Two tracks, open and hidden: research underground

Summer, Year 6 of Konoha.

As the first morning light filtered through, Yinglang had already completed three sets of basic conditioning in the backyard training ground. Sweat soaked his indigo training clothes, plastering them against his slender back as it rose and fell gently with his breathing. He finished his movements, stood still, and regulated his breathing-not with the Dragon-Slaying Breathing Technique, but with the most ordinary, even rhythm.

Three months and seven days had passed since he moved into Elder Xuan's home.

It was not long, but it was enough for many things to change.

[Ding! Host's request detected. Retrieving character panel-]

The cold system notification sounded in his mind, audible only to Yinglang himself.

[Host: Uchiha Yinglang]

[Age: 5 years old (physical development approximately 7 years old)]

[Current world: Shinobi World · Konohagakure]

[Identity: Elder Uchiha Gen's son-in-law/heir]

[Power system one: dragon essence cultivation (strictly confidential)]

[Stage: dragon essence seed (stable phase)]

[Dragon essence reserves: elite jonin level (continuing to grow slowly)]

[Passive cultivation efficiency: 24 hours/around the clock]

[Mastered: Dragon-Slaying Breathing Technique (all nine forms), basic taijutsu (fully integrated), Meridian Nourishment Method]

[Physical strength: elite jonin (taijutsu specialist)]

[Special abilities: inner vision, micro-level energy control, high-speed self-healing (beginner)]

[Power system two: chakra cultivation (publicly displayed)]

[True chakra reserves: chunin level (continuously suppressed)]

[Disguised chakra reserves: genin level (precisely controlled output)]

[Affinities: all affinities (fire, lightning, wind, and yin detected)]

[Mastered: Chakra Refining Method (Uchiha basic version), Three Basic Body Techniques (mastered), shuriken/kunai throwing (proficient), Fire Release · Great Fireball Technique (incomplete)]

[Taijutsu rank: chunin (excellent)]

[System functions]

[Myriad Worlds Lottery: once every seven days (unused draws accumulated: 0)]

[Storage Space: 100 cubic meters (approximately 8% used)]

[Panel monitoring: always enabled]

[Special items held: Mermaid Flesh (sealed in jade box), Forbidden Technique · Emotion Transformation token, Nichirin Blade (replica), incomplete "Turtle Breath Skill" text, Pseudo-Immortality Pill formula (derivation incomplete), assorted "miscellany"]

The panel slowly faded before his eyes.

Yinglang briefly closed his eyes, sensing the two utterly different currents of energy inside him. Deep in his dantian, the dragon essence seed circulated with the gentle warmth of a small sun, nourishing his entire body with every breath. Meanwhile, within the more superficial network of meridians, a deliberately suppressed and adjusted current of "chakra" circulated slowly, its strength and purity consistent with an "early-stage genin."

Two systems, advancing on parallel tracks.

Publicly, he was the heir Elder Uchiha Gen had chosen, a boy of good character and modest talent, laying his foundations step by step. His progress was "reasonably" fast-in two months, he had gone from nothing to barely reaching the threshold of a genin. Among the Uchiha, where geniuses abounded, that was nothing earth-shattering, but it was enough to earn the occasional nod from Shinichi-sensei and a little more approval in Elder Xuan's eyes.

In secret, his dragon essence cultivation and chakra cultivation never stopped. Late at night, when the entire residence fell silent, he would slip soundlessly out of his window and practice the Dragon-Slaying Breathing Technique beneath the shadow of that old pine. There were no earth-shaking displays, only blood and vital energy surging through him like rivers, his muscles and bones tempered and strengthened in silence. An elite jonin's physique lay within this five-year-old child's body like a keen blade hidden in its sheath.

"Yinglang."

The voice drifted from the far end of the veranda, soft, carrying a coolness like something chilled in well water.

Yinglang turned and saw Uchiha Ruri standing beneath the veranda roof. Today, she wore a pale blue-green casual outfit, her long hair loosely tied behind her head with a matching ribbon. She held a wooden tray bearing a bowl of still-steaming miso soup and two rice balls.

"Ruri." Yinglang stood up and took the tray. A fine layer of condensation beaded the bowl's exterior, cold enough to send a shiver through his fingertips.

"Father won't be back until this afternoon," Ruri said. Her gaze passed over his sweat-damp bangs, his sun-reddened cheeks, and his soaked training clothes, lingering for an instant. "Shinichi-sensei went west. You'll practice on your own this morning. This afternoon... Father wants to see your Fire Release."

"Mm." Yinglang responded, spooning some of the trembling substance into his mouth. It was tea jelly. The clean bitterness of tea mingled with a touch of honey's sweetness, instantly soothing the dryness in his throat.

Ruri did not leave. She stood on the line dividing the veranda's shade from the courtyard's white glare, half her face in shadow and half illuminated, making her look even paler. Her eyes turned toward him, dark and deep as two ancient wells whose bottoms could not be seen. "You're pushing yourself too hard," she said suddenly. Her tone remained level, without much inflection, but the meaning behind her words seemed a little different.

Yinglang swallowed the tea jelly and looked up, letting just the right amount of childish stubbornness and a little unwillingness to lose show on his face. "I... want to get strong sooner."

Ruri watched him for a long while. Overhead, the cicadas suddenly shrilled louder, then abruptly stopped. Everything became so quiet that only the sound of shifting heat seemed to remain. Then she gave an almost imperceptible nod, as light as a falling leaf. "Know your limits." She uttered those words, turned, and walked away. Her wooden sandals struck the veranda boards with crisp, lonely sounds that slowly faded.

Yinglang stood there, slowly finishing the tea jelly in the bowl. That trace of cold slipped down his throat, seeming to soothe a little of the prickling irritation that his prolonged pretense had bred within him.

He gathered the bowl and utensils and returned them to the small tea room at the end of the veranda. Then, instead of heading to the backyard training ground, he turned and went back to his room.

When he shut the door, the glaring brightness and the cicadas' agonized shrieking outside suddenly seemed far away, muffled as though beneath a thick cloth. The room was cool and dim, with a silence cut off from the world. He walked to the southeastern corner, where the edge of the tatami looked no different from anywhere else. Kneeling, he carefully picked at an almost invisible seam with his fingernail, then pressed against it and gently levered it up.

Click.

There was a faint, crisp sound from a mechanism. One section of tatami sank smoothly and slid aside, revealing a dark square opening beneath it. An odor drifted faintly upward, mingling damp soil, old medicinal herbs, and something indescribable, an exceedingly faint, bloody sweetness.

Yinglang slipped sideways into the opening. The tatami above his head closed soundlessly, fitting perfectly into place.

The darkness lasted only a breath. On the walls, several stones embedded in the earth lit up one after another with a soft, steady, cool-white glow. Neither dazzling nor hot, they provided just enough light to fill this secret space of a little over ten square meters. These were a small bag of [Fluorite] he had won in a recent lottery draw. They had little practical use, but their light was lasting and steady, making them perfect for illumination.

His "laboratory."

He had simply reinforced the walls and floor with Earth Release-of course, by secretly directing a tiny amount of dragon essence to imitate the effects of earth-affinity chakra. He dared not use actual chakra, lest he leave traces of its fluctuations. All the excavated soil had gone into the system's storage space. Later, he had found opportunities to mix it into the dirt pits from his backyard training and dispose of it in batches.

The most conspicuous thing in the room was the set of equipment on the wooden table to the left. Clear long-necked flasks, winding glass tubes, a small mortar and pestle... They gleamed with a cleanliness and orderliness that did not belong to this world. This was [a set of beginner's alchemist equipment] he had drawn two weeks earlier. The description was casual, but he had treasured it. To the right, on an unfurled sealing scroll, a flat jade box sat neatly in place. The box was lined with an unknown black velvet, upon which rested a palm-sized piece of flesh, as lustrous as mutton-fat jade, yet with a faint pearly sheen flowing through it.

Mermaid Flesh.

Yinglang did not touch it first. He walked to the table, bent down, and retrieved a notebook from the bottom shelf. It was an ordinary notebook, made from bound sheets of coarse hemp paper, the sort available on the street for a few copper coins. What was written inside, however, was not ordinary.

He opened it, the pages making a dry rustling sound. They were densely covered in writing that was neither Chinese nor any script commonly used in the Shinobi World.

It was a foreign language from Uchiha Yinglang's previous life-English, written in an additional untidy scrawl.

My English teacher from my last life, you're the MVP now! Yinglang chuckled inwardly. Essential formulas, medicinal ingredient reaction equations, extraction temperatures and times-he recorded everything in these symbols. For herbs unique to the Shinobi World that had no corresponding words, he pieced together names using pinyin letters, then added simple sketches only he could understand. If anyone broke in here and opened the notebook, they would find it utterly incomprehensible and be unable to make any sense of it.

On the notebook's latest page, the ink was still relatively fresh.

Project: "Pseudo-Immortality Pill" (based on Mermaid Flesh)

Time: approximately two months after moving in

Objective: stabilize/extract the longevity factor.

Progress:

Exposure to specific Fluorite light was effective, inducing the separation of an active substance (provisionally named factor X).

Combined with the principles of "Turtle Breath," extraction guided by simulated chakra yielded stock solution A (extremely small quantity, approximately 0.1 milliliters). Extremely active; became ineffective after exposure to air for more than forty breaths.

Blended with type S stabilizer obtained from the lottery at a ratio of 1:100, yielding prototype α.

Live mouse testing: significantly extended lifespan. Side effects included mild hyperactivity and a sharp increase in food consumption. Medicinal effects declined after seven days.

Current stock:

Pseudo-Immortality Pills (using stock solution A + type S stabilizer): 5 pills. Extremely potent. Ingredients exceedingly rare.

Fake Immortality Pills (simulated using substitute medicinal ingredients from the Shinobi World): 10 pills. Approximately thirty percent as effective as Pseudo-Immortality Pills. Ingredients difficult to obtain.

Bottleneck: type S stabilizer nearly exhausted. Must find a local substitute. Suspect Hozuki Castle's "Spirit-Concentrating Herb" or the Land of Tea's "Centennial Tea Heart" may be worth trying. Extraction efficiency too low; 5 Pseudo-Immortality Pills already the current limit.

Yinglang closed the notebook, unconsciously scraping his fingertips against its rough cover. Then he crouched and felt around inside an extremely well-hidden hollow beneath a table leg, retrieving two small porcelain bottles.

One was pale gold and translucent. Held against the Fluorite light, it revealed five soybean-sized pills within, their surfaces faintly shimmering-Pseudo-Immortality Pills.

The other was dark brown and opaque, rattling softly when shaken. It contained ten ordinary-looking Fake Immortality Pills.

Pulling the cork from the pale gold porcelain bottle, he did not lean close to smell it, but merely fanned the mouth gently. An exceedingly faint sense of vitality drifted out, refreshing the mind. He immediately pushed the cork firmly back in. This was a trump card, a bargaining chip weightier and more likely to invite disaster than an S-rank scroll. It had to remain hidden in the deepest part of the secret room and could never be used lightly.

After putting away the porcelain bottles, his gaze fell on the rough paper on the table. It bore normal Chinese characters interspersed with diagrams and arrows showing chakra flow-technique concepts.

Technique concept-Lightning Release · Thunderclap Bomb

Form: spherical, fist-sized. A stable mass of Lightning Release chakra.

Key points: 1. Maintain a weak mental connection after release (assisted by yin release) to control direction. 2. Controllable detonation timing. 3. Power per shot approximately equivalent to one Explosive Tag.

Advantages: flexible, low consumption (approximately five percent of a genin's chakra).

Difficulties: precise shape control, maintaining stability at range. Progress: nighttime backyard tests achieved controlled flight over approximately ten paces and successful detonation. Insufficient stability; works inconsistently.

Technique concept-Storm Release · Cross-Shaped Flying Blades

Form: four kunai temporarily fixed in a cross shape by Wind Release chakra, with a "miniature Thunderclap Bomb" embedded in the center.

Key points: 1. Wind Release provides initial velocity and flight stability. 2. Controlled detonation of the central lightning sphere during flight; explosive impact sends the four kunai scattering at high speed in four directions. 3. Area damage and disruption.

Advantages: broad coverage, highly sudden attack.

Difficulties: simultaneous precise control of two affinities, control of detonation timing and kunai scattering trajectories. Progress: theoretical stage only. Must first become fully proficient with "Thunderclap Bomb."

Yinglang stared at the crude diagram, tracing imaginary lines across the table with his fingers to simulate the paths of chakra circulation. Elder Xuan would inspect his Fire Release that afternoon. He still needed several more rounds of practice with the Great Fireball Technique. He had to spit out a respectable flame, but not form a ball.

But right now, underground, he wanted to try something else.

He walked to the open space in the center of the chamber and stood still. Raising both hands, he made none of those elaborate seals, merely cupping them loosely before his chest. He sank his awareness inward, but did not seek out his true chunin-level chakra, much less mobilize his dragon essence. He precisely located the disguised pathway specifically used to output "genin-level" chakra and carefully "squeezed" a thread from it-weak, but carrying a distinct, tingling vibration of lightning affinity.

Bzz...

There was a faint sound, like electrical sparks scattering. A thread of pale blue electricity sprang into being between his joined fingertips, leaping and twisting like a disobedient little bright-blue insect. He held his breath, concentrating his entire mind on that point. Control it, tame it, forcibly constrain its violent tendency to explode in an instant, and compress it into a "ball."

Real sweat seeped from his temples. This was not physical exertion, but an extreme expenditure of mental focus, the burden of controlling power with the precision of miniature carving. The thread of electricity writhed and struggled, gathering toward the center with agonizing slowness until it became a glowing mass slightly smaller than an egg, its light unstable, tiny electrical sparks bursting from its surface from time to time.

Thunderclap Bomb (embryonic form).

The glowing mass hovered an inch above his palm, trembling slightly and giving off a low hum. Yinglang concentrated, attempting to separate a strand of mental energy finer than a hair and gently attach it to the mass like a kite string. Then, with an exceedingly gentle movement of his wrist, he released it.

The glowing mass drifted unsteadily outward, moving as slowly as a floating lantern carried downstream on a summer night. Its crooked path crossed the dim white Fluorite light as it floated toward the reinforced earthen wall opposite him. An instant before contact, Yinglang willed it-Disperse.

The glowing mass shuddered violently. Without a sound or a flash, it vanished silently into the air, leaving only a few sparks so tiny they were almost invisible. They flickered once, then died out completely.

It worked. And it didn't. It flew, didn't explode, and was controllable. But it was slow, drifting, unstable. And that one attempt alone... He could clearly feel that the "genin-level" chakra used for his disguise had visibly diminished by a small portion. The consumption was greater than expected.

He stood where he was, settling his breathing slightly while also calming the faint ripples within him caused by that extremely precise manipulation. He looked at the empty space where the glowing mass had disappeared. It had not left so much as a mark on the earthen wall.

There was still a long way to go. But it counted as a beginning.

After standing quietly for a moment, he returned to the table, carefully rolled up the rough paper bearing his technique concepts, and locked it away with the notebook full of foreign writing in another hidden compartment beneath the table. He cleaned up the remaining fragments of herb roots in the mortar, used to test substitute medicinal ingredients, closed the jade box, and stored it back in the sealing scroll.

He looked around. Everything in the secret chamber was as usual, with only a few pieces of Fluorite still giving off their cold, lonely light. He walked beneath the exit, tilted his head, and quietly listened to the sounds overhead for a while.

There was only a deep silence, mingled with his own slowed breathing and the exceedingly faint, muffled echoes of cicadas filtering through the depths of the soil.

He climbed the earthen steps, pushed up the tatami, and pulled himself out, restoring the hidden door to its original state. The tatami lay as flat as before, the seam hidden without a trace.

When he opened his room's door, the fierce, near-white sunlight of late morning flooded in. As though held back too long, the cicadas' cries rushed inside at a suddenly greater volume-clamorous, scorching, utterly real. Heat rose in waves through the courtyard, making the view waver slightly.

Yinglang narrowed his eyes, waited for the dizziness brought on by that white glare to pass, then stepped out from beneath the veranda roof and headed toward the backyard training ground.

His footsteps landed lightly and steadily on the sun-heated paving stones. Deep within him, dragon essence circulated quietly, warm and immense. The slender current of disguised chakra also traveled its prescribed pathways, slowly and "laboriously," preparing for the afternoon's inspection.

The summer sun was still high, and the cicadas were still shrieking with all their might. There was a long way to go on both paths. He had to make every step firm.