"Otherwise, next time, it might not just be the enemy's blades we have to face!"
Kakashi's grave words weighed like a boulder on the hearts of everyone in Team 7.
Naruto stopped making noise. He bit his lip hard, and for the first time, a fire called resentment burned in his blue eyes, something other than his desire to "become Hokage." A burden... he hated that word more than anything!
Sakura went pale with fright. She clutched the hem of Sasuke's shirt, and Shengu Xuan's icy gaze made her feel as though a venomous snake had fixed its eyes on her, ready to swallow her at any moment.
Sasuke hung his head, his bangs hiding his eyes and making his expression unreadable. But his fists, trembling slightly from how tightly he clenched them, his knuckles white, showed just how violently the waves were raging inside him.
A burden!
He, a survivor of the Uchiha Clan, a genius bearing a blood debt of vengeance, had actually... been considered a burden by someone his own age!
This humiliation was even harder for him to bear than defeat at an enemy's hands!
The group returned to Tazuna's home in silence.
Tazuna's daughter, Tsunami, welcomed them warmly, but the atmosphere at the dinner table was utterly oppressive.
After the meal, Kakashi called Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura out to the clearing outside.
His expression was more serious than ever.
"Starting today, we're beginning emergency training!" Kakashi looked at the three students before him and said gravely, "Our enemies are Zabuza Momochi and that mysterious masked boy whose strength is no less than mine. Next time, they'll definitely appear together. We have to be fully prepared."
"Training? Great!" The moment Naruto heard about training, he was brimming with enthusiasm again. "Kakashi-sensei, hurry up and teach us some powerful ninjutsu! I want to learn a move like Shengu Xuan's, something that sends the enemy flying with a boom!"
"Idiot. Do you think you can learn a technique at that level just because you want to?" Sasuke doused his enthusiasm coldly. He understood better than anyone that the nature of Shengu Xuan's power was not something that could be learned simply by being "taught."
It was talent, a bloodline limit, something on an entirely different plane!
"What did you say?! Sasuke, you bastard!"
"Enough, both of you!" Kakashi interrupted them with a headache. "Before learning any new ninjutsu, you have to master something more fundamental and more important-precise chakra control!"
As he spoke, Kakashi walked over to a towering tree.
"This is the training you'll be doing."
Without making any hand seals, he simply placed his feet against the trunk, then walked straight up it, step by step, as though strolling on level ground. Finally, he hung upside down from a thick branch.
"Whoa! Amazing!" Naruto watched, dumbfounded.
"This is... concentrating chakra in the soles of your feet and climbing through adhesion..." Sasuke's Sharingan instantly saw through the principle behind it.
"Exactly." Kakashi jumped down from the tree. "The principle is simple, but actually doing it requires extremely precise control over your chakra output. Output too much, and the bark will be repelled and damaged; too little, and you won't stick and will fall."
"This training is meant to develop your chakra control! Only when you can walk on trees as easily as I do will your control barely pass muster!"
With that, Kakashi handed them several kunai. "Use a kunai to mark the highest point you can reach. Let's see who can get to the top first!"
"Yeah! I'll definitely be first!" Naruto grabbed a kunai and charged forward, shouting.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
He wanted to win through numbers, but the result was predictable.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Of the dozen or so Narutos, some barely made it two steps up the trunk before a tremendous force threw them off. Others got halfway up, only to fall straight down when their chakra output grew unsteady. For a moment, the scene was utter chaos.
Meanwhile, Sasuke took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, carefully sensing the flow of chakra inside him, then snapped them open!
His Two-Tomoe Sharingan slowly rotated!
He carefully gathered chakra in the soles of his feet. One step, two steps...
He was far steadier than Naruto, climbing seven or eight meters in one go!
"Damn it! That Sasuke!" Watching him made Naruto even more anxious.
"You're amazing, Sasuke-kun!" Sakura cheered from the side. She tried it herself as well. As a top student whose theoretical knowledge far surpassed her practical skills, her chakra control was surprisingly good, and she actually managed to climb several meters too.
For a time, the clearing held nothing but Naruto's screams and the figures of Sasuke and Sakura struggling to climb.
And Shengu Xuan?
He was leaning against another tree in its shade, yawning as he watched this farce of "monkeys climbing trees" with a bored expression.
Tree climbing?
To him, this level of chakra control was easier than breathing.
He could even use the Dragon Talisman's power to generate thrust from miniature explosions beneath his feet and "blast" himself into the sky.
"Hey! Shengu Xuan! Why are you slacking off again?!" Naruto fell from the tree and landed on his backside. Seeing Shengu Xuan lounging around, he immediately shouted in dissatisfaction, "Everyone's working hard to train! Don't you feel any sense of danger? Didn't you call us 'burdens'? What about you, then?"
"That's right," Sakura couldn't help chiming in. "You might be strong, but teamwork matters too, doesn't it? You should take part in Kakashi-sensei's training too."
Kakashi and Sasuke also looked over.
They were curious about what Shengu Xuan would do too.
With his strength, this kind of training should have been completely meaningless to him.
"Training?" Shengu Xuan lazily stood up and stretched. "Fine. Since you want to watch so badly, I'll play along."
He walked over to a tree even taller and smoother than the one Kakashi had just climbed.
Then, under everyone's astonished gazes, he made exactly the same move as Naruto.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
In an instant, twenty Shengu Xuans appeared in the clearing.
"What's going on? He's using that move too?" Naruto froze.
Sasuke and Kakashi frowned as well, unable to understand what Shengu Xuan intended. Numbers were useless for this kind of training.
But what happened next made their eyes nearly pop out once again.
The twenty Shengu Xuans, all wearing the same irreverent smile, charged toward the tree in unison!
They didn't rush forward haphazardly like Naruto.
Instead...
Chakra erupted beneath one Shengu Xuan's feet, leaving a deep crater in the trunk as he leaped high into the air!
Just as he was about to fall, a second Shengu Xuan used the first one's shoulders as a springboard and leaped again, reaching even greater heights!
The third! The fourth! The fifth!
Like the most accomplished circus acrobats, the twenty Shengu Xuans used the bodies of those coming after them as footholds, performing an unbelievable "aerial relay"!
They weren't using chakra to cling to the trunk at all!
They were using the purest, most brutal, most unreasonable method-stepping on each other!
In just a few seconds, the final Shengu Xuan had been "delivered" to the treetop, dozens of meters above the ground!
He easily stuck his kunai into the highest point of the tree, then waved at the dumbfounded group below and floated down as lightly as a feather.
"There. Done."
Shengu Xuan dusted off his hands, walked back into the shade, and lay down again.
"..."
A deathly silence fell over the clearing.
Naruto's mouth hung open. He no longer knew what expression to make.
Sakura rubbed her eyes, wondering whether she was seeing things.
The corners of Sasuke's mouth twitched wildly.
You could... do it like that?
Kakashi felt his blood pressure beginning to soar again.
Now he finally understood why Shengu Xuan had called it "playing along."
This guy wasn't taking the training seriously at all! He was... toying with them! Crushing them from an entirely different plane, in a way they could neither imitate nor understand!
"Damn iiiit!!"
Provoked like never before, Naruto roared and charged at the tree again. This time, he didn't use shadow clones. Instead, he copied Sasuke and began diligently controlling his chakra.
Sasuke also took a deep breath and started climbing again, the obsession in his heart burning even hotter.
Lying beneath the tree, Shengu Xuan watched the two of them, who were working as though he'd shot them full of adrenaline, and the corners of his mouth curved faintly upward.
"What an energetic bunch of monkeys."
He closed his eyes and began sensing the power within him.
The Dragon Talisman's explosive force, the Shadowkhan's mystery... these powers were strong, but something still seemed to be missing.
System, what are the unlock conditions for the next talisman? he asked inwardly.
[Ding! Checking the host's status...] [Activating the next talisman requires the host to experience an energy cycle of 'from incomplete to whole' or 'from injury to healing.']
From injury to healing?
Shengu Xuan raised his eyebrows slightly.
Now that was interesting.
With the system's enhancement, his own body was indestructible. Even getting hurt was difficult.
Then how was he supposed to experience "injury"?
Shengu Xuan's gaze fell once more on Naruto, who was climbing trees as though his life depended on it.
Watching Naruto's crude, haphazard use of chakra, he had a flash of inspiration.
Got it.
Shengu Xuan sat up and walked over to the tree again.
This time, he didn't use shadow clones. Instead, imitating Naruto, he forcefully poured a vast, chaotic mass of chakra into the soles of his feet without restraint!
Boom!
A muffled explosion rang out!
The violent chakra instantly blasted a huge hole in the trunk beneath Shengu Xuan's feet! He himself was also hurled backward by the recoil!
Pfft!
Shengu Xuan flipped in midair and landed steadily, but a metallic taste rose in his throat, and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
He could clearly feel that the chakra pathways inside him, through which chakra had originally flowed steadily, had developed several tiny, almost negligible... cracks from that crude surge of energy.
"Hey! Shengu Xuan, are you all right?" Seeing Shengu Xuan spit blood startled Naruto, and he hurried over.
Kakashi's and Sasuke's expressions changed as well.
Shengu Xuan had actually been injured?!
It was only a minor injury, but this was the first time they had seen this monstrous being reveal a "vulnerable" side.
Yet Shengu Xuan ignored them. Instead, an excited smile appeared on his face.
Because the voice he had been waiting for so long rang out in his mind.
[Ding!] [An "injured" state has been detected in the host's body! The conditions for activating a new ability have been met!] [Congratulations, host! Successfully unlocked a new ability: Horse Talisman (control over healing, the divine horse's power, the divine authority of healing that expels all things)!]
Boom!
A warm, peaceful energy, brimming with life, surged from within Shengu Xuan in an instant!
A totem of a galloping horse, radiating soft white light, flickered in and out of view on his chest!
Like the gentlest stream, that energy instantly flowed through his limbs and every part of his body, rushing toward the chakra pathways that had only just developed cracks.
In the span of a single breath.
All the damage was instantly smoothed away and repaired. They even... became tougher than before!
Under the baptism of this divine authority of healing, the chakra inside him became purer and more concentrated!
"This feeling..."
As Shengu Xuan felt the unprecedented ease within his body, his smile grew even brighter.
Destruction and healing.
These two utterly opposing powers had now reached perfect harmony within him.
"Hey, Shengu Xuan, you... what the hell are you doing?" Naruto felt a chill down his back as he watched the strange smile on Shengu Xuan's face.
Sasuke's Sharingan remained fixed on Shengu Xuan.
He had clearly seen a flash of white light, filled with life energy, pass through Shengu Xuan's body!
Then, Shengu Xuan's aura, which had grown slightly disordered from his injury, instantly steadied. It had even... become stronger than before!
What was that?!
Medical ninjutsu?!
No! No medical ninjutsu could produce such a terrifying effect of instantaneous self-healing!
"Shengu Xuan..." Sasuke's voice held a tremor even he hadn't noticed. "What exactly... did you just use?!"
Before you continue