Calm

After the Branch House tournament, life suddenly became peaceful. Neji was quickly enrolled in the Ninja Academy, where he soon began to stand out.

One morning, as Neji stepped into the classroom beneath the clear glow of the rising sun, the girls' whispers suddenly buzzed like a disturbed swarm of bees.

He unfastened his snow-white high-collared coat embroidered with subtle patterns, revealing the black fitted outfit beneath. Loose strands of hair fell along his forehead and swayed gently with his movements, tracing meteor-like arcs through the morning light.

The Caged Bird curse mark gave off a faint glow, making his handsome face seem all the more mysterious.

"Neji-kun's headband is bamboo green today!" Inuzuka Yayue hid her flushed face behind a textbook in the back row.

"I heard he threw the upperclassman Uchiha Masato three meters during taijutsu class last week." Yamanaka Saori bit the end of her pen. "That was an Uchiha genius!"

Their instructor, Tanaka Haruto, tapped the blackboard, sending chalk dust drifting onto the heads of the front-row students. Neji laid his ninja tool pouch flat on his desk, took out a shuriken, and idly spun it over his fingers.

"Today's test covers Chapter Three of the Geographical Records of the Five Nations."

As Tanaka-sensei unrolled the scroll, Neji had already swept the entire classroom with his Byakugan. At the back left, an Inuzuka Clan ninja hound was stealing potato chips from an Akimichi Clan student. On the right, Uchiha Shinichi's scratch paper was covered in flame crests.

Tenten was counting the blades in her sealing scrolls, while Rock Lee sat in the very back with a dejected look on his face.

When the chalk wrote, "Principles Behind the Formation of Hot Springs in the Land of Hot Water," on the board—

Neji wrote on his paper: "The flow of earth veins is obstructed. The hot springs should be distributed in spirals along fissures in the strata. The volcano has been sealed by a shrine, its force contained but not released. Combined with the climate and water veins of the Land of Hot Water, this forms hot springs."

On the training field that afternoon, twelve targets raced about at high speed.

Neji stood in the middle of the field blindfolded, his earlobes twitching faintly. When Uchiha Shinichi deliberately sent his shuriken off course, Neji turned sideways and caught the spinning blade between two fingers. The arc of his return throw accurately sliced through the red centers of every target.

"A Hyuga dares play with shuriken in front of an Uchiha?" Uchiha Shinichi formed hand seals twice as fast as usual, and Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu burst into a sky full of fireballs.

Neji's Byakugan suddenly glimmered blue-green as he saw the Explosive Tags hidden within every fireball. Amid the girls' screams, he stepped through the Bagua positions to evade them, his white outer robe fluttering like crane wings.

When Uchiha Shinichi launched a surprise attack through the smoke, Neji suddenly turned into a rotten log—the afterimage of the Substitution Jutsu had not yet faded when his real body appeared behind the crowd.

"Your hand seals may be fast, but your transitions aren't smooth. Fast doesn't mean good." Neji spread his fingers, and the leaves scorched by the fireballs suddenly gathered into the shape of an azure dragon. This was an advanced application of infusing chakra into natural objects. The trajectory of the leaves dancing through the air sealed off all of Shinichi's escape routes.

The crowd erupted into thunderous applause. When Tenten rushed over carrying a medical kit, Neji was wrapping a bandage around Shinichi's sprained wrist. The Uchiha boy shook off his hand and snorted. "Don't think winning a few times means you can lecture me. Hmph..."

That evening, as Neji walked home after school, Zong Zhi's loud shout suddenly came from behind him. "Brother Neji, come eat at my house tonight! Mom said she hasn't seen you in ages, and she'll make takoyaki for you."

Neji turned around and saw the increasingly round chubby boy bouncing toward him.

"No, I've reached a critical point in my training lately. Maybe next time!"

Seeing the hopeful look in Zong Zhi's eyes, Neji considered it for a moment before refusing.

In truth, his training had not reached a critical point. He had hit a bottleneck.

The second form of the Soaring Dragon Palm, the Sea-Covering Form, had reached A-rank standards despite being limited by his chakra reserves. His chakra had barely reached the level of a Chunin, while his Inner Qi had already liquidified.

After a year of hard work, six-year-old Neji had fully earned his title as a genius through his strength.

By all rights, Neji's accomplishments would have been dazzling on anyone else. Unfortunately, he was not satisfied. After the Liquidified Inner Qi that formed the foundation of his power stopped growing for the time being, the energy he acquired from food could no longer support further transformations of his Inner Qi.

Furthermore, after Little Marten, Neji had never encountered another beast carrying the aura of nature. The inner world of the Primordial Bagua Diagram had closed its gates to him.

Now, only one path lay before Neji: find a way to make contact with the Three Great Sage Regions.

To approach the Three Great Sage Regions, he would naturally have to deal with Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru.

Unfortunately, none of them were in the village. Even if they were in Konoha, Neji seemed to have no opportunity to earn their favor.

It was as though the Hyuga Clan's Branch House being excluded from the notice of Konoha's upper ranks was an unspoken rule among them. Neji was already this talented, yet Hiruzen Sarutobi had not even given him a private lesson on the Will of Fire.

Even more infuriatingly, not even that old schemer Danzo thought him worth a glance. That truly wounded Neji deeply.

In the end, the existence of the Caged Bird makes them lose interest in investing. They fear their investments will come to nothing, or that they will merely be making a wedding dress for someone else. After all, the lives of the Branch House are always firmly held in the hands of the Main House. No one dares place their bets on someone who cannot even control their own fate...

Neji sighed inwardly.

As Neji continued nurturing the Primordial Bagua Diagram, he had long since gained the ability to completely remove the Caged Bird curse mark. He did not need to understand the principles behind curse marks or the rules of Sealing Jutsu.

As an extremely high-level existence, the Primordial Bagua Diagram could erase the Caged Bird curse mark from a higher level, like wiping an error drawn on paper.

However, Neji was not prepared to remove the Caged Bird yet. He still lacked the ability to do whatever he pleased in the Ninja World.

Neji had merely added a lock to the Caged Bird, preventing anyone from the Main House from doing something desperate.

That was why, with a way to remove it in hand, Neji could openly display the curse-marked forehead as though it did not exist at all.

At the same time, it was a tempering of his character. Sympathetic voices, contemptuous voices, all sorts of comments often sounded behind his back, but Neji turned a deaf ear to them. He simply continued training and walked on with calm composure.

Neji had already finished all the courses taught at the academy. Stealth techniques, intelligence gathering, shuriken throwing, the Three-Body Jutsu, and more posed no difficulty for Neji, who had lived two lives. Coupled with the fusion of his soul, Neji's mind was stronger than ever, and his threshold for fatigue was far higher as well, making learning quite effortless.

In his spare time, Neji had also learned several ninjutsu left behind by Hizashi. Their ranks were not high, and Neji had merely experienced what it felt like to cast ninjutsu. Their usefulness in actual combat was practically nonexistent, since Neji could not possibly disperse the chakra in his palms to form hand seals while fighting an enemy.

Neji had privately tested his chakra attributes and found them to be water, fire, and earth. Chakra nature transformation and shape transformation possessed considerable power in the future, giving Neji many ideas for improving the Soaring Dragon Palm later on.

At his current pace, if Neji trained steadily step by step, reaching Shadow Rank in the future would not be a problem. But whenever he thought of everyone in the later stages of Shippuden gaining all kinds of outrageous power-ups, a mere Shadow Rank would not even get you invited to a group fight.

In the end, I still need to find a way to contact the Legendary Sannin if I want to go further. If there's no opportunity, then I'll create one! Neji narrowed his eyes and began to scheme.