[You chose option one: storm the Heavenly Sage Dynasty and abduct the Saintess. Mission complete. Reward: Flying Thunder God Technique.]
They had just left the Heavenly Sage Dynasty aboard the Wood Dragon.
They were on their way back to the Land of Ancestors.
Throughout the journey, Abe Kiyuki had been subdued, clutching her little fox.
There was no telling what she was thinking.
The girl who had chattered incessantly ever since leaving the Wind-Snow Realm
had fallen unusually silent.
There was no way to comfort her over something like this, though, and Yuya was happy to enjoy the quiet.
Taking advantage of the time, Yuya began studying the Flying Thunder God Formula.
As the reward for his choice was issued,
a wealth of insights into the Flying Thunder God Technique flooded Yuya's mind.
The Flying Thunder God Technique was a special spatial formula,
known as the Flying Thunder God Formula.
By inscribing this formula on an object, one could use it as a medium to open the spatial node where the formula was located. The usual medium was a kunai.
Activating the Flying Thunder God Formula again and sensing the location of the original formula allowed the user to teleport instantly to the marked location.
Notably, the formula could teleport not only the caster, but also objects indirectly connected to the caster through their chakra.
This opened up even more possibilities for the Flying Thunder God Technique.
It could be used for teleportation, attacks, disruption, and surprise assaults on opponents.
It could also shorten the distance of long-range ninjutsu and transport targets.
Those targets included an opponent's ninjutsu.
One example was the teleportation of the Nine-Tails' Tailed Beast Bomb during the tailed beast disaster.
It required no hand seals to activate, either, making it undeniably powerful.
Writing and inscribing the Flying Thunder God Formula
was not complicated. For Yuya, a single glance was enough to learn it.
The difficult part was locating spatial nodes.
At its core, the formula merely guided the caster to use chakra along its prescribed pathways to open a spatial node.
The key point was that it only provided guidance, not a guarantee.
That was why the requirements for learning the Flying Thunder God Technique were so extraordinarily high.
In all of Naruto, only the Second and Fourth Hokage had mastered it.
Most ninja, even with the guidance of the Flying Thunder God Formula,
could not locate spatial nodes.
It required exceptional insight... and a special constitution!
A constitution that could resonate with the curvature of space and sense spatial nodes.
Throughout Naruto, there had been countless gifted ninja.
Madara, Hashirama, Orochimaru, Itachi, Shisui, Kakashi before the age of twelve...
Which of them had not possessed extraordinary talent?
Yet only the Second and Fourth Hokage had managed to master it.
The reason was that no one besides those two possessed a constitution capable of sensing space.
Unfortunately, Yuya did not possess that constitution either...
Asking him to sense space now was like asking a blind man to identify an elephant by touch.
He had the formula, but could not activate it.
With his mastery of chakra, he wrote out the Flying Thunder God Formula without the slightest error.
He circulated his chakra along the formula's pathways in sequence.
Yet he still could not sense the location of a spatial node.
He wanted to curse. What the hell was the point of giving him the Flying Thunder God Formula without changing his constitution...?
The fact that the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, had learned the Flying Thunder God Formula despite his civilian background
showed that this ninjutsu was openly available to learn... because even if they let you learn it, you still could not master it...
The valuable thing had never been the formula...
It was the constitution that could sense space...
So giving him nothing but a formula now
was this some kind of joke?
Atop the Wood Dragon, Yuya sat cross-legged.
His brows furrowed slightly, and a rare disturbance appeared in his aura,
revealing the unrest within him.
I refuse to believe Space-Time Ninjutsu is beyond my reach!
It was a rare inward complaint from Yuya.
His development of ninjutsu had always gone smoothly.
How could he stumble over Space-Time Ninjutsu today?
If he could not learn Flying Thunder God, his only option in the future would be to awaken the Mangekyo.
And even then, he did not know whether he would gain Space-Time Ninjutsu.
That was why he placed such importance on Flying Thunder God.
Suppressing his many thoughts,
Yuya stopped hesitating and began studying the Flying Thunder God Formula.
He already knew the formula's structure inside out.
He could even write it backward without difficulty.
Now, he began deriving and expanding upon the formula.
He wanted to see whether he could find a better way to open spatial nodes.
A little over ten minutes later,
his brows were still tightly furrowed.
But without realizing it, on the wall of air before him,
he had written countless intricate, tadpole-like formulas in chakra.
They were many times more complicated than the original Flying Thunder God Formula.
A single glance was enough to make anyone's scalp prickle.
These were the extensions and modifications he had made based on the Flying Thunder God Formula.
Even with this formula, he could only just sense a faint spatial fluctuation.
Fortunately, though, it was compatible with an ordinary constitution like his.
He buried himself in thought again,
making more alterations on the wall of air before him.
After seven or eight minutes,
the formula before him remained complex, but had been completely transformed.
This time, with the formula's help, he could finally sense spatial fluctuations.
In other words, fully activating this formula would allow him to teleport through space.
But running such a complicated formula would take far too long, rendering it pointless.
It could, however, serve as a fixed teleportation method with a startup delay.
Using it in actual combat was out of the question.
Sure enough, Yuya remained dissatisfied and began experimenting and researching again.
This time, he removed some of the cumbersome, useless formulas.
He kept the essential core, stripping away complexity in favor of simplicity.
He barely needed to think.
Every second, Yuya deleted or replaced large numbers of formulas.
After about three minutes,
he had removed more than half of the formulas before him.
Activating the formula now would take around ten seconds.
Yuya did not stop.
Only when he had reduced the activation time to one second
did he pause.
There was nothing left to remove. Deleting or replacing any further part of the formula
would interfere with opening the spatial node.
Although it was not instantaneous, any ordinary ninja who mastered this formula could now use it.
It had become universally accessible.
[Thanks to your extraordinary insight, your improvements have greatly reduced the restrictions on using the Flying Thunder God Technique.]
"Is the Flying Thunder God approach a dead end?"
Yuya murmured to himself.
This was not the result he wanted. A ninja's battle changed in an instant; even the slightest startup delay was unacceptable and would greatly diminish its effectiveness in combat.
Yet, working from Flying Thunder God... this was the limit of what an ordinary person could master.
A moment later, he sank into thought again.
This time, he completely abandoned the Flying Thunder God approach.
He even replaced some of its core formulas entirely.
Previously, he had built upon Flying Thunder God, innovating and improving it.
But this time,
he attempted to develop a spatial formula entirely different from Flying Thunder God.
He had already fully analyzed the Flying Thunder God Formula. With his previous experience,
creating another spatial formula suited to his constitution would not be difficult.
This time, a full ten minutes passed
before Yuya opened his eyes.
A new understanding shone in them.
In the next instant, ripples spread through space.
He vanished directly from the dragon's head.
When he reappeared, he was already ten li away.
"Did it work...?"
Yuya murmured. Even he
could not keep a flicker of delight from his eyes.
[Thanks to your extraordinary insight, you have created Space-Time Ninjutsu: Instant.] [Arrive instantly anywhere within your sensory range or wherever your chakra remains.] [Rating: SS-rank.]
Not only had he created a spatial seal unique to himself,
he had engraved it within his mental sea, merging it with his aura until it became instinct.
He no longer needed to inscribe a formula and rely on a medium to teleport through space as the Flying Thunder God Technique required.
Instead, anywhere within his sensory range, or anywhere he had visited,
or anywhere he had left chakra, was a place he could reach instantly.
It also retained every function of the original Flying Thunder God Technique.
The next moment, Yuya appeared on the dragon's back again.
He teleported beside Abe Kiyuki
and dispelled the Wood Dragon Technique.
Before Abe Kiyuki could react,
the world shifted again... They had already... arrived in a country.
Creating Space-Time Ninjutsu, even for him,
had been no small challenge.
Fortunately, it had yielded considerable results.
Now, he would soon head to the Wind-Snow Realm. He very much wanted to see Princess Kaguya...
Before you continue