In the blink of an eye, over an hour had passed.
It was nearing noon.
Inside the training room, Seimei was still quietly sensing the Chakra Refining Technique cycling tirelessly within his body.
At one point, it suddenly seemed to jam, grinding to a halt.
Seeing this, Seimei wasn't alarmed—quite the opposite, he was thrilled.
Why? Because the automatic cycling stopping meant the old loop he'd built was no longer suitable.
And there could only be one reason for this: his Chakra Refining Technique had leveled up.
Just as this thought crossed his mind, a faint wave of insight surged within him.
Without hesitation, Seimei focused his mind and began absorbing these new revelations.
The process took a full half-hour.
When he opened his eyes again, they were brimming with excitement.
As expected, the sudden burst of insight was indeed tied to his Chakra Refining Technique advancing.
And now, his Chakra Refining Technique had officially reached Level 7.
Just as he'd anticipated, hitting Level 7 brought a qualitative leap in its effects.
Generally speaking, the Chakra Refining Technique served two purposes for him: restoring chakra and tapping into his body's potential.
The first—chakra restoration—came in two forms: passive and active.
Passively, at Level 6, an hour of running the Chakra Refining Technique restored three thousand chakra points.
Over a full day of twenty-four hours, that amounted to seventy-two thousand chakra points.
Early on, this method of chakra restoration had been his main reliance.
But as his base attributes grew higher and his body naturally recovered chakra faster, the chakra restored passively by the Chakra Refining Technique was becoming almost negligible.
Beyond passive restoration, there was also active chakra recovery.
However, Seimei rarely used this method.
Why? Because it didn't increase his daily chakra cap—it merely squeezed out the recoverable chakra in a short burst.
From its effects, it was clear this was a technique for unleashing maximum combat power in a pinch, not particularly useful for training.
On the contrary, such squeezing would weaken his body, affect chakra output for days, and even waste some chakra due to its rushed nature.
For Seimei, who was focused on training, this was a losing deal.
As for boosting combat power?
Chakra hadn't been the bottleneck for his combat strength in a long time. His chakra reserves already far surpassed a normal person's, and further increases yielded diminishing returns.
This became even more apparent after he created All Things Sealed, opening a seal space to store chakra.
So, he basically never used this method.
But having the ability and not using it was different from not having it at all.
With his Chakra Refining Technique now at Level 7, both aspects had seen significant improvements.
First, passive chakra restoration.
It went from three thousand points per hour to five thousand points per hour.
This wasn't about squeezing his body for more chakra but about improving energy efficiency—using less mental and physical energy to produce more chakra.
In other words, he could now restore an additional forty-eight thousand chakra points per day (= (5000 - 3000) 24)!
Well… while the increase wasn't massive, more was always better than less.
Next, active chakra restoration.
It still couldn't break his daily chakra recovery cap, but when he needed to go all out, he could now refine all his chakra much faster than at Level 6.
Plus, the loss during the process was less than before.
Overall, it was an improvement, but not a dramatic one.
Still, Seimei wasn't too disappointed.
Why? Because chakra recovery speed wasn't his main focus. His real priority was the latter effect: tapping into his body's potential.
Only by improving this could he more quickly convert the skyrocketing potential from his boosted base attributes into actual combat strength.
With that in mind, Seimei calmed himself, opened his status panel, glanced at his chakra cap, noted the number, and began actively running the Level 7 Chakra Refining Technique.
The moment he did, he immediately felt the difference.
If running the technique before was like digging into his potential with a spoon, bit by bit, now it was like wielding a shovel, scooping out huge chunks at a time.
The speed was leagues faster than before.
Seimei was so immersed in the thrill of it that he lost himself in the sensation.
Time slipped by, second by second.
In what felt like no time, it was already noon.
Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle~
Suddenly, his stomach growled loudly.
He hadn't eaten since morning, and now that it was noon, his body was naturally sounding the alarm.
The interruption snapped Seimei out of his trance.
Checking his panel again, he saw his chakra cap had increased by 460 points.
Then he glanced at the time—an hour and change had passed.
Doing a quick calculation, he got his answer: running the Chakra Refining Technique for an hour now boosted his chakra cap by three hundred points.
Before, that number was only sixty-four points.
In other words, at Level 7, the technique's ability to tap into his body's potential had more than tripled in speed.
This completely exceeded Seimei's expectations.
He'd known from past upgrades that each level-up doubled the technique's effect in this regard.
Though he'd prepared himself for a qualitative leap at Level 7, he'd only expected it to hit around two times the previous effect—maybe a hundred fifty points per hour, which would've already been beyond his expectations. But three hundred points per hour? That was unreal.
At this rate, running it for twenty-four hours a day would increase his chakra cap by 7,200 points.
That's 7,200 points a day. Over thirty days, that's 216,000 points. In a year, it'd be 2.6 million points of chakra cap.
For the first time, Seimei felt a glimmer of hope that he could fully convert his body's potential into actual combat strength.
Why only a glimmer?
Simple—his base attributes weren't standing still.
Based on past experience, if his Mental or Physical attributes increased by just two points in a year, it would easily outpace the effects of his Chakra Refining Technique.
And that wasn't a hard benchmark to hit.
In other words, his potential might keep growing faster than he could tap into it—unless…
Unless he could level up the Chakra Refining Technique again!
While going from Level 7 to Level 8 wouldn't bring another qualitative leap, the improvement would surely be no smaller than the jump from Level 6 to Level 7.
That might be enough to keep his potential from piling up endlessly.
But leveling up the Chakra Refining Technique again? Easier said than done.
Looking at his panel, Seimei saw that over the past hour, the technique's proficiency had only increased by one point.
Just like before, leveling up at Level 7 still relied on grinding time.
And it was still one point of proficiency per hour.
To go from Level 7 to Level 8 required 20,000 proficiency points—that's 20,000 hours, or over two years.
"Over two years, huh…"
Seimei shook his head, pushing the thought aside.
He stood up, left the training room, washed up quickly, and headed outside to find some food.
No rush on the training!
Today was his rest day anyway, so there was no need to push himself too hard.
His goals for today were simple: first, complete the routine nurturing of his Byakugan; second, get familiar with the Level 7 Chakra Refining Technique to get it running automatically again.
Neither of these was particularly challenging for him.
So, he'd take it easy and tackle them with a calm mind!
(Chapter End)