Chapter 91: Their Respective Progress
A serious fight...?
Looking into Sasuke's blazing eyes, Sakura was a little surprised deep down.
What Sasuke meant was a no-holds-barred battle where Sakura would use ninjutsu like the Water Style: Wind Blade Raging Stream and ultrapure water.
So, is Sasuke confident that he can break through these two moves? Sakura stared intently into Sasuke's eyes, as if trying to see through to his thoughts, a hint of understanding already in her heart.
He must have awakened a higher stage of the Sharingan...
He was at two tomoe before. He probably broke through to the three-tomoe stage during the battles in the Chunin Exams.
Plus the new ninjutsu Kakashi taught him, the Chidori, is a jutsu with extremely strong piercing ability. Is he thinking of testing the hardness of the ultrapure water?
Or is he planning to rely on his extreme speed and the Sharingan's kinetic vision to bypass the ultrapure water's defense, find a weak point, and kill with one blow?
Since Sasuke had issued the challenge, he must have already formulated a feasible set of tactics.
Unlike the sensitive and fragile Sasuke from the original story, the Sasuke that Sakura knew—perhaps because he had always been by her side and been beaten down by her—did not have that inexplicable arrogance of looking down on everyone from the original story. He was less frivolous and had a bit more composure.
In the original story, after the Chunin Exams, when Sasuke discovered that Naruto's strength had skyrocketed, even surpassing his own, his heart was unbalanced and even filled with jealous anger, although he probably didn't even know what he was jealous or angry about. Perhaps it was simply because he felt threatened by Naruto's strength surpassing his. A person who has long been in the number one position and has never been challenged is usually more sensitive to such things. Plus, he had just been provoked by Itachi, so he had an extraordinary desire for power and an extraordinary hatred for his own weakness. That was why in the hospital, just after waking up, he had recklessly challenged Naruto, trying to confirm that his strength was greater than others by defeating him, to save his fragile self-esteem.
Such a Sasuke was pitiful and childish.
But this Sasuke that Sakura knew, although he also craved power, did not have that arrogance of "I must be the strongest under heaven." On the road to becoming stronger, he had always had a clear goal, and that was Haruno Sakura, who, as a peer, was always ahead of him in strength. And the process of chasing after Sakura was also a process of Sasuke learning from a stronger person.
At first, she could even toy with him using just some basic ninjutsu that she had practiced to perfection—this made him realize that blindly pursuing powerful ninjutsu was the wrong path. Sometimes, some simple and practical ninjutsu could have outstanding effects when used well. Later, she had to use her self-created nin-taijutsu to suppress him, and he quickly realized that in actual combat, taijutsu should not be overly flashy; power and speed were the keys. And recently, due to his Sharingan awakening to two tomoe, a Sakura who didn't use the Super Water Gun and ultrapure water could no longer beat him.
As the one being chased, watching Sasuke progress at such a fast speed, Sakura sometimes felt quite emotional. She felt that she could understand the feelings of the Sasuke from the original story. It was true that seeing someone with a cheat catch up step by step, even though your own talent was stronger and you had worked just as hard, could easily make one's mentality become unbalanced.
If it weren't for her stronger self-confidence, believing that her ninjutsu could be stronger than the Uchiha's bloodline, perhaps even Sakura, with the experience of two lifetimes, would have felt uncomfortable.
She just didn't expect that Sasuke would be challenging her at her full strength so soon. Come to think of it, Sasuke must believe he has a decent chance of winning.
Thinking of this, Sakura revealed a faint smile.
Sasuke, ah... You're aware that you're progressing, but do you really think I've been standing still? You don't even understand the power of a Kekkei Genkai at all...
It was only after fully mastering Ice Style that Sakura discovered that chakra, as a combination of spiritual and physical energy, could actually act upon the body and spirit in return!
For example—everyone knows that among people with the wind affinity, there are many speed-type ninja, the most famous of whom is the Golden Flash, the Fourth Hokage. But few people can definitively say whether it is the wind-natured chakra that has the ability to enhance one's speed talent, or if speed-type ninja are more likely to develop the wind nature transformation. If such an effect really existed, it was too subtle, too unnoticeable.
But the effect of Ice Style was more significant.
Although it wasn't very obvious now, Sakura keenly discovered that ever since she had learned Ice Style, it seemed easier for her to calm down during battle.
When she really wanted to kill someone, a bone-chilling killing intent would spread throughout her body, shielding her from negative emotions like nervousness and fear, and stimulating her to fight more calmly and precisely. Such a feeling was not uncommon for a battle-hardened ninja, but before the Land of Waves, she hadn't even seen blood or a dead person. Then, in her first live-fire battle with an enemy in the Land of Waves, she was able to kill ruthlessly... Alright, even if this was because of her transmigration and her spiritual power being several times stronger than an ordinary person's, allowing her to do this, then how to explain that after the Land of Waves, her physical fitness had begun to slowly increase along with her in-depth training of Ice Style?
In fact, she could really feel that when her spiritual and physical energy were mixed to form water and wind affinity chakra, and then condensed into ice affinity chakra, and then naturally degraded and recycled back into the original spiritual and physical energy in her body, something had changed.
For example, speed. It was actually an attribute that was greatly restricted by talent. A non-speed-type ninja could easily reach their speed limit, and no amount of training could improve it. From this point of view, Lee was a true genius, because his body could actually support his crazy training without collapsing, and instead, his strength and speed had steadily improved. A normal person—at least with Sakura's physical condition—would have already trained themselves into ruin!
Transmigration had not changed Sakura's physical constitution. The Haruno Sakura in the original story was not a speed-type ninja, and the Sakura of this world was not either. Training had quickly made her touch the speed limit of her body. There seemed to be an invisible wall there. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get over it.
The situation had changed in recent months—she found that she had gotten faster.
It wasn't because of physical development, because she hadn't grown much taller, nor had her chest suddenly gained a few ounces of flesh. And she had been in her developmental stage all along, so she had a very intuitive understanding and prediction of the improvement of her physical fitness. For the sudden enhancement of her physical fitness, she didn't have many guesses. The Ice Style chakra was the most likely one.
To put it more simply and clearly, Sakura felt that her physical abilities were trending towards becoming like Haku's. Her mediocre physical attributes were turning into those of a speed-type ninja, with fast movements and quick reactions.
Besides that, there were probably some other small changes, for example, her looks were also becoming more like Haku's. Her skin became less prone to tanning, and her features had changed from the original heroic type to being a bit more pretty and charming.
The above point could definitely only be discovered by someone who looked in the mirror every day.
During the Chunin Exams, everyone had trained on their own for a month. Affected by the increase in speed, Sakura's taijutsu ability had improved very significantly. With Sakura trending towards a speed-type ninja, Sasuke's high-speed combat might be able to gain the upper hand, but to think that he could beat Haruno Sakura so fast that she couldn't react in time to use her ultrapure water for defense was really thinking too much.
So, after pondering for a moment, under the expectant gazes of both Sasuke and Naruto, Sakura still shook her head.
"I refuse."
Waving her hand to stop Sasuke's impulse to speak, Sakura explained, "One reason is that I've already used up all my ultrapure water in the past few days. I'll need some time to save up enough to use in a fight."
As we know, ultrapure water is a type of water with extremely high purity. If air or impurities dissolve into the water and cause its purity to drop, its strange properties will disappear.
Under normal circumstances, Sakura would use chakra to isolate the ultrapure water to maintain its purity. But in a fierce battle, overly violent collisions could cause the water film to be pierced, allowing impurities to mix into the water, leading to a decrease in purity and a significant drop in strength. Even if this contaminated part of the water was discarded in time, the purity of the entire mass of ultrapure water would inevitably decrease, until finally, the entire mass would become completely ineffective.
"Secondly, I've recently learned a few Ice Style moves. Want to try them out now? I still won't use the Wind Blade Raging Stream."
Seeing the unconvinced look on Sasuke's face, Sakura smiled lightly. "Because this move is becoming less and less suitable for sparring."
Without any visible movement from her, the girl just raised her hand. Chakra suddenly surged, and a line of water shot out from Sakura's palm, cutting a distant rock.
As the girl's signature skill, the Water Style: Super Water Gun Jutsu could not only be ultimately evolved into the Water Style: Wind Blade Raging Stream, but its casting speed was also becoming faster and faster. This was a realm she had broken through a few days ago while fighting Kabuto. At that time, in a moment of urgency, she had completed the Water Style: Super Water Gun Jutsu with just a wave of her hand. Even she herself found it a bit incredible afterwards! Just a single gesture of raising her hand, in just half a second, she had completed a high-level ninjutsu. Sakura's attainments in Water Style were truly unprecedented, and it was likely that there would be few who could follow in her footsteps!
The expression on Sasuke's face showed that he knew what this move of the girl meant. He had also struggled with whether to follow Itachi's path of speeding up hand seals, or to learn from Sakura's way of simplifying the hand seal steps and eventually achieving seal-less casting. Now it seemed that the ultimate form of casting was like Sakura's. No matter how fast the hand seals were, they could never be faster than no seals, faster than a raise of the hand!
—As an aside, Itachi could also use many ninjutsu without seals.
The Sharingan could discover the state of an opponent's muscle exertion through extremely detailed observation, thereby discerning and even predicting the opponent's next move. But it could not predict the changes in chakra. Sasuke had thought that with his three-tomoe Sharingan, he could already defeat Sakura, but against such a ninjutsu...
At the very least, the outcome was uncertain.
And a spar between teammates, did it have to get to the point where one could be cut in two by accident?
Sasuke first shook his head, then nodded.
"Alright, then let it be so. I've also made some new progress recently. You can come and try it out!"
The two of them then took their stances and formed the Seal of Confrontation.
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