"Oh, come on…" I sighed, staring at the cutting board.
I'd put in way too much effort - the thin wooden board was almost sliced clean through. I really should be more careful. With another sigh, I moved the chicken and its chopped-up parts onto a plate and tossed the board in the trash. At this point, it would snap in half if I so much as looked at it wrong.
The clones had mastered walking up vertical surfaces, and even learned to walk on water using a big tub of water. Sure, walking on still water isn't the same as crossing a raging river or the sea, but honestly, compared to wall-walking, being able to walk on water like Jesus isn't exactly a must-have skill - unless you're into fishing or living in the Land of Water, and as long as I'm sane, you'll never catch me there. [ image. ]

If the leaf exercise helped me learn to strengthen or weaken the flow of chakra in my CCS (chakra circulation system - basically, the network of chakra channels), then with wall and ceiling walking, I got better at controlling exactly where the chakra goes. When you spin up chakra at the source, it spreads evenly through your whole body.
It's actually pretty hard to focus chakra in just one part, since all the channels are interconnected. It's like a garden hose - anyone can turn on the tap and let the water flow, but making the water stay in just one part of the hose, swelling it up? If you just squeeze or bend it, the hose will probably pop off the tap or burst from the pressure.
Focusing chakra in a specific area of the chakra network makes those channels expand, and if you're not careful, you can damage or even rupture them. The more chakra a shinobi channels into, say, their hand, the stronger that hand gets, but the higher the risk of blowing out the channels - or even the muscles and bones, since those need to be reinforced with chakra too.
Put too much chakra in your hand? Say goodbye to your career as a shinobi. Didn't reinforce the muscles and bones enough? Hello, hospital.
And muscles probably have a limit to how much chakra they can take, too. If you overdo it, you'll burn through chakra even faster… man, it's complicated. You have to control, hold, and measure out the chakra in just the right spot, and keep the balance between strengthening and boosting. And that's just for a whole limb - Tsunade, if you remember the anime, could focus chakra into a single point on her finger.
Honestly, if I were a jinchuriki, I'd probably break something every time I moved, unless my organs just gave out from the toxic chakra right away.
Thanks to wall-walking, I got a lot better at focusing chakra in my legs - or more specifically, my feet. My hands, though, still need work. Right now, for example, I was trying to finish cutting up a chicken for the second time, being extra careful not to ruin the new board. Even without chakra, cutting up a chicken and its bones isn't that hard, especially if you go for the joints. But with chakra, it's like slicing butter with a hot knife.
To improve my overall chakra control, especially in my hands, I wanted to go through all three steps of making a rasengan, just like Naruto. I don't know if I'd have enough chakra to actually pull it off, but I had to put that on hold for now - all my clones were busy cramming the fuinjutsu book, specifically the section on kanji. After that came thirty-five pages of ready-made beginner seals and deeper theory. The author strongly recommended not to waste time on those until you'd fully mastered the earlier material. So my clones were just sitting there, quizzing each other.
****
"Whew." I closed the thick book and stared up at the ceiling, exhausted. After sitting there lost in thought for five minutes, I got up and went to the kitchen to down a few glasses of water. It was two in the morning. I probably should've just gone to bed, but I was too wound up to sleep. I was feeling right now wouldn't let me rest for at least another hour.
A sudden, helpless laugh escaped me. I covered my face with my hand, shaking my head at the absurdity of it all. "Damn, I can't take it anymore. I need a walk."
Nighttime Konoha, with its rare streetlights and empty roads, looked a little creepy. At this hour, normal people had no business being outside. You could see the faint glow of nightlights from some windows - everyone was asleep, Konoha was asleep. The only ones awake were probably the patrols. If it weren't for the crickets, the dead silence would've been my only companion on this late-night stroll.
You know, it's hard to just sit at home after you realize you might have the potential to master god-level abilities. All those sudden emotions that hit me after reading the book needed to clear my head."
Yeah, I'd finally made it through the last chapters of the basic fuinjutsu book. Without knowing the meaning of all the kanji, those chapters were almost unreadable, and what you could read could easily be misinterpreted - all it took was misunderstanding a single character. That's why, until my clones said they'd finished with the kanji, neither they nor I even touched what came after the alphabet - and that was a big mistake. If I'd known from the start what fuinjutsu was really about, I probably wouldn't have left the house until I'd mastered the whole book. [ image ]

Seriously, who would've thought… Now it's clear why it took three whole countries to wipe out a single village - or rather, a single clan. If I were an enemy of the Uzumaki, I'd have done the same.
Kishimoto barely touched on fuinjutsu in the anime: explosive tags, sealing scrolls, seals for suppressing tailed beasts, silencing, or storing and releasing shuriken. It all seemed pretty straightforward - fuinjutsu seals and unseals physical things and chakra, which is a mix of material (yang) and immaterial (yin) energy. Even the name "fuinjutsu" says it all - sealing technique, or more accurately, the art of sealing. But… the theory I just read can be interpreted differently, and if I add my 21st-century knowledge… oh man.
"Hahaha…" I couldn't hold back another laugh. Just…
"Hey, you! What are you doing there?" a voice called from above, and before I could even look up, two shadows appeared silently beside me.
Well, here we go…
"Good evening, officers. Is something wrong?" For a split second, I saw one of them flash a Sharingan. Was he checking if I was a spy? Who would be dumb enough to sneak into the village in the middle of the night, out in the open? Then again, maybe the sheer absurdity of it made him want to check.
"Good evening. May I ask why you're wandering around the village at this hour?"
"Hm? Is that not allowed?" I asked, surprised.
"No, the curfew was lifted over ten years ago, and it's not wartime, but we're still required to check the identity of anyone who catches our attention." So how did the guy who smashed my restaurant window not get caught?
"Honestly, I just needed to cool off a bit. Figured the night air would do me good."
"I see. Still, could you give us your name?" Oh, do they actually log everyone they meet at night in their reports?
"Zoldyck Akira."
"Ahem, ahem," his partner coughed, who'd been standing off to the side just watching this whole time.
I watched as the cold expression of the one questioning me slowly shifted into a slight smile.
"Ahem, all right, you're free to go. Have a good walk, Akira-san." He nodded and vanished, and a moment later, his partner disappeared too.
****
[ Third POV ]
"Ichiro, that was Akira! Damn, why didn't you get his autograph?" said the one who'd stayed quiet in the presence of such a celebrity.
"I know, Daisuke. My son's obsessed with his book, but… I just felt a little awkward." The man turned away, pretending to search the empty streets for something.
"Maybe… we should go back and ask? I don't know about your son, but after work, all I do is reread that book. Maybe we could at least ask when the next one's coming out, or what's going to happen next?"
"No, my friend, we're shinobi. Our best friend and comrade is patience. I just hope we didn't throw off his train of thought with our sudden appearance - he was laughing so hard… I'm sure it's got something to do with the next book's plot. Damn, I'll tell my son tomorrow morning who I met - he won't believe it."
"Yeah, we should tell the captain too. Hmm, and you know, he really does look like the description of the second prince of the Dawn Kingdom. Do you think he might actually be from the nobility, just pretending to be a regular civilian?"
"Hm, that would make sense. Such a rich way with words, and there's no way a regular person could look like that. And remember, Sarukamachi in the book was pretending too…"
"Ahem, ahem, Senior Detective Ichiro, we don't have enough information for a proper analysis and deductive conclusion."
"Quite right, Daisuke… I mean, Junior Detective Daisuke. But what's stopping us from doing our own little investigation? I'm sure Keitaro-sama wouldn't mind sharing some info."
****
[ First POV ]
Well, the walk did help me get my thoughts in order a bit.
So, what did I figure out about the art of sealing? Fuinjutsu is created using three components: chakra, symbols in the form of kanji, and a chakra-conducting surface. The interaction of these three elements triggers a reaction, modeled by the meaning of the symbols. Each symbol has its own meaning, and a combination of symbols creates or clarifies a specific effect.
Chakra acts as the activator for the seal - you can activate it by pouring chakra directly into the seal. Experienced chakra users can leave a bit of their chakra in a finished seal and activate it remotely, though besides time limits, there are also range restrictions.
What can fuinjutsu do? It's easier to list what it can't do - and even that's not certain.
Now, the main thing: the symbols of the seal. It's not enough to just write "fire" on a piece of paper and pour chakra into it, expecting fire to appear or the paper to burst into flames. No, it's way more complicated and interesting than that. First, you have to define the structure of the fuinjutsu - there are two: for sealing or unsealing. You can combine both, but then the complexity goes up exponentially. Once you've set the framework, the real fun begins. You set parameters like chakra type, restrictions, activation conditions, cycles, operations, and expressions - and there are strict rules here. Break them, and the seal just won't work.
For the last few hours, after reading all this, I couldn't get one thought out of my head: "Fuinjutsu is programming." But unlike programming, where you create software by translating commands from a programming language into binary code for a computer, here… the commands are sent to the world itself? Someone has to process the kanji of the seals, and I doubt it's just the chakra-conducting paper doing all the work. Or maybe the commands go to some entity created by a god, who manages all this by default. In that case, you could even theorize that the whole universe is just a matrix, and in some worlds, you can interact with it directly… oh man, I'm about to spiral into deep thoughts again. Better stop myself.
So, seals are a way to affect the physical world using specific conditions and a certain language. What does that mean? In theory, someone who's mastered fuinjutsu perfectly and has infinite chakra could become something even scarier than a shinigami - but that's just theory. In practice, as we all know, fat chance. And it's way too early to talk about possibilities after reading just one book, which is only the basics. But damn…
Once again, I couldn't help but grin from ear to ear and closed my eyes.
Drawing was just a little hobby of mine, same as writing. Running a small business, modeling business processes, understanding economics - those were just side disciplines I picked up while getting my degree.
In my world, nobody knew me as a writer, artist, or entrepreneur. To all my relatives and friends, I was just… a programmer.
🔥~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~🔥
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