Only from certain angles could one see its outline, like air distorted by heat haze.

Standing at the cave entrance in the center of the barrier, Naruto reached out and touched its wall with a finger.

A slight resistance met his fingertip, like a highly elastic rubber membrane.

He nodded.

This barrier could isolate all chakra fluctuations and sensory detection from within. The outside world would be unable to perceive any movement inside.

However, its physical defenses were weak. Forget ninjutsu—even a genin could break it with a hard shove.

This was not a barrier for combat. It was designed specifically to conceal one's presence.

And that was exactly what he needed most right now.

With no time to waste, Naruto immediately began the core task of his planned training: the Flying Raijin Technique.

He stepped onto a relatively flat rock beside the pool and pressed his hands together.

"Shadow Clone Technique!"

This time, the smoke was several times greater in both scale and density than before.

Once the smoke dispersed, more than thirty Narutos stood neatly in the clearing by the pool. Their blond hair was soaked by the waterfall mist, but every pair of eyes shone as brightly as lit lamps.

"Everyone, time is short."

Naruto's original body looked at the more than thirty identical faces before him. "Let's begin!"

"Yeah!" ×30

The thirty Shadow Clone Techniques answered in unison, then quickly spread out and each found a spot in the clearing to sit cross-legged.

The instant they closed their eyes, the technique formula diagram for the Flying Raijin Technique, the spatial coordinate calculation formulas, the essentials of spatial perception, and every insight Minato Namikaze had explained were all brought forth in their minds at once. They began dissecting and analyzing every word and sentence.

More than thirty people trained in the same technique at once, yet each Shadow Clone Technique approached it from a different angle. Some began with the structure of the formula, some worked backward from the pathways of chakra flow, some frantically simulated the mapping relationships between spatial coordinates in their minds, while others repeatedly pondered Minato Namikaze's exceedingly abstract explanation of spatial perception.