Ryūchi Cave, the Dragon Transformation Pool.
Lin Ze sat cross-legged in the emerald-green pool, his eyes shut tight, his entire body shrouded in dense mist of natural energy.
He had already been cultivating here for three days.
Over those three days, he had tried dozens of different methods of fusing the energies, but none had succeeded.
Natural energy and chakra were like two stubborn children, refusing to blend perfectly no matter what.
"As expected... creating my own sage arts isn't that easy."
Lin Ze smiled wryly to himself.
In the original story, Naruto had taken only a month to learn senjutsu, but he had a ready-made formula passed down through a thousand years at Mount Myōboku.
Creating a set of sage arts suited to a "dragon" from scratch was on an entirely different level of difficulty.
Lin Ze sighed and prepared to keep experimenting.
Just then, the "Void" ring on his left index finger suddenly began to glow faintly.
"Demonic Illusion: Mirage... Nagato is gathering the members."
Lin Ze frowned slightly.
A summons at this point was most likely about Konoha.
He had long expected that Obito would not leave the Uchiha alone, but he had not expected the Akatsuki to be involved as well.
"Fine, I'll go see what's happening."
Lin Ze closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into the ring.
The next moment, his consciousness appeared in a dim space.
This was the alternate space the Akatsuki used for remote meetings, where all its members appeared as illusory projections.
Fortunately, the projections' auras were formed from a combination of soul and chakra. After Lin Ze converted the Ryūmyaku chakra into the sharpness of Wind Release, no one noticed that "White Tiger" had become a different "person."
Lin Ze looked around.
Deva Path Pain and Konan stood at