Chakra Enhanced Strength

The Land of Gold lay southeast of the Land of Iron and northwest of the Land of Hot Water, a hilly region famed for its mineral veins.

After sailing for ten days, the merchant ship docked in the Land of Iron and was expected to remain there for about half a month.

Thus, Tsunade and her two students continued by land, crossing the border of the Land of Iron and entering this territory blanketed in mining slag and smelting smoke.

At that moment, they had stopped in an open valley far from the mines.

Low hills surrounded them, covered in drought-resistant shrubs. The ground was reddish-brown sand, leaving deep footprints wherever they stepped.

In the distance came the faint creak of mine carts rolling along their tracks, mixed with the deep rumble of the smelters.

The afternoon sun poured down without obstruction, scorching their skin.

Tsunade stood in the center of the clearing, her blonde hair casually tied behind her head. The sleeves of her loose dark-purple kimono had been bound up with thin cords, revealing her smoothly contoured forearms.

With her hands on her hips, she looked at the two students before her. Shizune wore a serious expression, while Sōji stood quietly three steps away, his eyes covered by black cloth and his posture straight.

"Chakra Enhanced Strength."

Tsunade spoke in the same stern tone she had used when teaching Shizune years ago. "The name is awful, but the principle behind it is simple."

"It means concentrating chakra to an extreme degree in a certain part of your body, then releasing it explosively at the instant of attack or movement to produce physical destructive force far beyond normal."

She raised her right hand, spreading her fingers to show them her palm.

"There are two key points."

"First, concentration. Your chakra cannot disperse. You have to twist it into a single rope and force all of it into the part of your body that needs to exert strength."

"Second, timing. You can't release it too early or too late. The instant you make contact with the target, detonate all that compressed chakra at once."

As soon as she finished speaking, Tsunade lightly pressed her right palm against a boulder beside her that stood half a person tall.

The movement was gentle, as though she were caressing it.

The next instant...

"Boom!"

The boulder exploded. Fragments of stone scattered like shrapnel, with the largest pieces flying more than ten meters away and crashing into the shrubs in a cloud of dust.

Tsunade withdrew her hand and brushed off nonexistent dust, her expression unchanged. "That's how it works. Shizune, you go first."

"Okay!"

Shizune took a deep breath and walked up to another boulder. She dropped into a horse stance, clenched her right fist, and began gathering chakra within her toward its surface.

Sōji's Six Eyes turned slightly beneath the black cloth, allowing him to see the flow of chakra inside Shizune's body.

That mass of energy started from her lower abdomen, surged through her chakra pathways toward her right arm, then hesitated slightly just before reaching her fist.

It was like water encountering a suddenly narrowed river channel. Its flow slowed sharply, and its density loosened as well.

Shizune gritted her teeth and punched the boulder.

"Bang!"

A thin crack appeared in the rock. Her fist sank roughly two inches into its surface, sending fragments flying, but the boulder itself did not move at all. Shizune pulled back her hand, her knuckles slightly red, and looked at Tsunade with some frustration.

"Your concentration isn't enough."

Tsunade frowned and commented without mercy. "Your chakra started dispersing halfway through. By the time it reached your fist, only sixty percent remained. Again."

Shizune nodded, adjusted her breathing, and gathered her chakra once more.

The second time, her chakra dispersed again when it reached her forearm. Her punch split the rock with a larger crack, but it still did not shatter.

The third time, the fourth time, the fifth time...

Half an hour passed. Sweat covered Shizune's forehead, and her knuckles had turned red. She had only knocked a corner off the boulder, still far from Tsunade's ability to shatter rock with a single palm strike.

"That's enough. Rest for a while."

Tsunade waved a hand, a hint of helplessness in her tone. "Shizune, your talent isn't bad, but Chakra Enhanced Strength requires an utterly unreasonable level of concentration."

"You're too meticulous. You care too much about the distribution of every strand of chakra, and you end up tying yourself down."

Shizune lowered her head in shame. "I'm sorry, Lady Tsunade..."

"What are you apologizing for? It's not like I scolded you."

Tsunade irritably scratched her hair, then turned her gaze toward the blindfolded boy who had been quietly observing. "Kid, you give it a try."

Yamada Soji gave a slight nod and stepped forward, stopping before a fresh boulder.

He did not move immediately. Instead, he silently observed the rock. Beneath the black cloth, his Six Eyes slowly opened—not at full power, but adjusted into analysis mode.

Within his vision, the boulder's internal structure unfolded layer by layer: the arrangement of mineral particles, the direction of its fissures, and subtle differences in density distribution.

Even the lingering traces of chakra left in the air by Tsunade's previous palm strike were clearly discernible.

At the instant that energy had contacted the rock, it had formed a perfect waveform of compression and eruption, its peak sharp and utterly clean.

He then looked within himself. Chakra flowed quietly through his pathways, mixed with wind, water, and earth attributes, yet separable. He tried drawing out a portion and gathering it in his right hand.

The feedback function of the Six Eyes activated at the same time. Every thread of chakra flow appeared in his vision with digital precision: speed, density, path deviation, concentration rate...

He saw Shizune's problem. Her chakra was too orderly. Every strand wanted to take the smoothest route, resulting in dispersion.

To achieve Tsunade's effect, however, concentration alone was not enough. It required compression.

It was like forcibly stuffing a quilt into a pillow, shrinking the distance between chakra particles without limit and squeezing them against one another until they reached their limit.

He raised his right hand and slightly spread his fingers as chakra began gathering in his palm.

But unlike Shizune's slow, steady flow, Sōji's chakra moved with a strange, leaping quality.

Rather than traveling smoothly through his chakra pathways, it seemed to be drawn by some powerful force, converging almost instantaneously.

Wave after wave surged toward his right arm, then was forcibly compressed by some power into an extremely small area in his palm.

Hmm?

Tsunade narrowed her eyes slightly.

In her perception, the chakra density in the kid's right palm was rising at an astonishing speed.

At that moment, a faint, nearly transparent glow appeared across the skin of Sōji's palm. It was visual distortion caused by the chakra density becoming too high.

He felt a slight prickling pain in his palm, the sensation of energy compressing his cells. But the feedback from his Six Eyes told him it remained within the safe threshold. He could compress it further.

He saw the peak data from Tsunade's strike, then used it as a baseline and continued compressing.

Until... it reached ninety-seven percent of that value.

That was enough. For his first attempt, he did not need to perfectly copy it. He only needed to experience that instant of eruption.

His right palm lightly pressed against the boulder.

The same movement as Tsunade's, equally gentle.

At the instant of contact, the chakra compressed to its limit erupted from that tiny point in his palm like a flood released from a dam.

"Bang—"

The terrifying boom made the nearby shrubs tremble and rustle.

The boulder exploded at the point of contact, but rather than breaking into chunks like Tsunade's, it was completely pulverized.

The entire boulder was like an explosive tag had been planted inside it, turning into countless tiny stone fragments that sprayed outward in a fan shape for three meters.

The shockwave scraped a shallow pit into the ground, and dust filled the air, blocking out a broad swath of sunlight.