Hearing the call from outside the door,
Hyuga Yu instinctively activated his Byakugan. The blood vessels around his eyes bulged along with his expanding field of vision.
After seeing that the person standing outside was just an ordinary Hyuga clan ninja, he dispersed the chakra in his hands.
Strangely enough,
The chakra he waved away didn't dissipate like normal chakra. Instead, driven by another peculiar type of chakra, it quietly reverted from wind-style chakra back into ordinary chakra and returned to his body.
In the Byakugan's perspective view of the human body, this ordinary chakra was then decomposed once more, converting back into an even more fundamental unit—"stamina."
Hyuga Yu's complexion visibly became more ruddy.
Then he stood up, walked to the entrance, and opened the door.
Standing outside was a Hyuga ninja wearing a Chunin vest. Hyuga Yu recognized him as well.
Hyuga Iroha.
Fourteen years old, a Hyuga clan ninja one year ahead of Hyuga Yu at the academy, currently still a Chunin who would probably be promoted to Jonin around his twenties when Shippuden begins. Even with the Byakugan, he was a ninja who wouldn't stand out much in a crowd.
Not everyone in the Hyuga clan was like Hyuga Tetsu with his terrible attitude toward Hyuga Yu.
At this moment, Hyuga Iroha casually greeted Hyuga Yu.
"Yo, Yu, up pretty early, huh? And... you're looking well."
He looked Hyuga Yu up and down, pausing for a moment on his unusually ruddy complexion, then smiled and handed over a scroll.
"The clan has decided to send you to the Hidden Mist battlefield frontlines."
"But you're pretty lucky—you've been assigned to the medical corps at Kusanami Coast. Hmm, that place... how should I put it? Perfect for retirement."
Kusanami Coast was located inside the Land of Fire and served as a collection point for frontline wounded. Those sent here had basically already received initial emergency treatment and were waiting to be sent back to the Leaf Village for recuperation or further treatment. The medical ninja stationed there had much more downtime than the medical ninja at Konoha Hospital back home.
At this point, Hyuga Iroha couldn't help but joke: "If I get transferred there later too, we could get together and play cards when we're free."
"Thanks." Hyuga Yu returned the smile, reached out to accept the scroll, and replied with a shake of his head.
"However, I really hope we don't run into each other there. After all, I don't particularly want to stitch your intestines back together."
Hyuga Iroha froze for a moment, then understood and laughed with a shake of his head:
"Haha, good point."
Due to the special nature of the collection point, ninja sent there had basically already had their fate sealed. Under those circumstances, seeking out the medical ninja in the camp usually meant needing work like stitching intestines or tidying up faces—preparing the body for viewing.
Theoretically, this was the corpse disposal team's job, but wartime circumstances were special, and the corpse disposal team was just a small department under Konoha's Medical Division. Faced with an ocean of war casualties, they were inevitably short-staffed.
"I still have a few more deployment orders to deliver, so I'll take my leave."
After seeing Hyuga Iroha off, Hyuga Yu unrolled the scroll and began reading.
Just as he'd guessed,
The clan's deployment order had a departure time set for the day after tomorrow, and the mission location was exactly as Hyuga Iroha had said—the medical corps at Kusanami Coast.
This matched the location the Root had deployed him to, only the reporting authority was different.
The Hyuga main family had ordered Hyuga Yu to report to someone named Furo Fuki, an elderly female ninja. This grandmother-generation ninja had previously been the vice director of Konoha Hospital, was currently in a semi-retired state, and was also theoretically the highest authority in the camp.
The main family's arrangement wasn't unfair to Hyuga Yu at all—it was even somewhat preferential.
However,
Hyuga Yu merely glanced at the scroll before casually stuffing it into the scroll pouch strapped to the left side of his leg.
Then he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall.
5:40.
The main family would be leaving the village today and would depart punctually at eight o'clock according to custom, with three squads rotating to provide escort and advance reconnaissance of the route.
Hyuga Yu had already confirmed the general route, so he didn't plan to follow the main family's convoy.
The reason was simple.
If there were enemies that Jonin couldn't handle, him going there as a Genin probably wouldn't help much either. Moreover, the Byakugan of the main family's guard squad could see much farther than his own. If he were discovered, Hyuga Yu would have no way to explain what he was doing there.
If Hyuga Genko became suspicious and used the Caged Bird Seal in desperation, Hyuga Yu would have nowhere to cry out his innocence.
He simply wasn't comfortable with Hyuga Natsu being caught up in this incident, and the person he wanted to protect was only Hyuga Natsu... at most adding Hyuga Tetsu.
At the same time, sharpening the axe wouldn't delay chopping wood.
Confirming there was still adequate time, Hyuga Yu returned inside the house, sat down cross-legged again, and picked up a kunai from the table to channel chakra into it.
Mastering ninjutsu couldn't be accomplished overnight.
But that was only under normal circumstances.
Thanks to having planned his training direction from very early on, Hyuga Yu had used chakra paper to test his chakra affinity as soon as he could crawl.
Unfortunately, he wasn't a genius like Hatake Kakashi. His chakra affinity was only of one type—Wind.
At the same time, his training in wind-style chakra nature transformation and shape transformation had already begun when Hyuga Yu first learned to extract chakra.
Chakra nature transformation had many variations. For example, water could transform through nature transformation into glue or muddy water; fire could transform through nature transformation into gunpowder, steam, high-temperature objects, and so on.
For the wind attribute, the most common and easiest to replicate was [sharpness], or to put it more vividly, [blade].
According to the process Sarutobi Asuma used to teach Naruto wind-style chakra nature transformation,
Chakra nature transformation training had three stages in total:
First stage: Strengthen [nature transformation].
In layman's terms, this meant finding the direction of chakra nature conversion.
The process was also simple—channel chakra into a leaf until the leaf showed signs of splitting or cutting.
Second stage: Increase the instantaneous transformation volume.
In Shippuden, Naruto trained this by summoning a bunch of clones to cut through a waterfall, highlighting the brute force approach with shared experience.
Hyuga Yu didn't have that much chakra, so he used a grinding approach. Whenever his stamina was sufficient, he would attempt to fuse wind-style chakra to cut into the ground or a large rock placed not far from his front door.
After a full seven years of grinding work, that rock riddled with holes was finally split in two by Hyuga Yu with a bare-handed press.
And when Hyuga Yu emptied all his chakra except what was needed to sustain life, he could use chakra alone to cut a groove about one millimeter thick and three meters deep straight down into ordinary ground.
It wasn't that Hyuga Yu couldn't cut deeper than three meters, but that his chakra reserves only allowed him to cut that much.
Training to the point of being able to release all one's chakra in an instant meant this stage of training was perfectly complete.
The third stage, also the most difficult:
[Fusion with jutsu].
Naruto nearly destroyed himself training this stage. The process of fusing wind-style with the Rasengan continuously ravaged his hand meridians. It was only because the Uzumaki clan's constitution stacked with the Nine-Tails buff made him relatively resilient that Naruto purely relied on his terrifying recovery ability to tough out the entire training process.
However, for Hyuga Yu who possessed the Byakugan and knew Gentle Fist, this was actually the simplest step.
Just like right now—
Hyuga Yu deftly gripped the kunai and channeled chakra into it.
The sharp, prickly wind-style chakra that continuously emitted piercing shrieks was, in his hands, as docile as a cat rubbing against his knees seeking comfort.
Even occasional signs of losing control were, in the next instant, redecomposed and resynthesized under the interference of another peculiar chakra.
The entire process didn't waste even a shred of chakra.
Even more...
The process that even Shimura Danzo had to open his mouth to exhale and form the "Rat" hand seal to attach wind-style chakra onto a kunai to form a Vacuum Blade—
In Hyuga Yu's hands, that step was directly omitted!
In the next instant,
A pale yellow wind blade approximately one meter long, continuously emanating sharp sword energy, suddenly extended from the kunai Hyuga Yu gripped!
————
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