Sage Arts, Achieved

At the deepest part of Otogakure's underground base, Neji sat cross-legged inside a six-square-meter stone chamber, Garaga's Reverse Scale resting in his palm. In the darkness, the scale emitted a steady, magma-like glow. Its warmth seeped through his skin and into his chakra pathways, bringing with it a strange sense of calm.

This was the seventh day since he and Garaga had established a "friendly chatting relationship." Once a day, he summoned Garaga. He did not ask about combat or pry into Ryūchi Cave's secrets; they simply talked. Sometimes they discussed the nature of chakra, sometimes the history of the Shinobi World, and occasionally, the Caged Bird—the one-eyed red snake seemed more interested in the Curse Mark than in Neji himself.

"The Caged Bird's stability is built upon the imprisonment of your soul," Garaga had once assessed. "It is like a prison. It confines your freedom, but it also isolates outside interference. As a result, your spiritual energy is abnormally pure—pure to the point of near-deadness."

Neji had asked at the time, "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"For learning Sage Arts, it is a good thing." A strange glint had flashed through Garaga's single eye. "Sage Arts require Natural Energy, physical energy, and spiritual energy to be balanced at 1:1:1. Most shinobi fail because of their spiritual energy—too many distracting thoughts, unstable emotions, impure intentions. But you... the Caged Bird has forcibly 'muted' your spirit. In a sense, you naturally meet one-third of the training requirements."

Those words took root in Neji's heart like a seed.

Over the next few days, he began deliberately studying the theory of Sage Arts. Orochimaru's private library contained scattered records about the Three Great Sage Regions, and Neji absorbed every scrap of information he could find like a sponge. He learned of Mount Myoboku's Toad Oil, Shikkotsu Forest's Katsuyu mucus, and Ryūchi Cave's snake venom—each a medium that aided in sensing Natural Energy. Yet the true core was always the same: finding the perfect point of balance between absolute stillness and motion.

And his circumstances truly were exceptional.

As for physical energy, three months of extreme training and Eight Gates development had given him extraordinarily refined control over his own chakra. He could clearly sense every thread of chakra flowing through his pathways and even distinguish differences in energy density at different chakra nodes.

As for spiritual energy, the Caged Bird's restraint had become an advantage instead. The Curse Mark acted like a mental filter, blocking most emotional fluctuations and distracting thoughts, leaving his consciousness in a constant state of cold clarity.

All that remained was Natural Energy.

"I want to learn Sage Arts," Neji said to the Reverse Scale one day.

The scale grew faintly hot, and Garaga's consciousness flowed through their connection. "Why?"

"There isn't enough time." Neji spoke honestly. "I need to reach a level where I can participate in the battle for the Ten-Tails within three years. Conventional training is far too slow. Sage Arts are the only shortcut—they can increase my strength by leaps and bounds, and..."

He paused. "Sage Art Chakra suppresses the Caged Bird, right? You mentioned it before."

The Reverse Scale fell silent for a long time. So long that Neji thought Garaga would not answer, until the scale suddenly erupted with dazzling red light and a stream of consciousness was violently forced into his mind:

Ryūchi Cave Sage Arts Trial: Serpent-Belly Rebirth.

Location: the deepest part of Ryūchi Cave, the "Ten-Thousand Snake Cave."

Method: voluntarily allow yourself to be devoured by the snake horde. Sense Natural Energy amid the ultimate experience of digestive fluids eroding your body, suffocation, terror, and near death. Succeed, and you will absorb Natural Energy to balance the three energies and transform into a sage; fail, and you will become pus and blood, nourishment for the snakes.

Time limit: no more than three hours from being devoured to being completely digested.

Survival rate: 1/147 in historical records.

The information ended abruptly. The Reverse Scale's glow faded, returning to its usual temperature.

Neji sat in the dark, processing the information. Three hours, a survival rate of less than one percent, being digested alive—Ryūchi Cave truly lived up to its name. Even its trial method had such "character."

But he did not hesitate.

"I'll go."

Three days later, deep within Ryūchi Cave.

There was no light here. The cave walls were covered in glowing moss, but its dim green radiance only illuminated the space within arm's reach, making the darkness seem even deeper. The air was damp and thick, mixed with the stench of snakes, rotting matter, and some ancient stone.

Garaga coiled around an inverted stalactite, his crimson body resembling a stream of flowing lava beneath the dim glow. He did not look at Neji. His one eye was fixed below—on an enormous, bottomless cavern. Rustling sounds rose from its depths as countless scales scraped against stone like surging tides.

"That is the Ten-Thousand Snake Cave," Garaga said, his voice echoing through the empty cavern. "There are 7,400 snakes inside, from venomous vipers as thick as thumbs to rock pythons as thick as waists. They have been starving for three months."

Neji stood at the cavern's edge and looked down. Countless eyes glowed in the darkness—emerald, scarlet, deathly white—like an inverted sky of stars, except every "star" shone with pure hunger.

"What is the process?" he asked.

"Jump down," Garaga said. "The snakes will swallow you. The digestive fluids will begin corroding your skin, then your muscles and internal organs. Throughout that process, you must remain conscious and use your spirit to sense, capture, and absorb the Natural Energy permeating every inch of Ryūchi Cave's air."

He paused, and his one eye finally turned toward Neji. "Natural Energy is extremely violent. Under normal circumstances, you must guide and harmonize it with the utmost care. But when you are near death, your body and spirit will enter an extreme state of 'openness'—like a drowning person desperately grasping at anything within reach. At that time, Natural Energy will actively surge into your body. Before it blows you apart, you must find that point of balance."

"Three hours," Neji repeated.

"Yes. Three hours." Garaga said, "If you have not succeeded by then, your body will completely melt away. Even if you succeed, if the balance is established too late, the damage to your body will be irreversible—you may go blind, become paralyzed, or turn into a half-human, half-snake monster. Orochimaru got stuck at this step. He feared death, so he forcibly interrupted the trial at the last moment. As a result, he only gained incomplete snake transformation abilities."

Neji was silent for a moment before suddenly asking, "How did you pass it?"

Garaga's single eye narrowed. "I did not."

"What?"

"I am a snake. I can naturally sense Natural Energy." Garaga's tone was as flat as if he were discussing what he had eaten that day. "But my former master—the bastard who wanted to kill me and take my eye—passed. I watched him jump down. Three hours later, he climbed back up with horns growing from his forehead and snake pupils in his eyes. Then the first thing he did was use his newly acquired strength to ambush me."

He said nothing more.

Neither did Neji. He removed his shirt, revealing a lean upper body covered in scars. The Caged Bird Seal on his forehead gave off a faint green glow in the dim light, like a third eye.

"One last thing," Garaga said. "If you truly succeed, remember to control your first thought—Sage Art Chakra amplifies emotions, especially negative ones. Many people survive the trial, only to lose to the overwhelming ecstasy or rage that surges forth at the instant of transformation."

"Understood."

Neji stepped back several paces, took a running start, and leaped into the darkness.

The fall was brief, yet it felt endless. Weightlessness seized his heart as the wind howled past his ears. The glowing eyes below rapidly expanded and drew closer. He could smell the distinctive stench of snakes, growing thicker and thicker.

Then came the impact.

He did not hit the ground. He crashed into a slick, writhing, crowded nest of living flesh. Countless snake bodies instantly wrapped around him, cold scales scraping against his skin as they contracted and tightened. Suffocation swept over him like a tide, squeezing the air from his lungs bit by bit.

The first snake opened its mouth and bit into his shoulder. It was not tearing at him—it was sucking. Its fangs pierced his skin and injected digestive enzymes. Pain exploded through him, as though someone had driven a red-hot iron rod into his flesh and stirred.

The second. The third. The fourth...

Neji was completely submerged. The snake horde twisted into a massive cocoon, and at its center, countless mouths gnawed at his body. The sensation of digestive fluid corroding his skin was strange—first numbness, then itching, and only then burning agony. He could feel his epidermis melting away, dripping down like candle wax.

Fear came.

Not psychological fear, but a living creature's instinctive resistance to death. Adrenaline flooded his body, his heart threatened to leap from his throat, and every cell screamed at him to run. But he could not move. He could not even lift a finger.

"Calm down..." Neji told himself in his mind. "I have lived twice... I have died once already... What is there to fear...?"

But it was useless. The terror of death was too primal, too direct. It bypassed reason and struck his nerves directly. He began to tremble, his teeth chattering, his stomach spasming as he tried to vomit but could not—snake bodies had already blocked his esophagus.

His vision blurred. Not from tears; the digestive fluids had begun eroding the surface of his eyes. Mucus filled his ears, and his hearing slowly vanished. His sense of smell held only the stench of snakes and the sickly sweetness of his own rotting flesh.

Time lost all meaning. Perhaps only a few minutes had passed, or perhaps an hour already had. Pain seeped from the surface into the depths. He could feel muscle fibers breaking down and liquefying under the enzymes. Pressure built against his ribs as the snake horde tightened, trying to squeeze his organs out.

"I'm going to die..." The thought surfaced clearly for the first time.

Then came the second thought. "Is this how it ends? I transmigrated here, was bound by a Curse Mark, treated as an experimental subject, and in the end, I die inside a snake's belly?"

Unwillingness.

Like a flame igniting in a pitch-black abyss. It was not anger, nor resentment, but something colder and harder—obsession. I want to live. I want freedom. I want to stand at the peak and see the sights those people can never see.

At the instant that obsession reached its peak, he felt it.

Not with his eyes, not with his ears, but with some more fundamental sensory organ. He "saw" colorless, transparent streams of energy floating through the air—they flowed like wind, rippled like water, leaped like fire, and rested like earth. Natural Energy, Natural Energy accumulated in Ryūchi Cave for a thousand years.

They sensed the "gap."

A vessel on the verge of death, with an utterly pure spirit and a body opened to the extreme.

Natural Energy surged in.

The sensation was ten thousand times more agonizing than the snakes' gnawing. If digestive fluid was breaking down his flesh, then Natural Energy was remolding his soul. It brutally forced its way into every chakra pathway, every acupoint, every cell. Neji felt as if he had been thrown into a forge, his body melting, reforming, melting again, reforming again.

Balance. 1:1:1.

He instinctively began to adjust. Physical energy—the resilient body forged through Eight Gates training—became an anchor; spiritual energy—the icy-pure consciousness restrained by the Caged Bird—became a counterweight; Natural Energy—the violent power of heaven and earth flooding into him—needed to be tamed.

It was like walking a tightrope over a storm-tossed sea. One moment of distraction, and he would fall into a bottomless abyss.

Time continued to pass. The snakes' digestion had penetrated into his internal organs. He could feel his stomach wall thinning and his intestines dissolving. Natural Energy, meanwhile, wrought destruction from within as chakra pathways ruptured and acupoints collapsed.

But Neji did not stop. With nearly cruel precision, he adjusted the ratio of the three energies. When there was too much Natural Energy, he compressed a portion of his physical energy; when spiritual energy fell short, he forcibly drew more from the Caged Bird's restraint.

Gradually, a balance began to form.

It was not a static balance, but a dynamic, flowing, endlessly self-sustaining cycle. Natural Energy flowed in, fused with physical energy, was guided by spiritual energy, and transformed into an entirely new kind of chakra—Sage Art Chakra, carrying a heavy, solid texture.

The instant the first thread of Sage Art Chakra was born, the Caged Bird Seal on Neji's forehead suddenly burned.

It was not activating. It was... being suppressed. As Sage Art Chakra flowed through the chakra node where the seal was located, those cold, binding runes began to weaken and retreat like ice and snow beneath sunlight.

It worked!

The discovery was like a shot of adrenaline. Neji's spirits surged, and he absorbed and converted energy even more frantically. More and more Sage Art Chakra formed within his body, rushing toward the Caged Bird Seal of its own accord like an army besieging a lone city.

The snakes' rate of digestion began to fall behind Sage Art Chakra's rate of repairing his body.

Corrosion and regeneration, destruction and reconstruction, death and rebirth—all unfolded within Neji at once.

He did not know how long it had been. Perhaps he was nearing the three-hour limit when his body suddenly felt lighter.

Not because the snakes had released him, but because he... had grown stronger.

Sage Art Chakra filled every chakra pathway, and his sensory abilities skyrocketed. He "saw" the entirety of the Ten-Thousand Snake Cave—7,400 snakes, each one's location, condition, and degree of hunger. He "heard" magma flowing in the depths of Ryūchi Cave, water dripping from stalactites, even Garaga's heartbeat in the distance.

Then he made a simple movement: he expelled Sage Art Chakra through every pore in his body.

Boom—!

The snake horde wrapped around him was blasted away as if struck by an explosion. Digestive fluid, mucus, shattered scales, and bits of snake flesh sprayed in every direction. Neji rose from the snake cocoon, his bare upper body covered in wounds that were healing at a visible rate.

He raised his head.

Garaga looked down from the cave ceiling, and for the first time, his single eye revealed an emotion that could be called shock.

"You..." Garaga began, but did not finish.

Because the skin on both sides of Neji's forehead, three inches above his temples, suddenly split open. They were not wounds. Something was... breaking out from within.

Two bony protrusions burst through the skin, rapidly growing, extending, branching, and finally taking shape—a pair of short yet sharp, jade-white horns. Natural spiral patterns covered their surfaces, and pale golden light flowed through those patterns.

Dragon-Transformation Horns. The mark of Ryūchi Cave Sage Arts reaching completion.

Neji reached up and touched the horns on his forehead. They were warm and hard, like fine jade. He could feel that they were not ornaments. They were gathering points for Natural Energy, amplifiers for Sage Art Chakra.

"I succeeded," he said softly. His voice was hoarse from prolonged suffocation, yet it carried an unprecedented sense of power.

Garaga slid down from the stalactite, his enormous body coiling around Neji. His single eye carefully examined him, especially the pair of horns. "One hour and forty-seven minutes. The second-fastest record in history."

"Who is first?"

"The founder of Ryūchi Cave, the White Snake Sage herself." Garaga paused. "But you are the first to succeed while bearing the Caged Bird. Sage Art Chakra's suppression of the Curse Mark... is even stronger than expected."

Neji sensed the Sage Art Chakra coursing through his body. It was like warm magma. Wherever it flowed, the Caged Bird's cold sense of restraint weakened greatly. It had not been removed, but at least... he could breathe again.

"Now," Garaga said, narrowing his eye, "you are qualified to meet the White Snake Sage. But before that..."

He suddenly opened his mouth and exhaled a cloud of crimson poison mist. This time, however, it was not an attack. The mist gathered in front of Neji and formed a mirror.

In the mirror, Neji saw his current appearance: his bare upper body was covered in scars that were rapidly healing, jade-white horns on either side of his forehead glimmered faintly gold in the dim light, and most striking of all were his eyes—around his originally pure white pupils was now a pale golden ring, while tiny snake-like vertical lines flickered faintly within their depths.

Sage Art Eye.

"Ryūchi Cave's Sage Arts will alter your physique," Garaga said. "Over the next month, your body will continue transforming. Pain, itching, numbness, auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations... all of that is normal. Endure it, and you will become a true master of Sage Mode. Fail to endure..."

"I will endure it," Neji interrupted.

He clenched his fist, and Sage Art Chakra gathered in his palm with a deep hum. That power was heavy and solid, as though it could punch straight through a mountain.

Three and a half years. From today onward, the countdown officially began.

Sage Arts were only the first step.

Next came full attribute transformation, Yin-Yang Release research, gathering intelligence on the Ten-Tails, and... ultimate liberation.

Neji raised his head and looked toward the deeper darkness of the cave. That was the path leading to Ryūchi Cave's core, where the White Snake Sage awaited at the end.

"Lead the way," he said.

Garaga stared at him for a long time before finally turning around. His crimson body wound forward through the darkness.

Neji followed. His footsteps landed on damp stone, producing steady echoes.

The horns on his forehead grew faintly hot, like two lamps that had just been lit, illuminating the road ahead.

How long those lamps could shine, or how far they could illuminate, he did not know.

But he knew that from the moment he crawled out of the snake's belly, he was no longer Neji Hyuga, the one who could only be manipulated by fate.

He was a sage.

The variable that would soon stir the entire Shinobi World into turmoil.