"Lightning Style Armour?!"
Kakashi panted heavily as he stared at the scene before him and spoke uncertainly.
Hearing this, Shinichi merely shook his head calmly.
"No, Kakashi. This is only lightning armor. It's still far from a true Lightning Style Armour."
This lightning armor was naturally the preliminary result of his week-long intensive research on Blue B's corpse.
Shinichi's attainments in medical techniques and taijutsu already rivaled those of a master, and with Proficient In Lightning Style and Master of Ninjutsu providing a solid foundation and amplification for his understanding of the Village Hidden in the Cloud's Lightning Style system.
Combined with the transcendent vision produced by the fusion of Lightning Speed Reflex and Clarity, together with the dual of Seeing Through Things as Clearly as Observing a Flame, which provided supercomputer-like high-speed information processing, key recognition, and logical deduction abilities, the efficiency of his scanning and analysis of Blue B's corpse was astonishingly high.
In merely one week, Shinichi had already reverse-engineered most of the techniques and applications of Lightning Style Nintaijutsu from the various complex information within Blue B's corpse.
Lightning Teleportation Jutsu and Lightning Armor were representative examples among them.
However, the deeper essence of the Lightning Style Armor, involving profound cellular activation and systematic enhancement of the neural reflex arc, things that touched the very core of the technique, still resembled the center of a treasure vault locked within layers upon layers of mist.
Wth only a dead corpse, it was difficult to completely reverse-engineer it.
This required years of repeated deduction.
After all, although Blue B had learned Lightning Style Nintaijutsu and was considered a powerful user of the Lightning Style Nintaijutsu, his core power lay in his use of the Eight-Tails' power. Unlike the current third Raikage and the future fourth Raikage (A), he had not made the Lightning Style Armour the absolute core of his own power system.
"Simply put."
As Shinichi demonstrated, lightning once again flickered across his body as he explained to Kakashi: "Lightning armor is more of a defensive application that stabilizes lightning-nature chakra around the body surface and turns it into protective armor. It weaves lightning nature chakra into a suit of armor worn over the body, mainly providing a defensive layer with decent physical and energy resistance, while also carrying some mild activation effects on surface muscles."
"But the true Lightning Style Armour of Village Hidden in the Cloud is fundamentally based on using the active nature of Lightning Style chakra to systematically stimulate and activate every part of the body from the outside inward, eventually reaching even the cellular and neural reflex system levels, fundamentally raising the limits of bodily function."
As he spoke, the lightning around Shinichi's body grew increasingly active and dense, becoming more agile and flowing through him like water.
Kakashi stared closely, and with his own keen perception of Lightning Style and his experience developing Chidori, he immediately realized that the core activation technique behind the lightning armor Shinichi was currently using truly shared the same origin as the principle when using Chidori, using lightning nature chakra to stimulate the nerves and muscles in his arm to achieve extreme speed.
But Shinichi had successfully expanded this stimulation from localized arms and legs to his entire body!
Moreover, the stability, controllability, and endurance of the energy distribution were clearly more than one level beyond his own crude localized stimulation and activation!
This was not merely an accumulation of quantity.
It was a leap in qualitative control.
"What I've currently achieved is only the preliminary realization of relatively stable lightning nature chakra activation across the body's surface tissues. There's still a very long road before truly reaching the deep cellular level and achieving neural reaction enhancement like the real Lightning Style Armour."
After hearing this, Kakashi fell silent.
Even if Shinichi could not yet fully achieve it, the depth of his understanding and control over lightning nature chakra that he displayed now had already thrown Kakashi far behind.
Ever since being defeated by him on the Ninja Academy training grounds five years ago, Kakashi had desperately been trying to catch up to this peer of his.
At first, the other party had only surpassed him in Taijutsu and swordsmanship.
Later, he surpassed him in the comprehensive application and creativity of Ninjutsu as well.
And now, even Lightning Style, the field Kakashi took the most pride in, the one he had mastered only after pouring in countless amounts of effort, had been overtaken in a short time by the other party with almost unbelievable progress.
Seven or eight months ago, this guy didn't even know how to use lightning-nature chakra, right?
The gap was truly growing larger and larger.
So large that he could barely even muster the thought of catching up.
Perhaps, just as that powerful samurai, Isshin, from the Land of Iron had once evaluated, Shinichi was destined to become the strongest in the Shinobi World of this era.
Kakashi thought to himself with both unwillingness and relief intertwined.
"Don't belittle yourself, Kakashi."
As though seeing through his complicated emotions, Shinichi spoke calmly.
"I only managed to barely touch this threshold by researching Blue B's corpse and standing on the shoulders of generations of Village Hidden in the Cloud's accumulated knowledge."
"In terms of talent for the lightning nature alone, among everyone I've ever seen, no one compares to you, not even the third Raikage and his son. Your only disadvantages are that your starting point was lower, your accumulation time was shorter, and the complete inheritance you had access to was more limited."
Shinichi shook his head and looked at him seriously.
"And I'm not showing this off to you. I came to cooperate with you and research and perfect this Lightning Style Nintaijutsu together. One person's perspective and thought process are ultimately limited, especially when neither of us possesses a complete inheritance. Your talent and experience are an irreplaceable treasure to me."
Cooperate…
Kakashi remained silent for a moment.
If it had been his former self, the one who viewed his father's suicide as shame and a burden and bottled everything inside, perhaps he would have rejected the offer out of awkward pride.
But now…
He thought about how much he already owed the other party. Once the debts piled high enough, strangely enough, they no longer felt burdensome.
Rather than obsessing over empty pride and the ever-widening gap between them, it was better to seize this opportunity before him that could rapidly strengthen him.
If he could produce research results sooner and increase his strength, it could also count as repaying this heavy friendship in some way.
Moreover…
Kakashi clenched his fists.
For the current him, whose heart was filled with an overwhelming thirst for power to avoid repeating the desperate dilemma his father once faced, being forced to choose between two impossible options, any path that could make him stronger had to be grasped firmly!
"Alright!" Kakashi agreed without hesitation, nodding his head.
Hearing this, a smile appeared on Shinichi's face as he tossed over a scroll.
"This is what I organized yesterday regarding the basic principles of Lightning Style Nintaijutsu and lightning nature chakra applications, along with some deeper directions and theories I've inferred. Read through it first. If there's anything you don't understand, ask me anytime."
"Mm." Kakashi accepted the scroll and nodded.
Then he read it very slowly and carefully. Sometimes his brows were tightly furrowed, sometimes they relaxed. Whenever he encountered something difficult to understand or had a question, he immediately stopped and raised his confusion to Shinichi nearby.