Clone Training Successful

The enormous chakra reserves granted by Golden Body Mode and the precise control brought by Absolute Control combined perfectly in this large-scale training project.

When the eastern sky began to show the first hint of dawn, Naruto stopped.

He stood at the cave entrance and looked over the results of his night's work.

A domed rock cavern roughly five hundred meters in diameter lay fully formed before him.

The ceiling was high enough that he could not touch it even if he jumped. The floor had been repeatedly leveled by giant chakra hands. It was not mirror-smooth, but it was flat and solid enough.

Several protruding rocks had been deliberately left along the walls, to be used later for hanging ninja tools or engraving sealing formulas.

Next came the Perception Isolation Barrier.

He selected a core node at the center of the newly excavated cavern, then created two clones and had them stand at the entrance and the ceiling respectively.

The three barrier seals were completed simultaneously within seconds.

Now, like the fifty-meter-wide training clearing outside, the interior of this cavern was firmly enveloped by a Perception Isolation Barrier.

From now on, no matter what techniques he practiced inside, no one outside would be able to detect the slightest trace of it.

After walking out from behind the waterfall, Naruto noticed that the rocks he had excavated had already piled up into a small mountain.

Originally, Naruto had planned to stack the stones nearby along the riverbank. But now that he looked at them, there were simply too many. They sprawled over a huge area beneath the moonlight. Forget ninja—any ordinary villager passing by would find it suspicious.

Leaving them alone was definitely not an option. If they were discovered, it would be the same as directly telling Konoha that someone had carried out a major construction project here.

And Naruto did not know Earth Release ninjutsu yet, so he had no way to fuse the rocks back into the mountain or sink them underground.

"Then I can only destroy them all."

Naruto muttered to himself.

He raised his right hand, and a clear blue Rasengan swiftly took shape in his palm. Then he walked over to the nearest boulder and pressed the Rasengan against it.

The instant the rapidly spinning chakra sphere touched the rock, chunks of its surface were ground away as though someone had scooped huge spoonfuls out of ice cream. The fragments were pulverized into fine dust by the spinning chakra, then instantly vaporized by the high heat generated through friction.

A massive boulder over ten meters tall was shaved away from top to bottom by the Rasengan in less than half a minute, without even a grain of sand left behind.

After destroying several large rocks in succession, Naruto lowered his head and looked at the rotating Rasengan in his hand. A thought suddenly surfaced in his mind.

What if I threw the Rasengan?

The Rasengan's greatest weakness had always been that it required close-range contact to deal damage. If it could be turned into a long-range attack, his flexibility in battle would rise by an entire level.

Without hesitation, he decided to try it.

Naruto formed another Rasengan. This time, instead of holding it in his palm and pressing it forward, he made a throwing motion and fiercely hurled the rapidly spinning chakra sphere toward the pool.

The moment it left his hand, the Rasengan continued flying normally through the air for seven or eight meters. Naruto almost thought he had succeeded.

But just as he was about to memorize the sensation, the blue chakra sphere became like an electric top that had been unplugged. Its speed grew slower and slower, the edges of the sphere began to blur, and chakra leaked out in every direction. When it reached around twelve or thirteen meters, it completely collapsed into a cloud of blue mist, landing on the pool and stirring up a barely noticeable ripple.

"As expected, it didn't work."

Naruto withdrew his hand, neither disappointed nor surprised.

The Rasengan's core structure was an irregular mass of rapidly rotating chakra. Without external control, it could only remain stable for a few seconds.

To turn the Rasengan into a long-range attack, he either had to incorporate chakra nature transformation and restructure it, or directly use a chakra cloak as an extension connecting it to him.

The latter was the principle behind a giant chakra hand holding a Rasengan in Golden Body Mode.

Come to think of it, when he had watched Boruto: Naruto Next Generations in his previous life, Boruto's Rasengan could be thrown directly without adding nature transformation, and it could even turn invisible.

It seemed to be related to Boruto accidentally adding a trace of Lightning Release chakra while training the Rasengan, but Naruto's chakra currently possessed only Wind Release.

Mastering nature transformation was another important foundation. It would prepare him for the future Rasenshuriken and lay the groundwork for learning other composite ninjutsu.

After the time of the Chūnin Exams passed, he would find an opportunity to ask Kakashi about the specific methods for training chakra nature transformation—especially how to get started with attributes other than Wind Release.

Kakashi was Konoha's publicly acknowledged expert in this field. As the Sharingan wielder who had copied over a thousand ninjutsu, his understanding of the five chakra natures and his skill in switching between them were, in some respects, even more comprehensive than the Third Hokage's.

With that in mind, Naruto raised his right hand again and obediently continued clearing the remaining rocks with the Rasengan in close combat.

The Rasengan emitted a low hum as it spun at high speed, blending with the roar of the waterfall. In the darkest hour before dawn, it sounded like a tightly paced work chant.

One massive boulder after another turned to powder beneath the Rasengan's cutting force, leaving behind not even lime.

Naruto understood better than anyone how keenly people in the ninja world could notice details.

He had failed because of details in his previous life. In this life, he would not make the same mistake again.

When the last remnants of rock had been ground into powder by the Rasengan and scattered into the pool, an extremely thin gray-white band of light had already appeared on the horizon.

Naruto clapped the nonexistent dust from his hands, preparing to dismiss the Golden Body Mode he had maintained all night.

"Hahahaha... I sensed spatial fluctuations!"

An excited shout that cracked at the end came from the direction of the rock cavern.

A Golden Body clone sprang up from the ground. His golden chakra cloak swayed from rising too abruptly, nearly causing him to trip over himself.

After steadying himself, he raised both clenched fists overhead and shouted at the waterfall, startling the other clones who were still sitting with their eyes closed in contemplation.

Immediately afterward, several more clones leaped up from the ground. Their overlapping shouts could not be drowned out even by the waterfall's roar.

"I can engrave chakra into the formula now!"

"I can sense the chakra I engraved—the approximate direction, location, and distance! I can sense all of it!"

Naruto's eyes lit up.

Without any hesitation, he formed a release seal with both hands.

"Shadow Clone Technique, release."

"Poof, poof, poof, poof..."

In an instant, forty Golden Body clones transformed into clouds of golden chakra smoke at the exact same moment.

Then, more than forty sets of training memories surged into Naruto's mind like a flood released from a dam: Flying Raijin formula diagrams, the positioning and calculation of spatial coordinates, the feel of chakra engraving, and the initial perception of spatial fluctuations.

Each memory carried insights and details from a different angle, converging and colliding at the same time.

Naruto stood where he was with his eyes closed as Absolute Control activated instantly.

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