Rinto spent five full days circling through the dense woods before shaking off every last tail and stepping into the Forest of Death.
True to its name, this forest was forbidden ground for the living. Ancient trees blotted out the sky and blocked every ray of sunlight. Years of fallen leaves soaked in standing water, fermenting into miasma so thick it would not disperse; a single breath made the lungs ache. Poisonous vines and insects filled the woods, and even the wind carried the stench of decay. Never mind ordinary ninja-even experienced Jonin dared not venture into its depths alone.
That suited Rinto perfectly. The more dangerous a place was, the quieter it was, and the fewer people would come bother his research.
He walked deeper into the forest for most of the day and found a natural cave on high ground. Rampant poisonous vines completely concealed its entrance. Inside, it was dry and well ventilated, more secluded than either his previous mine or limestone cave. The miasma could not drift inside, yet he could hear every sound outside clearly.
His first task was still setting up defenses.
Unlike before, he did not settle for a few layers of detection and traps. After suffering several setbacks, he understood all too well that hiding would not work. He had to turn this area into a forbidden zone where anyone who trespassed would die. Centered on the cave, he laid down seven full defensive lines within a one-kilometer radius: the outermost consisted of frequency-scrambling anchor points that disrupted sensory detection, scrambling all probing chakra and rendering sensory ninja blind; farther in were triggered paralytic Lightning Release and Explosion Release traps that would kill or cripple anyone who stepped on them; deeper still were barriers capable of trapping Jonin, along with countermeasure anchor points targeting Sealing Jutsu. Anyone who dared use a sealing array would first be injured by the backlash explosion.
He even modified the poisonous vines at the entrance, carving triggered Wind Release configurations into them. Anyone who touched them would be engulfed by countless poisonous vines and wind blades, unable even to scream.
By the time he finished all the defenses, two days had passed. He wolfed down two thoroughly roasted wild rabbits and drank half a flask of filtered water before taking off his pack and setting up an experimental bench on a flat rock at the very back of the cave.
First, he carefully set out his most essential experimental records, configuration drafts, and the top-grade starfall iron he had won at a black-market auction. Then he took out the crystalline jade vial containing the sealed chakra of Matatabi, the Two-Tails, and examined it under the light.
A small clump of dark red chakra was sealed inside the pale blue crystalline jade. Even through multiple layers of seals, he could feel the violent power surging within, carrying fire and wind natures. It was the complete opposite of the steady, weighty wind-and-earth chakra of Shukaku, the One-Tail.
This was what he truly wanted. What he had previously seen in Shukaku's scroll was nothing more than lifeless records and lines, but this vial of tailed beast chakra contained living, innate logic for nature fusion. Tailed Beasts could easily control chakra of multiple natures and even achieve deep fusion between them. That was precisely the hard nut he wanted to crack: Kekkei Tōta through three-nature fusion.
He had already achieved dynamic fusion for dual-nature Kekkei Genkai, but Kekkei Tōta required three completely conflicting chakra natures to fuse precisely at a microscopic level, creating an entirely new nature transformation. Dust Release's Detachment of the Primitive World, for example, fused wind, earth, and fire, allowing it to break anything down to the molecular level. If he could pull this off, never mind Konoha's pursuers-even if someone at Kage Level came, he would have the confidence to take them on.
But only when he spread out his draft paper and settled down to work did he discover that this was more than an order of magnitude harder than five-nature switching or dual-nature Kekkei Genkai.
His previous dynamic fusion logic had been "identify natures-match ratios-build anchor points simultaneously-complete fusion." It was more than enough for two natures, but adding a third made the whole system collapse. The flow rates, properties, and fusion ratios of three chakra natures differed drastically. Even starting them simultaneously was impossible: fire was fast, earth was slow, and wind was sharp. Before the anchor points could form, the three streams of chakra would collide in the channels and explode.
At first, he considered stacking them. He would fuse two natures into a Kekkei Genkai, then fuse that with the third nature. For example, he could first create Lava Release from fire and earth, then fuse it with wind. But as soon as he finished drawing the framework, he knew it would not work. Lava Release was already stable, fused chakra. When it encountered wind chakra, no further deep fusion was possible; they would only repel each other. Forcing them together would result in nothing but a blowout.
Unwilling to accept that, he carved a simplified stacking configuration into crystalline jade, intending to try fusing water and wind into Ice Release, then combining that with lightning. But the instant he injected chakra, the jade exploded in his hand with a crack. Fragments struck his face, cutting a small gash at the corner of his eye that burned painfully.
"Fuck." He cursed, casually wiped the blood and debris from his face, then picked up the shattered fragments and held them under the lamp. The fracture had occurred at the junction between the two fusion structures. The Ice Release chakra and lightning release chakra had clashed head-on, shattering even the anchor points.
It really would not work. The stacking approach was wrong at its very root.
Kekkei Tōta was not one plus one plus one, nor was it two Kekkei Genkai pieced together. It was three natures fused at the very source of their chakra, creating something entirely new. Just like tailed beast chakra: no matter how many natures it contained, its source was unified, not split into separate pieces.
He put down his carving knife, carefully undid one layer of the seals on the crystalline jade vial, and used a conducting needle to draw out an extremely fine strand of the Two-Tails' chakra into a specially made observation crystal. Under the chakra lamp, he could clearly see that the fire and wind chakra were not two distinct masses. Each existed within the other. Every strand of chakra carried both fire's explosive power and wind's sharpness. They had not been separated and then fused; they were fused together by nature.
Rinto stared at that strand of chakra for an entire night.
Only near dawn did he abruptly snap out of it, grab a charcoal pencil, and begin drawing furiously on his draft paper. His previous thinking had been entirely wrong. He had kept asking, "How do I fuse three natures together?" But the correct logic should have been, "How do I build a core anchor point that can accommodate three natures simultaneously, allowing all three to undergo deconstruction and reconstruction together inside the core?"
It was not a matter of starting with three natures and then piecing them together. He needed to first create a universal fusion core. Once the three chakra types entered, they would be broken down directly into the most fundamental chakra particles, then reconstructed into entirely new fused chakra according to the ratios of Kekkei Tōta.
The idea was absurdly crazy. It meant carving a miniature array capable of simultaneously deconstructing three natures and precisely reconstructing them in a space the size of a fingernail. There was zero margin for error. The slightest carelessness could send the deconstructed chakra out of control and blow his hand clean off.
Yet the more he drew, the more he felt this was the right path. His previous dual-nature fusion had essentially been "build the framework, then fuse," while the Tailed Beasts' logic was "deconstruct first, then reconstruct." They were fundamentally different.
By the time he finished the core framework, daylight had fully arrived. Outside the cave, there was only the chirping of insects and the rustle of wind through leaves. It was very quiet. After staying awake all night, his eyes were bloodshot, but he felt no sleepiness whatsoever. He grabbed a piece of top-grade starfall iron bought from the black market and secured it in the vise with a click.
As he lowered the knife, even his breathing grew extremely light. This deconstruction-and-reconstruction core was finer than any configuration he had made before. Over a hundred micron-scale anchor points interlocked with one another. The slightest deviation would cause the chakra to run wild and blow out. His hand remained perfectly steady, never trembling even when the old wounds on his fingertips pulled painfully.
Carving this core took three times longer than carving the five-nature configuration. By the time he finished the final stroke and removed the starfall iron from the vise, it was pitch-black outside again.
He loosened his neck, so stiff it felt ready to snap, and walked to the rock wall at the very back of the cave. The rock was thickest here; even an explosion would not bring it down. He took a deep breath and slowly injected chakra into the starfall iron in his hand, choosing the three most basic natures: wind, earth, and fire, the foundational natures of Dust Release.
The instant the chakra entered the core anchor point, deconstruction began, breaking the three chakra natures down into the smallest particles. But something went wrong during reconstruction. The reconstruction ratios of the three natures fell into complete chaos, and the fire chakra instantly ran wild. With a sharp crack, the starfall iron split apart in his hand. Scalding fragments showered his hand, slicing a deep gash across his palm, and blood immediately welled out.
"Fuck!" He abruptly let go and shook his hand for a long while in pain, his anger rising rapidly.
What happened? Deconstruction went smoothly. Why did everything fall apart as soon as reconstruction began?
He crouched down, picked up the shattered fragments, and examined them under the lamp. The deconstruction section of the core anchor point had not collapsed. What had broken were the reconstruction ratio anchor points. The particles of the three natures had failed to fuse in the preset ratios, colliding with one another and exploding outright.
So that was the problem. He had only built a universal deconstruction core without resolving the precise ratios required for reconstruction. The fusion ratios of Kekkei Tōta could not be off by even one part in a thousand. Dust Release's ratio of wind, earth, and fire was vastly different from Magnet Release's ratio of wind, earth, and lightning. Universal reconstruction anchor points simply could not control ratios that fine.
Cursing, he sat back down at the experimental bench, grabbed some gauze, and haphazardly wrapped the wound in his palm. Blood quickly soaked through it, but he paid no attention, grabbing his charcoal pencil to revise the plans. He needed to add a ratio-adapting structure to the core anchor point, one that could automatically match the appropriate fusion ratio based on the chakra natures injected, just like his previous adaptive primer.
But that brought another problem: there was only so much room in the core anchor point. Adding another ratio-adapting structure would crowd the anchor points together, making them highly prone to interfering with one another. It would still explode.
And so he revised and carved, carved and exploded, then revised again. For a full week, he holed up in the cave, barely sleeping. Scrap piled high in a corner, all shattered starfall iron and crystalline jade fragments. His hands and arms accumulated plenty of fresh burns and cuts, new wounds appearing before the old ones healed. Yet he acted as though nothing had happened, his eyes fixed solely on the plans and carving knife.
During this time, the sensory anchor points he had placed at the outermost perimeter occasionally trembled. Konoha's search teams had entered the Forest of Death and were searching its edges, not daring to venture deeper. After triggering his traps and losing several people, they no longer dared advance. They merely set up a wide-ranging sensory barrier around the perimeter, clearly intending to wait him out-either until he emerged on his own or until the miasma weakened enough for them to search inward inch by inch.
Rinto did not take it to heart at all. The outer barrier could not trap him, and those people did not dare come deeper. Perfect. No one would interrupt his struggle against this deadlock of three-nature fusion.
But as the explosions mounted, he grew increasingly irritable. It either blew up during deconstruction or during reconstruction. His best attempt had only achieved preliminary three-nature fusion before the chakra exploded in the channel from an imbalance in ratios just as he was about to release it, nearly injuring his arm.
"Damn it, what am I missing?" He hurled the half-piece of scrap iron in his hand into the waste pile and cursed, then leaned against the rock wall, closed his eyes, and rubbed his aching temples. After nearly ten days of grinding away, he was unshaven, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had grown noticeably thinner. Yet the core problem remained unresolved.
He casually picked up the vial containing the Two-Tails' chakra sample, drew out another strand, and stared at it for a long while. Suddenly, he realized that tailed beast chakra fusion had no fixed "ratio anchor points" at all. The fusion of chakra particles adapted automatically to the chakra's flow. It was not a structure rigidly carved in advance. It was dynamic, moving with the chakra.
His previous thinking had still been too rigid. He kept trying to lock the fusion ratios into the anchor points, but the chakra of the three natures was flowing, and the ratios shifted with that flow. Fixed anchor points simply could not keep up with the chakra's dynamic changes. It would have been strange if they had not exploded.
"Fuck! I went in a huge circle and made the same old mistake again!" His eyes flew open. He slapped his thigh, grabbed the charcoal pencil, and began drawing.
Instead of fixed ratio anchor points, he needed a dynamic adaptive structure. During reconstruction, the anchor points would follow the flow of the deconstructed chakra particles and adjust the fusion ratios in real time. It was like pouring water into a container: whatever shape the container had, the water would take that shape, rather than freezing the water into a fixed block of ice beforehand and stuffing it inside.
This idea was even crazier than the earlier deconstruction core. It amounted to making anchor points carved rigidly into iron adjust their own structures in real time with the flow of chakra. The margin for error was vanishingly small. But if it worked, never mind three natures-even a four-nature Kekkei Mōra might come within reach.
The more he drew, the more smoothly it went. The deadlock that had held him up for nearly ten days suddenly opened up. From the deconstruction core to the dynamic reconstruction anchor points, the entire chain of logic flowed without a single snag. Even the crowding of anchor points he had worried about resolved itself once the fixed ratio structures were removed.
By the time he finished the final stroke, it was already the next morning. A few thin shafts of morning light filtered through gaps in the vines at the entrance, falling across the densely covered draft paper. He stretched, his bones cracking, and only when his stomach felt painfully empty did he remember he had not eaten for nearly a day.
He got up, caught a fish in a stream near the cave, gave it a quick roasting, and finished it in a few bites. Only then did he return to the experimental bench, replace the blade on his carving knife, and secure a fresh piece of starfall iron with a click.
This time, he carved much more slowly, making every anchor point and every groove exceptionally precise. The dynamic reconstruction anchor points were even finer than the previous structure. Every node had a micron-scale margin for error. One tiny mistake would ruin the entire piece.
He carved for most of the day. By the time he removed the starfall iron, it was dark outside again. The insects outside the cave abruptly fell silent, and the outermost sensory anchor point trembled faintly. A small squad of ninja had taken advantage of the window when the miasma was weakest to creep deeper into the forest. They had already triggered his first warning line and were less than a kilometer and a half from the cave.
It was a search team from Konoha's Root.
Rinto frowned but ignored them. Testing the configuration came first. Even if the sky fell, it could wait until he finished this attempt.
He walked to the rock wall, took a deep breath, steadied his breathing, and slowly injected chakra into the starfall iron in his hand. Wind, earth, and fire chakra entered the core anchor point simultaneously.
Deconstruction began instantly, breaking the three chakra natures into the smallest particles. Immediately afterward, the dynamic reconstruction anchor points activated in sync. Following the flow of chakra particles, they adjusted the fusion ratios in real time. Wind's stripping, earth's solidification, and fire's burning-three completely conflicting properties fused precisely inside the core, generating an entirely new chakra carrying a translucent white glow.
Did it work?
Rinto's heartbeat instantly quickened. With a push of his fingertips, the translucent white light shot out and struck the thick rock wall. There was no explosion, no thunderous sound. Wherever the white light passed, the hard granite simply vanished, leaving not even a speck of dust. All that remained was a smooth, even hole whose bottom could not be seen. Even the edges of the rock wall had been stripped perfectly clean.
Dust Release.
It had really worked.
He stood frozen, staring at the starfall iron in his hand, then at the hole in the rock wall, unable to collect himself for a long while. Kekkei Tōta, the deep fusion of three natures-he had done it. No bloodline, no Kekkei Genkai. Through chakra configurations alone, an ordinary ninja could release Dust Release, something that should only have been usable by Kekkei Tōta wielders like the Second Tsuchikage and Ōnoki.
This truly overturned the Shinobi World's bloodline monopoly.
Just then, the second layer of traps outside the cave suddenly exploded. The blast was particularly piercing in the quiet forest. It was followed by ninja screaming and hurried footsteps charging toward the cave. They were less than half a kilometer away.
Rinto came back to himself, his gaze instantly turning cold.
He carefully put away the starfall iron in his hand, wrapped it in two layers of oilpaper, and placed it in the pouch he kept close to his body. He also secured all his core plans and experimental records inside a waterproof bag and slung it onto his back. Then he picked up the ring engraved with five-nature and Kekkei Genkai fusion configurations, slipped it on, and flexed his wrist, his bones cracking.
Before, he had not wanted trouble. He had only wanted to hide away and conduct his research in peace. But these people would not leave him alone. They had chased him into the Forest of Death and even dared breach his defenses.
Since they were courting death, they could not blame him for showing no mercy.
He walked to the entrance, lifted the poisonous vines, and looked at the few Root ninja charging toward him. There was not a ripple in his gaze, only bone-chilling cold.
Perfect. Time to see how well this newly completed Dust Release works.