Shira has found another great place.
This place is outside Sunagakure, in the shadow of a Giant Rock eroded with countless holes by the wind.
Far from the training grounds and from human habitation, this place is only accompanied by the ever-present wind and the scorching sun.
Shira chose this place because it was remote, quiet, and firm enough—the rocky ground beneath her feet could withstand the impact of what she was about to do.
He took off his outer clothes, revealing his old training uniform underneath, which was soaked with sweat and faded from repeated washing.
Then he walked to the Giant Rock, where several heavy-looking bags were roughly tied together with thick hemp rope and tough leather.
However, it wasn't filled with sand, but with a high-density Iron Sand, a specialty of the Sunagakure Mine, which was extremely heavy.
This was a set of weighted equipment that he specially commissioned from a craftsman, using part of his mission reward.
He first picked up two smaller bags and carefully tied them to his calves with sturdy leather buckles. His muscles tensed instantly, feeling a heavy weight. Next, he tied two heavier bags to his thighs near his knees.
Then came the largest one, worn like a vest, with weights on both the front and back, secured tightly with crisscrossing leather straps. Finally, he picked up two specially made Iron Sand sandbags with handles, one in each hand, like holding giant dumbbells.
As she donned the full gear, Shira felt her body suddenly sink, and the rocks beneath her feet seemed to groan under the weight.
The weight was more than double the standard weight he usually used in training, even approaching the exaggerated weight he saw Guy use to give Rock Lee extra training when he was in Konoha. Every muscle, every bone was protesting and groaning, the flow of blood seemed to slow down, and his breathing involuntarily became deeper and heavier.
Shira did not immediately activate its activity.
Normalcy is the foundation for honing skills.
He walked to the center of a relatively flat rocky area, his feet shoulder-width apart, his soles firmly gripping the ground. His back was straight, his core engaged, and his gaze was fixed on the horizon distorted by the heat. The Iron Sand sandbags he held in his hands hung naturally at his sides.
"One..."
He counted silently in his mind, and then began to slowly and deliberately squat down.
The movements were textbook perfect: hips moved back, knees aligned with toes, and body sank steadily.
The pressure from the weight shot from the soles of my feet straight to the top of my head. The muscles on the front of my thighs felt like they were being pierced by countless steel needles, contracting and trembling wildly, trying to resist the terrifying downward force. My knees and ankles made a faint, teeth-grinding creaking sound.
"Oh~ this feeling..."
"Two..."
As she sank to her lowest point, her thighs were almost parallel to the ground. Shira paused for an extremely brief moment, feeling the terrifying sensation of the weight reaching its peak, as if it were pressing her into the ground.
Then, the core muscle groups of the legs, buttocks, waist and abdomen simultaneously exerted explosive force, resisting gravity and the weight of the Iron Sand, and pushed the body, along with the hundreds of kilograms of load, upwards with difficulty, inch by inch!
Sweat poured out almost instantly, seeping wildly from his forehead, temples, and back. His breathing became heavy, and his lungs felt like a broken bellows.
But he gritted his teeth, his eyes fixed on the front, clearing his mind of all distractions, leaving only one thought: Rise!
"Three..."
It sank again.
This time, the pain was more pronounced, and the trembling in his muscles began to teeter on the brink of losing control. But he forced himself to maintain the standard of his movements, refusing to cut corners.
Sink, stand up. Each cycle is like wrestling with an invisible behemoth, squeezing out the last bit of energy from the muscle fibers, and challenging the limits of the bones and ligaments.
Shira didn't count to one hundred, nor to five hundred. Under such extreme pressure, numbers lost their meaning. He simply mechanically and attentively repeated one of the most basic yet most difficult human actions, using his body in the most direct way to feel, adapt to, and conquer this heavy force.
This is a tempering of the leg foundation, the source of explosive power, and the basis for all future high-speed movement, powerful kicks, and even withstanding higher-energy recoil.
In the original work, Guy was able to unleash such terrifying leg techniques, and powerful Taijutsu ninjas could run on air; their lower body strength must have undergone hellish training.
Shira doesn't have a teacher like Kai to guide him step by step, but he knows the direction—to train his legs into "weapons" capable of kicking through rocks and cracking the earth, using the most basic and direct method.
After finishing his squat training, he unloaded some of the weights from his legs, leaving only his vest and arms on. Then, he began his jumping exercises.
This isn't a simple, light frog jump; it's a weighted vertical jump!
He squatted down in place, then leaped upwards with all his might, trying to touch a three- or four-meter-high marker he had drawn in charcoal beforehand on the Giant Rock.
"Hey!"
On his first jump, the heavy burden made him feel as if his body was tied to a giant boulder, and he was pitifully low off the ground, far from the target point.
Upon landing, the heavy impact traveled from the soles of my feet throughout my body, causing my internal organs to churn.
Adjust your breathing, squat down again, gather your strength, and jump!
Once, twice, ten times...
Every jump was a full-force effort, and every landing was accompanied by an impact several times their body weight. The muscles in their calves, like forged iron blocks, became scorching and hard with each compression and release.
His ankles were under immense pressure, and a dull ache was coming from them. But he didn't stop until his legs were so weak that he could barely bend them, and his lungs were burning. Only then did he collapse to the ground, panting heavily, with sweat soaking the ground.
After resting for a while and waiting for the trembling to subside, he began practicing explosive jumps under load again—not straight up and down, but rapid forward and sideways leaps, simulating instantaneous advances and changes of direction in actual combat.
This places higher demands on the stability of his ankles and the explosive power of his legs, and also makes him more prone to injury, but Shira still trains meticulously.
Just as he was focusing on a full-force leap to the side and backward, a weathered rock beneath his feet loosened slightly upon landing, causing him to stumble for a moment—
"Call!"
A turbulent current, clearer than usual, suddenly spread outwards with his abrupt landing, stirring up a lot of sand and dust.
Shira steadied herself, but a thought suddenly struck her.
Huh? Damn! Something's wrong!
That impact just now... the airflow it created upon landing seemed to be more than just a simple vibration of the air?
Weight, speed, sudden pauses... did these factors, in some way, more violently "disturb" the wind?
He vaguely felt that leg techniques might not be just about the power and speed of kicks. If this "disturbance" could be amplified and controlled, could it also become an aid to attack or movement? For example, using the airflow in the opposite direction to propel oneself when pushing off the ground with full force? Or, generating wind pressure during a high-speed kick?
The thought flashed through my mind, but I'll jot it down for now.
The primary task at hand is to allow the legs to adapt to and eventually master this weight.
During a training break, he leaned back in the shade of the Giant Rock, taking small sips of water from his canteen. His gaze fell on the heavy Iron Sand sandbags beside him, but his thoughts drifted to the "strange tales" he had overheard a few days earlier in the village, excitedly discussed by several young ninjas during a break.
They mentioned a traveler from another village who boasted in a tavern that he had seen extraordinary people overseas who could "walk with heavy loads in the deep sea," "soak their muscles and bones in medicinal baths until they were as strong as iron," and even had a secret method to "strengthen their internal organs and make their heart and lungs as strong as a wild beast."
At the time, Shira dismissed it as a trivial rumor. But now, considering the bottleneck she had genuinely experienced in her cultivation—the increasing burden on her internal organs, especially her heart and lungs, due to the enhancement of her Second Activation —she realized that...
Musculoskeletal strength can be honed through weight training, but the strength of internal organs seems to improve slowly; recovery ability is also gradually failing to keep up with the increasingly intense training intensity—those absurd rumors made him think deeply.
"A cultivation method to enhance the strength of internal organs? Heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys?"
Shira repeated in a low voice, "I can carry heavy loads like Rock Lee, try diving to relieve the pressure... and then take a medicinal bath to recover and strengthen my muscles and skin..."
He's carrying a load, that's what he's doing.
Diving? Hmm, even large lakes are rare in Sunagakure, let alone the deep sea. Medicinal baths? Perhaps we could inquire whether Sunagakure has any recipes for strengthening or restoring health using desert-specific herbs, but that requires knowledge and connections.
As for "modifying an extra pair of lungs, heart, liver, spleen, and kidneys"... Shira shook her head. That was too bizarre, almost heretical. At least for now, she didn't intend to think in that direction.
My own Seven Heavens Breathing Method is about tapping into the human body's own potential; it's a kind of "evolution," not a transformation that turns me into a non-human being.
Besides, does such technology even exist in this world? Perhaps it does, after all, there's Orochimaru in this world. But that probably doesn't fall into the category of "effort," but rather involves stepping into an unknown and dangerous forbidden territory.
"Being able to breathe in Natural Energy and cultivate both internally and externally—that's already a different realm of cultivation..."
Shira recited the last sentence, her eyes deepened.
Natural Energy? He vaguely remembered that it was mentioned in the original work, that it was a more primal and violent energy of heaven and earth than Chakra.
Senjutsu? Those belong to the legends of sacred places like Mount Myōboku and Ryūchi Cave, far removed from the reach of a Sunagakure Genin.
Moreover, as that person said, that might truly be a realm "not for humans".
He temporarily suppressed these chaotic, forward-thinking, and even somewhat unrealistic ideas. For now, what he could and had to do was remain grounded in reality:
Continue extreme weight training to solidify the leg foundation, improve absolute strength and explosiveness, and lay the foundation for higher levels of agility, faster speed, and stronger kicking techniques.
Explore the possibilities of combining "load" with "environment," such as sensing and utilizing airflow under load, and training bursts and stability in sandy terrain.
Of course, one should also be mindful of any traditional methods of strengthening or restoring health that may exist in Sunagakure, such as the use of certain desert herbs. Perhaps one could consult Granny Chiyo.
Improving one's internal organs and recovery may require a deeper exploration of the " Seven Heavens Breathing Method " itself. Breathing techniques optimize energy utilization efficiency, so can we, by adjusting the rhythm of breathing, gently stimulate and hone the endurance of internal organs while strengthening muscles? This requires extremely careful experimentation and perception.
One must take things one step at a time. It's easy to imagine a new pair of lungs or a new heart, but how to make the existing heart and lungs beat stronger and expand more powerfully under every extreme breath and every heavy impact is the real challenge that Shira, as a human ninja, needs to face.
After resting, he re-fastened his weights and stood up. His gaze returned to its calm state.
The deep sea is too far away, and Senjutsu are elusive.
But the sandstorm before my eyes, the rocks beneath my feet, the weight on my body, and the power flowing within me in a unique rhythm are real.
He took a deep breath of the dry, scorching air of Sunagakure, faced the Giant Rock again, and assumed a squatting stance.
Let's start here. With these hundreds of kilograms of Iron Sand, let's smash every ounce of our potential into this hard ground, into every difficult rise and fall, to forge a more solid and stronger tomorrow.
"Keep going, Rōshi," Shira said to herself, and then her body sank heavily downwards again.
The number of views dropped from 8800 to just over 3000 (=TェT=)