Back to the present.
When the Nine-Tails heard that Naruto was about to begin another round of training, his curiosity was immediately piqued.
After all, Kurama himself knew very little about ninjutsu.
Aside from the Chakra Extraction Technique and the Three Basic Techniques, no one had ever taught Naruto any ninjutsu.
Although Kurama had no idea where Naruto had learned the Rasengan, he believed that after mastering both the Rasengan and the Wind Release: Rasenshuriken, Naruto had already reached the limit of what he could accomplish on his own.
From here on, someone would have to guide him.
Yet now, Naruto was preparing to develop another technique entirely.
Naturally, Kurama wanted to see what bizarre idea the boy had come up with this time.
Under Kurama’s watchful gaze, Naruto slowly opened his palm.
He closed his eyes.
A moment later, the outline of a leaf gradually materialized in his hand.
“It actually worked!”
Naruto’s delighted voice echoed through the sealing space.
Even Kurama couldn’t hide his surprise.
This brat…
actually taught himself how to materialize objects inside the seal?
The next instant, wind-nature chakra flowed across Naruto’s hand.
Rip!
The newly created leaf was instantly sliced into several pieces.
“Perfect.
The texture is exactly the same as a real leaf.”
Naruto nodded with satisfaction.
“What exactly are you trying to do, brat?” Kurama asked in his usual disdainful tone.
Naruto grinned.
“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘With flowers and plucked leaves, one can still wound an enemy’?
It’s considered the ultimate realm of martial arts.
That’s what I’m trying to achieve.”
“‘Flowers and leaves can wound people?’ ‘Ultimate realm of martial arts?’ What are you talking about?” Kurama asked in confusion.
“Oh, it’s something from novels.”
“You know what novels are, right?”
“They’re stories imagined by people, written down with words, and printed into books.”
“For example, your own life is a story.”
“If someone wrote it down, it could become a novel titled…”
‘The Tsundere Little Fox Who Thought He Was Invincible—Until the God of Shinobi and the Ninja World’s Asura Beat Some Sense Into Him With Their Loving Fists.’
Kurama exploded.
“You damned brat!
You’re making fun of me!”
“And stop making things up!”
“I’m not tsundere!”
“Hashirama Senju and Uchiha Madara weren’t in love!”
“And I’m the Nine-Tails!
Why would I need to learn how to be human?!”
Naruto laughed.
“That’s what novels are.”
“They exaggerate reality to make stories more entertaining.”
“Now that I’ve learned how to materialize things with spiritual power, I’ll create a few novels for you someday.”
“You can read them.”
His eyes shifted mischievously.
He had suddenly remembered a common strategy from other Naruto fanfictions—winning Kurama over by introducing him to books.
“Hmph.”
“What are you plotting now?” Kurama narrowed his eyes.
The moment he saw Naruto’s constantly shifting eyes, he knew the boy was definitely up to something.
“Nothing.”
“I just thought that if you read some novels, we’d have something to talk about.”
Naruto flashed a broad smile.
“Hmph.”
“Who wants common interests with a brat like you?”
Kurama snorted even more proudly.
Honestly, if Kurama had lived on Earth, he probably would have remained single through sheer force of personality.
“Fine.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“I’m going back to training.”
Naruto sighed helplessly.
He quickly adjusted his mindset and immersed himself completely in practice.
Again and again…
He created leaves.
Again and again…
They were shredded into pieces.
Thus began his newest training project.
An entire winter vacation passed.
The snow melted.
Spring flowers bloomed.
A new school year began.
This year, several new courses were added:
* Theory and Intelligence Analysis
* Genjutsu Analysis
With these classes added to the curriculum, Sakura completely dominated the written examinations.
From that year onward, no one ever took first place from her in academics.
Even Sasuke had to admit that when it came to theory and intelligence analysis, Sakura was better than he was.
Naruto, however, couldn’t care less.
The only subject he truly found useful was an elective.
Lip Reading.
It wasn’t an easy skill to master.
Even with Naruto’s permanently focused state of mind and nearly perfect learning efficiency, it still took him over a month before he truly mastered it.
As for Genjutsu Analysis…
At first Naruto had been excited.
He hoped it would teach him actual genjutsu.
Unfortunately, it was nothing of the sort.
The class merely taught students how to recognize the signs of genjutsu and a few basic methods of dispelling weak illusions.
Judging from what he knew of the original story, Naruto found these techniques largely useless.
With the level of mental discipline he possessed, the kinds of genjutsu these methods could break simply wouldn’t affect him in the first place.
He quickly lost all interest.
Theory and Intelligence Analysis interested him even less.
The course covered mathematics, physics, chemistry, codes, ciphers, cryptography, logic, and countless other subjects.
The amount of knowledge involved was practically ocean-sized.
Unless someone was an academic genius, mastering it was nearly impossible.
Naruto had no intention of spending years studying it.
As far as he was concerned, every problem in intelligence analysis had only one answer:
Brute force.
Unsurprisingly, Naruto once again finished the school year as the class’s last-place student.
Meanwhile, his training to turn leaves into deadly weapons had made almost no visible progress.
A year had passed.
He still couldn’t stop the leaves from tearing apart.
He hadn’t even completed the very first step.
Only now did Naruto realize how badly he had underestimated the difficulty of the technique.
Still…
Naruto possessed a personality trait that was either a strength or a flaw.
He was incredibly stubborn.
Especially when he didn’t have another training goal.
Once he became obsessed with something…
He refused to let it go.
“I’m going to master this no matter what.”
And so he continued.
Finally…
Three months after entering his sixth year at the Academy…
Naruto succeeded.
At last, he could coat a leaf with wind-nature chakra.
The leaf remained completely intact.
At the same time, it became unimaginably sharp.
Even after leaving his hand, the chakra remained stable for one full second.
Given Naruto’s throwing speed…
One second was enough for the attack to travel ten meters.
At long last, he had taken the first true step toward the legendary realm where flowers and falling leaves could become deadly weapons.
Although this was only the beginning…
Naruto had devoted more than three years to developing the technique.
The moment he succeeded, countless new ideas flooded into his mind.
Naturally, he immediately began expanding and refining the technique.
His first improvement was to make the leaf spin like a shuriken.
The rotation greatly increased the stability of the wind chakra.
As a result, the effective range jumped from ten meters to fifty.
Naruto named the new technique:
Wind Release: Loaded Shuriken Technique.
He chose that name because if there was a Loaded Shuriken Technique, then naturally there would also be an…
Wind Release: Unloaded Shuriken Technique.
This was an unexpected byproduct of his research.
After finally mastering the leaf technique, Naruto realized his chakra control had reached an almost absurd level.
He no longer needed a physical leaf at all.
Using only spinning wind chakra, he could directly create a shuriken-shaped projectile.
Its effective range reached thirty meters.
In fact, if Naruto hadn’t believed the leaf-based version still had greater long-range potential, he would have abandoned the Loaded Shuriken Technique altogether.
ADD TO COLLECTION.