"It seems you really want to know your strength. I can see the hunger for power in your eyes." Might Duy spoke with the tone of a seasoned adult. "Even though I think chasing power blindly is wrong, you must have your own pressing reasons for pursuing it, kid."
Jin touched his eyelids, confused. How did he see all that? All I ever notice in other people's eyes is eye gunk. If reading someone's goals were really that easy, would it not be effortless to catch spies?
Duy, unaware that Jin's thoughts had wandered somewhere strange, continued, "So I'll teach you Hachimon Tonkō, and you'll guide me through the basics of Basic Internal Energy."
Duy had done the math. A fair trade. Jin wanted to learn Hachimon Tonkō, but he did not expect the offer to come so directly.
Duy sat down, his face full of seriousness, and began explaining.
"I'm just a Genin who trains every day. I've spent more than ten years without fully mastering this technique, but I have some understanding I can share." He paused, then continued. "If you use this technique, you need to place a strict condition on yourself." "Self restraint."
Jin listened with a hint of skepticism. His main goal in training, besides survival, was to do whatever he wanted. If he had to put a time limit on that freedom, he wanted it to be forever.
As Duy explained, Jin gradually understood what Hachimon Tonkō was. The technique was far simpler than he had imagined, and at the same time, far harder. Simple in concept, brutal in execution.
The theory behind Hachimon Tonkō was short and easy to grasp. Anyone could learn it quickly and start training. The problem was that completing it was insanely difficult.
Hachimon Tonkō was about repeatedly breaking through the body's limits, which meant lifting the suppression of the Eight Gates that controlled the flow of chakra. The Eight Gates existed to protect the human body. They were limiters. In his previous life, people talked about "human limiters" too. In a moment of danger, some people unlocked that strength and did things like a frail woman lifting a car, but the price was serious injury or death.
The Eight Gates were chakra limiters. That was why opening them damaged the body. With Hachimon Tonkō, you did not rely on a life and death crisis to force them open. Instead, you trained until you surpassed your physical limits again and again, creating tiny cracks in the gates. Then you forced chakra through those cracks, releasing the power that had been held back.
Breaking the body's limit was not easy. A normal shinobi might manage it once. After that, the difficulty of breaking the next limit rose exponentially. No wonder Kakashi was shocked in the future when he saw Rock Lee open four gates. That was not something you achieved with "effort" alone. Four gates meant Lee had shattered his physical limits four separate times. It was unthinkable.
"This taijutsu isn't right for me." Jin shook his head in regret. He trusted his own persistence, but the time and energy required were astronomical. He could use that time to create much stronger ninjutsu. He was not one of those freaks who picked up Hachimon Tonkō and opened all eight gates in a few months or a few days.
By his estimates, reaching Duy's Fifth Gate level would take at least ten years. Going from the Fifth Gate to the Seventh would take another ten. The Eighth Gate, ironically, was the easiest to open. The only condition was opening the first seven, and the price was your life.
Now he understood why Duy's Eighth Gate did not compare to Guy's. When Duy opened the Eighth Gate in the future, he probably had not fully mastered the Seventh. In theory, the power of the Eighth Gate should be similar for everyone.
Jin looked at Duy, thinking.
"Kid, there aren't techniques that fit you or don't fit you. Maybe one day you'll have someone you need to protect with the glow of your youth." Duy raised a thumb toward Jin.
So you are cursing me to die. That has to be what that was.
Forget it. Jin did not feel like arguing, and the aches in his body were not helping either. Now it was his turn to teach.
"Where are you with Basic Internal Energy?" Jin sat down too.
Duy thought for a moment. "Weaving the seal."
Jin: (...)
That was step one. Fine. We were starting from zero.
Duy left. He had a pregnant wife to care for. Jin looked up at the sky. The clouds had taken on a faint reddish tint.
"His aptitude is genuinely unbelievable."
Jin was still processing how long it had taken to teach Duy. He could not imagine someone being that slow. It was not stupidity. It felt like someone who had no business being a shinobi was forcing chakra to condense anyway.
In this world, almost everyone had some chakra, but extracting it from your cells required a prerequisite: sensitivity to chakra. Many shinobi clans were naturally blessed in that area. The Uchiha were especially exceptional. At least ninety percent of them had what it took to become shinobi. This was a world that looked like it ran on ninjutsu, but in truth, it ran on bloodlines, on kekkei genkai.
If you could feel chakra, you could control it. The difference was precision. Medical ninjas, for example, required extremely high precision. In Duy's case, his chakra control was not even fifty percent. Where others used ten percent effort to control chakra, he needed fifty percent. Jin had never imagined something like that. For Duy, the difficulty of any ninjutsu multiplied fivefold.
"No wonder he's terrible at Ninjutsu and Genjutsu."
For Duy, a C Rank ninjutsu had the difficulty of a B Rank. That was already a wall for most shinobi. Basic Internal Energy was simple, a D Rank level of difficulty, but it had entry requirements. For Duy, it became C Rank.
"Shinobi aptitude really matters." Jin felt deep sympathy for the limitations placed on the mediocre in this world. Hachimon Tonkō was perhaps the only path that let the mediocre outpace geniuses on the curve.
"Good thing my aptitude is good." Even so, Jin was one of the rare Uchiha with affinity for all chakra natures, the same aptitude Sarutobi Hiruzen had. The peak of that kind of talent was Hiruzen himself, the "Professor of Ninjas," the "Strongest Hokage." In reality, Orochimaru probably knew more jutsu than he did. Hiruzen was a Kage built purely on talent and conventional training.
In theory, if Jin grew normally and awakened the Sharingan, he could surpass Sarutobi Hiruzen. But Hiruzen had a great teacher, Tobirama, and a vast arsenal of jutsu. Jin did not. So it was only theory.
And Jin had never planned to measure himself against Hiruzen alone. His ambition was much bigger. He did not aim to be Kage, Super Kage, or even reach the level of Madara and Hashirama. He was aiming for the Sages of the Three Great Sacred Regions, Ryūchi, Myōboku, and Shikkotsu, and for the level of the Six Paths, Rikudō. Combat strength was secondary. Longevity was the real point. His goal was simple: live a thousand years first, and decide everything else later.
Still, his all elements affinity could not be exposed. If it was discovered, he did not know how Hiruzen would react, but Danzo, the Pot Shadow, would never let him grow up. Weakening and suppressing the Uchiha was Konoha's political correctness.
"I should just defect. I feel safer outside than I do here." Jin cursed under his breath and walked off. It was only talk. The shinobi world was chaos. He needed a safe place to farm and grow. Once he was strong enough, Uchiha Jin would not swallow insults and pretend it was fine. That was a Chinese saying for doing whatever you want and refusing to be pushed around.
He did not leave Konoha Forest. Instead, he headed deeper into the woods.
In an abandoned, ruined training ground, two figures exchanged blows at high speed. Looking closely, both were Jin. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Technique).
One used only taijutsu. The other attacked with the Three Basic Jutsu and Katon (Fire Release). Kage Bunshin really was a cheat tool. Your body and chakra did not grow on their own, but the memory transfer was the trump card. Using it to train ninjutsu and stack combat experience led to explosive progress. Jin was doing exactly that.
"My limit is three clones." If he wanted to keep them up for a whole day and take the experience back without collapsing, three was all he could handle. The clones' fatigue piled onto the original body. He was not the future Naruto Uzumaki with his "infinite battery" and protagonist aura. If he made too many, he would die.
Besides the two fighting clones, a third clone was at home studying ninjutsu.
"Kai!" Jin formed a hand seal. POOF, POOF. The two clones turned to smoke and vanished. A flood of combat memories poured into his brain.
"Fighting myself doesn't pay off as much as fighting Duy."
While he savored the memories, he caught movement in the bushes out of the corner of his eye. He drew a kunai from his thigh and threw it. Whoosh.
When he walked over, he saw a small white snake pinned to the ground by the kunai, writhing. "It's rare to see a snake like this here."
Jin sighed and pulled the kunai free. The white snake tried to flee. Before it could escape, a shuriken appeared from nowhere and took its head clean off. The headless body twisted wildly, helpless against its fate.
Jin's eyes narrowed. He drew his kunai and went on full alert. He had not sensed anyone nearby, and Basic Internal Energy should have sharpened his perception.
"Life really is fragile."
A sigh echoed through the trees. With it came overwhelming killing intent. The air seemed to turn black and heavy. Jin felt like invisible weights had been chained to him, and even breathing became difficult.
In the distance, a man in a white kimono walked toward him with slow, measured steps. Pale skin. Long hair. A man who looked like a serpent. He wore casual clothes with no sign of battle readiness, yet the rhythm of his steps alone, tap, tap, tap, made Jin's heart beat in time with them.
The man stopped beside the dead little snake. His expression held genuine sadness, nothing like the person radiating that crushing killing intent.
"Don't you agree, young Uchiha?"
"Orochimaru!"