Neji Hyuga, Sake

Konoha's northern special training ground had been reduced to utter ruin. Within a radius of fifty meters, the ground looked as though it had been plowed over and over by countless invisible blades. Rocks had been ground into powder, trees shredded into splinters, and even the alloy targets used for training had warped out of shape, their surfaces covered in cuts of varying depths.

The culprit behind all this was currently slumped amid the ruins, his right arm wrapped from fingertips to shoulder in thick bandages, blood seeping through and staining the white cloth red.

Uzumaki Naruto lowered his head and stared fixedly at his trembling right hand. The hand that had just unleashed that earth-shattering strike could no longer even make a fist—its knuckle skin had split open, its muscle fibers visibly torn, and deeper still, its chakra pathway system was as ravaged as a field swept by a storm, with chakra flowing through it in complete disarray.

"Wind Style: Rasenshuriken..."

Tsunade crouched in front of Naruto. There was no anger in her emerald eyes, only a deep, almost sorrowful gravity. Her fingers lightly brushed the bandages around Naruto's right arm. Beneath the faint glow of the Mystical Palm Technique, she could clearly "see" the even more severe damage beneath the skin—cellular destruction and permanent scarring in the chakra channels.

"You created the most dangerous S-rank ninjutsu in Konoha's history." Tsunade's voice was calm, so calm it made people uneasy. "And also the most cruel forbidden technique to yourself."

Beside them, Jiraiya was uncharacteristically silent. The normally carefree hero had his brows tightly furrowed as he looked at the alarming readings on the monitoring instruments. At the moment the Rasenshuriken erupted, its energy peak had reached 60% of a Tailed Beast Bomb's level, but 47% of all impact feedback had directly struck the caster's arm. In other words, every time Naruto used this technique, he first blew up his own hand with enough force to flatten a small mountain.

"But... isn't it really powerful?" Naruto raised his head, his azure eyes full of unwillingness. "In that test just now, even Kakashi-sensei said that if it landed head-on, even someone at Kage Level would definitely die..."

"And then your hand would definitely be crippled too." Tsunade cut him off and rose to her feet, her Hokage cloak snapping in the wind across the training ground. "Naruto, listen carefully—starting today, this technique is classified as forbidden. Unless it is a life-or-death situation with no other choice, you are absolutely forbidden from using it."

"Why?!" Naruto abruptly stood up, only to stagger from the sharp pain in his arm. "It took me an entire month to finish it! This is what I can use to defeat Orochimaru and bring Sasuke back—"

"At the cost of one hand?" Kakashi's voice came from the edge of the ruins. He walked up to Naruto, the exposed Sharingan in his eye slowly turning as though recording every detail of that attack. "Naruto, I copied the entire process with my Sharingan just now. The Rasenshuriken works by compressing Wind Release chakra to the absolute limit, giving it a high-speed rotating form and creating countless tiny chakra blades. When those blades strike a target, they indiscriminately slice through everything—including the hand you use to maintain the technique."

He paused, his tone turning stern. "Right now, it's only your skin and muscles that are torn. Use it a few more times, and your chakra channels will completely necrotize. The meridian system in your whole arm will collapse. By then, forget being a shinobi—you won't even be able to hold chopsticks with that hand."

The training ground fell into dead silence.

In the distance, Sakura covered her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. Yamato stood beside her with a grave expression. Even Kiba and Akamaru, who were usually so carefree, had gone quiet.

Naruto looked at his right hand, then at the ruins ravaged by the Rasenshuriken around him. A month... one sleepless month. Every day, he had used Shadow Clones to simultaneously test hundreds of chakra form combinations. After thousands of failures, he had finally found that perfect balance.

And now they were telling him this technique would cripple his hand?

"Then... then find a way to improve it!" Naruto gritted his teeth, his voice carrying an almost desperate stubbornness. "There has to be a way! Jiraiya-sensei! Kakashi-sensei! Aren't you geniuses?! Help me improve it! Make it usable!"

Jiraiya stepped forward and pressed a hand on Naruto's shoulder. The gesture was gentle, yet it made Naruto's whole body shudder.

"We already have an idea for how to improve it." Jiraiya's voice was low, but every word was clear. "The Rasenshuriken's side effects come from needing to maintain the technique directly with your hand and bear the recoil. What if... you could throw it?"

"Throw it?" Naruto froze.

"That's right," Kakashi said. "Like an ordinary Rasengan—let it leave your palm and attack from a distance. Then all the destructive force will act on the target, while your hand only needs to bear the brief strain of launching it."

"But..." Naruto recalled how it had felt during the test. "The Rasenshuriken's structure is too unstable. The moment it leaves my hand, without me maintaining it, the chakra immediately loses control and disperses. I tried throwing it just now. It exploded on its own before it even went three meters, and it was weaker than an Explosive Tag."

That truly was a dead end.

The Rasenshuriken's power rested on extreme compression and precise form maintenance. The caster needed to continuously supply chakra and use chakra control to forcibly "pinch" that violent sphere of energy into shape. Once it left the hand, it was like releasing a balloon you had been pinching shut—the structure instantly collapsed.

"So it needs a medium." Yamato, who had remained silent until then, suddenly spoke. "A 'container' that can replace your hand and maintain the technique's structure."

"What kind of container could withstand a chakra upheaval of that level?" Sakura asked.

Everyone's eyes fell on Naruto at the same time.

Or rather, on the sealed presence inside him.

"...A Tailed Beast Chakra Cloak." Jiraiya slowly gave the answer. "The Nine-Tails' chakra possesses incredibly strong corrosive power and stability. If you can use Tailed Beast chakra to form an extended arm to replace your physical one in maintaining the Rasenshuriken, you can throw it from a distance."

Naruto's eyes lit up, but soon dimmed again. "But... I can't control it. Three-Tails is already my limit. Any higher, and I lose consciousness. And using Tailed Beast chakra to maintain such a precise technique..."

"Which is why you need special training." Tsunade made the final decision. "Starting today, Naruto's training focus returns to Tailed Beast chakra control. Jiraiya, Kakashi, Yamato—you three are in charge. I want to see progress within a month—at minimum, he must be able to use a chakra cloak in the Two-Tails state to steadily maintain a Rasengan for five minutes."

"What if he can't?" Kakashi asked.

"Then the Rasenshuriken will be sealed away permanently." Tsunade's tone allowed no argument. "Konoha cannot have a shinobi who might cripple both his hands at any moment, even if he is the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki."

Once the order was given, the training ground began to be cleared. The medical unit took Naruto back to the hospital for a thorough examination, while everyone else dispersed to prepare new training plans.

Only Jiraiya remained among the ruins. He crouched down and pinched up a bit of rock that the Rasenshuriken had shredded into powder. The dust was so fine it could pass through the densest sieve, and its edges were unbelievably smooth—the result of absolute sharpness.

"The pinnacle of Wind Release..." he murmured. "Minato, your son is walking a path more dangerous—and more terrifying—than yours."

In the deepest meditation chamber of Otogakure's underground base, Neji opened his eyes.

Within the Byakugan's field of vision, the distribution of his internal chakra "colors" had undergone a fundamental transformation. Red for fire, blue for water, brown for earth, and gold for lightning shone steadily and brightly, like four towering pillars supporting his entire chakra system. Only the cyan glow representing wind nature, while several times stronger than it had been a month ago, still seemed unstable, like a dying candle in the wind.

Eighty percent.

He was still twenty percent away from completing his wind nature transformation. Yet that final twenty percent had remained like an impassable chasm before him for two whole months, utterly unmoving.

"Wind is freedom, motion, the absence of restraint." Orochimaru's voice came from the communicator, carrying a rare trace of exhausted patience. "Your problem is that your entire power system pursues 'control'—Sage Arts control Natural Energy, Wood Release controls life forms, and Gentle Fist controls chakra points. Wind nature, on the other hand, resists that very control."

Neji did not argue. He knew Orochimaru was right. Over the past three months, he had tried every method: using swordsmanship to free his mind, pushing his body to adapt through extreme speed, even completely abandoning his control over chakra during training and allowing the energy to flow freely.

But whenever he reached the critical moment, that instinct for control engraved into his bones—the instinct of a Hyuga Clan Gentle Fist practitioner—would awaken and forcibly drag the nearly formed wind nature back onto its predetermined track.

"I can't wait any longer." Neji stood and walked to the meditation chamber's communication terminal, pressing the call button. "Lord Orochimaru, I need to see you. It's about the Akatsuki."

Five minutes later, in the main laboratory.

Orochimaru stood with his back to the door, observing a cultivation tank. Inside was not a human body, but a mass of ever-changing chakra aggregate—five-colored lights intertwined and clashed within it, trying to merge but never stabilizing.

"Eighty percent isn't enough," he said without turning around. "The stability of your all-nature transformation must reach at least ninety percent before you can avoid exposing flaws in front of those monsters in the Akatsuki. Itachi Uchiha's Sharingan can see through the essence of chakra, while Kisame Hoshigaki's perception of chakra is more sensitive than a shark's sense of blood. In your current state, you'll be exposed in under three days."

"But I don't have time." Neji walked to the cultivation tank and looked at the unstable energy mass. "The Akatsuki's operations are accelerating. According to the intelligence you received last month, they have already accepted an assassination contract from the Land of Water's daimyo, a mission to destroy a border fortress in the Land of Earth, and a covert infiltration of Sunagakure in the Land of Wind. They aren't just making money—they're testing the reactions of the nations and paving the way for large-scale operations."

He turned to look into Orochimaru's golden slit pupils. "The hunt for Tailed Beasts could begin at any time. Once they make their move, Sasori of the Red Sands is highly likely to become one of the first frontline operatives. If he dies, I'll lose my most important introducer within the Akatsuki. At that point, forget infiltration—I won't even be able to find the door."

Orochimaru fell silent for a moment, lightly tapping a finger against the cultivation tank's glass. "So you want to gamble? Use an eighty-percent completion rate to bet on an opportunity that may already be too late?"

"It isn't a gamble." Neji pulled out a scroll from his robe and spread it across the laboratory table. "This is all the known intelligence on the Ten-Tails and the Tailed Beasts that I compiled over the past two months. From the myth of the Sage of Six Paths creating the world, to the current situation of each nation's Jinchuriki, to analyses of the Akatsuki members' abilities—most of it is based on the data you provided, while a small portion is my own deduction."

Orochimaru swept his eyes over the scroll, and his expression shifted slightly. The degree to which the intelligence had been integrated, as well as the depth of its deductions, far exceeded his expectations. Especially the analysis of the connection between the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path and the Ten-Tails Husk—even he had not considered that possibility.

"If I successfully infiltrate the Akatsuki, the value of this intelligence will multiply." Neji continued. "I can obtain firsthand operational plans, member assignments, even... the specific process for reviving the Ten-Tails. All you need to do is provide one introduction and a little disguise support."

"A little disguise support?" Orochimaru smiled, his expression filled with mockery. "You're infiltrating the most dangerous organization in the Shinobi World, facing a genjutsu master on Itachi Uchiha's level. Ordinary Transformation Techniques and disguises won't last even three seconds."

He took a metal box from a hidden compartment beneath the laboratory table and opened it. Inside was neither a scroll nor medicine, but a nearly transparent human-skin mask as thin as a cicada's wing, along with a pair of custom crystal lenses embedded with miniature techniques.

"This is a biological mask cultivated from White Zetsu cells." Orochimaru picked up the mask. It twitched slightly in his hand like a living creature. "Once worn, it will completely fuse with your facial skin, altering your bone structure, muscle contours, and even your pupil color. Unless you encounter the Hyuga Clan's Byakugan or the deep sight of a Sharingan, it should theoretically be impossible to see through."

Neji accepted the mask. It felt cold and slick, truly like the skin of some living creature. The inner surface was covered in miniature techniques almost invisible to the naked eye—chakra-interference runes capable of concealing the wearer's chakra signature.

"What about my eyes?" he asked. "The Byakugan's features are too obvious."

"These lenses." Orochimaru handed him the crystal pair. "Once worn, they will cover the surface of your eyeballs and alter the shape and color of your pupils. Normally, they will look like ordinary dark brown eyes. But when necessary, you can activate them with chakra—the lenses will temporarily become transparent, allowing you to use the Byakugan. However, it cannot last more than three seconds, or the technique will overheat and fail."

It was a perfect disguise plan. But it also meant that once he infiltrated the Akatsuki, he would need to hide his abilities as much as possible. He could not use the Byakugan, conspicuous Gentle Fist techniques, or the newly formed Wood Release—because all of them were too easily identifiable.

"Then what identity will I use? What abilities?" Neji asked.

"Sake." Orochimaru gave him a simple codename. "A wandering shinobi skilled in combined Water Release and Earth Release ninjutsu, possessing a special Kekkei Genkai—Petrifying Touch—which can temporarily turn anything he touches to stone. That background is distinctive enough to draw the Akatsuki's interest without directly exposing your true trump cards."

He paused before adding, "As for your introducer... Kabuto Yakushi will take you to see Sasori. Sasori and I do still have a trade channel between us, but after this, that line will be exposed. So, Neji—no, Sake—you have only one chance. If you are seen through, if you fail, I will not save you. On the contrary, to clear myself of suspicion, I may be the first one to act against you."

This was the final warning, and part of the bargain.

Neji nodded without the slightest hesitation. "Understood."

"Then one final question." Orochimaru stared at him. "Even if you infiltrate successfully, even if you obtain intelligence on the Ten-Tails, how do you plan to acquire that power? The Ten-Tails is an existence on the Sage of Six Paths' level. Even the Akatsuki can only barely control it by gathering all their strength. What makes you think you alone can take a share?"

Neji remained silent for a long time. The only sound in the laboratory was the soft gurgling of bubbles rising in the cultivation tank.

Then he spoke, his voice quiet, but every word like a nail driven into stone:

"Because I don't want the complete Ten-Tails. I only need... a little. A little of the Ten-Tails' chakra, a little of Yin-Yang Release's origin, to make up for what I lack and break through the final threshold of the Byakugan's evolution."

He raised his hand, palm upward. With a flicker of thought, five differently colored chakra lights flowed and intertwined in his palm, eventually merging into a chaotic sphere of energy brimming with terrifying vitality.

Though it was still unstable, though the wind-nature portion still flickered uncertainly.

It was the embryonic form of all-nature chakra.

"I don't need to become the Sage of Six Paths." Neji looked at the energy sphere in his palm, his gaze deep. "I only need... enough power to break the Caged Bird and gain freedom. And the Ten-Tails is the fastest shortcut down that path."

Orochimaru stared at the mass of energy, a complicated gleam flashing through his golden pupils. Greed, wariness, admiration, and a trace of... apprehension he himself refused to acknowledge.

"Three days from now," he finally said. "Kabuto will take you to the underground bounty exchange in the Land of Grass. Sasori appears there on the fifteenth of every month. During these three days, you must completely master the disguise techniques for Petrifying Touch, familiarize yourself with your new identity, and..."

He stepped to Neji's side, and his pale finger suddenly touched Neji's neck—not an attack, but the implantation of some technique. A stream of cold chakra flowed into Neji's chakra pathways, eventually gathering near his heart to form a complex Curse Mark rune.

"This is an improved Earth Curse Mark." Orochimaru withdrew his hand. "I know you have been studying sealing techniques, and the Earth Curse Mark I gave you before has already fallen dormant under the suppression of your Sage Arts. This improved Earth Curse Mark remains dormant under normal circumstances and will not affect you. But if you betray me or try to escape my control, it will activate instantly and destroy your heart. Of course, in exchange..."

He took out a small vial containing several blood-red pills. "These are suppressants. Taking one every month will ensure the Curse Mark remains stable. Once I confirm that the intelligence you bring back is valuable enough, I will give you a method to remove it permanently."

Blatant control. An undisguised transaction.

Neji accepted the vial without surprise. He had long expected this. Orochimaru was never a philanthropist; there was no way he would send out a piece of this caliber without leaving behind a safeguard.

"Deal," he said calmly.

Three days later, at the secret exit of Otogakure's underground base.

Kabuto Yakushi adjusted his glasses as he looked at the completely unfamiliar man before him—short dark-brown hair, an utterly ordinary face that would vanish into a crowd, battered armor common among wandering shinobi, and a katana strapped across his back. Only his eyes occasionally flashed with an unnatural glimmer from certain angles, the disguise lenses adjusting their focus.

"Remember," Kabuto gave his final instructions. "You are 'Sake,' a rogue shinobi from the Land of Hot Water. You were hunted after killing the daimyo's son, and with nowhere else to go, you decided to join the Akatsuki. Your Kekkei Genkai, Petrifying Touch, requires contact with the target to activate, so you excel at close combat. You hate talkative people. The less you say, the better."

"Sake" nodded without speaking.

Satisfied, Kabuto turned and led him into the tunnel leading to the surface.

After they left, Orochimaru stood before the laboratory's surveillance screen, watching that gradually receding figure as his golden pupils flickered beneath the dim light.

"All-nature chakra... Sage Arts... Wood Release... and that terrifying decisiveness." He murmured to himself, unconsciously tapping his fingers against the control panel. "Neji Hyuga, will you bring back the fruit I desire, or... become a bomb that turns around and blows me to death?"

The glowing dot on the screen vanished at the edge of the monitored range.

The shinobi codenamed "Sake" had officially embarked on a dangerous road toward the Akatsuki, the Ten-Tails, and an unknown fate.

And because of this new variable, the storm in the Shinobi World was about to unleash raging waves beyond anyone's prediction.