What Fugaku also came to understand was that medical ninjutsu was not only about medical knowledge, skill, and chakra control.
Behind almost every practical application of healing, there was another foundation.
Yang Release.
Chakra was the fuel, but Yang Release was what actually gave that chakra its life-supporting, restorative quality.
Once Fugaku understood that, medical ninjutsu became somewhat less mysterious.
Not easy.
Just easier to break apart logically.
Yang Release was not the Uchiha clan's natural specialty.
If anything, it sat on the opposite end of their usual strengths.
But Fugaku himself was not completely lacking in it.
His physical constitution was unusually strong for an Uchiha, and with his current turbo-charged body conditioning, chakra quality, and absurdly precise control, he still had advantages that most civilian shinobi could never hope to match.
So he trained it directly.
Several of his clones regularly practiced basic Yang Release applications on small fish and other simple living subjects, slowly learning how to shape the crude restorative form of the chakra without damaging the tissue they were trying to heal.
By now, Fugaku could already produce the basic general form.
The real difficulty came afterward.
Healing muscle was not the same as healing skin.
Skin was not the same as blood vessels.
Blood vessels were not the same as nerves.
Bone, organs, connective tissue, chakra pathways, all of them required different control, different proportions, different behavior from the Yang-infused chakra.
If Fugaku ever wanted to reach something even remotely comparable to Tsunade's automatic regeneration of the future, he would eventually have to understand and refine those differences one by one.
That was not something six months could solve.
Still, he was progressing.
He was already approaching reliable use of the lower-level healing chakra used in techniques like the Mystical Palm Technique.
Nowhere near Tsunade.
Not even future Sakura.
But enough that Fugaku could see the road ahead.
More importantly, he had already begun thinking about a personal application of Yang Release.
Something tailored specifically to himself.
Not Creation Rebirth.
Nothing remotely that absurd.
More like a crude bastardized intermediate technique, designed to keep his body temporarily functioning through injuries that would normally slow him down.
It was still only an idea and a concept.
But a promising one.
Fūinjutsu was different.
There, Fugaku had no special bloodline advantage to exploit.
Mostly just his improved intelligence, chakra control, and the mathematical and logical habits carried over from a far more technologically advanced previous life.
Fortunately, sealing was perhaps the most Shadow Clone-friendly subject of all.
Symbols.
Formula structures.
Chakra pathways.
Layering.
Trigger conditions.
Spatial relationships.
Failure states.
All things that could be studied for hours without requiring significant chakra expenditure.
So progress there had been steady as well.
Fugaku was not urgently trying to invent some spectacular combat seal right now, as though he were an Uzumaki, nor was he particularly focused on ordinary passive applications beyond basic training.
He did not need to.
The Uchiha already possessed plenty of practical sealing tools.
Explosive tags.
Storage scrolls.
Weapon seals.
Barrier markers.
Basic restraint and containment methods.
At first, Fugaku cared more about understanding the underlying language well enough that one day, he could try and use it for whatever unusual purpose he might need.
However, Fugaku still had not expected fūinjutsu to become so important to one of his most important and immediate plans.
But it did.
Precisely in that last aspect.
This was a real world.
And in a real world, nobody powerful enough to prevent it would be comfortable living under the possibility that a Hyūga could look through their walls whenever he pleased, in the same village.
The Byakugan was simply too invasive.
So naturally, the people with enough resources had already developed answers.
The Hokage's residence was one example.
The entire main administrative building, the restricted chambers hidden inside the Hokage Rock mountain, and several other sensitive areas were layered with specialized fūinjutsu that together formed a type of barrier ninjutsu.
The principle was straightforward.
It disrupted or scattered chakra-based perception passing through it.
Ordinary sight still saw a wall.
The Byakugan saw interference.
Sensors received distorted information.
The stronger and more carefully layered the barrier, the less useful any attempt to inspect what was happening beyond it became.
The Uchiha had their own version.
They could not afford to cover the entire compound with something so expensive and maintenance-heavy, nor was there any reason to.
Most residences, streets, and ordinary training grounds had nothing worth hiding.
Instead, the clan protected a few specific locations.
The patriarch's private rooms and restricted archives, where sensitive records and clan secrets were kept.
The main clan hall, for meetings that required privacy.
The Naka Shrine, which had the strongest protection of all and served as the location for the most sensitive clan matters.
And this place.
The private training ground belonging to Fugaku's direct lineage.
It was designed for practicing techniques that the clan did not want outside eyes studying.
Especially Hyūga eyes.
Even more especially Hyūga who might be cooperative with the Hokage faction.
Most clansmen could request access through Takehito when they needed to train something genuinely sensitive.
Fugaku had naturally become interested in how the barrier worked.
Then interested became obsessed.
He asked Takehito for the underlying formula structure.
Studied it.
Had clones tear it apart piece by piece.
And eventually came up with an idea that even he admitted was slightly insane.
"What if I put the same principle on myself?"
Not merely a static barrier around a room.
A moving one.
A network of seals inscribed onto clothing, equipment, perhaps eventually even his skin, designed to constantly disrupt the chakra signature leaking from his body.
A mobile blind spot.
A ghost.
The goal was not merely to obscure himself.
That would not be enough.
Konoha's barrier did not need to identify Fugaku specifically.
It only needed to notice that something had crossed it.
So his seals would have to suppress and disperse his emitted chakra almost completely, while Fugaku simultaneously controlled his own chakra internally through the counter-sensory techniques he had spent the last six months practicing.
Two layers.
The seals handled passive leakage.
Fugaku handled whatever remained in real time.
In theory, if both worked well enough, he might be able to make himself register as little more than background noise while crossing Konoha's barrier.
In theory.
Fugaku was not stupid enough to test that theory yet.
He had never stopped training his sensing and counter-sensing during the last six months, specifically because of this plan.
He could suppress himself far better than before.
He understood the barrier formulas far better too.
But "better" was not the standard here.
One mistake could put Root, ANBU, and the Hokage himself on alert.
So Fugaku continued refining it.
Another six months, perhaps.
More testing inside controlled barriers.
More work with clones. This story is hosted at g.com.
More experimentation with the seal pattern.
Only when he was confident that both layers worked together naturally would he consider trying the real thing.
It was excessive.
Complicated.
Probably ridiculous by normal shinobi standards.
But Fugaku increasingly believed that being able to leave Konoha without permission or detection would become one of the most valuable advantages he could possess.
If he wanted to strengthen the Uchiha beyond what the village allowed them to become, sooner or later he would need access to a world larger than Konoha.
As for his current overall strength, Fugaku had no doubt he was much stronger than he had been even six months ago.
If he went all out in a genuine life-and-death battle, ignored the long-term cost to his eyes, and used everything he had, he felt he could probably fight an ordinary mid-level Kage now.
Probably.
That word mattered.
He had never actually tested himself against one.
And shinobi battles were not clean measurements of statistics.
One mistake could kill you.
One bad matchup.
One trap you failed to notice.
One hidden technique.
One moment of bad luck.
Someone considerably weaker on paper could still put a kunai through your throat if you gave them the opportunity.
Fugaku also had another embarrassing weakness.
Experience.
He had trained obsessively and fought plenty of serious spars with all Uchiha that mattered today in the village, but compared to veteran jōnin who had spent years on battlefields, his real-life and death combat experience was still painfully thin.
And fighting was never only about power anyway.
Terrain mattered.
Information mattered.
Deception, preparation, intelligence, counters, timing.
Most importantly, real shinobi rarely arranged polite one-on-one duels.
Ambushes were real.
Poison was real.
Traps were real.
Being attacked while exhausted, injured, or outnumbered was real.
Still, if Fugaku imagined a straight one-on-one fight with the major shinobi currently inside Konoha, there were not many people he would place clearly above himself anymore.
Hiruzen was one.
The Third Hokage would still beat him relatively comfortably in Fugaku's estimation.
Too much experience.
Too many techniques.
Too few obvious weaknesses.
Sakumo Hatake was harder to judge.
Unlike most young shinobi around his age, Sakumo already had a reputation that made even veteran Police officers speak carefully about him.
At only twenty-one, he had already become Jōnin Commander.
The position was partly ceremonial and tied him more closely to Hiruzen's administration, but it still meant something.
Officially, he was the foremost jōnin in Konoha.
And judging from the stories Fugaku had heard, Sakumo might genuinely already be around his level.
Perhaps even stronger in a real battle simply because he had far more experience using his strength against people trying to kill him.
The future Sannin were different.
Fugaku considered them late bloomers.
Right now, their reputation was still largely built around being the Third Hokage's famous students.
They were talented.
Clearly.
But they were not yet the monsters the future would remember.
At this stage, Fugaku was not even convinced any of them were stronger than Takehito.
The current Hyūga patriarch might also still be around their level.
That would change.
Fugaku knew exactly how absurd those three would eventually become.
But that was the future.
Right now, Sakumo was the young shinobi in Konoha who concerned him far more.