Chapter Eleven: Discovery
As winter set in, the climate in Konoha grew noticeably colder, and drifting fallen leaves covered the street corners.
Under the dim yellow streetlights, Ryuya carried a bag of late-night food and walked leisurely toward the Akimichi clan's residential area.
Over the past three months, as village missions were continuously taken and completed by various squads, there were far fewer tasks suitable for a small team like Team Thirty-One. As a result, Ryuya and the others went out on missions much less frequently.
Freed from the constraints of constant missions, the members of Team Thirty-One devoted more of their time to training and cultivation.
As for Ryuya, in addition to training and practice, he diligently fulfilled his duties as a library administrator.
Faced with the vast collection of books and scrolls in the library, Ryuya didn't hold back. While organizing the shelves, he continuously recorded their contents into his biological chip.
Perhaps because Ryuya's strength had improved, and because most of the materials were quite basic, the chakra consumption required for the biological chip to record them was not high. He could record more than ten items per day.
Even so, fully recording all the materials in the library was still a massive undertaking.
For this reason, Ryuya invested a great deal of time, spending three full months and still recording less than half of the collection.
Nevertheless, through organizing and analyzing these basic materials, the biological chip's database had already constructed a preliminary theoretical framework of knowledge about the ninja world.
With this framework in place, Ryuya's subsequent recording became noticeably faster, and chakra consumption was reduced even further.
As soon as he returned home, Ryuya noticed a figure waiting outside his door.
Taking a closer look, he saw that it was Akimichi Kyōko.
It was already close to ten o'clock at night. Kyōko was leaning against his door, asleep, tightly clutching a ninjutsu scroll in her hand.
"Hey! Kyōko, it's so late—why are you still here?" Ryuya hurriedly woke her.
"Ah! Ryuya-san, you're finally back!" Seeing Ryuya, Kyōko's face lit up with joy as she tried to stand.
However, perhaps because she had been sitting still for too long, she nearly fell to the ground as she rose.
Seeing this, Ryuya quickly supported her and said reproachfully, "Kyōko, it's so cold, and you're waiting out here this late—what were you thinking? If something came up, couldn't you have told me during the day?"
"Well, here—this scroll records a few secret techniques from our clan. I just got it from my father today, so I brought it to you to take a look first."
Kyōko smiled without replying to his scolding and handed the scroll to Ryuya.
Hearing this, Ryuya froze slightly.
"All right, I'll keep the scroll for now and return it after I've read it. It's already very late—go back inside and get some rest,"
Ryuya said after a moment, taking the scroll and waving her off.
Kyōko's actions deeply moved him.
She was a sincere and kind-hearted girl.
Perhaps because she had noticed Ryuya's strong desire for all kinds of ninjutsu scrolls during their previous interactions, Kyōko had thought of him the moment she obtained one.
Ryuya firmly engraved this kindness in his heart.
After returning to his room and finishing the late-night meal he had brought back, Ryuya eagerly opened the ninjutsu scroll Kyōko had given him.
The scroll recorded two Akimichi clan techniques in total: the Chakra Refinement Technique and the Expansion Technique.
"Unknown ninjutsu information detected. Record it?"
"Record."
"Akimichi clan Chakra Refinement Technique recorded. Defects detected—optimization complete."
It took a little over ten minutes for the biological chip to finish recording and optimizing the Chakra Refinement Technique, consuming more than half of Ryuya's chakra reserves.
Perhaps because the chip had already optimized a chakra refinement method before, this optimization did not take long, and the additional chakra consumption was almost negligible.
Noticing the lack of chakra in his body, Ryuya did not continue to record the Expansion Technique.
After all, the scroll was already in his possession—there was no need to rush.
After recording and optimizing the clan's unique Chakra Refinement Technique, Ryuya began to practice it.
As a hereditary secret-technique clan, the Akimichi family's chakra refinement method was vastly different from the one taught at the Ninja Academy.
This was something Ryuya hadn't realized before, but the moment he tried cultivating it, he keenly sensed the huge difference.
When ordinary ninja refined chakra, the ratio of extracting spiritual energy to physical energy was 1:1. The Akimichi clan's method, however, did not follow this ratio. It extracted additional physical energy and stored it within the body's fat.
This was the foundation for performing the Akimichi clan's secret techniques.
It was also the main reason Akimichi clan members needed to eat large quantities of food and gain weight.
On one hand, consuming large amounts of food and increasing body mass provided more physical energy; on the other, more body fat allowed for greater storage of that energy.
Within the Akimichi clan, the stronger a ninja was, the more burly their physique tended to be.
A body rich in fat not only helped Akimichi ninja store more physical energy, but also allowed them to rapidly convert fat into a special kind of chakra during combat.
When combined with the clan's specially formulated three-colored pills, an Akimichi ninja who had mastered the clan's secret techniques could unleash astonishing combat power in a short period of time.
Ryuya quickly realized that this chakra, which contained a large amount of physical energy, must be the Yang-attribute chakra unique to the Akimichi clan.
Once he understood this, his thoughts naturally began to branch out.
In the ninja world, aside from the Akimichi clan, there were several other clans that possessed Yang-attribute chakra, such as the Senju clan and the Uzumaki clan.
Both of these clans had once been famous and powerful throughout the ninja world. They were descendants of Asura, inheriting part of the Sage of Six Paths' physical power.
The strength of the Sage's body could be glimpsed from the abilities of Senju Hashirama and Nagato.
Ryuya began to suspect that the Akimichi clan might also be distant relatives of Asura's lineage. Otherwise, how could they possess such special Yang-attribute chakra and secret techniques?
In this regard, the Kaguya clan of Kirigakure was quite similar to the Akimichi clan—both were possibly distant descendants of the Sage of Six Paths.
Though Ryuya had his suspicions, he had no way to confirm them.
After all, even the original official materials provided no clear explanation.
To verify this, Ryuya estimated that he would need to carefully study the physical data of the Senju and Uzumaki clans before drawing any conclusions.
"Based on the cultivation effects of the clan's chakra refinement technique, continuously track and analyze my body to determine whether there are any special traits."
"Task established. Collecting data. Estimated completion time: undetermined."
After two days of practice, Ryuya issued a long-term task to the biological chip in his mind.
A day earlier, Ryuya had already recorded the Expansion Technique into the chip's database and returned the scroll to Kyōko.
The optimized Akimichi clan Chakra Refinement Technique increased chakra refinement speed by about threefold. Considering the need to use clan secret techniques in the future, Ryuya shifted his focus entirely to cultivating this clan-specific chakra refinement method.
For 60 advanced chapters,you can go to my Patreon: Patreon.com/Keiondir