Chapter 60: The Debate on Water's Nature Transformation
What Jiraiya said was not without reason. In fact, if the girl didn't already have her own answer in her heart, she might have been directly persuaded by him. It was precisely for this reason that his answer had such an impact—not because the speaker was Jiraiya, but because it could indeed explain some problems.
However, Sakura was even more confident in her own answer.
—At least, until her own error was proven.
Jiraiya's statement could be said to have its merits, but it did not prove that Sakura's understanding was wrong.
Even when facing Jiraiya, she still subconsciously believed that she was correct.
Even if this might be the prevailing answer in the ninja world, she supported her own viewpoint from the bottom of her heart and believed that everyone else was wrong.
She knew very well that this was the kind of person she was.
This was a kind of baseless arrogance.
Of course, this would not prevent her from re-examining her own and others' views.
In fact, the two great ninjutsu that Sakura had created herself completely demonstrated the divergence of these two ideas.
The Super Water Gun Jutsu required water-natured chakra to create ultra-high pressure.
The application of ultrapure water required water-natured chakra to make it deform and flow.
The more Sakura used these two ninjutsu, the more she understood the divergence of these two schools of thought.
The nature transformation of water-property chakra, is it flow or is it pressure?
Initially, she believed that the divergence stemmed from an incomplete understanding of the water property's nature transformation.
Everyone was a blind man touching an elephant.
Then someone touched a leg and said the elephant was four thick pillars—this could be called the pressure faction. Someone else touched the trunk and said the elephant was a thick rope that could move flexibly—so this was the flow faction.
Because both the flow theory and the pressure theory had their own merits, the analogy of the blind men and the elephant was also agreed upon by many.
That is, both were correct, but each had its limitations.
Many ninja of the pressure faction also agreed with this view. Furthermore, they believed that the water nature transformation was mainly manifested as pressure. Just as describing an elephant as a four-legged animal with thick legs, such a description at least summarized the vast majority of the elephant's body.
As for flow, it was just a secondary property.
Undoubtedly, Jiraiya agreed with this statement.
Many of the people in this faction were experienced ninja who had been immersed in Water Style for many years and whose application of it had reached a state of perfection. Among them were pillars like Jiraiya and the Third Hokage, so it almost represented the mainstream opinion.
When Jiraiya heard Sakura's answer, he did not rush to refute her, but instead explained their concept to her unhurriedly, precisely because he believed that the flow theory was also correct.
It was just not correct enough.
However, Sakura did not agree.
She had been in contact with Water Style since the age of five. As long as she was awake, she spent most of her time manipulating a mass of water with her chakra. She had played with Water Style to the point of perfection.
What's more, she carried the knowledge systems of two worlds. Not only could she extract theories from the experience of the Naruto world, but she could also construct theories with the help of the thinking patterns from the Earth world.
She believed her understanding of Water Style was not inferior to anyone's.
And even in certain fields, such as her self-created water jutsu, she should be better than everyone else combined.
Sakura understood very well why her predecessors placed so much importance on the pressure property of water's nature transformation.
This was because the killing power of Water Style was mainly expressed through pressure.
And flow, on the other hand, was more often applied in a supporting role.
Combat-focused ninja would, of course, place special emphasis on the property of pressure because of this, considering it to be the primary property.
However, the essence of a thing is not judged by its killing power.
If one were to blindly pursue killing power, the development of human weaponry should have just been about making cannon calibers larger and larger, and there would have been no invention of nuclear weapons. When Einstein proposed the theory of relativity, he never thought of using it to create a weapon that could destroy humanity. But in the decades after the theory was proposed, humans created something ten million times stronger than a cannon based on it.
The killing power of Water Style being manifested in pressure, and the nature transformation of Water Style being pressure, had no causal relationship at all.
Sakura believed that the seemingly secondary property of 'flow' was the essence of water's nature transformation, while pressure was a phenomenon caused by fluidity.
Anyone who has studied high school or even middle school physics knows what water pressure is.
If there is a mountain-shaped communicating vessel that is connected at the bottom, after water is injected, due to water pressure, the water levels in the various vertical pipes of the vessel will be the same. And water pressure originates from the fluidity of water. Conversely, if sand, which has poor fluidity, is injected, the sand levels in the various vertical pipes will not be the same.
The deepest ocean trench on Earth, the Mariana Trench, is over 11,000 meters deep. The seawater there has extremely high pressure; an ordinary submersible diving to that depth would be crushed into a pile of scrap metal by the high pressure. This is because of the fluidity of water, which can transmit the pressure of a 11,000-meter-high column of water down layer by layer, accumulating to an astonishing level by the time it reaches the bottom.
Therefore, the pressure of water originates from flow.
Unlike other Water Style ninja, Sakura applied the fluidity of water's nature transformation much more.
Ultrapure water itself is an extremely, extremely resilient liquid. Conversely, this makes it particularly, particularly difficult to deform such a thing.
Therefore, its defense against physical attacks is very high.
However, this also created difficulties in its application—each time, transforming the ultrapure water into the desired shape was a difficult problem.
Only by applying the fluidity of water's nature transformation to the ultrapure water could its shape be changed with relative ease, forming things like shields, pythons, and even the boosters in nin-taijutsu that cling to the joints and body to help exert force.
It was precisely because she had a deep understanding of both fluidity and pressure, and with the help of the physical principles from Earth, that Sakura dared to assert—
The nature transformation of Water Style is flow.
And pressure is the result of flow.
"...That is my view."
Sakura said calmly.
Even when facing one of the Sannin, Jiraiya, Sakura raised her opposing opinion without any timidity.
Naruto, who was present, was already dizzy from their discussion.
But Jiraiya was looking at Sakura with a solemn expression.
He was almost persuaded by Sakura.
He was convinced by the logic the girl displayed and her exploration of the two directions of water's nature transformation.
Decades of experience made him believe more in the pressure property of water's nature transformation, but his logic and thinking indicated that flow seemed to be the essence.
The Naruto world, of course, also had research on physics. Mechanical analysis was closely related to ninja. Much of the content in the academy's culture classes was about these things, it was just that no one would calculate the trajectory of a ninja tool in a battle.
It was just that no one had ever thought that physics knowledge could be used in ninjutsu.
After all, the ninja world was full of powerful ninja who were illiterate or semi-illiterate. A high level of education was not important to a ninja at all.
His strength and authority were far greater than the girl's before him, yet Jiraiya actually felt that the girl was standing at a higher perspective.
Who is right? Emotionally, he couldn't accept that something so many people had believed for so long was wrong.
But the disposition of a strong person could not allow him to judge the truth of an objective matter based on emotions. What is right is right, what is wrong is wrong. It has nothing to do with how many years you have persisted in it.
Believing for ten thousand years that one plus one equals zero will not make one plus one actually equal zero.
"Alright, let's change the topic," Jiraiya finally ended the topic noncommittally, neither agreeing with nor opposing Sakura's view.
Perhaps he still needed time to verify it.
However, Jiraiya's current focus was still on giving the girl some guidance.
"Are there any other ninjutsu you want to research?"
The ninjutsu Jiraiya had mastered was not just Water Style.
"Hmm, I'm still learning the nature transformations of wind and ice..." the girl said, touching her smooth chin.
During the Land of Waves mission, Kakashi had suggested that she use ninjutsu methods to solve the problem of producing ultrapure water. She also thought it was a good idea and had been going in this direction ever since.
As a result, there had been many by-products.
She learned Ice Style, making up for the lack of defense of ultrapure water against ninjutsu.
She developed many offensive methods, avoiding the awkwardness of having to rely on her trump card ninjutsu to resolve every battle.
But there was still no progress on the ultrapure water problem.
The girl had also been feeling troubled by this recently.
Ultrapure water was not easy to produce, and once it was contaminated or evaporated, it was completely irretrievable. Recently, there had been a series of great battles, and her stock was running low.
There were still many battles to come. Even if she used it sparingly, it was a bit of a stretch.
What's more, she still had many ideas that could only be developed with a large amount of ultrapure water as a foundation!
Sigh, even the landlord's house has no surplus grain.
Jiraiya didn't quite understand what this so-called ultrapure water was. But he didn't need to.
He just needed to know that Sakura had encountered a bottleneck in her practice of wind nature transformation.
"To be honest, I don't really understand Ice Style either. But when it comes to Wind Style, I still consider myself qualified to teach you a thing or two!"
Jiraiya said with a hearty laugh.
Wind Style, his proud disciple Namikaze Minato also had this affinity. When he was teaching Minato, he had specially conducted in-depth research on Wind Style.
Therefore, Jiraiya was quite at ease teaching it.
After checking Sakura's progress, Jiraiya found that her proficiency in Wind Style was a notch lower than Minato's at the same age, as wind was not her main affinity, after all.
"The nature transformation of Wind Style is cutting," he said, staring at the girl's lips. Seeing that she did not refute, he actually felt a small sense of relief in his heart.
Finally, a topic where I won't be slapped in the face by a junior's junior!
"At your current level of wind nature transformation, it already has decent killing power. From cutting fragile leaves to cutting hard iron plates, do you know what the higher realm of wind nature transformation is?"
"...I don't know. What is there to cut?" the girl asked, blinking her bright, autumn-water-like eyes.
"Molecules."
Jiraiya said seriously.
"The higher realm of wind nature transformation is cutting molecules."
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