Medicinal Baths and Spandex, One Point Four Meters at Age Six

When Naruto floated into his rented apartment, his feet felt like they were barely touching the ground.

Although the father-in-law still stubbornly held onto the phrase that Hinata was going to take over the Hyuga Clan in the future and could not marry outside, Naruto knew clearly in his heart that this matter would inevitably loosen up sooner or later.

That old man Hyuga Hiashi hated the rotten rules of the main and branch families right down to his bones.

If pushed into a real corner, it would not even be out of the question to marry in and take both sisters.

Anyway, the name Naruto Uzumaki originally followed his mother's surname.

In the Naruto World, commoners and women basically had no such thing as a surname, and even someone as prominent as Tsunade did not inherit the surname of the Senju Clan.

Wearing the two characters of Uzumaki was completely useless aside from giving people from other villages a few more reasons to hold grudges, as if the sealing arts of the Uzumaki Clan were not already famous enough outside.

Speaking of which, the reason he had never gone to find Might Guy to train before boiled down to money.

The eight-word saying that literary pursuits require poverty while martial arts require wealth was an iron-clad truth.

High-intensity training crushed the physique, and without a sufficient amount of medicinal herbs to replenish the body, hidden injuries would pile up until a person was ruined, and they could forget about ever growing taller.

Being only one meter four at twelve years old was already miserable enough, and if he trained himself to death on top of that, training until he became a third-class disabled person would truly be the end.

Even though ninjas generally did not grow very tall due to the nature of assassination work, he was a transmigrator, so no matter what he had to secure a one-eighty-centimeter frame.

He did not demand to be as exaggerated as the Raikage, but no matter what, it could not be lower than one meter eight.

As for that Nine-Tails Chakra self-healing stuff, it ran along the exact same path as Tsunade's Creation Rebirth.

To put it bluntly, it urged cells to divide at a faster rate, and it was only because Naruto was young and had the Yang Release Chakra of Asura holding down the bottom in his body that the side effects did not surface.

Unless it was an absolute last resort, this thing was something he would use as little as possible.

Now things were different.

The Hyuga Clan had nodded, and he no longer needed to penny-pinch and calculate when it came to money.

Therefore, when Naruto put on that pitch-black spandex suit and stood in front of Might Guy, Guy pulled Naruto straight into his arms and started crying and howling.

"Youth! Ah, ah! Head in the direction of the setting sun, and squander the sweat of our youth for all it's worth!"

From that day on, alongside that Blue Beast who howled endlessly all day long, the outskirts of Konoha gained another little kid who gritted his back teeth and endured stubbornly.

When commoners and some minor ninja clans saw Naruto training like this, they rolled their eyes all the way up to the backs of their heads.

In that mindset of theirs, ninjutsu ultimately called the shots in the Naruto World.

No matter how fiercely you trained your taijutsu, could you catch ninjutsu with your bare hands?

No matter how brutal your strength, once I wrapped chakra around my fist, you still wouldn't be able to withstand it.

Therefore, even with an example like Might Duy laid out right there, ninjas who relied on taijutsu to make a name for themselves like Might Guy were still looked down upon by them.

Just listening to the nickname gave the whole thing away—Blue Beast—and those two characters for "beast" were certainly not used as a compliment.

Yet Naruto did not care.

He understood better than anyone that a physique capable of taking a beating could multiply one's strength several times over.

Besides, since he had no cheat codes in his hands, the Eight Gates Released Formation alone was enough to make him push through everyone's disdain and train hard.

The scene of Might Guy shaking the Six Paths with a mortal body back then was burned into the minds of countless Naruto fans and could never be erased.

He was someone destined to climb to the Six Paths level.

To open the Eight Gates with a body at the Six Paths level—if Madara Uchiha's head took a kick, it would probably shatter on the spot.

Add in the dual bottom-backing of Nine-Tails Chakra and Asura Chakra, and a reckless move like Night Guy might not necessarily kill him.

Once he climbed to that Six Paths tier, tossing out Night Guy as a basic attack was not even out of the question.

Pondering it like this, the bit of embarrassment brought by the spandex suit did not seem quite so grating anymore.

Naruto thus transformed from a homebody otaku into a fitness-obsessed maniac who disregarded his own life.

Aside from eating and sleeping, as long as Guy was not out on a mission, he threw himself into Guy's drilling and trained himself to death.

Every day he would not stop until things went black before his eyes and he collapsed, and in the end Guy always carried him back to the Hyuga Clan.

Hyuga Hiashi did not say a word, simply shoving him straight into the medicinal bath barrel prepared in advance, relying on those medicinal decoctions to mend the damage worn down by high-intensity training.

It was only thanks to the medical arts of the Nara Clan sustaining the foundation that, if it were his past life, training to death at such a young age would have long since stiffened his frame and kept him from ever shooting up in height.

Yet nurtured by the medicinal bath of a ninja clan, not only was Naruto not trained into a cripple, but his physique instead left children of his own age completely in the dust.

After consuming over two years, Naruto at age six had already shot up to one meter four, catching up to the height he had back when he graduated at twelve.

One had to know that in the Naruto World, kids from ninja clans mostly failed to grow tall because they started training early, and a normal Naruto at graduation was at most around one meter forty-five.

During these past two years, aside from hammering away at taijutsu, Naruto also periodically went to beat up Sasuke to relieve his boredom, along the way taking advantage of the situation to freeload on the shuriken-jutsu classes Itachi Uchiha taught Sasuke.

The shuriken techniques of the Uchiha Clan were notoriously rigorous, and for this kind of free ride, it would be a waste not to freeload.

Days thus flipped past one by one, utterly ordinary, until Naruto finally awaited the day he would step through the doors of the Ninja Academy.