Transforming Takigakure

Oguri Hayashi was right. Tsunade—or rather, Konoha—was happy to see this happen.

Once Oguri Hayashi settled down, his behavior became predictable. His movements left a trail that could be anticipated, prepared for in advance, and traced afterward.

An Oguri Hayashi with ties was far easier to deal with than one without them.

Konoha did not want a Kage-level powerhouse wandering the shinobi world without a fixed home.

And so, Oguri Hayashi settled down in Takigakure.

His residence was still quite some distance from Takigakure. He had even raised the foundation with Earth Style before building the house. It was not particularly comfortable, but it was more than enough for Oguri Hayashi.

To Tsunade, Oguri Hayashi was a strange person. He had no pursuit of material comforts. Every day, he trained himself harshly for over ten hours, and that was merely physical training. Using the Heavier Rock Technique, he had no idea how many times he had increased the gravity on his body.

Only after those ten hours did he begin practicing ninjutsu, almost entirely Lightning Style techniques. As for Konoha's Secret Scrolls, he would only begin reading through them slowly after lighting a lamp at night.

And his reading was extremely broad. Whether it was the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu or the Flying Thunder God Technique, he was deeply interested in both.

The Book of Thunder also contained a secret technique capable of direct teleportation—the Heavenly Transfer Technique.

However, this secret technique could only transport objects. The immense tearing force would rip apart the body of anyone being transported. Only physical monsters like the Third Raikage and Fourth Raikage could withstand such violent tearing.

Clearly, the Cloud Ninja's Heavenly Transfer Technique and Konoha's Flying Thunder God Technique were two completely different kinds of Space Ninjutsu. With Secret Scrolls from both villages, Oguri Hayashi gradually gained a clearer understanding of Space Ninjutsu by comparing them.

Humans were creatures of three-dimensional space and were naturally sensitive to space itself. But human talent varied, as did one's sensitivity to space. Someone like the Yellow Flash undoubtedly possessed an extraordinarily keen sense of space. He hardly needed any acquired training to develop a powerful instinct for it. Oguri Hayashi's talent was not especially high, but he had at least attended university in his previous life and had some understanding of physics and space. After studying the theoretical knowledge in the Secret Scrolls, he had gained a rough idea of how to practice the Flying Thunder God Technique.

The most important things for the Flying Thunder God Technique were theoretical knowledge and an understanding of space. If there was a third requirement, it was probably spatial markers.

Oguri Hayashi was slowly studying these things without actually using them. For most people, the Flying Thunder God Technique had been practically deified. In terms of combat power, it was indeed extremely strong, but the reason only two people had ever used it was probably because the Hokage had kept the secret technique tightly guarded.

It was like how Oguri Hayashi had thought the Rasengan required Wind Release Chakra to use. But after reading the theory in the scroll, he discovered that the Rasengan could actually be practiced with ordinary Chakra. Yet even all the way into Boruto, only a few people could use it. Like the Flying Thunder God, it was probably due to the secrecy surrounding inherited ninjutsu.

Otherwise, could a village as large as Konoha really fail to produce even two or three ninja capable of learning the Flying Thunder God Technique?

And just like the Rasengan, which had only ever been used by a handful of people from beginning to end, the Flying Thunder God Technique had likewise only been used by two people. Both belonged to the Hokage's direct lineage of masters and disciples. The Rasengan was the same: Jiraiya, the Fourth Hokage, Kakashi, and Naruto Uzumaki, passed down in one line.

At the end of the day, the ninja of the Hokage world were much like the martial arts world of China. They clung to sect rules and passed everything down through a single lineage. Those outside the direct line were forbidden from learning.

And regrettably, although Naruto constantly spoke of bringing peace to the shinobi world, he had only developed the economy and made no particularly outstanding institutional reforms. That could only be called a limitation of Naruto—or perhaps a limitation of Kishimoto.

Oguri Hayashi could either directly enter the Hokage's inner circle and take someone like Tsunade or Orochimaru as his teacher, or carve out his own path and open a road no one before him had traveled.

If Oguri Hayashi still had the Chakra reserves of an ordinary Chunin, then forget becoming Tsunade's or Orochimaru's disciple—even Jiraiya, who liked taking in civilian ninja, would not have thought much of him.

Or perhaps Oguri Hayashi could have proposed some earth-shattering theory and attracted Orochimaru's interest. But that was not the path he wanted. He wanted to grow stronger, but he did not want to be controlled by others. He could take the initiative to help others, but he did not like being forced into anything.

In his eyes, Konoha had far too many problems, from its systems to its people. Of course, that was from the perspective of a modern person. In the past, Oguri Hayashi might have muddled through the Third Shinobi World War and safely coasted into Naruto's era. But now that his fate had changed, he would never compromise with destiny again.

He gradually began learning to master the Flying Thunder God Technique, but his primary goal remained training his body.

People his age needed large amounts of protein and nutrition. In Konoha, he could exchange money for such things, but in this village, he had to directly demand food and other necessities from the Waterfall Ninja.

Although he was their nominal leader, directly demanding things and squeezing the villagers like this would still provoke their anger and resistance.

What Oguri Hayashi wanted was a complete supply system. The entire village's productivity needed to become highly developed so it could support him, allowing him to focus solely on becoming stronger without engaging in production himself. Once he became strong, he could in turn protect the entire village.

But there was a huge flaw in that logic. Even without Oguri Hayashi, Takigakure had been doing perfectly well. His so-called protection was therefore greatly diminished in value.

So rather than protecting the Waterfall Ninja, the first thing Oguri Hayashi needed to do was increase Takigakure's productivity.

He gathered all the Waterfall Ninja and held a meeting led by himself. Tsunade attended as well, wanting to hear what kind of trouble Oguri Hayashi was planning this time.

"The topic of this meeting is very simple," Oguri Hayashi said, looking at the several dozen Waterfall Ninja standing before him.

"Takigakure has too few people and too little cultivable land. Without land, we cannot feed people. Therefore, as the pillars of Takigakure, we must change this."