The Next Day, Morning at 5:40 AM…
Seimei yawned and half covered his mouth as he walked into a private outdoor training ground, which was bigger than five football stadiums.
It was one of the exclusive training grounds belonging to Senju Tobirama, his father.
It had a lake filled with clear water, an artificial forest area covered in tough ironwood trees, personally grown by Hashirama's Wood Release technique, rocky terrains, and open earth areas.
This training ground also had target practice facilities, evasion training facilities, a Ninjutsu testing zone, and a combat area, large enough to allow even the Kage-level ninjas to fight freely without feeling any constraint.
Even Seimei had to admit he was quite impressed.
But why did Seimei come to his father's private training facility?
Well, because Toirama asked him to.
Tobirama wanted to check Seimei's proficiency with the Flying Thunder God Technique and guide him so he could improve his spatial perception and achieve greater mastery of the technique as soon as possible.
And what was the best way to guide a ninja to master a technique as obscure as a space-time teleportation technique?
It was practical combat, of course.
Yesterday, he sparred with Uchiha Reina in his hidden training spot inside the forest at the back of the Hokage Rock.
And today, he would be fighting his father, who would be going all out using the Flying Thunder God Technique, only keeping his physical parameters in check to evaluate Seimei's combat prowess.
Tobirama was unusually excited when he learned that Seimei had already mastered the Second Step of his signature space-time teleportation technique.
Well, he was probably gonna be unusually thrashed today.
Thinking of this, Seimei couldn't help but sigh.
"And then the special graduation exam starts in one week, too."
Seimei murmured as we walked beside the lake of the training ground.
And it's not a normal graduation exam either. Apart from the written test, the other tests are nothing like the standard practical graduation exams.
Additionally, since the format never stays the same, we can't be sure what kind of practical exams we will have to tackle.
Then again, we are in the S-class, and we will be promoted straight to the Chunin rank instead of the Genin rank after our graduation.
In that case, having abnormal practical tests is pretty normal, right?
Seimei thought sarcastically, and he finally stopped moving.
He looked at the sky and the position of the sun. It was as if he were trying to determine the exact time by evaluating the sun's current position.
It was one of the key skills of a ninja. They must have a good awareness of time. Whether by looking at the position of the sun during the day or the stars at night, they could judge the time, direction, and many other things.
Seimei chuckled a bit. "In a way, we ninjas are pretty good astronomers, at least when you judge by the standards of the medieval period's astronomy."
But then he shrugged and grabbed a pocketwatch from his jacket's inner pocket.
He flicked the lid open and saw the time.
5:57 AM
Seriously, why bother with the sun and star stuff when you have a pocket watch and a compass?
Heck, he could even develop special Fuinjutsu seals to help him determine time and direction precisely.
He didn't understand why the ninjas didn't think about using them.
"I see."
"I still have more than one hour before father arrives."
Seimei furrowed his brows and fell into deep thought.
"Since I have time, I might as well meditate and sense nature energy carefully."
"As long as I can control nature energy to some extent, I can enter the Sage Mode—a Sage Mode that is unique to me. A Sage Mode that is perfectly compatible with me."
"It would be nothing like the flawed Sage Modes that are hardly suitable for humans, such as the Sage Modes of the Three Great Sacred Places (Mt. Myoboku, Ryuchi Cave, and Shikkotsu Forest)."
However, that goal was still far away.
Seimei's lips curled into amusement.
By the time I attain Sage Mode, I will have already awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan and become a Kage-level ninja. So, can the Sage Mode temporarily raise my strength to the Super Kage-level, allowing me to finally beat my father?
"Only time will tell."
Seimei shook his head and manipulated the earth chakra to shape the ground, creating a one-meter-tall, sturdy rock platform with a flat surface.
Then, he climbed on top of it and sat on it cross-legged.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his mind. After that, he let his chakra sense and perception take over his other senses.
Since he had been meditating for so long, Seimei could already enter a focused state of mind, suppressing all his chaotic thoughts and the noises assaulting his ears within a minute.
In this state, he could see nothing.
But he could feel his perception sharpen and every bit of the elements floating in the air.
It was as if a third eye was peeking through the cloud of mist to discover the true nature of the world.
And before long, he sensed a peculiar energy floating in the air.
It wasn't chakra. It wasn't any elemental particles floating in the air.
It was something more fundamental—like a breath of life flowing in the air.
This peculiar energy was the very foundation of life. It existed in the world way before chakra did.
The energy permeated the air, water, earth, plants, and every living being. And yet, the energy would never gather in those objects.
It just flowed from one thing to another continuously.
Yet, strangely, it reacted with the chakra in the air.
But chakra in the air?
This fact had long since bewildered Seimei.
How could there be chakra in the air?
Here, living beings didn't gather chakra from the environment and refine it to add chakra to their own reserves.
To be clear, chakra wasn't anything like the mana he had read about in the fantasy novels in his previous life.
After all, the chakra was the result of living beings merging their physical and spiritual energy.
Once those two energies merged and formed chakra, only then could the living beings store it inside their bodies and use it as fuel to perform various miracles.
So, the fact that there was a huge amount of chakra in the air was something that should have been impossible.
But after observing nature energy for so long, Seimei had a bold speculation.
Perhaps the natural energy somehow bound the chakra with it, allowing the chakra to stay in the atmosphere.
Nature energy and chakra interact with each other, and their interaction influences the very nature around them.
And this also influences the beings living in that area, slowly adapting their physiques generation after generation.
That was what gave birth to the chakra beasts after the chakra appeared in this world.
Seimei opened his eyes. His mind raced with several hypotheses.
As for how the interaction of the chakra and nature energy influenced the natural landscapes of the Shinobi continent and its inhabitants…
He also had a few viable speculations about that.
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