"This should be the place," Akiko said as he arrived at the grave that had an onigiri and some flowers placed on it.
He looked around for the old man, but there was no trace.
Then with no option left, he sat down in front of the grave and stared using his sensory jutsu.
After using the sensory jutsu he was immediately able to locate a faint Chakra signature on a tree near the cemetery.
The man named Chen was an unparalleled martial artist in the previous era of Konoha but that doesn't mean he can hide from sensory skills.
He seemed to notice that Akiko was using sensory skills and immediately appeared behind him and smacked him in the head.
"Don't you know it's rude to use sensory abilities in the resting place of others?" He said.
"Still it's impressive to find someone who is not an Uzumaki with a chakra pool as large as yours." He said as he looked at Akiko.
"What do you want?" He asked.
"You are Master Chen right?" Akiko asked.
The old man didn't reply.
"I wanted to improve my taijutsu skills so can you teach me..."
"No." Before Akiko was able to finish his words, Chen rejected his proposal.
"My teaching days are over. And in the current age, one should master Ninjutsu and Genjutsu rather than Taijutsu." Chen said.
"You can survive if you only know Ninjutsu and Genjutsu. But only knowing Genjutsu is not sufficient for you to become a great ninja." Chen continued.
"Rather than trying to learn something unnecessary, you just need to improve your ninjutsu," Chen said as he looked at Akiko.
"I am sorry. But I can't follow your advice." Akiko replied.
"I wanted to be a Shinobi who excels at everything. No matter the field. Either in Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, or Bukijutsu." Akiko stated.
"My teacher specialised in ninjutsu and sensory abilities combined with the fact that I lacked talent in Taijutsu I knew I had to find someone exceptional to train me if I ever wanted to become a master in Taijutsu," Akiko said as he looked into Chen's eyes.
"And since you are said to be the greatest Taijutsu user, please teach me. Master." Akiko said as he bowed to Chen.
"You are an interesting kid aren't you?" Chen replied.
"Can you promise me that you won't rely heavily on just Taijutsu if I train you?" Chen asked.
"Yes," Akiko replied with enthusiasm in his voice.
"Then come and find me in the morning around 8. And bring an onigiri with you." Chen said.
"Thank you. Master." Akiko replied.
Akiko was lucky that he possessed ninjutsu and had some kind of passion for Taijutsu because if he lacked one of them Chen would not have agreed to train him.
Rock Lee was rejected by Chen because he could not perform ninjutsu.
Because if he possessed the ability to do even a single jutsu he would have been Chen's student.
Especially since the old man has so much free time after he has retired.
In terms of qualifications for a taijutsu student, Akiko was lagging so much compared to Lee.
But Chen doesn't care as his former experience of losing a student who specialised solely in tainutsu makes him so heartbroken that he swore that he will never teach someone who can only use that one skill.
With Chen's acceptance, Akiko has increased his training time even further than it was already before but he knew that this was necessary as he wanted to become a Chunin as fast as possible.
*****
Chen's training style is rough and distant.
It seems he wasn't planning to get close to Akiko.
Akiko guessed that losing his last student made Chen terrified of getting close to someone who could die sooner or later.
In the world of Shinobi, anyone can and could die anytime especially with the Akatsuki and other notorious hiden nin running around.
Even without any kind of talent Akiko was able to improve his Taijutsu while training under Chen at a rapid pace.
Chen just like how rumours suggested was a master at Taijutsu so he was able to identify even the smallest mistake that Akiko made and inform him what he could do to fix it and how to identify that mistake.
Which helps him from repeating that mistake.
Akiko doesn't have talent but he is not stupid and he is a diligent learner so despite being unable to pick up the knowledge that Chen gave him immediately he was able to make progress without getting a bottleneck.
It also helps that Chen seems to be rushing his training since the old man knew that he might not be alive for long.
Akiko also guessed this so he even slowed down his other training so that he could focus on Taijutsu training more.
Chen was not very pleased with Akiko's actions since he didn't think Taijutsu should be prioritised over Ninjutsu but he didn't stop Akiko since the sooner he gets this over the better it is.
And he also knew that Akiko was not giving up on his Ninjutsu, it's just that he wanted to finish his training before Chen died.
Both Chen and Akiko both knew that Chen might not even be able to teach Akiko everything that he knew before Chen died.
If Chen has like four or more years left he could train Akiko to be someone who is almost as great as him in Taijutsu but according to his age and health, he has less than one year left.
So what he could do was to teach Akiko the fundamentals that are necessary to learn his ultimate move and teach him that move.
Unlike with Santa, whom Akiko considered to be a benefactor he never got close or attached to Chen.
This was for two reasons, first was that Chen never tried to get close to him and secondly, he had to give Chen riceballs every time he was trained by him.
This causes him to view their master student relationship as more of a transaction instead of a favour that he would never be able to repay.
He still respected Chen and was grateful to him but he was as thankful to Chen as he was to Rock Lee who noticed him about Chen's existence.