Chapter 53: Hinata, Showing Her Edge
To Neji's surprise, after Hiashi saw him arrive, he simply smiled and nodded in acknowledgment, then had Neji spar with Hinata.
Neji's impression of Hinata was still from several years ago. The Hinata of that time was a weak and shy, gentle girl.
Although they occasionally met at the academy, Neji had almost never paid any attention to her.
Even the few scraps of information he had about her were only heard when he was paying attention to the junior, Haruno Sakura, simply because Hinata and Sakura had a good relationship.
It was as if in an instant, the shy little girl from back then had grown into a graceful and poised young beauty.
The childishness in those blank, white eyes had now been replaced by a radiant and moving heroic spirit.
Looking at his poised sister's valiant and heroic bearing, Neji was filled with mixed emotions.
How long has it been? Since I've looked at my own sister this carefully.
Unconsciously, the little tag-along had already grown into such a ninja.
"Neji-niisan, please."
Hinata's voice was gentle and melodious, like a clear spring in the mountains, flowing into Neji's heart and pulling him back from his reverie to the training ground.
He did not dare to be careless. He took the same opening stance as Hinata and focused his gaze on his sister's shoulder.
Ever since his defeat at the hands of the young girl Haruno Sakura, Neji no longer dared to underestimate these girls who appeared soft and weak on the surface.
Although he had heard that his own sister was not very talented and her performance at the academy was not outstanding, just based on the fact that she was Haruno Sakura's good friend, Neji gave it his full attention.
A lion will not befriend a sheep!
Neji's caution was correct.
A long standoff. Both of them were cautious and did not attack first.
Then, a fallen leaf fluttered down, spiraling in the air before landing on the ground. In the next instant, the two of them attacked at the same time!
The two siblings, using identical fighting styles, rushed towards each other!
In the instant their fists and palms made contact, even the battle-hardened Neji's expression couldn't help but change slightly. Hinata's seemingly small and delicate fists and feet were so swift and powerful!
Thud, thud, thud— In the continuous clash of fists and palms, the two figures, one large and one small, weaved and shifted, their figures constantly intertwining, a dazzling sight to behold.
The Gentle Fist, born from the same source, was interpreted with completely different styles in their hands.
Neji's Gentle Fist was light and elegant, flowing like water, sticking and following, yielding and extending, never losing contact nor clashing, never too close nor too far, taking "softness" to its extreme.
Hinata's Gentle Fist was a balance of hard and soft, like the wind, sometimes light and agile, sometimes swift and fierce, its reality and illusion unpredictable, a communication of yin and yang, ever-changing, following a path of hardness within softness.
Needless to say, the flavor of the Strong Fist in it was naturally due to Sakura's influence.
With a master of extremely high-level chakra control by her side, like seeks like. Hinata's chakra control would naturally not be poor. In fact, Hinata's own control over her chakra was never bad to begin with. And after receiving Sakura's full assistance, her skills had progressed by leaps and bounds, making her stand out among the Genin.
With her outstanding chakra manipulation skills, Hinata could also enhance her body by precisely controlling her chakra, allowing it to erupt with unimaginable power. This technique, learned from Sakura, was the important reason why Hinata's Gentle Fist could achieve a balance of hard and soft.
Hinata's Gentle Fist like this had already taken a different path from the original version. In Hiashi's eyes, this was a heretical and disorderly modification. However, facing his eldest daughter who had already become an official ninja, Hiashi had no way to force her back onto the correct path.
Hinata was a person who was soft on the outside but tough on the inside. Once she had decided on something, she would not change it easily. She believed that this kind of Gentle Fist was more suitable for her, so no matter what Hiashi said, it was useless. What's more, on the day Hinata became a ninja, Hiashi had already given up on her, choosing Hanabi as the heir to the main family.
From that moment on, Hiashi no longer had any standing to interfere in Hinata's training.
Hinata's strength, far surpassing that of the original story, also proved the correctness of this path.
And this point, the deadlocked Neji could feel most keenly.
The Strong Fist had an excess of ferocity but lacked in versatility; the Gentle Fist was the opposite. The method of penetrating the enemy's body with chakra to destroy it from the inside greatly made up for the Gentle Fist's lack of killing power, but its innate flaws still existed.
Hinata, by integrating a nin-taijutsu similar to monstrous strength into the Gentle Fist, had made her fighting style possess the advantages of both the Strong Fist and the Gentle Fist. It was no longer a simple Gentle Fist.
The moves were still there, but the principles of the style had changed.
Hinata had unexpectedly discovered that although she had mediocre talent in the Gentle Fist, she had quite a bit of aptitude for the Strong Fist. This modified Gentle Fist was not only powerful but also surprisingly suitable for her!
The low-key Hinata had never proclaimed this to others. Her team leader, Kurenai, was not skilled in taijutsu and didn't see any problem with Hinata's Gentle Fist. As for Hiashi... he hadn't trained Hinata for a long time, so of course, he didn't know that her Gentle Fist had been modified by her and Sakura to this extent. The only one who knew about this was her long-term sparring partner who had helped her develop the ninjutsu, Haruno Sakura.
Hiashi was a real failure as a father.
In the original story, Hiashi was even indifferent to the matter of Hinata becoming a Genin, which involved life and death, appearing very cold and ruthless. This was very contradictory to the sentimentality he showed when he knelt down to ask for Neji's forgiveness. Perhaps there were many hidden reasons or the cruel rules of the Hyuga clan that forced him, but Sakura still found it hard to understand such behavior.
It wasn't until recently, when Hiashi saw his eldest daughter unexpectedly break into the third round of the Chunin Exams, that his passion for training Hinata was rekindled. Only then did he discover that Hinata had already walked a path in the Gentle Fist that no one before had ever explored.
After discovering that he could no longer bring Hinata back to the "correct" path, and that this new path seemed to have some merit, Hiashi also allowed Hinata to have her own way.
Right now, Hinata, just by relying on this new Gentle Fist which was still in its embryonic form, had already forced Neji to the point where he had to take her seriously.
Then, in the battle, Hinata displayed even more moves.
For example, a pressure point technique that amplified the circulation of chakra.
Whether in Kakashi's explanation in the original story or in the literature of this real Naruto world, it was clearly mentioned: tenketsu strikes could either stagnate the flow of chakra or amplify it.
However, destruction is easy, while construction is difficult.
The Hyuga clan had a pressure point art that blocked the enemy's chakra flow, but they did not have one that amplified their own. Besides the reason that the Hyuga's taijutsu consumption was not large and the members of the clan rarely failed due to a lack of chakra, it was naturally because the latter was more difficult to develop.
A few years ago, Sakura and Hinata, who were both short on chakra (compared to Naruto), were attracted by the words "amplify chakra." Relying on their super-high chakra control and not fearing that their chakra would go out of control, they began their experiments on a chakra amplification jutsu in a death-defying spirit.
The result of hundreds of experiments was that Hinata mastered a set of pressure point techniques with a moderate degree of amplification, and the two foolish girls were so scared by the huge risks of the experiment that they chickened out.
Several times, after they had stimulated the pressure points, their stamina, spirit, and even life force had immediately begun to be madly converted into chakra. If it weren't for Sakura's extremely high chakra control, which forcefully stopped the conversion, she probably would have died from life force depletion in a few seconds.
Sakura still remembered their last experiment. Among the pressure points they were preparing to stimulate, there was one called the "Setsugakkō"...
After that experiment, Sakura understood three things. First, the Eight Gates had another way of being opened. Second, why Uncle Snake's experiments had killed so many people.
And third, if you don't court death, you won't die.
After that experiment, the two, with pale faces, immediately declared the ninjutsu development complete. This set of pressure point techniques, which could amplify chakra by about double, became the final product.
Although the amplification was low compared to some of the methods they had tried that amplified chakra by hundreds or thousands of times, its advantage was that it was safe and stable, with basically no side effects. And a double amplification was more than enough for Hinata.
Unfortunately, this set of techniques was much less effective when used on others, possibly because only one's own chakra could properly stimulate the pressure points.
Besides the amplification tenketsu, Sakura also helped Hinata develop a "Rending Air Palm" that was somewhere between the Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven and the Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm.
Its principle was almost a simplified version of the Revolving Heaven.
The difference was that Revolving Heaven ejected chakra from all the tenketsu points on the body and rotated the body at high speed to form a chakra protective wall that could block most physical attacks. This Rending Air Palm, however, only ejected chakra from a few chakra points on the palm and then rotated the chakra at high speed to form a small chakra shield in the hand.
This chakra shield could not only defend against attacks but could also be used to strike a Gentle Fist from a distance, attacking targets at close to medium range.
With this Rending Air Palm, Hinata's Gentle Fist could be used for both offense and defense, at close and long range, and had become a system in its own right.
However, compared to the absolute defense of the Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven, the defense of the Rending Air Palm could naturally only be called a relative defense.
The reason for developing this ninjutsu, besides the fact that Revolving Heaven consumed a large amount of chakra and was unsuitable for Hinata, was more importantly that Sakura discovered that Hinata couldn't learn Revolving Heaven no matter what. Later she found out that Revolving Heaven was a ninjutsu that required a special aptitude to learn; only a few people in the Hyuga clan could emit chakra from all the tenketsu points on their body.
In the original story, the fact that Hinata could use the more advanced Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm but not Revolving Heaven also proved this point.
The few moves Sakura helped Hinata develop all had a strong Sakura-style flavor: extraordinary power, low chakra consumption, and an extremely high requirement for chakra control.
Unfortunately, Sakura couldn't use any of these moves herself. The pressure point and air-rending techniques were all modified from the Hyuga clan's unique ninjutsu. If Sakura casually learned them, it would cause huge trouble for Hinata. However, just being able to get a close look at the Hyuga clan's secret arts was already a major gain for Sakura.
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