Location: Konoha Training Grounds | Time: Six Months After Naruto's Departure
Point of View: General / Omniscient
For six months, the wind had been his companion.
While missions kept him moving—while the village stood between invasions, reconstruction, and quiet unease—Ren Uzumaki found his own rhythm in the one thing that never stopped moving.
Wind.
Unlike fire, it didn't roar.
Unlike lightning, it didn't scream.
It whispered. It danced. It breathed.
And so, Ren listened.
Day by day, hour by hour, he attuned himself to its presence. He watched the way it bent branches, swept dust, curled around stone. His chakra followed, not to overpower it—but to ride with it.
That was the secret he chased.
The reason he focused on mastering one element at a time.
Each element had a voice, and Ren wanted to hear them all clearly.
But first, the wind.
---
He stood now in the middle of the training grounds, the usual stillness around him broken only by the rustle of leaves and the faint hum of chakra gathering in his palms. Before him stood a wooden training dummy, scarred and marked from months of silent conversation.
Ren's eyes narrowed—not with effort, but focus.
He drew in a slow breath, let it fill his lungs, and shaped it with intent. His hands moved—not quickly, but deliberately—as he released a sharp horizontal slash of wind chakra that tore through the dummy's torso cleanly. The cut wasn't jagged or loud. It was smooth. Controlled.
Precise.
Not brute strength.
Refinement.
He didn't smile. He didn't need to. The soft breeze that followed said enough.
Again.
He formed the hand seals once more, this time shaping a small vacuum sphere and releasing it like a silent bullet. It struck the second dummy with pinpoint force, collapsing its frame in on itself.
Again.
This time a fan-like arc, spreading out in a crescent slash across three targets. Wind whistled—not wildly, but rhythmically, like the edge of a blade singing across air.
Each movement came with deeper understanding.
How wind slips between cracks.
How it pushes, pulls, lifts, breaks.
How chakra flows through it, not against it.
---
From a distance, one of the patrol shinobi paused and watched him.
"Isn't that Ren Uzumaki?" another asked.
"Yeah. Been coming here almost every day between missions."
"What's he training?"
"Wind."
A short silence.
"He already knows how to use it though, doesn't he?"
The older shinobi just nodded.
"He's not trying to learn it," he said. "He's trying to understand it."
---
And as another gust moved across the training field, Ren stood silently, breathing in its rhythm once more.
One element at a time.
One truth at a time.
End of Chapter 179
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