"Earth Release: Excavation Technique!"
Sasori and Pakura both knew Mukai had exchanged for this Ninjutsu with the village.
Compared to the battlefield-level Tearing Earth Turning Palm preserved by Iwagakure, the version kept by Sunagakure was actually very outdated.
Even so, it brought the earth up from underground,
creating an eruption like a mud volcano, and its effect was still astonishing.
Could Mukai's Chakra already be enough to control a massive Ninjutsu on that scale?
As everyone watched, the ground shook, and the mound of earth in front of Mukai began to churn,
looking just like boiling water.
Immediately afterward, the churning ground began to spew liquefied mud and small stones upward,
scattering them across the ground to form a mound of mud and a hole.
But the mound was only a little taller than a person, and the hole looked to be just over two meters deep at most.
That was it?
Everyone who had eagerly anticipated seeing the Ninjutsu's effect was sorely disappointed.
Where was the promised battlefield-level, massive terrain-altering Ninjutsu?
He had just dug a well?
Even the usually serious Sasori couldn't help twitching at the corner of his mouth. He had so much to criticize that he didn't know whether to say it.
Mukai, the one responsible, clapped his hands and said with great satisfaction:
"Mm-hmm, not bad!"
Unable to take it anymore, Pakura used the Body Flicker Technique to reach him and put him in a headlock, grinding her knuckles into his head.
"You brat, how dare you make a fool of me!
What kind of Tearing Earth Turning Palm is this?
All you did was dig a shallow well!"
Mukai explained as he endured and enjoyed the Poison Dragon Drill:
"Teacher, you've got it wrong. I'm just marking out a vertical shaft for the water tunnel project!
You know that controlling the amount of Chakra can make a world of difference to a Ninjutsu's effect!
You can't blame me for this!"
Pakura thought about it and realized he was right, so she finally let the mischievous Mukai go.
Having escaped her clutches, Mukai turned to Nagato and said:
"Nagato, use this vertical shaft I dug as the center and try using Tearing Earth Turning Palm at full power!"
After Mukai told the others to step back, Nagato, who had already learned the technique, stood alone in front of the shaft Mukai had dug,
and began forming Hand Seals with careful precision.
Boar → bird → rat → snake
"Tearing Earth Turning Palm!"
As Nagato poured in Chakra at full power, the entire stretch of ground, more than ten meters across, began to boil and churn.
Then, like a fountain under pressure, liquefied mud shot more than three meters into the air like a high-pressure jet of water!
Mukai had been ready. He used the Body Flicker Technique to get behind Nagato and carried him, limp from exhaustion, out of the eruption's path.
Nagato really was a straightforward kid!
When told to use his full power, he really hadn't held back a single bit of Chakra!
With Nagato's enormous reserves of Chakra and the amplifying power of the Rinnegan,
the mud volcano before them, which had erupted to leave a pit fifteen meters across, finally looked like a proper Opening Earth Rising Excavation.
Nagato's Ninjutsu kept erupting for more than twenty minutes,
digging, in the open space near the Moon Shadow River,
a great pit fifteen meters wide and six meters deep.
A quick calculation showed that the pit held at least a thousand cubic meters.
If more than a hundred people had dug it with shovels, they would have needed to work continuously for at least three days!
Earth Release Ninjutsu really was a godsend for civil engineering!
Mukai told Nagato to get some proper rest, and especially warned him not to use up all his Chakra at once again.
This pit was the starting point of the entire tunnel project, but it wasn't going to stay this size.
Later, Nagato would continue using Tearing Earth Turning Palm around it to expand the water storage space at the starting point.
The enormous Chakra reserves and extremely rapid recovery of his Uzumaki Constitution
made Nagato the obvious choice for the surface excavation work.
With the large pit at the project's starting point finished, work could begin on the sloping water channel.
Mukai's construction method was modeled on the design of a karez.
A naturally sloping passage would connect the river beside Moon Sake Town to the oasis workshop.
The excavation between the two points would be positioned using a series of vertical shafts.
The spacing between these shafts along the route matched the range of Mukai's bioelectric field sensing.
Using this method, Mukai set up twenty-two vertical shafts along the way.
With his bioelectric field sensing, Mukai could accurately correct the direction of the excavation.
On the Land of Rain side, Nagato was digging the reservoir with the help of his Uzumaki Constitution.
At the endpoint in the Land of Wind, Mukai issued a mission through the village
and directly called in six ninja skilled in Earth Release to dig a well more than twenty meters deep beside the abandoned oasis!
Combined with the existing difference in elevation between the Land of Rain and the Land of Wind, the total drop between the two was over thirty meters.
An ordinary water channel didn't need such a steep drop, and Mukai wanted more from this one than simply transporting water.
If a primary school student in China were asked what a rushing river could be used for,
generating electricity would certainly be among the answers.
With such abundant water resources in the Land of Rain, what a waste it would be not to use them to generate electricity!
With enough electricity, he would be able to do even more.
As construction on the water project got underway, Mukai grew busier by the day, spinning around like a little top.
"Konan, send a paper crane to let Nagato know
he can pause the reservoir excavation for a while.
Have him start using Earth Release: Earth Shore Return to make stone slabs,
and hire the villagers of Moon Sake Town to lay them.
Tell Yahiko to buy some extra food lately.
Everyone's busy working, so make sure they get enough to eat.
Sasori, why did your mountain-digging mecha stop?
If you slack off, you won't get any lunch!"
Konan, who had become Mukai's full-time secretary and personal assistant, heard him teasing Sasori as the latter worked hard at digging while Mukai wound a coil.
She merely smiled, picked up the project plan, and quietly left.
After spending so long together, she naturally knew that Mukai and Sasori's friendship was like that of brothers.
Bickering like this had long been an everyday occurrence.
Of course, Sasori was the one who came off worse. Who told him to be so bad with words?
The Mountain God Mecha had now been modified and looked like the front half of a mole cricket,
with sturdy, sharp coverings fitted over the fingers of both its burly hands.
With assistance from Chakra Threads and a ratchet-driven hydraulic system, it could efficiently excavate a passage.
Inside that passage, Mukai could then use a precisely controlled Chakra-output version of Tearing Earth Turning Palm to safely widen and heighten the tunnel.
Using Chakra to lift the earth compacted the excavated soil against the surrounding walls,
not only saving the time needed to carry it out, but also reinforcing the entire passage.
As he teased Sasori, he set down the special coil he had been winding with insulated wire and got up to help.
There was only one reason Sasori would stop the modified excavation mecha: he had encountered hard rock ahead.
Sasori controlled the excavation-modified Mountain God Mecha, backing it into the widened and reinforced tunnel so Mukai could go forward wearing the Zealot Mecha.
Sasori paid no attention to Mukai's teasing. Instead, he sat down at ease beside the strange machine Mukai had been busy making.
As he ate to replenish his strength, he said:
"You're using so much Chakra Metal to make this thing. Is it another powerful ninja tool or mecha?"
Inside the Zealot Mecha, Mukai shook his head.
He pressed the arm blades on both arms against the rock, activating their high-frequency vibrations and the pulse jets on his arms.
Amid the hum of vibrations and the hiss of the jets, he answered:
"This isn't a ninja tool or a Ninjutsu, but it can transform the power of nature
into a great power comparable to Chakra.
Of course, it can also be stored for use as a weapon or Ninjutsu.
It's called a hydroelectric turbine generator."