This morning Tsunade was clearly in a good mood.
Propping her chin on one hand, she nibbled unhurriedly at a rice ball, her gaze settling with amused interest on the red-haired boy across from her.
“I hear you were out beating up kids in the village again yesterday?”
There was a teasing edge to Tsunade’s voice as her fingertip tapped lightly on the table.
“I’m telling you, little Genshin, you spend every day busy sorting out the village’s little brats.
Don’t tell me you’ve given up on being the Uchiha’s bridge and decided to become the local kid boss instead?”
Genshin’s hand froze mid-bite, and he scratched his head in embarrassment.
He should have known.
A little stir like this in the village could never stay hidden from Tsunade.
The scene last evening—him dealing with that pack of bandwagon-bullying brats—had been no small commotion.
Konoha wasn’t exactly big, but it wasn’t tiny either, and a bit of fresh gossip like this always managed to race through the circle of acquaintances in no time.
“It’s not that I’m being deliberately petty.
It’s that the atmosphere in the village these days is genuinely sickening.” Genshin set down the food in his hand, recalling the previous night’s scene.
“Sensei, you weren’t there to see it—yesterday’s situation was just too absurd.”
“Earlier, those three kids who bullied Naruto—after I gave them a beating, they stopped bullying anyone else.” Genshin shook his head.
“But the moment that happened, those same kids got bullied by others.
Because they’d lost, in everyone else’s eyes they became the ‘weaklings,’ the ones who deserved to be bullied.”
Sighing, Genshin went on.
“It’s like the children of Konoha have followed this bizarre rule since they were small: as long as you’re weak, as long as you make a mistake, as long as you’re different from everyone else, then you deserve to be ostracized and tormented.”
“And everyone has to fall in line with the crowd in rejecting the odd one out.
The second someone breaks ranks and pities the outcast, they become the next target to be isolated.
The group forms a silent conspiracy—everyone actively takes part in the bullying to buy their own acceptance into the group.”
As Genshin spoke, Tsunade gradually stopped eating and began to listen to him in earnest.
Meanwhile Genshin’s words continued.
“What’s the root of all this, then?
I think… it’s this sick Shinobi World.
A ninja’s values are the law of the jungle—the strong prey on the weak—and this whole mindset gets drilled into them from childhood.
Children imitate the adults’ standards of judgment and instinctively shun the ‘weak, clumsy, dead-weight’ ones.
It’s precisely these mistaken values that give rise to all this chaotic atmosphere.”
“I want to change all this, Sensei.”
Finally, Genshin lifted his head and looked at Tsunade in earnest.
Watching the look in Genshin’s eyes, the mocking expression vanished from Tsunade’s face, replaced by a thoughtful silence.
Genshin was right.
She thought back to Orochimaru and Jiraiya in their youth.
Compared to ordinary people, one of them was a genius with a soft, gloomy air, and the other a big, careless fool—but what they had in common was that neither of them fit in very well, and as a result both of them had been either isolated or bullied.
Both had gone through some bad experiences.
And then there was Kushina, that lively, strong-willed child.
Because of her outsider household registration and her head of red hair, she too had been bullied and mocked by her classmates when she first arrived…
Though that child, just like Genshin, had ended up beating every last one of them back.
There was certainly a problem with the bullies—but tracing it to its source, it still came down to the cruel jungle law of the ninja world, which had tamed one generation after another.
The Konoha of today… was this the way Grandfather had wanted to see it?
“You did beautifully.”
At that thought, Tsunade lifted her eyes to Genshin, her voice utterly firm.
“Someone should have cleaned up this rotten atmosphere long ago.
Go ahead and do as you please.
If you run into that kind of person again, don’t hold back—just deal with them, hard.”
She raised a hand and patted her billowing, surging chest, her tone domineering.
“If anything happens, I’ll take the fall for you.
You know my skills anyway—as long as they’ve still got a breath left in them, I can bring them back.”
Genshin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Sensei, there’s really no need to be that extreme… they’re all kids from the same village.
I know my limits.
At most I rough them up a bit so the lesson sticks—I won’t actually go all-out on them.”
Hearing this, Tsunade’s expression softened slightly, though her stance stayed resolute.
“You can have limits, but your confidence has to be rock solid.
The ninja world is a place where only the strong have a say.
You have to show enough toughness to keep these crooked ways in check.”
“All right.” Her tone shifted as she returned to the state of a strict master.
“Enough small talk.
Starting today, I’m teaching you Medical Ninjutsu.”
Genshin blinked, a little surprised.
“Medical Ninjutsu?
Sensei wants me to become a Medical Ninja?”
The thing is, studying medicine can’t save the Shinobi World!
Tsunade shot him a look.
“I’m teaching you Medical Ninjutsu, not telling you to switch careers and become a Medical Ninja.
It’s for your training.”
“Your problem right now is far too obvious.” Tsunade laid it out with clear logic.
“Your Hamon Chakra is very strong—strong enough to produce destructive power rivaling the genuine Chakra Enhanced Strength, which is plenty of proof that your Chakra talent is superb.
But your force delivery is still crude, and your fine control is an absolute mess.”
“For opponents of the same level or weaker, that doesn’t matter, of course.
But against the strong, these details will become a fatal opening for you.”
Genshin nodded silently at this—it really did strike his sore spot.
If he were to measure himself by a Stand’s stats right now, his strength and speed and the like would rate an A, but his precision was probably only a C, sitting at the same table as Bombing Space.
“And Medical Ninjutsu is the system that best trains Chakra control.” Tsunade continued her explanation.
“On top of that, Medical Ninjutsu belongs to the Yang Release category.
Your blood is itself within the domain of Yang Release life energy.
By training in Medical Ninjutsu, you can both refine the precision of your Chakra and cultivate Yang Release to temper your blood—two birds with one stone.”
With that, Genshin had nothing more to say.
Having a good teacher really was a comfort—he’d just train according to the staged cultivation plan Tsunade had settled on and be done with it.
In the early stages of training, Genshin cast aside all explosive techniques and practiced nothing but fine control the entire time.
In the first stage, he was to use a single thread of Chakra to seep into a withered leaf, required to repair the cracks on its surface and reactivate its vitality, coaxing the dried yellow leaf to unfurl once more.
In the second stage, he manipulated a little more Chakra to revive flowers and grass on the verge of wilting, awakening the plants’ life force so they would grow.
Finally came the advanced training—healing dying little fish.
Genshin was required, without damaging a single scale, to activate all the cells of the wound and sustain the life of the dying fish, honing the precise control of his Chakra.
When he first began, facing fish that he was used to treating as ingredients, the cooking-accustomed Genshin simply couldn’t rein in his Hamon Chakra.
Several times he overdid it, and the little fish that should have had their lives prolonged were instead thoroughly cooked by the scalding, abundant Hamon—turning fragrant and flavorful.
Oh, so he’d actually developed a new cooking technique; it would surely come in handy next time he prepared a meal.
Staring at the fish in his hand, Genshin muttered to himself.
“Come in handy my foot!”
A fist swung down onto his head as Tsunade violently put a stop to his dangerous line of thought.
Uh-oh, he’d said it out loud without meaning to.
Genshin rubbed his forehead and chuckled sheepishly, then went back to grinding out the details of Chakra control bit by bit.
Besides Medical Ninjutsu, Tsunade added one more standing regimen for Genshin: maintaining the Hamon Breathing Method twenty-four hours a day.
No longer deliberately forcing bursts—keeping only the faintest, steadiest baseline vibration, letting the Hamon energy fully permeate the fabric of his flesh and maintain his body’s constant state of activation.
Day after day of dull, tedious ascetic training quietly ground away at Genshin’s weaknesses, and in the blink of an eye several months passed.
These days of training brought Genshin a round of transformation.
The most obvious was the earth-shaking change in his Chakra control ability.
The once merely brute, explosive Chakra was now released and withdrawn at will, precise to the finest degree.
The Hamon Breathing that had once required deliberate circulation and active forcing had now completely become a permanent buff, fused into his body’s instinct.
Even in a state of sleep, Genshin’s flesh was still being continuously tempered by the Hamon.
And as his Hamon cultivation gradually deepened, whenever he set aside his stray thoughts and emptied his mind, he could faintly sense a kind of energy all around him—serene and gentle, yet holding within it a weight and grandeur as vast as mountains, rivers, grass, and trees.
This was probably Natural Energy.
But even though Genshin knew the general principles of Sage Mode, he didn’t dare court death by drawing it into his body.
How long had he even been training?
He wasn’t yet qualified to touch power of this tier, and he had no desire to turn into a stone pining for a wife at such a young age.
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👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Naruto: Is it reasonable to beat up an Otsutsuki with Hamon, right?