Sound-to-Thread (Part One)

Autumn, Year Six of Konoha.

The chill grew more pronounced by the day.

The ground at the Elite Training Ground had been trampled rock-hard. A thin layer of white frost formed morning and evening, turning to mud when the sun came out and squelching beneath the children's straw sandals. Autumn slipped into their collars on the cold wind. Even the air carried a dry, earthy tang. Crushed frost mixed with flecks of mud splashed onto their trouser cuffs, quickly freezing into a thin, stiff crust.

Training entered its second month. They had learned the rudiments of everything they needed to learn; all that remained was to drill themselves to death. Tetsu Uchiha's dark face grew grimmer, and his insults grew cruder.

"Are your wrists made of dough?"

"Is that chakra borrowed? Afraid to use it?"

"What are you staring at? The target's easier to recognize than your mother!"

His roars ricocheted across the empty training ground, shaking dead leaves loose from the treetops. The children hardly dared breathe, gritting their teeth and making their movements more precise.

But no amount of scolding stopped the gap from widening day by day.

Those with a foundation from home grew steadier with their shuriken, releasing them, cutting through the air, and nailing the targets in one smooth sequence. During water walking practice for chakra control, they could manage a dozen or so steps, however unsteadily, their pride impossible to hide. Those without that foundation trained until their hands shook and their legs went weak, their arms too sore to lift. Their progress crawled along like a snail. Even the most basic hand seals often tripped them up, and getting berated became an everyday occurrence.

Yutian belonged to the latter group.

No, he had it even harder than they did.

Everyone knew he was the son of an Uchiha servant. Getting into the Elite Training Ground at all had been an incredible stroke of luck, but that luck had brought him no special treatment. Instead, it became a pretext for others to mock him. Among these children born into the glory of the Uchiha, he was like a blade of grass growing in a crack between rocks: insignificant, yet an eyesore.

"Uchiha Yutian!"

Tetsu Uchiha's voice exploded across the training ground like a stone striking still water, instantly drawing everyone's attention. "Chakra control, water walking, thirteenth attempt! Ready-"

A small pool had been dug at the western end of the training ground. It was shallow, only deep enough to cover their calves, and its clear surface reflected the gray sky. The assessment was brutally simple: walk across the water to the other side, a full ten steps away. For the children in the elite class now, this was hardly a harsh test. Most could already stand steadily on the water and take a few steps with ease. Even the worst could stir up small ripples without sinking the moment they stepped onto it.

Yutian alone was the exception.

He stood at the pool's edge, his fingertips curling slightly as he drew a deep breath. His forehead was covered in sweat; it was impossible to tell whether it came from days of exhausting training or nerves before the test. Cold sweat slid down his temples into his collar, making him shiver. Dozens of gazes pricked his back like a dense array of needles. Some held the mockery of spectators enjoying a show, others impatient contempt. One or two carried a trace of sympathy, but they quickly darted away in alarm, afraid of being implicated.

At the very front of the crowd, Kagami Uchiha stood with his arms folded and an indifferent expression. He had easily completed water walking the previous week. He had not moved quickly, but his steps had been astonishingly steady, his posture relaxed and graceful. He was one of Tetsu Uchiha's most satisfactory students. Now he watched Yutian without much emotion in his eyes, as calmly as if looking at an inconsequential stone, without a ripple in his heart.

Yutian closed his eyes, trying hard to recall what the theory lessons had taught him-spread chakra evenly over the soles, control the output precisely, carefully sense the rise and fall of the water, do not rush, do not lose control... He had repeated it silently countless times, his fingers clenched white.

He lifted a foot and gently stepped down.

The moment his sole touched the water, the chakra output he had barely managed to stabilize lurched out of control, scattering instantly like a kite with a broken string.

Splash.

He pitched straight into the pool, sending water high into the air and soaking the hems of several children beside him.

Unrestrained laughter erupted, shrill and piercing.

"That's thirteen times! Teacher Tetsu, does he just have no talent for chakra at all?"

"I think there's something wrong with his head. Were those theory lessons for nothing? He can't even learn something that simple!"

"He's a servant's son. It's good enough if he can read, and you expect him to understand chakra? Stop wasting resources by taking up an elite spot!"

The taunts were like knives, cutting into Yutian one stroke at a time.

He stood up in the knee-deep water, soaked through. His black hair clung to his forehead, and droplets dripped continuously from his chin, falling onto the surface and spreading into feeble rings. The icy pool water saturated his clothes and pressed them against his skin, making his teeth chatter slightly. But he said nothing. He merely pressed his pale lips together and walked back to the edge, step by step, silently preparing for his fourteenth attempt.

He could not give up. Once he did, he could only crawl back to the stables and spend the rest of his life in the dust.

"Enough!"

Tetsu Uchiha approached with a frown, his face displaying undisguised impatience and even a measure of disgust. Over the past half month, his patience with Yutian had long since run out. Keeping a useless boy who could not even complete basic water walking in the elite class would only lower the standard of the entire class.

"Uchiha Yutian, go practice the basics of chakra control on the sidelines first. No more water walking today. Stop wasting everyone's time."

The words landed as heavily as a lump of iron striking the ground.

The training ground fell silent for an instant. Even the laughter cut off abruptly. Everyone understood that this was no simple suspension of training. It was an unmistakable abandonment, a public declaration-you could not do it; you did not belong.

Yutian stiffened, his head sinking lower. His wet hair hid his eyes, and he forced out a hoarse reply. "...Yes."

He turned and walked toward a corner at the edge of the grounds, his back rigidly straight, like a slender bamboo stalk that refused to bend. Water streamed from his wet clothes, leaving a long trail across the muddy ground, and the cold wind soon froze them stiff again.

Near the back of the crowd, Yinglang toyed with a training shuriken, turning it slowly between his fingertips. He watched the scene calmly, without the slightest ripple in his eyes, yet saw everything clearly.

He understood.

Yutian was not stupid, nor did he truly lack talent for chakra.

Someone was simply "looking after" him.

The theory instructor belonged to Yuanguang Uchiha's faction, a man with a vicious mind and dirty methods. When explaining chakra control, he deliberately glossed over several of the most crucial points, mixing in plenty of plausible-sounding "personal insights" to mislead children without a family foundation. Naturally, children with connections had someone to guide them privately and would not fall for it. But those without a foundation either listened in bewilderment or foolishly practiced exactly as instructed. Something was bound to go wrong.

Yutian was the one who had been specifically targeted and ultimately had something "go wrong."

Over the past half month, Yutian had spent longer on extra practice than anyone else. His hands and legs were covered in blood blisters and bruises from taijutsu training. At night, after everyone in the dormitory was fast asleep, he was still in a corner of the courtyard, working over a basin of water and feeling his way through chakra control bit by bit. But the more he practiced, the more anxious he became, and the more anxious he became, the more chaotic it grew. He was like someone circling inside a maze, never finding the exit.

Yuanguang's move was viciously underhanded.

No direct beatings or scolding, no open ostracism-just this sort of "reasonable" unequal treatment, wearing down your confidence little by little and cutting off your opportunities until you believed, deep down, that you were incapable. In the end, you would withdraw of your own accord, without even grounds to lay blame.

Yinglang turned the shuriken in his hand, his indifferent gaze sweeping over the training ground.

Kagami had already taken the few sycophantic children around him off to practice throwing shuriken at moving targets. Their clear laughter drifted faintly over, smug and unrestrained. Tetsu Uchiha was berating another child whose form had slipped, his roars as grating as ever. Most of the children had scattered to practice on their own. No one looked at the bedraggled figure in the corner anymore.

Yutian crouched alone in the most secluded corner at the edge of the grounds, a battered wooden basin half-filled with cold water in front of him. His fingers hovered above the surface, his brows tightly knitted and veins standing out on his forehead. He mustered all his strength to mobilize his chakra, trying to make regular ripples spread across the water-the most basic, introductory exercise in chakra control.

He practiced with utter seriousness, pouring nearly all his attention into it. Yet the ripples beneath his fingers were utterly erratic. Sometimes the surface jolted violently, throwing up great splashes; at other times it lay like a stagnant pool, without the slightest movement.

If he kept practicing like this, he would never grasp even the rudiments of chakra control, not even if he practiced himself to death.

Yinglang slowly withdrew his gaze and looked down at his palm.

Sound-to-Thread.

He had secretly worked out this move over the past half month, borrowing from a technique in a certain bottom-of-the-barrel fantasy world. The principle was not particularly complicated: mix a minute strand of chakra with his own refined Spiritual Energy, compress it into an invisibly fine thread, and send it directly into the target's ear. The difficulty lay in the utmost precision of control. A fraction too much chakra, and a sensory ninja could easily detect it; a fraction too little, and the sound would not carry. Attaching the Spiritual Energy required even greater precision, or all that reached the other end would be a jumble of noise.

He had tested it countless times. At present, he could reliably transmit sound within twenty steps; any farther, and it would spin out of control and disperse. He could also transmit only simple, short sentences. If he spoke too long, the chakra threads would snap outright.

But it was already enough to guide Yutian in secret.

Yinglang closed his eyes and drew a deep breath of crisp, cold air.

Within him, he carefully mobilized that layer of disguised chakra, which barely reached genin level, sending it flowing slowly along an extremely well-hidden chakra pathway he had secretly opened over the past half month. At the same time, a faint but intensely refined strand of Spiritual Energy seeped from between his brows, winding slowly around that strand of chakra like a wisp of smoke.

Compress.

Compress again.

Until that strand of mixed energy grew finer than a hair, as concentrated as an invisible needle, suspended soundlessly in the air.

He slowly opened his eyes, his gaze settling precisely on the small, thin figure crouched in the corner twenty steps away.

Now!