The sea wind, laden with a salty tang, battered the stone door of the underground laboratory in the Land of Whirlpools with a dull hum. Rinto reached behind him and locked it tight, his fingertips still stinging from the senjutsu chakra that had scorched his chakra pathways during his fight with Orochimaru.
Ignoring his torn clothes and bleeding wounds, he rushed straight to the stone table. Scrolls, rough paper, and metal plates engraved with chakra configurations lay scattered there, flung about by the battle-the fruit of nearly half a year of work, all his theoretical work on Barehanded Senjutsu, dynamic reconstruction, and kekkei genkai fusion.
"Damn you, Orochimaru..."
He cursed under his breath and condensed a faint wisp of Wind Release at his fingertips, carefully gathering the sheets of rough paper still drifting in the air. The charcoal marks had been shaken into smudges, and flying rubble had even torn several core configuration diagrams. He crouched and laid the dusty, bloodstained diagrams on the floor in order, his brows knotted tight.
He had won that battle, yet lost what mattered most to him.
Carrier-Version Senjutsu had indeed driven Orochimaru back, but its flaws had been laid utterly bare: balance anchor points had to be engraved into iron or stone slabs in advance, the rate of natural energy absorption was fixed and could not synchronize with his own chakra, and senjutsu chakra could only be released through a carrier. It was completely divorced from the ideal he pursued: "Barehanded Jutsu Casting, a thought becoming a jutsu."
When Orochimaru had ambushed him, he had only been able to release senjutsu wind blades through three engraved iron plates buried in the ruins beforehand. Their flexibility was abysmal. Had Orochimaru not been eager to probe his abilities and refrained from killing him, he probably could not even have protected the laboratory.
"Fixed anchor points... they simply won't work."
Rinto sat on the cold stone floor and picked up the most intact sketch. It depicted his original idea: condense a core balance anchor point in his dantian and use it as the center to guide the fusion of natural energy with physical and spiritual energy. But actual combat had proven that a fixed anchor point within flowing chakra pathways simply could not withstand the impact of natural energy—like trying to stop a flood with a wooden stake, it collapsed on contact.
He grabbed his charcoal pencil and began writing again on a blank sheet of rough paper. The scratching of its tip against the paper sounded especially clear in the silent laboratory.
[Approach one: strengthen the core anchor point] - Reinforce the anchor point's structure with nested Whirlpool Sealing patterns to improve its resistance to impact. - Problem: the influx rate of natural energy is uncontrollable. Even a reinforced anchor point will be swept apart, while sharply increasing localized pressure in the chakra pathways and triggering petrification backlash. [Approach two: multiple anchor points in parallel] - Place an anchor point in each arm, the shoulder and neck region, and the dantian to distribute pressure. - Problem: the anchor points cannot synchronize. Natural energy is distributed unevenly, causing a blowout during fusion and throwing chakra into chaos.
The charcoal pencil stopped against the paper, leaving a deep, dark dot. Rinto irritably raked his fingers through his hair. The cuts on his fingertips reopened, and blood dripped onto the rough paper, spreading into a small dark-red stain.
He looked up at the ration sack in the corner of the laboratory-only two hard flatbreads remained. He picked one up and took a bite. Dry wheat flour scraped around his mouth, making his throat hurt. Crumbs fell onto the sketch, landing right over the core anchor point he had drawn.
He frowned and blew the crumbs away, only to freeze that very instant.
The crumbs did not scatter evenly. Instead, they drifted crookedly outward, following the texture of the paper and the direction of the airflow.
"...Dispersal causes collapse, and concentration causes collapse too."
Rinto murmured to himself, his eyes slowly brightening.
All his previous ideas had revolved around "using anchor points to lock down natural energy," like a dam holding back water. But natural energy was not stagnant water. It was a tide, a torrent; the more he blocked it, the fiercer it became.
The paths of the crumbs gave him inspiration: anchor points should not "block," but "guide." Rather than using one or several fixed points to withstand the force head-on, he should let the anchor points adjust dynamically with the flow of natural energy, like a river channel guiding water, like sluice gates responding to the rising and falling tides.
He immediately grabbed his charcoal pencil and frantically revised the diagram. He changed the originally solid anchor patterns into hollow, nested, expandable structures; beside their originally fixed positions, he wrote, "fine adjustments according to chakra flow speed" and "automatic adaptation to natural energy concentration."
"Not fixed anchor points, but floating balance anchor points..."
The pencil tip danced rapidly across the paper as a new configuration diagram gradually took shape. Completely absorbed, Rinto forgot the pain of his wounds, forgot his hunger, forgot the time. Only when the sky outside the window shifted from darkness to faint light did he set down his pencil and let out a long breath.
He had a new approach, but he knew very well that this was only the beginning.
Between theory and practice lay countless rounds of trial and error, countless instances of backlash, countless times of scrapping everything and starting over. He had already stumbled into the pitfalls of Carrier-Version Senjutsu. The road to Barehanded Senjutsu would only be harder.
He stood and stretched his stiff body. The burns left by the uncontrolled natural energy were still on his left arm, pale-blue petrification patterns spreading like a spiderweb. He walked to the workbench, picked up a bottle of povidone-iodine, poured some onto gauze, and hastily treated his wounds.
The bottle tipped over, spilling brown liquid onto a fragmentary sealing scroll from the Land of Whirlpools tucked away in a corner. Rinto's heart tightened, and he hurried to save it. The spreading stains blurred most of the scroll's patterns. Distressed, he gently wiped them with his fingertips, only to see something different within those blurred patterns.
It was the underlying structure of Whirlpool Sealing-not a single sealing array, but countless miniature sealing units, nested, linked, and responsive. When one unit activated, every unit responded in sync; when pressure increased, the units automatically expanded their capacity; when energy weakened, they automatically contracted.
"Moving anchor points... nested locking... responsive adaptation..."
Rinto's eyes widened further and further. This was exactly what he needed!
The floating anchor points he had designed before only allowed individual anchor points to adapt, whereas the Land of Whirlpools' Sealing Jutsu allowed the entire system to adapt. If he applied that logic to senjutsu balance, it would not be a single anchor point moving, but every anchor point throughout his body forming an interconnected network, jointly maintaining the balance of the three energies.
He immediately spread out the fragmentary scroll and studied it word by word, disregarding the iodine stains. The scroll had been left behind when the Land of Whirlpools was destroyed. It recorded the relationship between Sealing Jutsu and the balance of natural energy. Many passages were incomplete, but its core logic was exceptionally clear.
"Let one's own chakra be the sea, natural energy the tide, and anchor points the embankments; follow the tide's rise and fall, neither blocking nor cutting it off..."
Those words split the fog in his mind like a bolt of lightning.
All his previous failures stemmed from setting himself in opposition to natural energy, trying to use "jutsu" to control "energy." True balance, however, was fusion, coexistence: making his chakra system a vessel capable of holding natural energy, rather than a cage.
Rinto abruptly stood and walked to the center of the workbench. There lay the crystal plate he used to test chakra configurations. He drew a deep breath, condensed his own chakra at his fingertips, and began engraving a new anchor structure onto the crystal plate according to the nesting logic in the scroll.
This time, he no longer drew a single anchor point. Instead, he drew countless miniature, interconnected, expandable anchor units across the entire crystal plate like a star chart. Extremely fine chakra lines connected the units, forming a complete network.
Time passed little by little. Sunlight streamed through the laboratory's ventilation opening, casting long, narrow patches of light across the floor. Sweat covered Rinto's forehead, and his fingertips trembled slightly from continuously manipulating chakra, but his eyes grew brighter and brighter.
When the final anchor unit was complete, pale-blue light shone from the crystal plate. Countless miniature anchor points flickered in unison, contracting and expanding rhythmically, like breathing.
Looking at the result before him, Rinto let a faint smile touch his lips for the first time.
This was not an endpoint, but a new beginning.
He knew the trial and error ahead would be even more dangerous. Distributed floating anchor points demanded a hundred times his previous precision in chakra control. An error in even one miniature anchor point could throw the chakra throughout his body into chaos, with unthinkable consequences from the backlash.
But he did not care.
To him, studying the essence of chakra and solving the problem of Barehanded Senjutsu mattered more than his life. Orochimaru's harassment, Konoha's wanted notice, the conflicts of the shinobi world-all of it was irrelevant noise.
He walked to the ration sack, picked up the last hard flatbread, and took a large bite. This time, even the dry wheat flour seemed to taste sweet.
He carefully put away the new configuration diagrams in a sealed metal box. Then he began tidying the laboratory, sorting and filing the scattered documents, repairing damaged tools, and returning the experimental equipment displaced by the battle to its proper places.
Once all that was done, he walked to the laboratory window and opened it a crack.
The morning sea breeze washed over his face, carrying the coolness of seawater. The distant sea glittered, and seabirds swept across the sky, soaring freely.
Rinto's gaze, however, settled farther away.
His location in the Land of Whirlpools had been exposed. Orochimaru would not let the matter rest, and Konoha would not tolerate the existence of a rogue ninja like him who possessed the secrets of senjutsu and kekkei genkai fusion. More people would come knocking, bringing more trouble, more interruptions.
He had to establish solid defenses before he could research in peace.
Rinto closed the window, his gaze turning cold and resolute.
He turned and walked to the workbench, picking up an engraving knife and a chakra metal plate. This time, he would not be making a senjutsu configuration, but an island-wide sealing defense line.
The outer layer: frequency-disrupting sensory anchor points to interfere with all probing; the middle layer: triggered Lightning Release + Explosion Release traps to make intruders pay; the inner layer: an adaptive barrier to trap jonin-level opponents.
He would turn the Land of Whirlpools into an absolutely secure research fortress.
Anyone who dared interrupt his research was his enemy.
And he never showed his enemies mercy.
The charcoal pencil made its first stroke on a new blueprint, writing: "Land of Whirlpools Island-Wide Defense Configuration Plan."
A new chapter began.