So where had Naruto gone?
Naruto had spent the entire day at the research institute where Orochimaru and the Second worked.
He was asking Orochimaru about Senjutsu.
Granted, Orochimaru's own Senjutsu training left him with little more than a shaky grasp of the subject.
Still, he knew a great deal about Ryūchi Cave's Sage Mode.
Naruto actually intended to forge his own path to Sage Mode, just as Hashirama had.
Hashirama's Sage Mode was not Shikkotsu Forest's Sage Mode, but he was not much of a teacher, either.
Hashirama himself was an instinctive genius.
When Naruto asked him for guidance, the God of Shinobi who had brought peace to a war-torn world scratched the back of his head and gave an answer that would have driven anyone seeking systematic instruction to despair.
"Huh? Sage Mode? I don't really know how to teach it... One day, I suddenly felt some strange energy in the air, so I tried communicating with it and absorbing it, and then... I could just do it!"
As absurd as that sounded, it pinpointed one of the key barriers to mastering advanced Sage Mode: one either needed a pure, undistracted mind like the Sage of Six Paths, capable of easily sensing and blending with natural energy.
Or one needed the indomitable will and unwavering purpose of Naruto Uzumaki, forcing a path forward through countless failures and dangers.
When it came to learning Senjutsu, Hashirama was unquestionably a genius on the level of the Sage of Six Paths.
Jiraiya and Orochimaru, on the other hand, were cautionary examples.
Jiraiya had no exceptional talent for learning Sage Mode, nor could he attain a mind free of distractions.
Combined with his easygoing nature and increasingly sporadic training, this left his Sage Mode with imperfections such as frog-like features. In emergencies,