· Tsunade found the lack of progress thoroughly bizarre.
“This makes zero sense.
Given your sheer brilliance with medical ninjutsu, mastering Cherry Blossom Impact should be a walk in the park.
Why are you hitting a wall like this?” Hideki Sato could only stare down at the grass, offering a helpless sigh.
“Maybe my innate affinity is hyper-focused on healing arts, Sensei.
Aside from the medical techniques you’ve taught me, I only know the standard Three Basic Jutsu.” Tsunade fell completely silent, utterly speechless.
Only now did it finally click.
Throughout their entire half-year of deployments, she had never actually seen Hideki deploy a single offensive or defensive ninjutsu.
Because Charmander routinely handled the high-output combat logistics, Hideki’s own interventions were strictly limited to close-quarters thrusts with his kunai.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Tsunade wore a look of intense frustration.
After a long pause, a sudden tactical adjustment came to mind.
She reached out, grabbing Hideki’s hands and clamping them firmly around her own wrists before triggering a localized surge of her technique.
“Do you register anything?” Meeting Tsunade’s intensely expectant gaze, Hideki’s eyes subtly drifted, his focus shifting.
He offered a thoroughly hesitant reply.
“Uh…
well, I register that your wrists are incredibly soft and exceptionally smooth, Sensei.
The tactile feedback is genuinely premium.” Crack!
Hideki successfully harvested a sharp knuckle-knock directly to the crown of his head.
“I meant do you register the precise structural flow of my chakra, you little brat!
Who told you to perform a diagnostic evaluation on my skin?!” Rubbing the fresh welt, Hideki finally processed her pedagogical intent.
He locked his entire sensory awareness onto the internal siphoning of chakra moving through Tsunade’s wrists.
After she demonstrated the precise internal circulation several more times, a micro-thread of comprehension finally crystallized in Hideki’s mind.
Raising his right fist, a look of quiet contemplation crossed his features.
After a long silence, he abruptly pivoted and drove a sudden punch straight into a massive oak tree bordering the clearing.
The towering tree violently shuddered from root to canopy, loose bark and a heavy storm of leaves raining down across the grass.
Staring at the physical feedback, Hideki’s expression erupted into absolute triumph.
He vaulted forward entirely on instinct, leaping straight onto Tsunade and locking his arms securely around her waist as he cheered excitedly.
“I pulled it off!
Did you see that, Sensei?
I actually triggered Cherry Blossom Impact!” Tsunade’s face lit up with equal excitement—arguably more radiant than the day she had first finalized the technique herself.
For a long stretch, she had genuinely begun to question whether her instructional baseline was fundamentally flawed.
Fortunately, Hideki had crossed the threshold.
However, after a solid minute passed and Hideki showed absolute zero intention of releasing his grip, Tsunade’s tone dropped into a flat, dangerous purr.
“I highly suggest you don’t push your luck with me, kiddo.” Sensing the shift in temperature, Hideki reluctantly slid back down to his feet.
While his initial embrace had been entirely fueled by pure, unadulterated triumph, his lingering hold had devolved into a simple reluctance to abandon the comforting, soft proximity of a legendary beauty.
Though harboring such thoughts felt somewhat treacherous toward Kushina, the structural density of Tsunade’s presence was undeniably far more developed.
Of course, this was largely due to the fact that Kushina had yet to reach her peak development phase.
The current Tsunade was operating at her absolute apex, whereas the young Uzumaki simply required more time to mature.
Faced with Tsunade’s deeply suspicious glare, Hideki offered a thoroughly embarrassed scratch of his neck.
“I just…
got swept up in the moment, Sensei.” “Fine.
I’ll waive the penalty this once,” Tsunade drawled, though her eyes remained narrowed.
“If I catch you siphoning free physical contact behind my back again, the payout won’t be this gentle.
Take this—it’s my personal compendium on Cherry Blossom Impact.
Review the framework thoroughly.
If you encounter any structural blocks, report to my estate.
If I’m not home, track me down at the casino on the east strip.” Hideki nodded quickly, accepting a rather dense notebook from her hand.
The inscribed handwriting was remarkably elegant and precise—a complete stylistic inversion of Tsunade’s chaotic personality.
Smack!
“Ow!
What was that for?!” Hideki clutched his forehead, staring at her in absolute confusion.
“I can’t articulate the precise metric,” Tsunade replied smoothly, dusting off her hands.
“But I had a sudden, profound intuition that you were dragging my character through the mud inside your head.” Does she harbor the instinctual radar of a wild predator?
Hecking Tsunade…
Hideki grumbled silently.
Spotting the dangerous alignment of her knuckles forming once more, Hideki immediately executed the absolute baseline of tactical retreats, vanishing down the tree line.
Later that evening, Hideki quietly slid a tall glass of iced barley tea across the table to Kushina before asking softly, “What happened?” Kushina stared down at her fingers, her gaze anchored to the polished wood for a long, heavy silence.
Hideki offered no prompt to force the dialogue, simply maintaining a quiet, grounding presence beside her.
After an immense stretch of time, Kushina finally raised her head, her voice carrying a raw, thoroughly hushed cadence.
“Hideki…
if I ever…
mutate into an absolute monster…
would you look at me with disgust?” Hearing the prompt, Hideki let out a long, silent sigh.
It appeared the health metrics of Mito Uzumaki had finally entered a terminal decline.
Kushina was officially being briefed on her impending succession to become the village’s next Nine-Tails Jinchuriki.
There was no other variable capable of reducing the fierce, iron-fisted girl to such a fragile, vulnerable state.
More critically, Hideki knew that the passing of Mito Uzumaki served as the historical catalyst that would ignite the Second Great Ninja War.
Though his status as Tsunade’s star disciple practically guaranteed he wouldn’t be deployed as baseline frontline fodder, the sheer mortality rate of the era was terrifying.
Even a high-tier legacy scion like Nawaki, operating under the direct supervision of Orochimaru, would eventually be reduced to ash by a rogue paper bomb network.
The absolute lethality of a full-scale war required zero exaggeration.
But the impending geopolitical crisis was a secondary concern right now.
Faced with Kushina’s rapidly collapsing emotional equilibrium, Hideki recognized that standard platitudes would fail to penetrate her defense.
He needed to execute a drastic, unprecedentedly bold intervention to violently jar her back to reality.
Stepping forward, Hideki brought both palms down, sharply slapping Kushina’s cheeks.
Clap!
The sudden, loud impact echoed through the room.
A brilliant crimson immediately bloomed across her face—though this time, the coloration was purely the physical byproduct of Hideki’s hands.
The sharp, stinging shock successfully disrupted Kushina’s descending spiral of self-loathing.
Yet, the heavy psychological weight of harboring the ultimate calamity within her soul still clouded her eyes.
If I mutate into a living abomination…
how could I possibly possess the right to stand beside him?
Staring into her wide, dazed eyes, Hideki spoke with absolute, unwavering gravity.
“Regardless of what form you take, Kushina, my love for you will remain entirely unaltered.
It was absolute in the past, it is absolute in this moment, and it will remain absolute for every single horizon ahead.” Locked within the unshakeable depth of Hideki’s gaze, the gravity of his words finally processed through her defenses.
The crimson on her cheeks violently expanded, consuming her entire face until her expression practically vibrated with rising steam.
Before Hideki’s stunned eyes could even blink, Kushina triggered a massive burst of speed, vanishing from the estate in a localized blur.
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