Chapter 104: Phased Results of the New Ninjutsu
The person who can betray Konoha could be someone like Mizuki, so what more is there to say—don't think that Mizuki was always a bad person. At the very least, when he passed the political review and was allowed to become a teacher to Naruto and the other rookies, his political score was on the same level as Iruka's!
Thinking too much about these things was pointless. She could only sigh helplessly. After being promoted to Chunin, her rank and authority had increased, but it also meant that many of the dirty things that Kakashi had shielded her from before would now come before her.
There were also happy things.
With Tsunade's support, the development of the new ninjutsu was going smoothly. After a week, the new jutsu basically had a prototype.
In today's routine spar, she had used this jutsu in actual combat, and its performance was brilliant: it still operated stably in intense combat and was able to reduce her reaction time by 0.01 seconds.
This number didn't sound like much, but its effect in battle was immediate—her record for today was a long-awaited clean sweep, 10:0, with Naruto and Sasuke each losing five times.
On the way home after training, her mood was still a little jubilant. It had been a long time since this girl had crushed those two with such a large advantage—well, mainly crushing Sasuke. That guy Naruto had always won more than he lost against her (limited to when her stamina hadn't been too depleted).
It also served as a reminder to the recently somewhat inflated Sasuke. He had been too engrossed in the strength increase brought by the Sharingan lately and had forgotten his basic training. Sakura had advised him several rounds that the essence of the Sharingan was a strength multiplier, not strength itself. Only when his fundamental strength was strong enough would the boost from the Sharingan be sufficiently great. Therefore, to blindly dig into the abilities of the Sharingan was actually to neglect the fundamentals for the sake of the trivial.
When the dynamic vision advantage that the Sharingan prided itself on was partially offset by the near-simultaneous-thought-and-action effect brought by Sakura's new ninjutsu, Sasuke was completely suppressed by Sakura. Then came five consecutive defeats.
Sasuke had been dismissive of Sakura's advice before. After this series of defeats, Sakura saw a thoughtful look on his face, and he had resumed the basic training that he had interrupted for some time—instead of practicing the high-level ninjutsu he had been rather obsessed with recently. She knew that he had done some self-reflection.
Then again, to be applicable in actual combat meant that the new ninjutsu could be declared a success, at the very least.
"So it's time to give it a name," Sakura said to herself as she walked home. "I can't just keep calling it Body Pathway Derangement or 'the new ninjutsu'."
Body Pathway Derangement was, after all, just the prototype for the new jutsu. After being greatly modified by Sakura, this jutsu was already a completely different matter from its predecessor and could no longer be lumped together.
"How about calling it Ninja Art: Sakura Rush - Phase One?" She had an inspiration as she crossed the roof of a house and saw a cherry blossom tree planted in the courtyard—coincidentally, her name was also "Sakura."
To be fair, this name was already an extraordinary performance for Sakura, who was not good at naming things.
The designation "Phase One" expressed Sakura's ambition for the new jutsu. With the generous sacrifice of countless ice clones, the young girl had now accumulated enough lessons from failure and success and had learned to safely and effectively inject and enhance her nervous system with chakra.
This was actually not difficult—just as anyone who has learned to ride a bicycle would not think that riding a bike is a very difficult thing. The only problem is that if learning to ride a bike meant dying every time you fell, then probably not many people would be able to learn the supposedly not-at-all-difficult skill of riding a bike.
"In short, it's decided. The new jutsu will be called 'Sakura Rush'! Phase One will be to simply enhance the nervous system with chakra, crudely increasing reaction speed and thinking speed. Next up will be Phase Two, Phase Three..." she said to herself as she leaped nimbly across the rooftops.
When Sakura had watched the manga in her previous life, she had once complained about the act of ninja jumping on rooftops: not taking the perfectly good road and insisting on playing hopscotch, which could only be explained by being off-the-charts chuunibyou.
Only after she became a ninja did she discover the benefits of jumping on rooftops: the main roads were mostly used by ordinary people, who formed a slow and crowded flow of traffic, making it impossible to run fast. Therefore, jumping on rooftops was the correct choice when in a hurry: not only could it avoid being blocked by the crowd, but it could also take a straight line without detours. This was not some chuunibyou behavior, but something with a practical need behind it.
For Sakura, this method of moving high up also had a kind of fun similar to parkour.
For example... seeing a very tall telephone pole on the street ahead, an idea came to the girl's mind.
She quickened her pace, leaping and rushing to a low house in front of the telephone pole.
The roof, in disrepair for years, swayed as she ran on it, and with a little force, it felt like it was on the verge of collapsing.
Her cool white shoes stepped lightly on the roof tiles. The semi-high heels tapped on the tiles, making a crisp sound. Chakra passed through the soles of her shoes and flowed into the roof, exquisitely reinforcing the dilapidated wooden beams, making them able to be tread upon.
The tall wooden pole stood right before her eyes.
The girl took a deep breath.
"Ninja Art - Sakura Rush - Phase One."
All emotions faded. Her thoughts seemed to drift away, leaving only a blank slate.
The most subtle chakra control ability, left after being tempered a thousand times, instinctively manipulated the chakra, circulating it according to the ninjutsu's requirements and flowing into the fine nervous system—
Then, in Sakura's eyes, the world seemed to slow down.
She could clearly feel every step she took, the contraction and wriggling of her muscles, as if in slow-motion replay. She could see the dust splash up and land on her fair feet, lightly coating them with a layer of fine ash.
Her sandals stepped on the roof. Each step in slow motion exquisitely found the most stable position. Then came a high leap. The girl's figure was as light as a young swallow. She crossed a height of several meters and landed on the wooden pole without a trace of effort.
She stood at this height, with half of Konoha at her feet: from the candy shop selling sweets to the hot spring inn with light smoke curling up in the distance, from the little children playing ninja games and running past the wooden pole to the crimson clouds on the horizon like fire, the infinite beautiful scenery was all in her eyes.
It was breathtaking.
After a good while, she finally stopped the Sakura Rush formula and jumped down from the wooden pole.
The Phase One Ninja Art: Sakura Rush that the girl had cast had actually only barely met the minimum requirements, but the effect was already quite good.
The conduction speed of human motor nerves is only about one hundred meters per second. After being enhanced by the Phase One chakra, it could reach a speed of about one hundred and fifty or sixty meters per second. And when Sakura was experimenting with the ice clone before, at her best, she had been able to electronify the entire nervous system, achieving the speed of light (that is, 300 million meters per second) for nerve signal transmission—although it had only lasted for less than a ten-thousandth of a second before it overloaded and collapsed. If the Sakura Rush ninjutsu could maintain this state for a longer time...
However, those were all things too far in the future! Sakura laughed at herself. Don't try to run before you've learned to walk.
The development of Phase Two had long been on the agenda: the safest method was to use chakra to warm the nerve fibers, raising their temperature, thereby increasing the electrical conductivity of the sodium particles, accelerating the depolarization process, and ultimately increasing the conduction speed—just by raising the temperature by 16 degrees, the nerve conduction speed could be increased by 3 times (Note 1).
Then, she experimented with a more radical method—after all, the life of an ice clone is not a life—directly constructing a micro-electric field in the nerve cells, forcefully increasing the electrical conductivity and crudely accelerating the conduction speed of the action potential. After sacrificing several clones, the girl was stunned to find that this plan was quite successful. Compared to the conservative plan, which required raising the temperature to dozens or a hundred degrees and could burn the nerves at any time, the method of directly strengthening the electric field was more operable, and the risk was smaller after becoming proficient.
Of course, Phase Two was more complex than Phase One, and she had only just gotten a clue about it now. To completely finish Phase Two would probably take another month or two of constant experimentation.
Actually, to be able to complete this first phase of Sakura Rush before the Land of Snow mission, Sakura was already very satisfied.
This ninjutsu had a quite obvious improvement on her combat power, as could be seen from Sakura's ten wins out of ten battles today. With this jutsu, she also had more confidence for the mission in the Land of Snow.
In fact, she had a bit of an ominous premonition about this seemingly simple mission: perhaps she had heard about it in her previous life? But she really couldn't remember where in the manga this country was mentioned. Maybe she had read about it in some fanfiction. Unfortunately, after so many years, she had almost completely forgotten these unimportant things.
In short, the name "Land of Snow" sounded like a dragon's pool or a tiger's den.
Speaking of which, that fat director... seemed a bit suspicious?
Alright, at first, Sakura was a little suspicious. But then she thought about it again, there was really no need to be suspicious of this and worry about that.
He was just an avid fan. Sakura had seen many middle-aged men in her previous life who were also avid stans. A certain great author had even caused a storm on Weibo because of this!
Being suspicious all day long, in the end, was just baseless worry.
To put it bluntly, assuming he had some conspiracy, even if he had some conspiracy, could he mobilize the entire army or ninja of the Land of Snow to deal with Haruno Sakura? Taking it ten thousand steps back, even if he could mobilize the entire military force of the Land of Snow to deal with them, could he do anything to the three of them?
A country the size of a booger, even with all its strength, would still be like this. It would be difficult for it to even deal with a slightly stronger Jonin.
Sakura shrugged, indicating no pressure.
Since that was the case, there was no need to delve into what secrets there were here. Sakura also didn't want to look at others with colored glasses all day long. A lot of the time, suspicion of others was just a case of "doubting a neighbor's axe." In your heart, you first assume that there is a problem with others, and then when you look at their behavior, you feel that everything is suspicious. The most terrifying thing is those who, after occasionally guessing right once, feel that there is a lot of truth in their suspicion of others. In fact, this situation is called "even a fool may have a good idea once in a while"...
On the way home, the girl had been lost in thought with a happy mood.
However, the girl's smile did not last until the end.
When she was almost home, she suddenly stopped, standing in a small alley.
The setting sun cast her body into a long, slender shadow, projected into the empty alley, where everything was silent.
"Is there something you need from me, you two?"
The girl's cold voice sounded, breaking the long-lasting silence.
(Note 1: This is not nonsense, it's true. Increasing the temperature does increase the conduction speed of nerve signals.)
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