Three days had passed in the blink of an eye.
It was evening now.
Seimei had just finished a round of training with the "Wood Clone Technique." Seeing that it was about time, he recalled the dozen or so shadow clones that had been absorbing natural energy.
In an instant, tens of thousands of chakra points, mixed with nearly five thousand points of natural energy, flowed back into his body.
As usual, Seimei first took control of this natural energy, then quickly absorbed and processed the training experiences and memories from his shadow clones.
He had expected this session to be like the others, boosting the proficiency of his "Natural Energy Sensing" and "Natural Energy Control" skills a bit.
But what he didn't expect was that this time, the proficiency he gained was just enough to level up both skills.
In a matter of moments, they jumped from Level 4 to Level 5 (1/5000)!
That's right—Level 5.
Three days ago, when he had raised both "Natural Energy Sensing" and "Natural Energy Control" to Level 3, each day after that, these skills had gained roughly a thousand proficiency points.
Including today, that added up to three thousand points.
And that was exactly enough to push both skills from Level 3 to Level 5.
Unlike the small qualitative change at Level 3, Level 5 marked the true turning point for a skill's transformation, and "Natural Energy Sensing" and "Natural Energy Control" were no exception.
At that moment, Seimei felt his sensitivity to natural energy sharpen dramatically, and he could now manipulate much larger amounts of it.
With a single thought, he directed his mental focus to the special space in his abdomen, trying to control the five thousand points of natural energy stored there.
As expected, the process was much smoother this time.
So, he used the "Mind Link Technique" to connect with the shadow clones scattered across the island, still absorbing natural energy. He had a dozen of them dispel their "Shadow Clone Technique."
In an instant, another five thousand points of natural energy returned to his body.
Seimei immediately took control of it, channeling it into the special space in his abdomen.
With that, the natural energy stored in his body reached a total of ten thousand points.
He tried manipulating this amount of natural energy again. This time, the difficulty had increased significantly. While it still wasn't his absolute limit, it was getting close.
Storing natural energy in his body always carried someリスク. Seimei didn't want to push things too far, so for the time being, he decided to stick to handling ten thousand points of natural energy.
And with ten thousand points of natural energy, he could create ten thousand points of Sage Chakra.
If used wisely, this Sage Chakra could noticeably speed up the strengthening of his body.
But this also brought up a problem: the special space in his abdomen was starting to struggle to contain all this natural energy.
That's right—it couldn't hold it anymore.
Initially, using the "All-Encompassing Seal," he had casually created a small space that could only hold a thousand points of natural energy.
Over time, through several improvements, he had expanded its capacity to five thousand points.
But now, with his ability to control ten thousand points of natural energy, the space was falling short.
As it stood, he had to constantly divert a portion of his focus to maintain the seal in his abdomen.
Otherwise, the natural energy would have spiraled out of control by now.
But maintaining it like this wasn't a long-term solution. He couldn't keep splitting his focus to stabilize the seal every time he absorbed natural energy, could he?
Not only was it a hassle, but the drain on his mental energy was something Seimei couldn't accept.
His time and energy were limited every day—he couldn't afford to waste them on this.
But improving the current setup... that came with its own issues.
The "All-Encompassing Seal" was originally designed to store chakra, not natural energy. Continuing to tweak it would only be a temporary fix, not a real solution.
Its ability to store natural energy would never match its capacity for chakra—not even close.
The more he tried to force it, the worse the results would be, and eventually, it would do more harm than good.
And it was clear that as time went on, the amount of natural energy he'd need to store would keep growing, and the rate of increase would only get steeper. The risks of losing control would grow exponentially.
This was an exponential growth pattern.
He had to find a way to solve this problem once and for all, before it turned into a crisis.
With all these thoughts swirling in his mind, Seimei's brain kicked into high gear, searching for a solution.
Thanks to the high-level sealing techniques he had developed over the past few years, an idea came to him quickly.
As the saying goes, the one who ties the knot must untie it.
Since the "All-Encompassing Seal" wasn't working well because it was designed for chakra, could he take the same approach and create a new seal specifically for natural energy?
No, not just for natural energy.
Considering that until the natural energy he controlled reached a balance with his body's chakra, he'd need to fuse Sage Chakra within the sealed space, the new seal would have to account for regular chakra and even the resulting Sage Chakra.
For a moment, all sorts of ideas flooded Seimei's mind, making him lose focus briefly.
Thankfully, a slight disturbance in the seal in his abdomen snapped him back to reality—this wasn't the time to get distracted.
Right away, Seimei reined in his thoughts and first fused the natural energy in the special space into Sage Chakra.
Then, he drew out this Sage Chakra and used the "Flying Thunder God Technique" to teleport temporarily to the inside of a volcano.
There, he spent some time using the Sage Chakra to perform the "Body Extremity Technique," strengthening his body further.
Once all the Sage Chakra was used up, he teleported back to the open area in the center of the island using the "Flying Thunder God Technique" again.
Seimei glanced at the shadow clones still working on developing Dust Release, both on and off the island. With a thought, he dispelled the "Multiple Shadow Clone Technique."
Instantly, all those shadow clones dissolved and vanished.
A flood of memories and information rushed into his mind.
Seimei closed his eyes and quickly sifted through the memories, absorbing and processing the training experiences they contained.
A quarter of an hour later, he opened his eyes again.
Standing there, he pondered for a moment before casting the "Multiple Shadow Clone Technique" once more, creating over four hundred and thirty shadow clones.
Of those, four hundred clones continued where the previous ones left off, standing on a higher starting point to keep developing Dust Release.
As for the remaining thirty or so clones...
Seimei thought for a moment. Instead of sending them to join the hundred clones absorbing natural energy, he had them follow his earlier train of thought, working on developing a new sealing technique to address the risks of storing too much natural energy.
Time ticked by, second by second.
And just like that, the area fell quiet again as Seimei's training continued!