Early the next morning, the sun had only just begun to rise when Grandma Momoka, accustomed to waking before dawn, already had breakfast waiting: gleaming white rice, Pacific saury fried until golden and crisp, crescent-shaped slices of pickled daikon, and a bowl of steaming hot soup.
With no mission scheduled, Shuji loosened up with a simple workout in the woods beside the old estate, then sat down to work out a proper training plan.
He knew the script of this world.
The Akatsuki.
Madara.
The Divine Tree.
The Ōtsutsuki…
Those names hung over his head like blades waiting to fall.
Even someone who simply wanted to live comfortably understood one thing: in this world, strength was the prerequisite for enjoying life.
The path by which a shinobi grew stronger was, at its core, surprisingly straightforward.
Temper the body, squeeze out its potential, and hone taijutsu.
Polish one’s skills, master ninja tools, and prepare for changing circumstances.
Study ninjutsu, broaden one’s options, and learn to adapt to different environments.
Of the three, ninjutsu produced the fastest visible results, but the true foundation was still the body.
Training the body was essentially the process of developing physical energy.
Every painful attempt to push beyond one’s limits also tempered the will.
Physical energy and spiritual energy strengthened one another, driving the growth of chakra until both reached the limits allowed by the body’s current potential.
Only after reaching that point did it make sense for a shinobi to pour most of their effort into ninjutsu.
Viewed from that perspective, the fundamental logic of becoming stronger wasn’t all that different from Earth.
The major differences were chakra itself and the astonishing potential granted by the roughly 130 trillion cells possessed by humans in this world—far more than an ordinary person on Earth.
As a descendant of the Senju, Shuji naturally possessed larger chakra reserves and a stronger foundation of physical energy.
Now that Hashirama’s cells had perfectly integrated with his body, his future ceiling was far beyond that of an ordinary shinobi.
But that was nowhere near enough.
Kage-level strength might be enough to deal with the Akatsuki.
Beyond that, however, only someone who surpassed the Kage level and stepped into the realm of the Sage of Six Paths—the Six Paths level—would even qualify to participate in those battles, much less survive disasters of that magnitude.
If he wanted to reach that realm, the events of the original story offered two possible paths worth studying.
The Ōtsutsuki path and the senjutsu path.
The Ōtsutsuki were the source of chakra—a race that traveled among the stars, plundering the life energy of worlds and converting it into chakra to strengthen themselves.
In theory, the Senju, Uchiha, Uzumaki, and Hyūga all clearly descended from the Ōtsutsuki bloodline.
By continually acquiring chakra and strengthening themselves, perhaps it was possible to purify that bloodline and gradually return it toward its ancestral state.
In the original story, one path by which an Uchiha moved closer to that ancestral power was to fuse with Hashirama’s cells, gaining powerful Yang-natured chakra that combined with the Uchiha’s own Yin-natured chakra to awaken the Rinnegan.
From there, becoming the Ten-Tails’ jinchūriki could elevate the user further, toward a kekkei mōra and ultimately an Ōtsutsuki-like existence.
As for the Senju, the original story never gave a clear answer.
But perhaps the path was similar—obtain an exceptionally powerful Sharingan?
There was, however, one crucial point that was often overlooked.
Uchiha Madara, who awakened the Rinnegan through this route, was himself the chakra reincarnation of Indra, son of Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo, the founder of Ninshū.
Senju Hashirama, meanwhile, was the reincarnation of Hagoromo’s other son, Asura.
Both inherited chakra qualities originating from Hagoromo, who had once been the Ten-Tails’ jinchūriki.
That suggested the harsh requirements for awakening the Rinnegan might involve more than merely combining Yin and Yang chakra.
It might also require inheriting some essential quality of power that originated from the Ten-Tails itself.
For the current Shuji, that road was buried beneath far too much uncertainty.
He would set it aside for now.
Then what about senjutsu?
From what the original story had shown, its upper limit stood above ordinary shinobi, though still below a fully realized Ōtsutsuki.
The strongest known practitioner of senjutsu was Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo himself.
After him came Senju Hashirama—a man who stood at the very peak beneath the Sage of Six Paths.
As a native power system of the shinobi world, senjutsu followed a path that, compared with ordinary chakra training, resembled the cultivation systems of old legends more closely.
The first step—and also the hardest—was developing a ‘sense’ for natural energy: becoming capable of perceiving its existence.
Only then could one absorb natural energy and blend it with physical and spiritual energy to create senjutsu chakra.
For ordinary shinobi, the first great obstacle was simply knowing what to look for.
A person first had to understand that natural energy existed before they could deliberately try to sense, absorb, and transform it.
Shuji didn’t have that problem.
For him, the next hurdle was perception itself.
Natural energy existed everywhere.
Shuji even suspected that the gigantic creatures found throughout the shinobi world—and the extraordinary physical strength of its humans compared with people on Earth—were the result of generations being nourished by natural energy.
He had already tried sensing it when he first began familiarizing himself with this body, but he’d gained nothing at all.
Now that he had returned from the mission, he reorganized everything he knew and approached the problem again.
There were two major known traditions of senjutsu: the toad senjutsu of Mount Myōboku and the snake senjutsu of Ryūchi Cave.
Toad senjutsu followed a gradual process.
Special toad oil was applied to help the practitioner sense natural energy.
Once they succeeded and entered Sage Mode, frog-like pupils and pigmentation around the eyes would appear.
Snake senjutsu was far more brutal and direct.
The White Snake Sage injected natural energy into the practitioner’s body.
Survive it, and you succeeded.
Fail to withstand it, and you died.
Despite the difference in method, both approaches shared the same underlying principle: force the practitioner into direct contact with pure natural energy until the body learned to perceive and adapt to it.
Was there another way?
Yes.
The Divine Tree.
To plunder a planet’s energy, the Ōtsutsuki planted a Divine Tree on the target world, allowing it to absorb the world’s life essence and transform that power into a Chakra Fruit.
A Divine Tree had once been planted in the shinobi world, and it had already borne fruit once.
That meant the Divine Tree unquestionably possessed the ability to absorb and process natural energy.
Wood Release, the secret art associated with Senju Hashirama, possessed the ability to absorb chakra.
Shuji suspected that Hashirama, through his bloodline and Asura’s chakra, had traced back to and reproduced a portion of the Divine Tree’s characteristics.
That might also explain Wood Release’s natural suppressive effect on the chakra of the tailed beasts.
If that theory was correct, then perhaps Shuji shouldn’t focus merely on practicing Wood Release ninjutsu.
Instead, he needed to dig deeper—to uncover the fundamental power hidden within the Wood Release kekkei genkai itself.
Wood Release: Activation Technique!
At Shuji’s low shout, the earth beneath his feet trembled slightly.
A tender green sapling broke through the soil and shot upward at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Sunlight danced across its bark as branches unfurled and leaves rustled softly.
When the tree reached shoulder height, Shuji deliberately reduced his chakra output until only the faintest connection remained between them.
“Keep growing,” he murmured, his gaze sharpening with concentration.
Shuji extended his perception like invisible tendrils, linking his awareness closely with the tree’s primitive spiritual world.
The sapling displayed an extraordinary sensitivity.
Its roots spread beneath the ground like starving hunters searching desperately for energy.
The earth bulged unnaturally as soil churned around them.
Even more disturbing was the change in its branches.
The once-soft limbs twisted and hardened beneath the sunlight.
They writhed through the air—then abruptly froze.
Every branch pointed straight at Shuji.
He could clearly feel the primitive desire pouring from the tree.
Hunger.
A nearly maddened hunger for chakra.
A prickling sensation raced across Shuji’s skin.
Sweat slid down his temple.
“Easy…” he muttered.
His fingers quickly formed the Snake hand seal.
The vicious branches stopped barely an inch from his body, trembling and twisting as though unwilling to obey.
Shuji forced himself to remain calm and guided the tree’s perception away from his chakra, directing it instead toward that omnipresent yet elusive force filling the world around them.
He felt the tree’s ’emotion’ shift from fury to confusion.
Then, suddenly, it seemed to catch something.
Natural energy.
The very force that Shuji himself had never been able to perceive clearly—the energy permeating heaven and earth.
Just as Shuji thought he was finally about to make a breakthrough, something went terribly wrong.
The small tree abruptly shot upward again, its trunk releasing an ominous creak.
It grew only another dozen centimeters before its entire form began to distort violently.
Branches bent and knotted at angles that defied natural growth, while strange dark patterns surfaced across the bark, writhing as though they were alive.
Shuji instinctively stepped backward.
At that exact moment, an ashen gray spread upward from the roots.
It moved like an invisible hand of death brushing across the tree.
Wherever the gray passed, every trace of vitality vanished.
In less than three seconds, the entire tree became a lifelike stone sculpture.
Even the smallest leaves were petrified in the middle of trembling in the breeze, frozen forever in place.
Shuji remained where he was, a fine layer of sweat forming across his forehead.
He had failed.
And the failure had been complete—dangerously complete.
The trees created by his Wood Release simply weren’t strong enough.
They lacked the foundation necessary to withstand the corrosive force of natural energy.
Even with Shuji’s chakra supporting them, these ninjutsu-created life-forms were like sandcastles before a flood.
The moment the torrent of natural energy struck them, they collapsed completely.
Still, the attempt hadn’t been worthless.
The instant his Wood Release tried to absorb natural energy, a subtle disturbance appeared in the surrounding air.
It was like dropping a tiny pebble into perfectly still water and watching almost imperceptible ripples spread across the surface.
That faint change was precisely what Shuji needed.
Although he had originally been completely incapable of sensing natural energy, those tiny ripples were gradually allowing him to brush against the faintest trace of its presence.
Deep in the forest, Shuji closed his eyes and concentrated, replaying that fleeting sensation again and again in his mind.