Chapter 139: Ten Thousand Kinds of Eight Gates
"Don't move, Original Body! You twitched, and I almost printed it wrong!"
An ice clone complained.
"That spot is itchy! You're me too, you should understand how I feel!" the original showed an innocent expression.
Another ice clone roughly held down the hands of the original lying on the floor. "Alright, I've got a firm grip this time. I guarantee she won't be able to move a single millimeter this time!"
"Ugh...! It hurts a little," the original let out a muffled grunt. "Hey, I say, Number Seven, aren't you using a bit too much force? My hand is turning blue!"
"Number Seven is ready!" Clone Number Seven, who was in charge of holding down her hands, completely ignored her.
"Number Six is ready!" another clone holding a shrinking scroll also chimed in.
"Right armpit sealing formula preparation complete!"
"Error less than one-thousandth. Position locked!"
"Clear the area! Other groups, pause your work. Original Body, please hold your breath and restrain your chakra... OK! Very calm! Right armpit group, begin work!"
A reconnaissance-type clone, standing on the table like a commander, said.
Swish~ A blue light of chakra flashed from the hand of Number Six, who was holding the shrinking scroll. Rice-grain-sized formulas began to be printed on the girl's smooth skin one by one.
"Thirty percent... Original Body, hold on. Don't breathe, don't use chakra, don't move... Sixty percent... Almost done... Ninety percent... One hundred percent! Very good, it's a success this time."
"Phew~" The real Sakura let out a long breath.
Although she had just been lying motionless on the floor the whole time, it was not easy at all.
Using these few days of vacation, she had begun to use her ice clones to help her shrink and print the formulas of the Yin Seal onto her body.
After two days of hard work, she had already completed more than ninety-five percent of the content. A few more printings, and she would be able to completely finish this ninjutsu.
From the commander clone's perspective, the girl lying on the floor in only her undergarments could be seen very clearly.
Dense formulas, from the girl's face and neck, extended all the way to her abdomen, legs, and arms. Even parts like her armpits could not escape. This was because Sakura's body surface area was only 1.43 square meters—this was calculated using the formula for the body surface area of an adolescent based on her height and weight. Excluding the hair, the area that could be used to write the formulas was even less. Even if the tens of thousands of sealing formulas were shrunk to be extremely small, it was still a tight squeeze to completely print them on her body.
The Sakura at this moment, her whole body covered in various runes, looked a little creepy.
"So many runes. I'm about to get trypophobia just looking at them!" Number Six said with a laugh, touching the original's skin.
Number Seven also laughed. "It is a bit ugly, but do you really have trypophobia... Anyway, it's fine. In a moment, when the formula is activated, the runes will become transparent and invisible."
"It's not just a bit ugly, it's hideously ugly..." the clone standing on the table complained. "Alright, if you don't want to see such an ugly original anymore, then speed up. There's not much left. Is the left armpit group ready?"
"Ready!" four voices said at the same time.
"Very good. The original's performance just now was not bad. Keep it up~ Hold your breath, restrain your—huh?"
A knock suddenly sounded on the door.
Everyone was stunned for a moment. The only person who knew about this laboratory at present was Hinata. What was she doing here at this time?
"Hinata-chan, is that you? Come in!" Sakura asked.
A clone went over and opened the door. Hinata's little head poked in.
"Are you doing an experiment, Sakura-chan? I saw you have a lot of clones on this side from outside," she said, walking in and glancing at the scene in the laboratory, then quickly locked the door. "Brother, you can come in later!"
"I'm working on the Yin Seal..." The girl casually pulled over a bath towel and draped it over her body. "It's almost done."
Hinata walked around the floor, which was covered in sealing formulas, and then looked at Sakura lying on the ground, covered in formulas, and let out an unidentifiable "tsk tsk" sound.
"Sakura-chan, you're making a big sacrifice for this jutsu!"
"Don't worry about it!" Sakura rolled her eyes at her. "After it's written, I'll channel chakra to activate it, and the formulas will become transparent and completely invisible. By the way, why are you two here?"
The white-eyed girl sat down on the table. "Of course, I have something to ask you. You finish this first. Let my brother wait outside for a bit."
"Tsk, making Neji wait for so long. Are you still his considerate little sister?"
"I'm worried he'll be scared if he comes in now!" Hinata said with a grin.
Sakura was speechless.
However, Neji didn't wait too long. The Yin Seal project was completely finished.
"Alright, can you tell me now? Why did you two come to find me?" Sakura asked when she saw Neji come in. A beautiful, purple, diamond-shaped mark had appeared on her forehead, and her whole face seemed to have a bit more of a gentle and charming aura.
The siblings exchanged a look, and Hinata said, "Do you still remember the set of chakra-amplifying tenketsu techniques we developed before?" (Please see Chapter 53)
"I remember. Haven't you been using it all this time? But we've already stopped the development work. So, do you have a new idea? Or a big breakthrough?"
Of course, Sakura still remembered this jutsu. In her youth and ignorance, she had almost gotten herself killed while developing it, so naturally, the impression was deep.
The risk of developing this jutsu was too great. The three hundred and sixty-one tenketsu points in the meridian system served to limit and control the flow and transformation of chakra. There were many tenketsu points that absolutely could not be opened, because once opened, the accumulated stamina and spirit in the body would begin to be madly converted into chakra, unable to be stopped, until the caster died.
However, there were also some gentler tenketsu points that, when opened, would only slightly or in a small amount amplify the chakra. If these tenketsu points were connected and opened at the same time, the effect of amplifying the chakra could be stacked.
The results of Sakura and Hinata's experiments back then were not very ideal. They had only tested out a few tenketsu points with average effects, and most of them could not be connected, so the amplification of chakra was not very obvious. The further the experiment went, the more pitfalls they stepped into. Many tenketsu points would be fatal if they were opened for a few more seconds. If not for Sakura's strong enough chakra control, which allowed her to forcefully close the tenketsu points when she found something was wrong, she would have probably died long ago.
She still remembered that in their last experiment, she had tried to open the tenketsu point called "Setsugakkō." If she hadn't completely opened it at that time, and the amount of chakra released was not yet huge, she might have died on the spot... It was because she had almost died in that experiment that she and Hinata had chosen to stop the development of this jutsu.
In the end, the chakra amplification jutsu that the two of them had developed could only slightly increase the amount of chakra, and it could not be compared to the Eight Gates at all.
However, the so-called Eight Gates was actually just selecting eight connected tenketsu points from the 361 in the human body. When they were opened in sequence, they could relatively safely release the body's restrictions on chakra, and then release stronger and stronger chakra, thereby allowing the caster to obtain powerful strength in a short period of time.
There were many choices for a set of interconnected tenketsu points. The Eight Gates was just one of them. However, to be able to choose seven connected ones that wouldn't kill you after being opened, the Eight Gates was already quite remarkable.
To choose eight tenketsu points from the 361 in the human body, there were 361!/353!, or 2.6677 x 10^21, possibilities. Adding the restriction that the selected points must be connected and adjacent, then according to Haruno Sakura's experience and calculations, there were about 30 to the power of 8: 6.561 x 10^11 (656.1 billion) possibilities. Even if only one in a hundred million of these was a feasible plan, there were still over ten thousand possible selection schemes for the Eight Gates.
It was precisely for this reason that Sakura had always believed that a forbidden jutsu similar to the Eight Gates could be mass-produced.
However, although in theory there should be many similar forbidden jutsu, in the end, only the Eight Gates had been passed down in the Naruto world. This was probably because there were too many pitfalls among the tenketsu points. A tenketsu point like the "Gate of Death," which would surely kill you if opened, was everywhere. Just imagine, if the founder of this forbidden jutsu had chosen the Gate of Death as one of the first few gates...
Then there would be no Eight Gates ninjutsu in this world.
Similarly, if not for the bad luck of the other founders, perhaps there would have been a Nine Gates Release, a Seven Gates Release, and so on in the Naruto world.
Then again, why the last gate of the Eight Gates was the Gate of Death, the answer was indeed a sad story!
In short, because developing this kind of jutsu was too dangerous, Sakura and Hinata had had no choice but to announce that they were giving up.
Just then, Hinata said with a mysterious smile.
"The biggest breakthrough... isn't it the one that happened to you?"
Hearing this, Sakura was stunned for a moment.
She was a little baffled. She hadn't researched that jutsu recently!
What on earth was going on?
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