Konoha at dusk was serene.
The night draped over the buildings like a great grey coat. The four faces on the Hokage Rock were like emaciated giants, calmly watching over this land of surging undercurrents.
At this moment, in a courtyard, Hyuga Kumo stood quietly in the center, wearing a white training uniform, his eyes tightly closed.
Around him, the remains of wooden stakes were suspended in mid-air by a mechanism, their sharp, splintered ends all aimed at him.
After a moment, he lightly released the thin rope connected to the mechanism.
Swish! Swish!
Instantly, the crisp sound of the mechanism closing and the sharp whistle of tearing air filled the entire courtyard. A barrage of razor-sharp wooden stake fragments rained down like a violent storm.
But in the next moment, Hyuga Kumo moved, his figure incredibly swift.
His entire body became a phantom, and with a whoosh of wind, he actively met the oncoming stakes.
Although the stakes were extremely fast and left almost no blind spots, in his perception, their trajectories and angles were crystal clear.
Bang! Bang! Bang!!
This time, unlike the simple techniques he had used against Himawari Hyuga, Hyuga Kumo's palms were enveloped in blue chakra. His two arms became afterimages, lashing out with a palpable wind pressure.
In the blink of an eye, the struck stakes exploded from within, bursting into a continuous cloud of dust around him, making his figure hazy, like a ghost in the smoke.
If Might Guy had been here to see this, his blood would surely have boiled with excitement.
Because Hyuga Kumo was clearly using the Gentle Fist, yet it carried a hard, straight, and domineering force, fusing the power-generating techniques of both the Strong Fist and the Gentle Fist.
Tss!
The last two thick wooden stakes, covered in menacing splinters, shot towards Kumo from different angles on either side.
Their visible speed symbolized a powerful kinetic energy, enough to pierce through a body of flesh and blood.
As if sensing something, Hyuga Kumo stood his ground without moving. A grin slowly spread across his face, his eyes still closed, as his palms suddenly clenched into fists with a hum.
"Vacuum Fist!"
He threw a punch, the fierce aura unleashed without any concealment. The surrounding dust was blown away as the chakra gathered in his hands transformed into an invisible, tangible entity, blasting away from his body and smashing into the wooden stakes.
Bang! Bang!
The two stakes didn't even have a chance to get close to Hyuga Kumo. They were blasted into an incredibly fine 'mist' three meters away, as if a powerful force had penetrated the stakes and made them explode from within.
This type of wood was specially used for practicing the Gentle Fist, its material tough both inside and out, enough to withstand the Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms without damage. But now, it had been blown apart by Kumo from a distance.
If those two fists had struck not wooden stakes, but a living person...
"Success."
Hyuga Kumo opened his eyes and looked at the panel in front of him, smiling. "Finally, I have a ranged and powerful ninjutsu taijutsu. In the future, I won't have to use the Gentle Fist to fight a Susanoo or a Tailed Beast."
[Taijutsu: Gentle Fist Art - Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms (C-Rank), Eight Gates - Gate of Life (Forbidden Jutsu), Gentle Fist Art - One-Hit Body (B-Rank), Vacuum Fist (A-Rank)]
By gathering a large amount of chakra in one part of the body and unleashing it all at once with the penetrating force of the Gentle Fist and Strong Fist, it could turn any enemy into a bloody mist from their fragile insides, no matter how tough their physique was.
Most importantly, this jutsu, like the Rasengan, was a jutsu with no elemental attribute and no hand seals. It could be combined with chakra nature transformation, adding wind, fire, lightning, earth, or water chakra. Its plasticity and practicality were extremely high, with a very high ceiling.
"An A-rank learning difficulty?" Hyuga Kumo's expression was thoughtful.
Perhaps in the eyes of many, "chakra amount" was like "mana" in a game, to be used whenever one fought.
But in fact, apart from users of ninjutsu like the Yin Seal and Jinchuriki, chakra could not be stored in the body; it would constantly dissipate.
Every time chakra was used, it needed to be refined from spiritual and physical energy. If the speed of refinement couldn't keep up with the speed of dissipation, one had no talent as a ninja, and this was one of the main factors that determined the strength of most conventional ninja.
Kakashi was always careful with his chakra precisely because for every bit of chakra he refined, he had to feed half to his master, the Sharingan, making his already less-than-abundant chakra refinement speed even worse.
And in the original story, before Naruto gained the Nine-Tails' recognition and assistance, he needed to prepare a shadow clone in advance to accumulate chakra and natural energy every time he used Sage Mode. Jiraiya also relied on the two toads on his shoulders for assistance.
On the basis of the refinement speed being faster than the dissipation speed, the upper limit of chakra that could be accommodated in the body was another decisive factor, determining the power and scale of the ninjutsu used by the ninja. For example, why couldn't others use a super-large-scale Fire Release like Madara Uchiha, even though those brought back by the Reanimation Jutsu had, in a sense, infinite chakra?
Fire Release: Great Fire Annihilation was only a B-rank Fire Release ninjutsu in terms of learning difficulty, but in Madara Uchiha's hands, it required the Allied Shinobi Forces to exhaust dozens of Hidden Mist ninja using the Water Formation Wall simultaneously just to block it.
This was because Madara's specially made body could hold more chakra, and the ninjutsu used by consuming more chakra would naturally have greater power and scale.
Therefore, at the end, Sasuke, who possessed the Rinnegan, was clearly no match for Naruto, who had the Sage Body and the Nine-Tails, in terms of endurance. In the battle at the Valley of the End, it was only after seizing the chakra of the other eight Tailed Beasts that he was able to fight a war of attrition with Naruto.
The speed of refining chakra, and the upper limit of accommodating chakra.
These two points were the main factors that determined the strength of a ninja when their ninjutsu levels were similar.
The former could perhaps be improved through training, but the latter was an innate "talent."
And what determined these two points was the "Chakra Pathway System" within the body. Like blood vessels through which blood flows, it was spread throughout the body, a system of pathways that allowed chakra to reach every corner of the body, and together with the 361 chakra points, it was called the "Chakra Pathway System."
If the chakra pathways of most people were just "small streams" of trickling water, the pathways of Hyuga Kumo's body were like a "river" rushing endlessly. In this aspect, he was even stronger than Naruto Uzumaki, a member of the Uzumaki clan.
The system had judged this jutsu as A-rank in learning difficulty, likely because he had fully utilized the talents of this body, including the extremely fast chakra refinement speed, the upper limit of chakra he could accommodate, and his extremely strong chakra control...
"I wonder if Kaguya Otsutsuki's 'Eighty Gods Vacuum Fists' works on the same principle, but with the talent of her body, the Eighty Gods Vacuum Fists is probably just a casual, brute-force move for her."
Hyuga Kumo pulled his wandering thoughts back and glanced up at the messy courtyard.
After a moment's hesitation, he decided not to clean it up and turned to walk into the house.
After a morning of high-intensity training with Might Guy, and then exhausting his energy developing a new ninjutsu taijutsu in the afternoon, all he wanted to do now was go back and get some good rest.
However, not long after he entered the house, a figure appeared outside the courtyard.
The newcomer looked at the wood chips and blocks scattered throughout the courtyard. The surrounding wooden stakes were all shattered, and the well-kept lawn was scarred and pitted. Some of the stake remnants were still stained with undried blood. He couldn't help but feel a sense of horror.
What happened here?
The newcomer frowned and walked into the courtyard without a sound. He stood before the door for several seconds before finally choosing to open it.
But just as his hand touched the doorknob...
BANG!
The door was suddenly thrown open from the inside, the force so great that it created a huge bang that spread from the doorknob.
It was as if it wanted to smash the newcomer to pieces and sprinkle him on the lawn as fertilizer, or as if it wanted to surge into his body.
"Hmm?"
The newcomer was stunned for a moment. His hand on the doorknob subconsciously pressed forward against the door panel, and with a sudden burst of force from his hand, he unleashed the power of the Gentle Fist, barely managing to counteract the surging force.
All the power seemed to melt away like a clay ox entering the sea, as if it had been neutralized by two opposing forces.
Hyuga Kumo, inside the room, stopped, apparently realizing who the visitor was.
Click.
The door was opened.
Seeing the face of the figure outside the door clearly, Hyuga Kumo also seemed to be stunned for a moment.
"Lord Hizashi?"