The next day.
Early morning.
The sky was just starting to lighten when Seimei woke up.
As usual after a rest day, he created a shadow clone to stay behind in the village, then used Human Shield to quietly slip out of the Hidden Leaf.
Outside the village, Seimei activated his Byakugan, scanning a one-kilometer radius to ensure no one was around. Once confirmed, he locked onto the island in the southern seas of the Land of Fire and used Flying Thunder God Technique.
His vision blurred for a split second.
In an instant, he went from the outskirts of the Hidden Leaf to the island.
Looking at the mist-shrouded island, Seimei had no intention of wasting time.
He raised his hands, forming the "Ram" seal, and immediately cast Multiple Shadow Clone Technique.
Poof, poof, poof!
With bursts of chakra smoke, 150 shadow clones appeared around him.
Seimei glanced at them and waved a hand. "Alright, get to it!"
The clones nodded and split off in small groups, heading away from the island's center.
Once they were gone, Seimei focused, activating Lightning Release Chakra Mode.
Crackle!
A peal of thunder rang out as his body was enveloped in lightning.
He locked onto the Flying Thunder God marker at the ocean floor, and with a thought, activated the technique.
Silently, he vanished.
The next moment, an immense pressure hit him from all sides, forcing him to hunch slightly.
After a day away from training, the sudden weight was a bit much, even for him.
But soon, the lightning wrapped around him flared brightly, easing most of the pressure. Seimei straightened up.
Channeling chakra to his feet, he looked toward the deeper ocean floor and started walking.
One meter, two meters, three meters...
Soon, the pressure reached the limit his body could handle.
Instead of pushing further, he found a relatively flat rock on the seabed and began manipulating the Lightning Release chakra coursing over his body to strengthen it.
Of course, he didn't neglect Palm Sage Technique or Human Shield.
With their passive effects combined with Lightning Release Chakra Mode, his physical reinforcement was progressing even faster than expected.
Seimei estimated that by early February, his body would hit the tipping point for transformation.
Once that happened, his Constitution stat would rise again, boosting his overall abilities and letting him withstand even greater seabed pressure.
That would allow him to dive deeper, using the harsher environment to accelerate his physical reinforcement.
Faster reinforcement would, in turn, speed up his body's transformation.
It was a positive feedback loop. Until he hit some kind of limit or diminishing returns, his body's evolution would only get faster.
Of course, faster evolution didn't mean the next transformation would take less time than this one.
Given how evolution got harder the further along you went, even with a faster pace, the next transformation would likely take longer than this one.
The "faster" part was only relative to similar conditions.
These thoughts flickered through his mind, briefly distracting him.
As a result, the Lightning Release chakra on his body started leaking into the surrounding seawater, creating a terrifying electric field within a 20-meter radius.
Bolts of lightning danced through the water like silver serpents, beautiful in their own way.
But Seimei wasn't in the mood to admire the view. That leaking lightning was his chakra.
He wasn't about to let it go to waste.
Snapping back to focus, he reined in his thoughts and concentrated on controlling the Lightning Release chakra, keeping it tightly bound to his body to prevent further leakage.
This took a good few minutes.
After that, he didn't let his mind wander again, focusing entirely on his training.
An hour passed in a flash.
Seimei paused his physical reinforcement, moved to a spot within his pressure tolerance, and used Flying Thunder God Technique.
Instantly, he vanished from the seabed, reappearing on the island.
He dispelled Multiple Shadow Clone Technique, recalling all his clones, and quickly began absorbing their training experiences and memories from the past hour.
Once he'd fully processed them, he could feel he was close to perfecting Heart-Sealing Soul Contract: Instant Mark.
His progress on developing Lava Release was also moving forward steadily.
And then there were Izanagi and Izanami. Their proficiency had crept up again, inching closer to the perfect LV9 (0/0).
Seimei figured they'd hit that milestone either tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest.
When they did, the 250,000 chakra points he'd save could go straight into Heart Reflection Technique.
That would bring his daily chakra investment in Heart Reflection Technique to 1,250,000 points, yielding 62 to 63 evolution points.
Add in the one or two points from Human Shield's passive effect, and he'd be looking at around 64 points per day.
At 64 points a day, reaching the 98,000 evolution points needed for his Sharingan to evolve into a Rinnegan would take about 1,500 days—just over four years.
"Four years…"
Seimei murmured to himself, then pushed the thought aside. He formed hand signs again, casting Multiple Shadow Clone Technique to start another round of training.
This time, he didn't head to the ocean floor to reinforce his body. Instead, he stayed on the island, using Heart Reflection Technique to push his Sharingan's evolution.
He alternated every hour, training from morning to night, sunrise to sunset, pouring all his focus into his practice.
That night, under a starry sky with a bright moon, Seimei sat on the massive boulder at the island's center.
Looking at the panel, he saw Izanagi and Izanami teetering on the edge of LV9. He shook his head.
No time to max them out tonight—he'd have to wait until tomorrow.
With that, he closed the panel and began his final training session of the day: nurturing his Byakugan.
Two and a half hours later, after burning through 2.5 million chakra points, he gained 12 evolution points.
Seeing the new progress in the Byakugan section of his bloodline panel, Seimei suddenly felt a bit deflated.
Back when Heart Reflection Technique hadn't been refined, and his Sharingan's evolution relied entirely on Human Shield's passive effect, he'd been pretty satisfied with the Byakugan's 12 or 13 points per day.
But now, with Heart Reflection Technique improved and his Sharingan's evolution speeding up, those same 12 or 13 points felt underwhelming.
Compared to using Heart Reflection Technique to actively stimulate his Sharingan, simply nurturing his Byakugan with high-energy chakra felt downright primitive.
Seimei wondered if he could take inspiration from Heart Reflection Technique to develop a similar technique for actively boosting his Byakugan's evolution.
But after some thought, he shook his head.
It wasn't that he didn't want to—it was that he couldn't.
Sure, he'd refined Heart Reflection Technique multiple times, boosting its effectiveness by leaps and bounds, but that didn't mean it was easy. Creating a technique like that from scratch, with no foundation, was insanely difficult.
Heart Reflection Technique only existed because of the blood, sweat, and tears of countless Uchiha who refused to accept their limits.
Even then, its initial effects were lackluster.
And now? What did he have to work with for the Byakugan?
Nothing.
Trying to develop a similar technique under those conditions was a pipe dream.
For now, all he could do was stick to the status quo, pouring massive amounts of chakra into brute-forcing progress.
As for anything else, that'd have to wait.
(Chapter End)