A Last-Ditch Counterattack and the Chakra Extraction Technique

"You poisoned it? Impossible! You never touched that wild boar!" Takeda Kenichi shouted, glaring at Lu Zeming.

"I did touch it. How else would it have shown up right in your path? You only eat game you've hunted yourselves. I went to a lot of trouble to lure that boar over!"

As he spoke, Lu Zeming pulled a newly weaned piglet from his clothes and tossed it to Rin. He told her to take the other children farther away, in case the three ninjas lashed out before they died.

Takeda Kenichi still refused to believe it. "Impossible. When we found the boar, it showed no signs of poisoning!"

Lu Zeming explained patiently, "That's why I chose ricin. It takes three or four hours to take effect, and it can withstand high temperatures."

"I wanted to use aconitine, but it breaks down when heated. Luckily, I found castor beans. Otherwise, this would've been a real headache!"

"Next, your stomachs will hurt more and more. You'll start retching, then vomiting blood. Don't worry. That's normal when your organs are failing."

Takeda Kenichi snarled, "I never thought the three of us would fall to a brat like you!"

Lu Zeming shook his head. "I wouldn't call it yet. Celebrating at halftime isn't my style. You may only be Genin, but you're still far too dangerous for an ordinary person like me."

"Oh, right. I've been talking this much to give the poison more time to work. What have you been waiting for?"

Damn it! All three jolted. How was this kid so sharp?

They had hoped to stall while gathering chakra to speed up their metabolism and heal their bodies. They hadn't expected the kid to catch on.

Before they could think further, Lu Zeming sprang toward the nearest of them, Hiranaka Shun, like a young leopard.

"So you're the bastard who hit me in the head!"

Lu Zeming brought his blade down, forcing Hiranaka Shun to block with a kunai.

Hiranaka Shun's arms trembled faintly from the poison.

Lu Zeming twisted his blade and slashed toward his neck.

The instant the blade struck, Hiranaka Shun's body vanished with a pop, leaving a wooden stump behind.

"The Substitution Technique. Interesting." Lu Zeming turned toward Hiranaka Shun, who had put some distance between them.

Having just used chakra, Hiranaka Shun could no longer hold back the poison. He spat out a mouthful of blood.

The other two showed no sign of helping him.

"Hiranaka Shun, hold him off! We'll help you once we've cleared the poison!"

Hiranaka Shun spat out another mouthful of blood at those words, nearly dying of rage.

Lu Zeming attacked Hiranaka Shun again while the other two focused on purging the poison.

But as time passed, their faces only grew more strained.

"How can this be? Chakra isn't working at all!"

Lu Zeming seized the chance to speak. "I forgot to mention: ricin is a ribosome-inactivating protein. It irreversibly blocks protein synthesis. Oh, you don't understand? Put simply, the more you speed up your metabolism, the faster you'll die."

"The poison attacks organs with high metabolic rates first: the liver, kidneys, intestines and lymph tissue. The bone marrow comes last!"

The three of them were terrified.

Hiranaka Shun showed it most clearly. Already at the end of his strength, he lost focus for an instant. Lu Zeming's blade caught him in the neck, killing him on the spot.

Takeda Kenichi and Hato Ryosuke exchanged a look. Knowing they had no hope of clearing the poison, they decided to take Lu Zeming down with them.

But by then, they could barely stand. Blood kept spilling from their mouths.

Their retching grew worse and worse, as though they might vomit up their organs. They were drenched in blood.

Filled with anger and unwillingness to die, the two collapsed and stopped breathing.

Lu Zeming still wasn't satisfied. He gave each of them another cut across the neck.

Then he turned to their packs. It was time to collect the spoils.

Less than ten thousand ryo in banknotes—roughly five thousand RMB in purchasing power—along with a dozen or so kunai and a handful of shuriken.

"What a bunch of paupers. Not even one Explosive Tag!"

Lu Zeming found no forehead protectors and guessed they were unaffiliated wandering ninjas. At last, though, he found a copy of the Chakra Extraction Technique.

Unfortunately, Lu Zeming couldn't read the writing. He asked the other children traveling with him, but none of them could read it either.

Getting someone else to help was out of the question. Fortunately, many of the characters resembled Chinese ones. He couldn't decipher every word, but between the context and what he remembered from his previous life, he could work out the gist.

This clearly wasn't the time to read. Lu Zeming had the other children gather dead branches. After burning the three ninjas' bodies, he led everyone to another cave for the night.

Once he had arranged shifts for keeping watch, Lu Zeming read the book by firelight.

It opened by explaining that chakra was formed by mixing physical and spiritual energy in the body's meridians at a certain ratio.

It described how to sit cross-legged and meditate, how to breathe and how to sense those two forms of energy.

Following the diagrams, Lu Zeming sat cross-legged and began to meditate. He sensed neither form of energy, but he did enter his Inner Landscape.

Before he could puzzle over it, the natural energy drifting around him surged toward him. It was more than a hundred times faster than catching it bit by bit as he used to.

Soon, that natural energy gathered into a cloud at his dantian.

At the sight, Lu Zeming cried out, "Cultivation!"

He was so excited he nearly leaped to his feet.

What truly ruled the Naruto World? Not the Will of Fire, and certainly not bonds. It was bloodlines. Whoever had the strongest bloodline called the shots.

Ordinarily, no matter how hard Lu Zeming worked without a special bloodline, he would reach the level of a Chunin at best.

But if he abandoned chakra and cultivated instead, he could surpass them on an entirely different level.

Just look at the toads of Mount Myoboku, the white snakes of Ryuchi Cave and the Slugs of Shikkotsu Forest. The possibilities for cultivation were immense.

"What natural energy? This is obviously spirit energy!"

Alongside his excitement, Lu Zeming faced a new problem.

What was he supposed to do without a cultivation manual?

I'm not like Orochimaru. I don't have a pile of test subjects to experiment on.

At that thought, Lu Zeming turned his attention to the tiny figure in his Inner Landscape.

He had once assumed it was simply a manifestation of his body there. After observing it for some time, though, he realized that wasn't quite right.

The tiny figure was more like a test dummy.

When he used to climb the mountain for herbs and chop firewood, Lu Zeming always ended up with an aching back.

Each night, he would guide the tiny figure through different ways of exerting force until he found the right one. The red marks around its waist would soon disappear.

If he could test how to exert force, could he also test cultivation methods? Could he test techniques?

Lu Zeming could barely contain his excitement. If he could, then even a master of forbidden techniques would have nothing on him.

He guided spirit energy through the tiny figure's meridians. The next instant, red warnings flared across its acupoints.

Lu Zeming checked his physical body. Nothing was wrong.

So problems with his body could affect the tiny figure, but problems with the tiny figure would not affect his real body!

The experiment worked. Lu Zeming was overjoyed.

He began testing routes one after another. If one failed, he tried another, working through the twenty major meridians, fifteen collateral channels and 361 acupuncture points.

"No, no. I can't do too much. My body's still too weak. I should stick to the major meridians and build a solid foundation first."

"I can't skip the Ren and Du meridians. Then through the Chong meridian, into the Yang Linking and Yin Linking meridians, and finally back to the dantian."

As soon as Lu Mingze finished speaking, the spirit energy gathered at the tiny figure's dantian began circulating on its own.

A bullet could only hurt someone if he had a gun to fire it.

Lu Zeming immediately flipped to the end of the Chakra Extraction Technique and found the section on the Three Body Technique.

Learning the Three Body Technique was secondary. What Lu Zeming really wanted was to learn how it released power.