No, I Want to Learn the Principles!

Beneath a steep, perilous cliff outside Konoha.

This was usually an uninhabited wasteland, but now it was filled with the teeth-grinding crackle of electric currents and the dull explosions of shattering rock.

"Bzzz—boom!"

A dazzling blue-white flash of lightning flickered across the cliff face, followed by a spray of shattered stone.

Uchiha Sasuke knelt on one knee, gasping for breath. His left hand was still trembling slightly, with a few lingering arcs dancing at his fingertips and crackling. Sweat slid down his stern face, dripping onto the scorching rocks and evaporating instantly.

"Still not enough..." Sasuke gritted his teeth, his eyes filled with unwillingness. "Just maintaining the chakra's shape transformation has already drained all my focus, let alone achieving a thrusting speed too fast for the naked eye to follow."

Not far away, Kakashi Hatake, who had been leaning against a dead tree reading Make-Out Paradise, closed his book. His single eye curved into a crescent.

"Well, don't be in such a hurry, Sasuke."

Kakashi walked over and glanced at the shallow scorched crater in the cliff face. "Lightning Cutter... or rather, Chidori, is an S-rank ultimate technique. It requires the user to possess a huge amount of chakra, supreme nature transformation, and... physical vitality capable of matching it. You've already done very well to reach this point."

"Not enough! It's nowhere near enough!" Sasuke clenched his fists, and the image of that red-haired figure carrying a gourd surfaced in his mind. "An attack at that level can't possibly break Gaara's absolute defense!"

Just as master and student fell into a brief standoff and the atmosphere grew heavy.

"Ahem... um, sorry to interrupt."

A weak voice, one that even sounded slightly airy, suddenly came from behind a nearby thicket.

Kakashi and Sasuke turned their heads at the same time.

Ye Tian was making his way over, leaning on that branch cane polished smooth from use, carrying a huge bamboo basket on his back, and swaying with every step. His face was still characteristically pale, and he held a steaming multi-tiered food container in one hand.

"Ye Tian? Why are you here?" Kakashi asked in surprise.

"Ahem... I came to deliver some warmth."

Ye Tian sat down before a flat stone as though those few steps had exhausted all his strength.

He opened the food container, and an intense medicinal-cuisine fragrance, strong enough to stir the appetite buried deep within one's soul, instantly exploded through the training ground's burnt odor.

"I heard from Naruto that you were training here, so I thought... ahem, as teammates, I should at least handle some logistical support."

Ye Tian took out a bowl of crystal-clear braised pork and several delicate side dishes. "This is my special 'Qi-Replenishing and Blood-Nourishing Set Meal.' It's made with angelica, astragalus, and the marrow of some... ahem, unspeakably ferocious beast."

In truth, it was just some scraps of boar demon beast meat that he had secretly stashed away in the Land of Waves.

"Grrr..."

Sasuke's stomach let out a thunderous roar with astonishingly poor timing.

Uchiha Sasuke, who had still been trying to maintain his cool facade, instantly flushed red. He had spent the entire morning undergoing intense Lightning Release training, and his stamina and chakra had long since been depleted. Faced with food containing Spiritual Energy, his body's instinctive reaction was simply impossible to suppress.

"Um... I'm not hungry..." Sasuke stubbornly insisted.

"Enough. Eat." Kakashi was completely unceremonious as he flashed over and picked up a bowl of rice. "Even Lord Hokage has praised Ye Tian's cooking. It'll get cold if you don't eat now."

Watching Kakashi feast heartily, Sasuke finally dropped his restraint. He picked up his chopsticks and began eating at a pace that looked elegant but was, in reality, ravenous.

As the food entered his stomach, a warm current swiftly spread through his limbs and bones. The meridians in his left hand, which had gone somewhat numb from the Lightning Release backlash, began rapidly recovering under that warm current's nourishment. His chakra recovery speed also increased severalfold.

"This food..." Sasuke looked at Ye Tian in shock.

"Don't look at me like that. It'll give you indigestion."

Ye Tian smiled as he drank Goji Berry Tea from his thermos. His seemingly clouded eyes, however, looked past Sasuke and fixed intently on Kakashi's left hand.

When Kakashi had demonstrated Chidori earlier, Ye Tian's Divine Sense had still been far away, but it had caught a trace of an extremely violent lightning-attribute fluctuation.

"Kakashi-sensei."

Ye Tian suddenly spoke. Though his tone remained weak, it carried a hint of probing curiosity. "That technique just now... was it the legendary Lightning Cutter that once severed lightning itself?"

"Hm? You've heard of it too?" Kakashi set down his bowl and chopsticks, somewhat surprised.

"I've heard a little." Ye Tian put down his thermos and leaned forward slightly. "Could you... demonstrate it once more, Sensei? Ahem... I'm very interested in techniques that push chakra nature transformation to its extreme. Perhaps... from a medical perspective, I could offer Sasuke some advice."

"A medical perspective?" Sasuke was startled.

Kakashi pondered for a moment before nodding. "All right. Sasuke, watch carefully. This time, I'll slow down the chakra flow."

Kakashi stood and walked toward the cliff face.

He took a deep breath.

Ox—Rabbit—Monkey...

Following a series of complex hand seals, Kakashi abruptly pressed his left hand downward and tightly gripped his wrist with his other hand.

"Bzzzzzzz—!!!"

In an instant, countless blue-white electric currents erupted from his palm, like a hundred birds crying out at once. The piercing high-frequency noise made their eardrums ache, and even the surrounding air was ionized into a pale blue.

[Lightning Release: Chidori!]

"Can you see it clearly?" Kakashi did not attack immediately, instead maintaining the lightning in his hand.

By then, Ye Tian had already activated Heavenly Eye in his mind.

Within his Divine Sense vision, that mass of blue lightning was infinitely magnified and broken down.

He saw how chakra was forcibly compressed, rubbed together, and stimulated within the meridians before ultimately transforming into a violent lightning-attribute ionic current. He also saw how the muscle fibers in Kakashi's arm trembled at high frequency under the lightning's stimulation to maintain that extremely unstable form.

"So that's how it is..."

Understanding dawned on Ye Tian, though he secretly shook his head as well.

"This technique's principles are too crude. It relies entirely on brute-forcing it with immense chakra reserves and physical strength. It's like holding a grenade with the pin pulled and charging into someone. The power is great, but it deals a thousand damage to the enemy while inflicting eight hundred on yourself."

"And..."

Ye Tian watched the movement that Kakashi could only lock onto with the Sharingan and reached a conclusion.

"A straight-line thrust moves so quickly that it blurs the user's vision. That is Chidori's greatest weakness. In the cultivation world, unless this kind of straightforward Thunder Arts is fast enough to reach the absolute extreme, it can easily be predicted."

A few seconds later, Kakashi dispersed the lightning in his hand.

"What do you think? Any ideas?" Kakashi looked at Ye Tian. He did not expect a Genin who could not use ninjutsu to see anything significant, but Ye Tian's previous performances gave him a trace of expectation.

"Ahem... it's flashy, and it's dangerous."

Ye Tian pointed at Sasuke's arm and began his serious "cultivation theory con."

"Sasuke, the reason you keep failing is because you're too fixated on being 'fast' and 'sharp.'"

"Fast and sharp?" Sasuke frowned. "Isn't the essence of Chidori an ultra-fast thrust?"

"That's ninja thinking."

Ye Tian shook his head, picked up a discarded ninja tool with a magnet attached from the ground, then picked up an iron nail.

"Lightning creates magnetism, and magnetism creates electricity. That is a fundamental law of heaven and earth."

Ye Tian brought the magnet close to the iron nail, and the nail was instantly drawn toward it.

"Chidori's essence is the high-intensity activation of Lightning Release. If, in that process, you can slightly alter the chakra's frequency and mix a trace of 'magnetic force' into the lightning's properties..."

Ye Tian stared into Sasuke's eyes, his voice full of temptation.

"You won't need to run so fast and ram into people. You only need to create a magnetic field, turning your hand into a magnetic pole. Your enemy's weapons, or even the iron elements in their bodies, will automatically be drawn toward you, or... pulled by your lightning."

"This is—Thunder Manipulation."

Boom!

Those words exploded in Sasuke and Kakashi's minds like a thunderclap.

"Adding magnetic force to Lightning Release... using a magnetic field to pull..." Kakashi's single eye suddenly widened. As its creator, he instantly realized the feasibility of this theory, as well as the terrifying potential it represented!

If it could truly be done, Chidori would no longer be a simple thrusting technique. It would become a perfect ninjutsu capable of control, tracking, and even defense!

Wasn't this... the embryonic form of Magnet Release?

"How... how did you come up with that?" Sasuke stared at Ye Tian in disbelief, as though meeting this sickly youth for the first time.

"Ahem... read more books, read more newspapers." Ye Tian weakly waved a hand. "When I was recovering in the hospital, I read many scientific magazines about thunderstorms... That's the power of knowledge."

But what scientific magazines? These were clearly the basic application principles behind Gengjin Divine Thunder and Magnetic Origin Thunderclap from the cultivation world's Thunder Arts.

Sasuke sank into deep thought, the light in his eyes growing brighter and brighter. It was as though he saw a brand-new road unfolding beneath his feet.

"I understand... Thank you." Sasuke gave Ye Tian a nod, an exceedingly rare gesture from him, then turned and walked toward the cliff face once more to begin a new round of attempts.

Watching the master and student working enthusiastically over there, Ye Tian's lips curled slightly.

"The seed has been planted. Whether it can bear fruit will depend on Uchiha Sasuke's fortune."

Ye Tian slowly stood and packed up the food container.

"Now that the food has been delivered, I'll head back first. I still need to brew medicine... ahem..."

After bidding farewell to Kakashi and Sasuke, Ye Tian did not head straight home.

He turned into a dense forest. Once he was certain no one was nearby and that ANBU was not monitoring him, he stopped walking.

The weakness on his face instantly vanished, replaced by excitement that he could not conceal.

"Lightning Release: Chidori... the ultimate compression of nature transformation..."

Ye Tian extended his right hand, palm upward.

He did not mobilize chakra. Instead, he drew upon the liquefied fifth-layer Spiritual Power within his Dantian.

"A cultivator's Thunder Arts are about invoking heaven and earth's might, wielding lightning with Divine Sense."

"Though I haven't reached Foundation Establishment yet and cannot summon heavenly lightning, I can use the compression principle I secretly learned just now, combined with the conversion of my Fire Spirit Root..."

Ye Tian closed his eyes, focusing his Divine Sense intensely upon a single point in his palm.

Buzz—

There was none of Chidori's noisy birdlike chirping, nor was there any violent, overflowing chakra fluctuation.

Instead, strands of golden electric arcs began silently dancing within Ye Tian's palm.

Unlike blue chakra lightning, these golden arcs were tiny, yet they carried an utterly yang and unyielding sacred aura, as if they could judge all evil.

They were produced purely through the compression and friction of Spiritual Energy—

[Golden Light Palm Lightning!]

Ye Tian compressed that cluster of golden lightning tightly in his palm until it was only the size of a walnut, yet the energy density it contained was several times greater than Kakashi's Chidori from earlier!

"Go!"

Ye Tian gave a soft shout. His palm did not touch anything; he merely pushed through the air toward a massive boulder beside him.

Whoosh!

A streak of golden lightning shot forth like a swimming dragon.

Puff.

A faint muffled sound rang out.

There was no explosion, no spray of shattered stone.

A small hole had appeared at the center of the two-person-tall granite boulder, piercing clean through from front to back. Its edges were smooth as a mirror and had even vitrified under the intense heat.

"Penetrating power... full marks."

Ye Tian stepped forward, looked at the small hole, and nodded in satisfaction. "And it's silent and extremely fast to activate. If anyone dares sneak up on me at close range in the future, one Palm Lightning strike to their chest will make sure their heart stops on the spot."

"This is the cultivation-enhanced version of Chidori. Or perhaps it should be called... Silent Thunderclap?"

Ye Tian withdrew his hand. Roughly twenty percent of the Spiritual Power in his body had been consumed.

"The power's good, but it costs a bit too much mana. Looks like I'll need to find a way to refine more Qi-Replenishing Pills."

Ye Tian brushed the dust from himself, resumed his sickly appearance, and walked out of the forest with his cane.

By then, the sun was setting.

Konoha was dyed blood-red.

Ye Tian raised his head to look at the round moon about to rise over the horizon, his eyes flickering slightly.

"Judging by the time... that Sound Ninja named Dosu should be getting impatient and preparing to challenge Gaara soon, right?"

"That Sonic Wave Armguard on his hand... would make a fine raw material for artifact refinement. It'd be a shame if Gaara simply crushed it."

Ye Tian touched the Flying Sword that had only just begun taking shape inside his sleeve, a special smile for scavenging appearing at the corner of his mouth.

"The moonlight is beautiful tonight... perfect for picking up bargains."