Chapter 121: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals
"Excluding the Rainbow Ice Walls, there are a total of 15 geothermal generators in the country, and the heat they produce can cover about 30% of the villages and towns..." Kazahana Koyuki looked at the report with a sad face, the excitement from discovering the geothermal generators two days ago completely gone. "That is to say, this heating system that Father left behind is actually not finished, is it? It seems that at least 50 or so such geothermal generators are needed to cover all the residential points in the country."
"Hey, hey, hey, where am I going to get that much funding and manpower to invest! Father spent 20 years and only built 15!" Kazahana Koyuki scratched her hair, turning her freshly combed hairstyle into a chicken's nest again. "And the Land of Snow still needs at least 35 more!"
"To be precise, you still need more than 45, because you need at least 60 geothermal generators to cover the whole country," Sakura said, sitting with her legs crossed, sipping her tea, and sinking Kazahana Koyuki's naive fantasy with a light sentence. "So you need to work for 60 years."
"60 years," Kazahana Koyuki muttered, collapsing onto the sofa with a lifeless look. "I feel like I'm a useless person..."
"You can take your time with this matter. But there's one thing I have to remind you," Sakura said, uncrossing her legs and sitting up straight, her expression serious. "There are no more tasks that need to be done here, so we will be ending our mission and returning to Konoha soon. The historical mission of the provisional government has been completed, and it will be dissolved soon. Have you thought about what your next step will be?"
"Ah... you're already going back?" Kazahana Koyuki asked, sitting up in surprise.
"Hn, the mission has already been delayed for a long time, and everything that needs to be done has been done."
And I've also gotten a lot of Ice Style ninjutsu scrolls, which has greatly enriched my Ice Style ninjutsu library—which originally only had Haku's A Thousand Flying Water Needles of Death and Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals—so that I won't fall into the predicament of having a Kekkei Genkai but no ninjutsu to use.
Although Kazahana Dotō was inept at governing, he had quite a knack for researching Ice Style. She had looked through the ninjutsu library of the Snow Ninja base, which was filled with exquisitely designed and powerful high-level ninjutsu like Ice Style: One-Horned White Whale and Ice Style: Tearing Dragon, Fierce Tiger. There were also various insights and experiences written down by the Snow Ninja over their many years of practicing Ice Style, enough to fill a library.
The accumulation of over twenty years of the Snow Ninja had filled the girl's pockets. Sakura felt that this mission had been a real eye-opener and a worthwhile trip. She had simply struck it rich.
Sakura's Ice Style had been taught by Haku Yuki, but Haku had been an orphan who had wandered everywhere since she was a child, and her understanding of Ice Style was not profound. The disciple she brought out was naturally also a half-baked one. With these materials, Sakura's understanding of Ice Style had deepened greatly, saving her at least a year or two of research time.
Although the Snow Ninja did not have the Ice Style Kekkei Genkai, by relying on the natural environment full of ice and snow, they could still use powerful Ice Style ninjutsu. For Sakura, who had the Ice Style Kekkei Genkai, the same Ice Style ninjutsu cast with her ice-natured chakra would be a level higher in power.
Of course, with Sakura's personality, she would certainly not be content to follow others' ninjutsu by the book. As long as she could figure out the principles, she would definitely not be able to resist making major modifications, changing others' ninjutsu beyond recognition until it was filled with her own personal characteristics.
Tsunade's Monstrous Strength Technique and Body Pathway Derangement were already precedents... It was just unknown what the ice whale and ice tiger would become by then.
The Ice Body Flicker that the Snow Ninja had used to escape earlier had long been targeted by her. It was a Body Flicker jutsu that used ice as a medium. It was fast and didn't consume much chakra. Among the Ice Style scrolls she had obtained this time, it was the ninjutsu she valued the most.
"The essence of all ninjutsu-type Body Flicker techniques is space-time ninjutsu," Sakura said, taking out the notebook she carried with her and reading the notes and insights she had written down when she had read the materials earlier.
Near the Snow Ninja base, there was a vast training ground full of ice and snow, which was very suitable for Haruno Sakura to test her Ice Style ninjutsu. After the political affairs in the Land of Snow had gradually decreased, she had a lot of free time to come here and practice her newly acquired ice jutsu.
The Ice Body Flicker was the first ice jutsu she had learned from the Snow Ninja scrolls.
The difficulty was not high, and she learned it quickly. It was just that she seemed to have no talent for Body Flicker jutsu. Even though her affinity with Ice Style was so good, she still felt awkward when using this ninjutsu.
It was the same feeling as when she was learning the Ice Style: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals. She had originally thought that after a long period of practice, she would be able to overcome this feeling of incompatibility, but the result was not very optimistic. When she used this jutsu in her spars with Sasuke and Naruto, neither of them found it very difficult to deal with.
"Your movements always have a slight pause after you flicker," Sasuke, with his three-tomoe Sharingan activated, could clearly see Sakura's problem. "This is a common problem with the Body Flicker jutsu, and it's very obvious in the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals. The essence of this jutsu is to continuously perform high-speed ice flickers on the ice mirrors to find the enemy's opening and attack when the opponent can't react. But if you always pause after a flicker, it will drag down your speed and you won't achieve the effect of a surprise attack."
Sasuke was right. The problem with ninjutsu-type Body Flicker was that the body couldn't immediately adapt to the new spatial position after changing space, which led to a sense of imbalance.
A taijutsu-type Body Flicker like Sasuke's did not have this problem, because that kind of Body Flicker was essentially just ultra-high-speed movement, not a change of space like the Substitution Jutsu, and would not produce a sense of imbalance. A monster like the Fourth Hokage, on the other hand, had a naturally extraordinary sense of balance, and Sakura couldn't compare.
After developing Sakura Rush, the situation had improved a lot. The sense of imbalance still existed, but the time it took to recover from it was greatly reduced.
Even so, she still couldn't use the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals ninjutsu well—or rather, she could use the jutsu in a decent way, but it was far from the god-like feeling she had when using her other ice and water jutsu.
One reason was that her talent in high-speed combat was indeed quite ordinary. Of course, the aptitude of the Sakura from the original story was even lower. In comparison, her situation was much better. After all, she was diligent in her training, and the Ice Style Kekkei Genkai was slowly improving her aptitude.
Secondly, the development of the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals ninjutsu was... hmm, she wasn't badmouthing Haku behind her back, but it really was quite poorly developed. But she couldn't blame her. A rough man like Zabuza didn't look like someone who could guide others in developing ninjutsu. As a wandering ninja, to be able to achieve this step with little to no reference material or guidance was already quite stunning.
Now that Haku had switched to being a medical ninja and was no longer concerned with matters of fighting and killing, the development and maintenance of these Ice Style ninjutsu had fallen entirely on Haruno Sakura's shoulders. Before, she had been troubled by the lack of information on Ice Style and had been at a loss as to how to develop and improve it. Now that she had obtained the materials of the Snow Ninja from the past twenty-plus years, developing Ice Style was no longer a case of a clever housewife being unable to cook without rice.
Especially after learning the Snow Ninja's Ice Body Flicker.
"The Ice Body Flicker and the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals are both ninjutsu-type Body Flicker techniques that use ice as a medium. The characteristic of the former is a single, long-range flicker, while the characteristic of the latter is multiple, short-range flickers. And for the Ice Body Flicker, there are a large number of ninjutsu insights left by the Snow Ninja. At least in terms of escape, this ninjutsu is very powerful."
Sakura had a plan in her heart. She had two scrolls spread out in front of her, the ultimate principles scrolls for the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals and the Ice Body Flicker. She looked at them and thought about how to combine the advantages of these two ninjutsu while discarding their respective shortcomings.
The environment of the Land of Snow was very suitable for the use and research of Ice Style. By the time she told Koyuki that she was about to leave the Land of Snow, this ninjutsu—the second stage of the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals—had already begun to take shape.
She also had a preliminary idea of how to use this jutsu in her tactical configurations.
In an ideal state, it should be like this: start with a large-scale ice jutsu, take the opportunity to lay down a large number of ice blocks in the environment, and then use these ice blocks as a medium for the Body Flicker to cast the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals. This way, she could appear in any corner of the battlefield at any time...
Hn, Haruno Sakura thought that the Fourth Hokage's fighting style was quite cool.
Of course, just relying on the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals - Phase Two and Sakura Rush - Phase Two might not be enough to achieve the effect of the Fourth Hokage. To completely bring out the feeling of the Flying Raijin in actual combat, she would probably have to wait until Phase Three of these two ninjutsu was fully developed.
Besides the second stage of the Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, Haruno Sakura also had an inspiration for another ice jutsu.
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