Chiba turned and returned to the babbling brook, his mind rapidly reviewing the simplified essence of the Water Dragon Bullet, firmly memorizing the hand seal trajectories and Chakra flow paths optimized by the Second Tobirama.
Taking a deep breath, his posture was steady, his fingertips moving with flowing grace as he quickly formed three minimalist hand seals.
“Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!”
Hum—!
The river surface suddenly churned, a rapidly rotating vortex forming in the center, the turbulent water surging violently.
The next instant, a ferocious water dragon as thick as a water vat broke through the surface, soaring into the air accompanied by a whistling wind.
Its dragon eyes were focused, its scales and claws distinct, and its presence was awe-inspiring.
Under Chiba’s precise Chakra control, the water dragon changed direction in mid-air, carrying immense impact force as it slammed fiercely into the sandy bank on the other side of the river!
“Boom!!!”
A massive explosion shook the forest, splashing water and sand everywhere.
When the dust settled, a giant crater over four meters in diameter and three meters deep had appeared on the flat sandy bank, its destructive power astonishing.
At this moment, Minato, who had just successfully climbed to the top of the tree and completely finished his Tree Walking training, happened to turn his head and witness this shocking scene.
He stared at the shocking crater on the opposite bank, completely frozen in place, unable to help but gasp, the corners of his eyes twitching slightly.
Looking at Chiba, who stood calmly by the river, his gaze was filled with speechless shock.
Having just learned Earth Wall, he turned around and instantly cast Water Dragon Bullet, and it was a complete, powerful B-rank Ninjutsu at that.
This isn’t a genius; this is simply an unreasonable monster!
Minato felt a wave of helpless exasperation, feeling that Chiba was sent by the heavens specifically to crush him.
As newcomers who had just started refining Chakra, this gap was truly too outrageous.
You have to know, Water Dragon Bullet and Earth Wall are both standard B-rank Ninjutsu with high thresholds; ordinary Genin might not be able to master them even after spending days or weeks, yet Chiba managed it on the first try and achieved mastery immediately.
After the shock, Minato suppressed the waves in his heart, stopped his wild thoughts, quickly calmed his mind, and focused on his subsequent training.
By the river, Chiba looked at the now-calm water, sighing inwardly: “The Second Hokage is indeed an unparalleled monster.”
“The highly difficult Water Dragon Bullet was forcefully simplified by him into a three-seal formula. By comparison, the original version inherited by Zabuza has a full forty-four seals—cumbersome and inefficient, not even on the same level.”
But he also knew that extremely simplified hand seals correspond to an extremely strict control threshold.
The forty-four-seal Water Dragon Bullet excels in having a high tolerance for error, relying on the flow of hand seals to stabilize the casting, with a learning difficulty equivalent only to a C-rank Ninjutsu. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
However, the three-seal version of Water Dragon Bullet completely discards unnecessary processes, relying entirely on Chakra control that is precise to the extreme, causing its learning difficulty to skyrocket to A-rank or even S-rank.
In the entire Ninja World, apart from Tobirama, who is proficient in the essence of Chakra and skilled in simplifying techniques, even ordinary Jonin would find it difficult to master in the short term.
Only someone like himself, possessing top-tier control talent, could succeed on the first attempt.
Sensing slightly, the Chakra in his body was completely exhausted, and his meridians transmitted waves of emptiness and fatigue.
“Chakra is completely bottomed out; today’s Ninjutsu training ends here.”
Chiba mused to himself: “Later, I can try to regulate Chakra output, practicing weakened versions of Ninjutsu to reduce consumption, thereby increasing the number of daily practice sessions, rapidly stacking Ninjutsu proficiency, and polishing the details of the techniques.”
With this thought settled, he stopped dwelling on Ninjutsu training.
Taking advantage of the state where his Chakra was exhausted and his body was in a fatigued, tempering state, he immediately started his daily Taijutsu special training.
The morning breeze blew through the forest, the youth sweated like rain, polishing his Taijutsu foundation over and over again, his movements crisp and neat, never slacking.
More than an hour later, the Taijutsu training concluded successfully.
After resting, the Chakra in Chiba’s body slowly recovered a little.
He turned to look at Minato and found that he had already successfully started Water Surface Walking training.
Although his posture was still a bit unstable, his progress was steadily climbing, so he did not go up to disturb him.
Chiba casually broke off a branch of uniform thickness, stripped away all the leaves, held it in his hand as a spear, and slowly stepped into the cool river water, intending to continue testing his special Collection System.
“If flowers, plants, and trees cannot be collected, are living fish in the river or ordinary small animals feasible?”
Holding a probing mindset, he waited patiently for a moment.
Relying on precise movements, in a few minutes, he successfully speared a plump river fish weighing three or four catties.
Chiba silently recited in his heart: “System, collect!”
A light breeze stirred the river surface, there was no abnormality in the surroundings, and the system remained silent, without the slightest response.
Chiba’s face fell slightly, and he helplessly thought to himself: “As expected, it doesn’t work. Ordinary aquatic creatures cannot be recorded either.”
“Looking at it this way, could it be that only Ninja Beasts carrying Chakra, or fierce beasts with special constitutions, can trigger the collection conditions?”
He temporarily suppressed the doubts in his heart and did not continue to dwell on it.
Looking at the fresh fish in his hand, a thought occurred to Chiba.
He tried to evenly attach subtle Chakra to his palm and raised his hand to gently stroke the scales on the fish’s body.
Swish—
In an instant, the entire layer of fish scales fell off, clean and tidy, with the fish body remaining undamaged, his technique exquisite to the extreme.
“Hehe, it really works. With Chakra control in place, everything is convenient.”
With the experiment successful, a clear smile appeared on Chiba’s face.
He followed suit and quickly cleaned the scales of the remaining few fish.
“Chiba, you are truly outrageous… too strong!”
A voice came from behind.
Minato, having finished his Water Surface Walking training and already hungry, happened to walk over and witness this miraculous operation.
Looking at the clean fish body, he couldn’t help but have the corners of his eyes twitch again.
He sincerely gave Chiba a thumbs up, his eyes full of amazement.
He was extremely clear in his heart that this kind of fine-grained Chakra control was by no means the work of a single day.
If it were him, he would need at least two or three months of accumulation and polishing to barely achieve this level of proficiency.
“Haha, it’s just so-so.”
Chiba laughed heartily, skillfully finding dried branches to build a fire, skewering the prepared fresh fish and placing them over the fire.
He then took out a spice bottle he carried with him from his bosom, carefully sprinkled the seasoning, and turned to ask Minato: “Looking at your state, have you finished the Water Surface Walking training?”
“Yeah!”
Speaking of training progress, a bright light flashed in Minato’s eyes as he nodded heavily: “It took a whole morning, but I finally basically grasped the knack for Water Surface Walking; I can barely consider it an introduction.”
After a pause, he continued with a firm tone: “However, I feel there is still a lot of room for improvement. This afternoon, I plan to continue digging deep into Water Surface Walking training to make my foundation completely solid. What do you plan to practice this afternoon?”
Even though his heart yearned immensely for Ninjutsu training, Minato always kept in mind that the foundation was paramount.
He knew deeply that only by polishing the core foundation of Chakra control to the extreme could subsequent Ninjutsu training truly yield twice the result with half the effort and steadily improve.