Flying Raijin Training Focus

As Tenten bent down to put back the sample ninja tools she had taken out earlier, the bell on the door rang.

"Welco—"

Tenten rose with her usual welcoming smile, but before she could finish, the smile vanished from her face as swiftly as a frost-stricken flower.

It was not that she did not want to smile. It was that the two people entering the shop were ANBU agents wearing animal masks.

The one in front wore a cat mask, while the one behind wore a dog mask.

Their footsteps were incredibly light. They made virtually no sound as they crossed the distance from the entrance to the counter; even the wooden floorboards did not creak.

The cat-masked ANBU stopped before the counter. His gaze lingered on Tenten's face for less than a second before sweeping over the inventory ledger and order slips she had not yet put away.

The dog-masked ANBU did not approach the counter. Instead, he stood with his back to the door and his hands behind him, his eyes slowly scanning the ninja tools displayed along the shop's walls through the holes in his mask.

"What did Naruto Uzumaki buy here just now?"

The cat-masked ANBU asked in a low, steady voice without the slightest inflection. Precisely because it lacked any emotion, the question carried an especially heavy weight in the silent shop.

"Huh?"

After saying goodbye to Tenten, Naruto walked back along Konoha's streets.

The sun had sunk behind Hokage Rock, and the entire village was draped in gentle twilight. Shops along the streets lit their lamps one after another, warm yellow light spilling from their windows and scattering patches of brightness across the ground.

Naruto made a trip to Konoha's public market.

The market was nearly closing at this hour, and the remaining vegetables had already been picked over several times. Still, he bought a small bag of rice, several scallions, two eggs, and a piece of meat from an old woman preparing to pack up her stall.

When the old woman took his money, she kept her head down and counted it twice without once looking at Naruto's face.

Naruto did not mind. He thanked her and left.

Back at his apartment, Naruto got busy in the spotless little kitchen.

He had learned to cook when he lived alone in his previous life. He was no master chef, but a few simple home-cooked dishes were no trouble for him.

He washed the rice and put it on to cook, sliced the pork thin and stir-fried it until the fat rendered, chopped the scallions and fried them until fragrant, then poured in the beaten eggs and stir-fried everything together. Finally, he added a splash of soy sauce for flavor.

In less than half an hour, a plate of scallion pork, a plate of scrambled eggs, and a bowl of white rice were set on the small low table, polished until it was spotless.

After eating, Naruto wrapped the leftovers in plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator.

The refrigerator was finally no longer filled with nothing but expired milk and instant noodles. Fresh vegetables and meat were neatly arranged in the fridge compartment, while two Pacific saury were frozen in the freezer.

He had bought these over the past few days in separate batches. There were several stalls in Konoha's market, and he visited a different one each time—buying meat in the east and vegetables in the west, doing his best not to draw attention.

After dinner, once he had wiped down the kitchen counter, Naruto went into the living room and created several Shadow Clone Techniques.

The Shadow Clones sat facing the original body and began discussing the finer points of kunai throwing.

The clones spoke one after another, neither loudly nor softly. Naruto even deliberately had them mention things like chakra a few times, their voices passing through the walls and air vents for the ANBU crouching in the tree opposite to hear.

More than twenty minutes later, Naruto yawned. He told the Shadow Clones to keep discussing while he carried a change of clothes into the bathroom.

The instant the bathroom door closed, Naruto took out a kunai engraved with a five-pointed-star Flying Raijin mark from his ninja tool pouch and silently hid it away.

As long as this kunai was here, he could instantly return from the waterfall cave at any time.

The last time, he had used Shadow Clones and the Transformation Technique to sneak out inside a garbage bag. It had worked, but the process was too cumbersome and prone to mistakes.

Now that he had a Flying Raijin coordinate hidden in the apartment, coming and going would be much simpler.

As long as he sensed the kunai's location, he could return with a single thought.

Naruto turned on the shower. Hot water splashed noisily onto the bathroom floor, and white steam quickly filled the cramped space.

Standing beneath the shower, he closed his eyes and slowly spread out his perception.

Outside the apartment, the chakra signatures of the two ANBU were still in their original positions.

There was also no sign of the Third Hokage's Telescope Technique probing him. He did not feel that needle-like sensation of being watched. Hiruzen Sarutobi was probably busy preparing for the Chūnin Exams.

Naruto took a deep breath, drew upon the chakra within him, and focused his thoughts on the designated Flying Raijin kunai hidden deep inside the waterfall cave.

The instant the Flying Raijin technique activated, the steamy white mist in the bathroom twisted slightly. A thread of golden light, nearly invisible to the naked eye, flashed through the air, and then Naruto vanished from the bathroom.

The shower continued spraying hot water, its sound even and unbroken, while the steam in the bathroom remained as thick as ever.

The next second, Naruto's feet landed on the rocky floor of the waterfall cave.

He opened his eyes to see a domed cavern five hundred meters in diameter.

The Perception Isolation Barrier was still operating steadily. Its barrier walls were completely intact, without the slightest trace of having been touched or tested.

The cave was filled with a faint dampness where mist drifting in from the waterfall mingled with the dry rock. The temperature was at least five or six degrees lower than outside.

The roar of the waterfall crashing into the pool came through the rock walls, low and muffled, like the beat of a drum wrapped in several layers of cotton.

"Everything's normal."

After confirming that everything was in order, Naruto walked to the center of the cave, where there was an open patch of ground he had specially leveled. "Then tonight's training begins."

He formed a cross-shaped hand seal.

"Shadow Clone Technique."

Poof, poof, poof, poof...

Forty clouds of smoke burst open in the spacious cave. When the smoke cleared, forty Shadow Clones stood neatly across half the open ground, forty pairs of eyes fixed on the original body at once, all brimming with energy.

"Everyone, let's begin," Naruto said.

"Yeah!" x40

All the Shadow Clones answered in unison, then quickly scattered to find their own places around the cave.

Naruto had set several clear directions for breakthroughs in his Flying Raijin training tonight.

The first was the speed of inscribing the technique formula.

Minato Namikaze's most terrifying ability was not Flying Raijin itself, but his ability to inscribe the Flying Raijin formula onto an enemy the instant he touched them in battle. After that, the fight was over.

The classic example was Minato Namikaze's battle against the traitorous Obito. In the brief flash when they crossed paths, he struck Obito with a Rasengan and inscribed a Flying Raijin mark on him in the same motion. From beginning to end, the battle lasted only a few breaths.

This was what Naruto needed to practice: in a high-speed battle, the instant his fingers touched any part of an enemy's body, he had to inscribe the formula without the slightest delay or extra movement.

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