Squad Assignment

Five days later.

Early morning.

Standing before the full-length mirror, Qian lifted the long hair from his forehead, tied the Leaf Village Headband around his head, and straightened his clothes.

In that moment, a hint of killing intent seemed to settle over him.

Graduating from the Ninja School meant he had officially set foot on the path of a ninja. From here on, whether he lived or died depended entirely on him.

After standing quietly for a moment, Qian called up the Proficiency Panel.

[Name: Uchiha Qian

Age: 10

Physical Constitution: 6

Spirit: 7

Chakra: 312 (622→862)

Bloodline: Sharingan · Unawakened (52/100)→(57/100)

Skills: Chakra Refining Technique: lv2 (9/500)→lv2 (69/500)

Clone Technique: lv2 (1/500)

Transformation Technique: lv2 (1/500)

Substitution Technique: lv2 (1/500)

Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique: lv0 (75/100)→lv1 (1/200)

Mind Reflection Technique: lv1 (10/200)→lv1 (65/200)

Basic Body Technique: lv2 (1/500)

Ninja Tool Throwing: lv2 (120/500)]

Over the past five days, aside from spending some chakra during the first two days to grind Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique to the entry level, adding another trump card for himself, he had devoted the rest of his time and energy to practicing the Mind Reflection Technique.

After pouring in more than ten thousand points of chakra in total, the proficiency of Mind Reflection Technique immediately surged by fifty-five points.

Along with it, the awakening progress of his Sharingan had also advanced by five points.

Basically, every ten points of proficiency in Mind Reflection Technique could drive one point of Sharingan progress.

Because of this, Qian finally understood why no one in the Uchiha clan had ever been able to awaken the Sharingan with the help of this technique.

It might look like every ten times he practiced Mind Reflection Technique, he could push the Sharingan's awakening progress forward by one point, but that was because he improved every single time he used Mind Reflection Technique.

For anyone else, without the assistance of the Proficiency Panel, gaining ten points of proficiency was not a simple matter.

Especially the further one went, the harder it became.

And if the proficiency of Mind Reflection Technique did not meet the requirement, it would not promote the awakening of the Sharingan at all.

In other words, one had to continuously raise the proficiency of Mind Reflection Technique to maximize the awakening of the Sharingan.

Because Qian could see the exact progress, he would not slack off.

But as for other people...

They would probably give up once they could no longer feel any obvious progress.

Even for him, if the initial awakening progress of his Sharingan had been above (70/100), and lv0 and lv1 Mind Reflection Technique were both useless, he would probably have felt uncertain too.

Would other people spend years, or even more than a decade, cultivating a genjutsu that was extremely difficult but not very practical to an exceedingly deep level?

Leaving aside whether they even had that talent, even if they did, without positive feedback, it would probably be very hard to persist.

What was more, he had a premonition that the final few points of the Sharingan's awakening progress would likely not be so easy to break through.

In that case, it would be even harder for anyone to persevere.

However, Qian was not too worried.

With the Proficiency Panel, as long as it was proven that this path worked, he would keep at it unwaveringly.

Pulling his thoughts back, Qian stopped thinking about it, left the full-length mirror, locked the door, and headed straight for the Ninja School.

Ninja School.

Inside a classroom.

Qian sat in the last row, looking at the graduates of his year in front of him, some familiar and some not, and secretly guessed who would be assigned to the same squad as him.

Tap, tap, tap~

After about half an hour, a young teacher walked into the classroom with a list in hand.

It was not Sugi Itto. Qian had some impression of him; he was an instructor from another class, and seemed to be called Miyabo Ye.

"Students, quiet down!"

Miyabo Ye stood on the podium, clapped his hands, and said in a gentle voice.

At that, the classroom gradually quieted down.

Then Miyabo Ye introduced himself. "My name is Miyabo Ye. Some of you know me, and some of you don't, but none of that matters.

"First of all, congratulations. Starting today, you are true ninjas."

At that, the classroom, which had only just fallen quiet, became noisy again.

Clap, clap, clap.

Miyabo Ye clapped his hands, signaling for everyone to be quiet.

Once no one was speaking anymore, he continued, "I believe your teachers have already told you in advance that today is the day you will be divided into teams.

"So-called team assignments mean splitting you into groups of three, each led by an experienced jonin, to carry out missions together.

"From now on, you will be each other's closest partners, as well as the comrades you can trust most."

At that, some people excitedly whispered to one another, some quarreled as they fought to be with their friends, and others sat restlessly with nerves. In short, everyone was full of energy.

Seeing this, Miyabo Ye revealed a faint smile and did not immediately interrupt them.

Only after several full minutes, when he saw that the time was about right, did he say, "Students, save whatever you want to say for later. Quiet down first. We're going to assign the teams."

At that, everyone immediately fell silent and stared nervously at Miyabo Ye.

Miyabo Ye smiled, picked up the list in his hand, and began reading. "Class 11: Nakajima Sota, Hanako, Fei Long. Class 12: Kimura Sota, Yamanaka Haru, Kuroda Ichiro. Class 13..."

Name after name was read out by Miyabo Ye. The students below were either excited or dejected, but none of them made any loud noise.

Soon, Qian heard his own name.

"Class 17: Uchiha Qian, Mizutani Shizuko, Ryosuke. Class 18..."

"Mizutani Shizuko... Ryosuke..."

Hearing those two names, Qian quickly swept his gaze toward the front.

Soon, two figures with different expressions entered his sight, one male and one female. The boy looked relatively lively. Qian did not know him, but there was an impression of him in his predecessor's memories. He was probably a student from another class.

The girl seemed somewhat quiet. She was in the same class as him, had a jonin father, was weaker in physical ability, but had solid theoretical knowledge.

Without awakening the Sharingan, Qian could not tell what their potential was like, but he figured it would not be too bad.

Setting aside his identity as a member of the Uchiha Clan, just from his final exam results alone, the higher-ups could not possibly place people with too little potential on his team.

If they did that, even if the Uchiha clan said nothing, the jonin leading the team would not accept it.

Because if the gap in potential was too great, the team would be difficult to lead.

As for geniuses...

Please. It was not as if Konoha produced geniuses every year.

Looking at things overall, geniuses were still the minority. For the vast majority of graduates, being able to scrape by as a Chunin in the end was already considered good.

So Qian did not hope for some genius teammate either.

In fact, to him, teammates were just teammates. The battlefield was so dangerous—who knew if they would survive to the end?

If he invested too much emotion, then once an accident happened, it would only add to his troubles.

In that case, it was better to keep things professional.

In a short span of time, Qian had already made up his mind.

By then, Miyabo Ye had also finished reading the list, and everyone in the classroom had their own teammates.

"Next, get to know one another. In a while, your team-leading jonin will come over. Just follow them when they do," Miyabo Ye said at last.

With that, he left the classroom.

And the instant he left the classroom, a wave of clamor burst out from inside. People moved all over the place, searching for their teammates.