He clenched his fist hard and could feel the surging power within his muscles, which was much stronger than yesterday.
“I see…” Uchiha Makoto muttered to himself.
“Makoto? What did you say?” Guy asked, tilting his head.
“It’s nothing.” Uchiha Makoto snapped out of it and smiled.
“Come on, I’ll teach you the principle. But this is harder than standard Tekkai, so you need to mentally prepare yourself.”
“Youth is not afraid of difficulties!” Guy gave a thumbs-up, and his teeth flashed with a ding.
Teaching Guy was much more worry-free than teaching Obito.
Although Guy was a bit single-minded, his talent in taijutsu was truly high.
After Uchiha Makoto demonstrated it only three times and explained the principle five times, Guy was barely able to harden just his palms.
Although the duration was only half a second, and his entire arm was shaking after hardening his palms.
“S—Success!”
Looking at his right hand, which shimmered with a metallic luster, Guy’s eyes welled up with tears of excitement.
“Makoto! I did it!”
“You’re still far from it.” Uchiha Makoto said that, but he was quite satisfied in his heart.
Obito had practiced for a whole day, and he still went stiff all over at every turn, just like he had been hit by a binding jutsu.
Even if he told Guy he was doing well, Guy wouldn’t relax his mindset.
This point was also the reason why he could succeed.
“Keep practicing,” Uchiha Makoto said.
“Practice until you can use it in actual combat.”
“Yes!”
Watching Guy start trying to harden both hands while doing a handstand.
Uchiha Makoto walked under the shade of a tree, sat down, and began to think.
The system’s mechanism was becoming clearer and clearer.
First, telling the same lie to different people could stack the manifestation degree.
Obito’s 80% plus Guy’s 70% directly exceeded 100%, and it produced a qualitative change.
Second, the effect of manifestation was related to the other person’s “imagined upper limit.”
Obito thought Tekkai was just a bit hard, so what manifested was ordinary hardness.
Guy felt that Tekkai should be hard enough to block swords, so what manifested was even harder.
“Cognition determines the upper limit!”
Uchiha Makoto rubbed his chin.
“It seems that in the future, I not only need to make them believe, but I also have to figure out a way to elevate their cognition.”
For example, if he could make Guy believe that “training Tekkai to its absolute limit can withstand a Tailed Beast Ball head-on,” what kind of effect would manifest?
Uchiha Makoto found it thrilling just thinking about it.
But the problem arose: how to make Guy believe this?
If you talked about a “Tailed Beast Ball” to a hot-blooded idiot who hadn’t even fully learned Chakra nature transformation, he might think you were talking about a new flavor of dango.
“The road is long and arduous!” Uchiha Makoto sighed.
Flowing Tekkai had already been successfully manifested, and the effect exceeded expectations.
Next was to let Obito master it as soon as possible.
Even if it was just at the entry level, as long as it could be used in actual combat, he shouldn’t lose the next sparring match.
As for other advanced applications.
Uchiha Makoto remembered CP Tekkai, Tekkai: Wheel, and Tekkai: Utsugi from the animation in his past life.
Those all required higher trust or more specific cognition.
You couldn’t rush it.
“Let’s take it step by step.” He stood up and patted the dust off his pants.
“Let’s get through the immediate hurdle first.”
Over at the training ground, Guy was already able to harden his hands the moment they touched the ground while doing handstand push-ups.
Although each hardening could only last for 0.3 seconds, and he had to gasp for breath for half a day after doing just one, at least he was making progress.
Uchiha Makoto walked over: “Guy, take a break. More haste, less speed.”
“But Makoto! Youth cannot stop!”
“Stopping is so that we can run further.” Uchiha Makoto pulled him up.
“Let’s go, I’ll treat you to ramen.”
“Really?!”
“When have I ever lied to you?”
Guy’s eyes lit up again.
Uchiha Makoto added a sentence in his heart:
Well, aside from those “white lies” told to make you stronger.
When the training ended in the evening and Uchiha Makoto pushed open the creaking wooden door, the dust kicked up inside made him sneeze.
“Achoo!”
He rubbed his nose and squinted as he looked at this “home.”
To call it a home, it actually wasn’t much different from an abandoned house.
Spiderwebs hung in the corners of the walls, one leg of the table was crooked, and the paper window had a hole in it that rattled loudly whenever the wind blew.
“I’m back,” he said to the empty house.
No one responded, save for the sound of mice running across the rafters.
“Growl—”
Uchiha Makoto looked down at his stomach and sighed.
The original body’s parents had died in battle three years ago.
Leaving behind this house and the relief funds issued by the clan every month, which was only enough to buy a bit of rice and some pickles.
This money wouldn’t starve him to death, but that was about it.
He walked over to the stove and lifted the lid of the rice jar.
There was a thin layer of rice at the bottom of the jar, glaringly white.
“Fine then.”
Uchiha Makoto scooped out half a bowl, washed it, threw it into the pot, fished out a few pickles from the jar, chopped them up, and threw them in as well.
A pot of pickle porridge.
He squatted in front of the stove, watching the flames lick the bottom of the pot, the firelight reflecting on his face, flickering uncertainly. New chapters come out on g.com first.
When the porridge was done, Uchiha Makoto served a bowl and sat in front of that crooked-legged table.
The porridge was very thin, and the pickles were very salty.
He drank the whole bowl of porridge directly, but his stomach was still growling.
“Something’s not right.” He put down the bowl and touched his abdomen.
Hungry.
Extremely hungry.
Uchiha Makoto frowned.
“Is it a problem with the system?”
He remembered that over the past few days he had frequently used the Lie Becomes Reality system to manifest Tekkai and modify his physique.
After all, his current body was essentially still just a kid.
And the consumption brought by the body modification from the system probably far exceeded what this age could bear.
“I need to get some money.”
Uchiha Makoto stared at the empty bowl.
“Otherwise, let alone practicing, it’s entirely possible I might starve to death.”
The question was, how to get it?
Uchiha Makoto thought about it for a long time, and finally his gaze fell outside the window.
There was a tree out there, and under the tree was a hole.
The next day.
“Obito!”
By the edge of the training ground, Uchiha Makoto found Obito, who had just finished his training and was covered in sweat.
“Brother Makoto!” Obito’s eyes lit up.
“Are we still practicing Flowing Tekkai today? I can already harden half my body!”
“We’ll talk about that later.” Uchiha Makoto pulled him aside and lowered his voice.
“Let me ask you something.”
“What is it?” Obito leaned in.
“Do you believe… that there is a treasure tree hole in this world?”
Obito was stunned: “A treasure tree hole?”
“That kind.” Uchiha Makoto gestured.
“There’s a hole under a certain big tree, and inside the hole are treasures buried by others. It could be gold, silver, and jewels, or it could be…”
“Money?” Obito picked up.
“Right.” Uchiha Makoto stared at him.
“A lot of money, about one million ryo?”
“O-One million ryo?!” Obito’s eyes widened round.
“Are you kidding me, Brother Makoto? Who would put money in a tree hole!”
“I’m not kidding.” Uchiha Makoto’s expression was serious.
“I really found a tree hole, right at the lower reaches of the Naka River, under that largest cedar tree. The hole is very deep, and I shone a flashlight into it; it’s full of money bags. I roughly estimated it to be at least one million ryo.”
Obito opened his mouth and didn’t speak for a long time.
One million ryo.