Chapter 141: Hyuga Neji's Melancholy
However, before the experiment began, Sakura felt it was necessary to make things clear first.
"Let me state beforehand that the Medical Research-type Ice Clone, although it replicates the original's body to the greatest extent, is still just a clone after all and shares the common weaknesses of clones."
"Using it can rapidly advance the progress of the Fist of the North Star, but it may not be able to fully develop this ninjutsu. I estimate that being able to develop it to the fifth or sixth fist would already be quite good..."
"Why?" Neji frowned, feeling a little disappointed.
"Brother, that's because after the fifth fist of the North Star, the chakra can be amplified by several to more than ten times. A clone cannot withstand that amount of chakra, so after the fifth fist, it's impossible to continue the experiment with a clone."
Hinata, after all, had done many experiments with Sakura and was clear on the details.
A clone was just a clone. No matter how much it simulated the original body, it had its limitations. That amount of chakra would be strenuous even for a real body, let alone a temporarily created clone.
But in that case, if the ice clone is unreliable, I'm afraid we'll have to use real clones...
Hn, another reason to research cloning.
"What if we don't activate the first five fists and directly open the sixth tenketsu point?" Neji asked, unwilling to give up.
"That won't work... Opening the sixth tenketsu point alone and opening the sixth fist after opening the first five are two completely different concepts. Even if the former is safe, it cannot be determined whether the latter is safe."
Haruno Sakura said, shaking her index finger.
"Just like how each of the Eight Gates must be opened in the order of Opening, Healing, Life, Harm, Limit, View, Wonder, and Death, the Fist of the North Star must also be activated in the order of Dubhe, Merak, Phecda, Megrez, Alioth, Mizar, and Alkaid. Otherwise, it will either have no effect, or because it lacks the buffer of the first few fists, it will be instantly fatal."
The pink-haired girl mercilessly shattered Neji's fantasy. She took the Eight Gates scroll and the Fist of the North Star ultimate principles scroll that Hinata had handed her. The latter was already covered in dust, obviously the result of having been placed in a corner to gather dust for several years.
This ninjutsu had been developed several years ago. Sakura had never paid much attention to it, so now she had almost forgotten to what extent it had been developed.
Hinata then gave a brief review. She was much more invested in this ninjutsu than Sakura. "The previous Fist of the North Star project had already found two safe tenketsu points. According to the naming rules you suggested, they are the first two of Dubhe, Merak, Phecda, Megrez, Alioth, Mizar, and Alkaid. Now we need to find a third... By the way, Sakura-chan, where did you get this set of names?"
"Hehe, this is just a meme. It's just a random name... That's not important. Let's get back to the main topic."
"Hn, the Fist of the North Star project is to find seven adjacent, safe tenketsu points from the 361 in the human body. We've already found the first two, Dubhe and Merak. The next step is to find a safe tenketsu point among the adjacent ones connected to Dubhe and Merak to serve as the Phecda point..."
The term "connected tenketsu points" is meaningless—the human body's tenketsu points are located on an interconnected meridian system. Any two points can be connected through the meridians. Therefore, in theory, there are 359 tenketsu points connected to Dubhe and Merak. The word that must be emphasized is "adjacent": only adjacent, not-too-distant tenketsu points are meaningful. If the distance is too great, the effect of stacking the amplification will be lost.
So their next step was to find a safe tenketsu point from the dozens of adjacent ones connected to Dubhe and Merak.
A more complex situation was that whether a tenketsu point was safe or not also depended on which points had been opened before it.
For example, a point that was normally a death point might become a safe one after the first few points were opened and it was buffered. Conversely, a point that was originally safe might also become fragile and dangerous due to the impact of the chakra amplified by the first few opened points, thereby leading to an accident.
Even the order in which the tenketsu points were opened would have an effect... If the first few gates of the Eight Gates were opened in reverse, it would cause a reverse flow of chakra, the meridian system would collapse, and the user would die on the spot!
This increased the difficulty and danger of the exploration a hundredfold.
A tenketsu point that was determined to be safe at the beginning could inadvertently become a deadly trap. A point that was found to be a trap in the previous round would have to be carefully tested in this round to see if it had become safe...
The search for the first and second tenketsu points, Dubhe and Merak, was still simple. When it came to the third and beyond, the situation became abnormally complex.
It could be said that without the help of the ice clone or other means, if Sakura wanted to develop the Fist of the North Star to the fifth fist, she wouldn't have enough lives to die.
However, fortunately, the ice clone was developed precisely to deal with this situation...
The experiment went reasonably smoothly: the ice clone, as expected, performed its function very well.
On this day, when the experiment had been going on until noon.
"So, how many usable safe tenketsu points have we found? How come I don't remember us ever succeeding?" an exhausted Haruno Sakura asked, slumping in her chair, feeling as if she couldn't even lift a finger.
She wasn't physically tired, but mentally tired. In one morning, she had experienced 101 ways for an ice clone to die. It was not an easy thing.
"Zero..." Neji said, flipping through the experiment records, a little speechless. "Not a single one? Is this normal?"
"The number of optional points for Phecda shouldn't have been this small. No wonder we couldn't succeed no matter how we tried back then," Hinata said, rubbing her temples and feeling a bit of a headache. "They were actually all wrong options."
"So that means we had walked into a dead end back then. This is good news!"
"Why? Isn't it better to have a larger range to choose from?" Neji was a little puzzled.
"No, the smaller the range, the fewer options need to be eliminated, and the more effort is saved in the experiment," Sakura said with her eyes closed and a smile. "If Merak and Dubhe, and Megrez and Alioth also only have a few safe options, then we can probably develop the first five fists of the North Star by tomorrow—unless there are no other tenketsu-based forbidden jutsu besides the Eight Gates."
"You're overthinking it," Hinata said, shaking her head and also smiling. "Don't forget that the second fist's Merak point actually has over a dozen backup choices, and the first fist's Dubhe point has even more choices. So the first two fists of the North Star alone have several hundred possible tenketsu combinations..."
"No, no, no, at most a dozen or so. The first fist's Dubhe point is particular. It can't be chosen on a main meridian or a point close to an internal organ, otherwise the initial amplified chakra will be too much, and the pressure on the subsequent points and meridians will be too great. It's best to choose a point on a minor meridian as the Dubhe point, and for the final Alkaid, try to choose a point on a main meridian. According to this principle, there are only about a dozen choices for Dubhe and Merak that are more suitable."
"According to what you're saying, the Dubhe and Merak we've chosen now are also wrong?" Hinata frowned.
"I just had this idea. For the first two points to produce a double amplification of chakra is not necessarily a good thing. Too much chakra will impact the tenketsu points and make them unstable. The first two gates of the Eight Gates are in the head, and they have almost no effect. So I think the function of the first two points of the Eight Gates is more as a buffer and controller for the chakra amplification..."
Hinata bit her nail and pondered with a tight frown for a while.
"The Eight Gates starts from the points on the head, the Gate of Opening and the Gate of Healing, and opens the points along the spine meridian, passing through the Gate of Life, the Gate of Harm, the Gate of Limit, the Gate of View, and after reaching the Gate of Wonder at the tailbone, it turns to the Gate of Death at the heart."
Hinata first recalled the content of the Eight Gates, then continued.
"Then the Fist of the North Star can also start from two points on the head as Dubhe and Merak, and then follow the meridians of the five viscera and six fu-organs, passing through the spleen, lungs, kidneys, and liver, through the four points of Phecda, Megrez, Alioth, and Mizar, and finally reaching the Alkaid point at the heart..."
The more she spoke, the brighter her eyes became.
"This idea is very interesting. It might just succeed!" Sakura also felt that this might be a brilliant inspiration. "But the meridians and tenketsu points that envelop the organs are still not a small number. Multiplied together, there are still several hundred or a thousand combinations."
"We only need to consider the possible combinations for the first five fists for now. In that case, there are only about three hundred possible options. In my opinion, there are still ways to screen it further..."
The two of them then began to discuss enthusiastically, for a moment completely forgetting the man who was standing silently beside them.
Hyuga Neji was a little embarrassed.
The feeling of being forgotten in a corner was a bit unpleasant...
He just stood on the side, watching these two girls who were exuding the aura of top students. He really couldn't say a word.
He felt that every sentence they said was easy to understand, but after thinking about it carefully, he found that the amount of information contained within was astonishingly large.
He didn't even know where to interject.
He was afraid that the words he said would be full of errors and be mocked by his sister and Haruno Sakura.
No, no, no, his sister would not mock him.
But that detestable girl with not a trace of femininity would definitely seize the opportunity to mock him harshly.
After all, their relationship was extremely bad. Every time they met, it started with an argument... Of course, at this time, Neji had selectively forgotten that every time, he was the one who had provoked Sakura first.
Shouldn't all girls be as virtuous and gentle as my sister, or as quiet and cute as Tenten?
This kind of sharp-tongued, yet powerful woman is really the most annoying.
This is probably a clash of geniuses' auras, Neji made an excuse for himself in his heart.
But had Neji really reflected on himself?
It seemed he had gotten used to it, used to the cold mockery when he met her...
Wasn't it just like a child trying to get an adult's attention?
The Hyuga Neji who had no sense of presence was a little gloomy. He did not like being a transparent person in front of these two.
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