Deep within the Forest of Death, inside a secret base, time seemed to have frozen. Neji sat quietly at the center of the Immortal-Gathering Grand Array, his eyes slightly closed and not a trace of energy rippling from his body. He resembled a stone statue weathered by a thousand years.
Three months earlier, the Three-Phase Immortal Power had completed its initial fusion, and the murky Chaos Immortal Power had formed its own cycle within his body. Yet a thin veil had always seemed to separate him from it, as though it lacked the final, defining touch.
"Chakra, Qi Refinement, Immortal Power..."
Neji's consciousness sank into his Inner Landscape as he gazed at the Primordial Bagua Diagram floating amid the chaos. During these days of meditation, he had not been fusing powers. He had been tracing their fundamental nature.
The Ninja World's chakra system originated from the Divine Tree Fruit. It was an external gift, but also an invisible shackle. It bound practitioners to a fixed path of growth—from Genin to Jonin, then Kage Level—with every step clearly defined. The path of Qi Refinement, however, sought transcendence: the freedom to comprehend alongside heaven and earth.
"My previous thinking was still too shallow." Neji came to a sudden realization.
He had always regarded Chaos Immortal Power as a superior form of chakra, trying to understand it within the Ninja World's framework. It was like measuring the sea with a ruler; he would never grasp its full expanse.
Chaos Immortal Power was neither an evolution of chakra nor a mutation of ordinary True Qi. It was the manifestation of the Dao on the level of energy, a source power born from the resonance between the Primordial Bagua Diagram and his own Dao foundation. It encompassed all things, yet stood beyond them.
This realization