Lee stood there gaping, thoroughly stunned.
That—
What kind of punch was that?
“How did you do that?”
“Perfect use of physical force, paired with chakra reinforcement.”
That was exactly what Chiba meant to teach him.
The Eight Gates, stripped down to their essentials, worked by unlocking the chakra already stored in the body to reinforce raw physical strength—a body strong enough could absorb some of the backlash, while a body that wasn’t paid for it in crippling injury, if not worse.
He didn’t understand the Eight Gates himself, but the underlying principle was one he could still borrow from.
“That’s incredible!”
Lee’s voice rang with excitement, though something like disappointment flickered behind his eyes.
“Lee, you and I are the same—neither of us can use ninjutsu or genjutsu.
But you do have chakra.
You couldn’t walk up trees or across water otherwise.
So you shouldn’t just be digging into raw physical strength.
You need to bring chakra into it too.”
Chiba said it seriously.
Lee said nothing for a moment.
“I haven’t taught this to anyone else yet, so I don’t know if it’ll work the same way for everyone.
I need you to help me test it.”
“Wuuuuh, thank you, Chiba, but I—”
Lee wasn’t clever, but he wasn’t a fool either.
Chiba called it an experiment, but really, this was Chiba teaching him.
Since starting at the Academy, Chiba had been the only classmate who’d never looked down on him.
At first it had felt like shared misery, two outsiders together.
But over time Lee had come to understand—they weren’t the same, not really.
And now—
“If there’s some reason you don’t want to learn this, that’s fine too.
Your ninja way is built on proving, through your own effort, that you can become a fine shinobi without any of that.
Isn’t it?”
Chiba said it plainly.
Lee went quiet for a moment, then nodded, hard.
“Try it the way I showed you.
I’ll watch from here.”
“Yes, sir!”
Lee shouted, and threw himself into it.
He wasn’t clever.
But he didn’t fear pain, either.
He drew chakra and threw punch after punch, over and over, while Chiba watched with his sensory ability, correcting the mechanics of his output bit by bit.
Finally—
Crack!
The tree trunk he’d been training against split open right where his fist had struck.
Lee stared at his own hand, stunned.
It worked.
It actually worked.
“Remember that feeling.”
“Yes, sir!”
Lee was practically vibrating with excitement.
He could get strong using chakra too, after all!
In that moment, he cried.
Again.
Chiba covered his face, at a loss for words.
Guy and Lee were both good people in every respect—except neither of them had the faintest idea how to keep their emotions in check.
It just came pouring out, no warning at all.
“By the way, how’s your hand?”
“My hand?
It’s fi—OW, OW, OW!”
Lee hadn’t noticed until the excitement wore off, and then the pain hit him all at once.
Chiba thought it over, checked him with a pulse of chakra, then pulled out his notebook and jotted something down.
If the body’s physical resilience falls below a certain threshold, this taijutsu can’t be learned safely.
“Come on, let’s go.”
“Where?”
“The medical division.
This technique’s meant to be a finishing move—and not just for punches.
In theory, if you can really internalize it, you could apply it through any point on the body capable of generating force.”
On the walk back, Chiba turned the problem of refinement over in his head.
He’d built the technique off the Lotus and the monstrous-strength technique, more or less—a watered-down blend of both, if he had to sum it up.
Weaker in raw power and effect than the true monstrous-strength technique, but paired with taijutsu it hit plenty hard.
The downside leaned closer to the Lotus, though—overuse in a short span damaged the muscles.
Refining it further—
That was going to be difficult.
He shook his head to himself.
Pushing the body to its limit always came at a price.
Even the true monstrous-strength technique demanded extraordinary things of whoever tried to learn it—Shizune had stayed at Tsunade’s side for years and never managed to master it, and that wasn’t for lack of Tsunade’s willingness to teach.
Shizune simply didn’t have what the technique required.
Never mind.
This is as far as it goes for now.
Chiba had no better solution at hand.
Meeting Tsunade in person, learning the full version of the monstrous-strength technique, might let him refine the chakra reinforcement and cut down the side effects further—but for now, that was well out of reach.
He set the idea aside.
Lee refused to go to the hospital, insisting he’d be fine with a little rest.
Money, in the end, was the real issue.
Chiba was about to press the point further—
Thwack!
A kick came flying in from the side, and Lee never saw it coming before it sent him tumbling.
A figure appeared.
“Lee!
I step away for a while and you go soft on me!”
“Uh—”
Chiba, for once, had nothing to say.
A sneak attack like that would’ve caught anyone off guard.
And yet Lee—
“Sensei Guy, I’m sorry!
I’ll work twice as hard, I promise!”
“That’s the spirit!”
Might Guy burned with fighting spirit.
Then he glanced sideways, blinked, and said, “Chiba, weren’t you supposed to be at the hospital these days?
What are you doing out here training?”
“Sensei Guy, I only go there to learn, not to become a medical-nin.
Once I’ve picked up what I need, I can hardly let my taijutsu slide.”
Chiba said with a helpless laugh.
Why did everyone keep assuming he was training to become a medical-nin?
He couldn’t even use medical ninjutsu.
“Still—hm, word’s gotten around out there.
They say your hands are better than half the medical-nin in the village.
Seems a waste, having skill like that and not using it to save lives.”
Guy looked genuinely torn.
On a personal level, he thought Chiba coming back to train was exactly right.
But looking at the bigger picture, a medical-nin with hands like that could spare countless shinobi the horror of losing a limb.
Chiba just smiled, unbothered.
“Sensei Guy, I hold a specially appointed post now, and the technique itself isn’t that hard to teach.
If a case like that comes up again, I can still step in.
The rest of my time is mine to spend as I like.”
“I see!
Well then—let’s have a hot-blooded showdown!!”
“Huh?”
Chiba blinked, honestly wondering if he’d misheard, and checked his surroundings with his senses just to be sure.
Kakashi wasn’t here.
“Sensei, Kakashi isn’t around.”
“That’s right.
I’m challenging you.”
Might Guy ran a finger along the split in the tree trunk.
He hadn’t witnessed the exchange between Chiba and Lee firsthand, but as a master of taijutsu himself, working backward from the damage to the force behind it wasn’t difficult.
Two clean fractures in the wood told him exactly how much power that punch had carried.
He genuinely couldn’t help wanting to test it himself.
“Then I’d be honored, Sensei Guy.”
“Give it everything you’ve got, kid.”
Guy said it in complete earnest.
Chiba thought it over, then gave a small nod.
He’d actually been meaning to demonstrate this taijutsu in front of Might Guy from the start—he’d only turned to Lee because Guy hadn’t been around.
Now that Guy was back from his mission, there was no one better to show it to.
He bowed slightly, then formed the ready seal.
The next instant—
Whump!
A Body Flicker, and a fist swept in sideways.
Guy didn’t dodge, didn’t even flinch, meeting the blow head-on.
Fist met fist, and the impact forced Chiba back a step to bleed off the shock, while Guy didn’t budge so much as an inch.
Chiba wasn’t surprised.
Thanks to the bodhi seed and years of relentless study and training, he could now command most of his body’s raw strength with ease, something close to a state on the edge of the Gates themselves.
That state, he could sustain indefinitely.
But.
There was still a hard ceiling on it, no matter what he did: the limit of his own physical body.
“Even with the reinforcement, I still can’t match your raw strength.”
Chiba said, something like admiration in his voice.
On taijutsu alone, Might Guy really was formidable.
“How old are you again?
Strength like that at your age is already frightening.”
Guy shook out his hand.
Taking that punch head-on had cost him more than he wanted to admit.
“Again.”