[Whew. Seven years after seven years, the Second Exam is finally here]
[The Chūnin Exams are straight-up ripped off from the Hunter Exam, I will not accept counterarguments]
[What's with the first guy—drive-by comment and out?]
[Troll account, probably]
[Actually it's because Lord Eight just dropped a video]
[Holy crap, been waiting forever—Lord Eight is finally back]
[I don't watch a single one of that Molotov trash-poster's videos, I only wait for Lord Eight]
[I've heard Molotov gets roasted by a ton of people—anyone know why?]
[Molotov has done so much dirt, why do you think he's called Molotov? Because the guy's always starting fires]
[Take the advice, Lord Eight is way better—Lord Eight's disclaimer game is top-tier]
The next day was the Second Exam of the Chūnin Exams. For the live audience, that meant a fresh new episode.
"So this Lord Eight seems to be a top-tier anime creator."
After Road to Ninja blew up, Hanabi had also noticed quite a few related anime-review videos. The heavy-hitters hadn't all jumped in yet, though, and there were plenty of marketing accounts just rehashing the same talking points—which really dragged down the viewing experience.
Early in the morning, Hanabi arrived at the meeting point outside the Forest of Death. She needed to adjust to the new ninja tools, so when she'd gotten up, Hikari and the others were still asleep. She'd come ahead of them.
She was a little early; there weren't many examinees here yet.
Hanabi's look was the same as always—a half-face fox mask, her gorgeous Zhuixia kimono, a red sun parasol propped over her shoulder.
But she had plenty of new gear prepared.
After a night of study, Hanabi had discovered that the greatest use of these prosthetic limbs was as props for things like the Body Replacement Technique and jutsu casting.
Using Curse Bind combined with the prosthetic limbs purely for stat-boosting could indeed give her a bit more cultivation gain.
But when she tried moving around while suspending the prosthetics from Chakra Threads, the motions came out stiff—inelegant, not up to her standards.
If she repurposed them as substitution props, though—when the enemy thought they'd grabbed her and discovered they were holding a prosthetic limb instead—now that was interesting. And she could operate them remotely, pulling off things with a lot more dramatic flair.
Once Hanabi had settled down and found a spot to sit, she started organizing her gear again.
Curse Bind coiled around her as always.
She looked like she was resting, but in truth her body was undergoing large-scale, high-intensity training right now.
Very convenient, really.
A pity Curse Bind had its limits.
Neither Curse Bind nor Zhuixia could be used on Shadow Clones.
Or rather—the "growth" effect applied to a Shadow Clone couldn't feed back into the original body. What got boosted was physical conditioning itself, not skills or techniques.
And on the other side of things, the restraints she could place on her own body were just about maxed out.
She couldn't exactly wrap her whole body up and operate a puppet from the outside, could she?
Even if she did, the strength gains would still be limited.
To push further in that direction, she'd have to rely on behavioral restrictions.
Things like: no killing, no soft drinks, no wearing underwear.
But that wasn't really a good option.
And the most important problem of all—none of it was pretty!
The visual effect was hard to describe, and she'd have to drag in a whole pile of exposition on top of it.
Right at the climactic, fired-up moment, you couldn't exactly pause to explain Curse Bind and all that.
That was just not cinematic.
Acclaimed director Hanabi set a very high bar for her theatrical productions.
When it came time for action scenes, you had to deliver a flowing, satisfying fight all the way through.
Just then, the screen cut to Naruto.
"Oh my, Naruto actually didn't sleep in."
Naruto had arrived too. But he was somewhere else right now.
"What are you doing over here? I'm going to find Hanabi," Naruto muttered.
"That red-haired Grass-nin woman. Take a quick look," Kushina said.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're impossible."
This morning Naruto had just woken up to find a lavish breakfast spread on the table.
Having that fox-demon "woman" humble herself and beg him felt pretty damn good.
Except today, what she'd asked him to come do was spy on a little girl. What the hell was this supposed to be?
"Ugh, don't tell me the fox-demon wants some kind of sinister sacrificial offering?!" Naruto suddenly started entertaining some very unpleasant theories.
"Look, I just think that person might be a relative of yours."
Kushina said.
"What—what?! A relative of mine?!" Naruto nearly shouted it out loud.
"Don't be so loud, someone's going to hear you!" Kushina face-palmed. "And even if she is a relative, she's a distant one. You know, the same as your classmate Hanabi, and the rest of the Hyuga clan—all people of the same family."
"Huh? I have a background like that?" Naruto scratched his head. "You're not pulling my leg, are you?"
Naruto squinted.
Why did he always get the feeling people thought, "This guy's uneducated—he's an easy mark"?
[I'm undereducated, don't fool me]
[Would be even funnier if Rock Lee said that line]
[So Naruto actually has that kind of background, huh]
[Well duh, what kind of ordinary person could be a container for the fox-demon]
[Turns out it was bloodline theory all along]
[Feels pretty normal to me—this whole world runs on all kinds of bloodlines]
[Lmao, normalized bloodline theory, what kind of hellscape is this]
[I think it's fine, just look at it like the old four-class system—scholar, farmer, artisan, merchant—and it's about the same]
[Rather than that, I wanna know who Naruto really is]
[Lmao, plot hook and no payoff]
[Dying, this massive tome is gonna take a few hundred episodes to unravel that mystery]
[Agreeing with the person above—Naruto's mom literally said distant relative, on her side of the family, how the heck are we supposed to figure that out]
Naruto was scratching his head in frustration out there, but Naruto's mom had started speaking in riddles.
Then the screen cut to Hinata.
"Oh my, it's big sister~" Hanabi watched on.
"This is the assembly point…?" Hinata arrived at the meeting spot and stared, bewildered.
"Hey, Hinata, you're early." Kiba Inuzuka of Team 8 had also arrived. He looked up. "Don't tell me this is the exam venue? Hinata, you look like you've been here before?"
"Um." Hinata fell into thought. "This place—I've brought meals here for Hanabi before. She trains here sometimes."
Before Hanabi had unlocked training mode, all her cultivation had been done on her own.
"Ohhh, so the mission should be pretty easy then!" Kiba figured it'd be a cakewalk.
"No." Hinata's voice dropped. This place had a very frightening name…
The screen cut away again.
This time it landed on the Ino–Shika–Cho trio.
But here, Hanabi saw someone unexpected.
"Don't go dying on me now, pig-head Ino."
"Yes, yes, yes. And you, Sakura—hurry up and graduate from the Academy already."
"You don't need to tell me that! I'm definitely going to catch up to Sasuke-kun!"
On screen were Sakura Haruno and Ino.
Sakura hadn't graduated smoothly—she'd been ruled unqualified by the Jōnin instructor.
She could only "repeat a grade" and wait for the next exam.
But maybe because of that, Sakura and her once-estranged friend Ino seemed to have patched things up.
"I wonder if I should've had Hikari come see me off? Getting her face out there for visibility and popularity—that doesn't sound like a bad idea," Director Hanabi reflected.
Strength she wasn't really worried about. What she feared most was having no popularity. A lack of popularity was the scariest thing of all!
But right then, Hanabi noticed the stage's camera cut directly to her.
"Hanabi!"
A voice called out. It was Hikari. She'd actually come after all.
You really are my guardian angel, Hikari!