At four in the morning, a lamp was lit inside a room on the first floor of Danzo's residence, where Xue Ge sat sketching and writing against a diagram of human acupuncture meridians.
Ninjutsu was a major pain point for him. Using ninjutsu was different from simply controlling chakra; it required making chakra circulate through the body in a specific form before a ninjutsu could be released.
Yet Xue Ge's body was already disabled, with incomplete meridians. Under such conditions, chakra circulation was extremely prone to imbalance, and during every operation Xue Ge understood the principles and knew how it should be handled, but each time he attempted it he fell short due to his physical condition.
Unfurling a ninjutsu scroll with his other hand, Xue Ge felt that the research he had been conducting since his days of training in hell was finally showing some promise.
The beginning of ninjutsu scrolls taught various hand seals, and ninjutsu releases were formed from different sequences of hand seals. In other words, the so-called seals were actually a kind of unit, and a ninjutsu was composed of multiple such units. The process of forming seals was essentially the process of mobilizing chakra, so a single unit could be viewed as a chakra flow process.
In Xue Ge's view, operations like one-handed seals, simplified seals, and seal-less releases were all likely manipulating the aspect of chakra flow.
Take the hand seals for the C-rank ninjutsu Lightning Release: Falling Thunder he had on hand, for example. Xue Ge could tell that certain seals among them could be skipped directly once he grew familiar with using them. Even without deliberate control, the internal chakra flow of his body would form them naturally.
If he wanted to perform a seal-less release, it was not entirely impossible-as long as he could bypass hand seal assistance and actively mobilize the chakra flow within his body. But that level of difficulty was not something an ordinary person could manage casually. For the vast majority of ninjas, having the energy to diligently practice a single ninjutsu like that was far worse than simply learning a few more.
As for one-handed seals, they presumably utilized the chakra flow of a single-sided seal to drive the entire body.
If Xue Ge wanted to break the deadlock, theoretically starting from one-handed seals should be the best direction.
Actually, however, Xue Ge still had another available option.
Could he purposefully exploit the chakra imbalance within his body?
Xue Ge frowned. Researching how to normally use ninjutsu was evidently using his own weaknesses to attack another's strengths for someone with his physical impairments, making it entirely twice the effort for half the result. Most of the time, his chakra imbalance was caused by forcibly making the chakra flow fit a normal state.
What if he did the reverse instead, and instead forced the ninjutsu's release process to adapt to his body's imbalance?
Perhaps it was possible, but that meant Xue Ge would have to figure out how to modify the hand seal sequence or even the hand seal method for most ninjutsu... Just thinking about it gave him a massive headache.
Relying solely on Xue Ge alone probably wouldn't work; after all, no matter what, he was just a kid who wasn't even a Genin yet.
"Graduation also requires learning the Three Body Technique..." Thinking of Kakashi's words from yesterday afternoon gave Xue Ge a headache.
The Clone Technique and Transformation Technique were not particularly difficult, and even if Xue Ge wanted to practice them himself, it wouldn't be hard. Those two ninjutsu were low enough in rank, and Xue Ge's chakra control after practicing for so long wasn't for nothing; worst case he could just perform a seal-less release directly, and using it for the exam shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
The key was the Substitution Technique, whose complexity was more than double that of the previous two. To release it perfectly, he either had to learn one-handed seals or walk the path of self-modification. Neither path was easy to walk.
After tapping the desk for a moment, Xue Ge pulled the Substitution Technique ninjutsu scroll out from the drawer and began slowly adjusting the hand seal sequence by cross-referencing it with the meridian diagram.
For now, he would just take it one step at a time.
Time flashed forward to eight o'clock. Xue Ge stopped his pen, glanced at the scroll in his hand, and nodded imperceptibly.
Although small, there was visible progress. To have managed this within four hours, Xue Ge considered himself satisfied. He closed the scroll, stood up, and prepared to leave. He and Hiruzen had an appointment today to go find someone.
Equipping his new prosthetic limbs-Danzo had plenty of spare prosthetic limbs specifically prepared for him, and if they broke he could just go ask him for more-Xue Ge got ready to set out.
Standing by the desk in deep thought for a moment, he brought the scroll along with him as he left.
The person Hiruzen was having him meet was definitely a ninja; bringing this scroll along for them to see might yield some pretty good insights from the other party. If you don't understand, ask; when you need to seek guidance, do so. Xue Ge was someone who loved to learn and had thick skin.
Arriving at the ninja academy gates, Xue Ge began to wait. This was the location Hiruzen had told him, and if he remembered correctly, that person would come looking for him.
The small pebble in the palm of his hand had been replaced by an irregular sphere. If the method of improving ninjutsu through modifications proved unviable later on, Xue Ge intended to release ninjutsu by strengthening his control over chakra.
After only a few minutes, a young man wearing cyan-green ninja attire walked up in front of Xue Ge.
"Yo, hello there," the young man said with a smile. "Are you Waterbird River Xue Ge?"
Xue Ge looked up. Atop the young man's head sat a crop of golden, spiky hair that, under the sunlight, nearly dazzled Xue Ge's eyes.
"Yes," Xue Ge replied.
"So it's you. Come to think of it, this is my second time seeing you." The young man crossed his arms. "Though for you, this should be your first time seeing me. Nice to meet you, my name is Minato Namikaze, you can just call me Minato. Please take care of me these next couple of days."
"Call me Xue Ge," Xue Ge nodded. "Then, Minato-senpai, right now?"
"Right now..." Minato rubbed his chin. "I've accepted two D-rank missions, you can come give me a hand."
Xue Ge didn't drag his feet at all, directly following Minato toward the mission location.
"It was the day before yesterday, right? I watched the fight between you and that kid named Might Guy at the academy gates," Minato chatted idly with Xue Ge on the way to the mission site. "That was really impressive. When I was a first-year, I certainly didn't have your kind of strength."
"..." Xue Ge did not answer.
Minato looked at Xue Ge, thinking to himself that this child's personality was rather cold.
Although he had learned some situation details from the Third yesterday, this child's psychological issues seemed somewhat tricky... He wasn't particularly good at handling that sort of thing.
Besides, he hadn't looked closely before, but how did this child's body end up looking like this?
Observing the prosthetic eye faintly visible behind the hair, along with the two prosthetic limbs that occasionally emitted slight wood-friction sounds, Minato felt a sense of emotion. To be mangled to this degree and still manage to rank among the very top of his peers-it was hard to imagine the effort the other person had put in.
"Well, I heard... you're Lord Danzo's adopted son, right?" Minato tried searching for a topic of conversation.
"Yes," Xue Ge answered concisely and clearly.
"The pressure of being his adopted son must be huge, right?"
"Yeah."
"..."
This kind of matter really should have been left for Kushina.
Minato felt rather at a loss when dealing with a reticent person like Xue Ge, mainly because the two of them weren't very close, making it difficult to even find common topics with Xue Ge. Moreover, he wasn't as straightforward and breezy as Kushina.
Xue Ge glanced sideways at Minato, noticing that the other party seemed to be breaking out in a bit of a cold sweat.
"What are we going to do now?" he took the initiative to ask.
"Oh, I'm taking you to carry out a mission right now." Minato let out a sigh of relief and said with a smile, "Generally speaking, only Genin can take on missions. I'll log this mission for you first. As an academy student performing missions, you're the very first one."
"A mission?" Xue Ge's gaze sharpened. "Is it killing people? Or a bodyguard escort?"
"It's finding a cat!"