Chapter 36: Chakra Acupoints
"Hmph!"
Danzo sneered coldly, not believing a word from Sarutobi Hadō. He gave a direct order: "Three missions. I'll act after a maximum of three."
Three missions to gather intel, and the fourth to strike.
That was Danzo's bottom line. He understood the Third's concern—frequent attacks on the Uchiha might provoke unnecessary trouble.
And that, Danzo agreed with.
But three missions' worth of intel gathering was already the maximum he could tolerate.
"I'm sorry, Danzo-sama," Sarutobi Hadō replied. "Five missions is already the fastest window for intel gathering. That's the Hokage's order."
Damn it!
Again with the Hokage's order!
Again using the Hokage to pressure him!
Danzo glared at Sarutobi Hadō with eyes that could devour.
Hadō lowered his head, not daring to meet his gaze.
But the Hokage's word was absolute for him.
His assignment to Root was to prevent Danzo from doing whatever he pleased. Otherwise, with Danzo's temperament, if he caused trouble, it would be the Third who paid the highest price.
After all, Root had just been established, and it was technically under ANBU. No one would doubt that Root's actions represented the Third's will.
That's why the Third sent a close clansman—Hadō—to keep Danzo in check.
"Fine."
Facing Hadō's unyielding stance despite his intimidating gaze, Danzo didn't explode this time.
He simply took a deep breath, waved his hand for Hadō to get lost, and went alone to Lab No.1 to continue his Sharingan research.
Li Yao, once again, was completely forgotten.
One day…
Two days…
Three days…
In the blink of an eye, three months passed.
In Lab No.2, inside a tall transparent glass tank, Li Yao floated curled up in a fetal position in faintly glowing green nutrient fluid.
In his chakra perception, he was surrounded by a gentle, glowing field of chakra.
"No one's come for so long… Looks like they're planning to keep me sealed for now."
Li Yao speculated to himself. For the past three months, no one had touched his body—very different from his treatment before.
But traumatized by previous traps, Li Yao didn't make any unnecessary moves. Even though he had figured out a way to hide his increasing chakra, he hadn't tested it.
He feared someone might be watching, just waiting for him to slip up.
But after three months of silence, he couldn't stay idle forever.
He couldn't just lie still endlessly.
To accumulate the power to escape, he had to take risks.
"Let's begin."
Resolute, Li Yao focused, starting to control his body's naturally released physical and mental energy, guiding it toward his body's various acupoints to condense new chakra there.
"It worked!"
Joy pulsed through his chakra—within the chakra acupoint near his heart, a new cluster of chakra had begun to form and flow.
That's right.
Flowing.
The chakra inside the acupoint wasn't being sealed like the chakra in his meridians or dantian by the Eight Trigrams Seal—it could move freely.
This meant Li Yao's method of hiding new chakra had succeeded—at least preliminarily.
In his perception, chakra in the body didn't just sit inside a "human-shaped barrel" like water.
Instead, it circulated like blood through countless chakra pathways spread across the body.
Just like how Taoist inner energy flows through the body via meridians,
chakra has its own meridian circulation system.
Chakra generated within the body travels through these pathways and is stored in the chakra dantian.
Some of that chakra naturally flows out of the dantian and along the meridians, nourishing the body and enhancing physical strength.
This is how chakra circulates.
If this circulation is sealed, a ninja can't use chakra-based jutsu at all.
The Eight Trigrams Seal works by sealing this entire chakra pathway system and consuming chakra from the dantian and meridians to maintain its function—completely sealing the subject's chakra.
If Li Yao wanted to bypass the seal while also hiding his new chakra, he needed a place to store it—somewhere untouched by the seal.
He found it.
His chakra perception revealed that while the seal affected the meridians and dantian, it didn't reach the countless acupoints embedded within the chakra pathways.
These chakra acupoints were like reservoirs or dams on a great river—controlling the flow while also capable of storing chakra like the dantian.
But unlike the dantian, acupoints were like locked chambers, isolated from the external meridians—impervious to the seal.
Compared to the dantian—an open hall anyone could enter—
acupoints were locked vaults.
That made them ideal for hiding new chakra, safe even from chakra perception.
If chakra was stored in them, even someone with chakra-sensing ability might struggle to detect its presence at close range.
This gave Li Yao precious time to silently build up power.
Until now, it had been theory.
Now, he had preliminary proof.
Whether this really fooled chakra sensors remained to be seen—but it was the best method Li Yao had.
In the stillness of Root's Lab No.2—
Li Yao continued guiding his natural body and mental energy toward the acupoint near his heart, fusing them at a 1:1 ratio to create chakra.
The human body has many acupoints, spread all throughout.
But they weren't all the same.
Some could hold large amounts of chakra—others very little.
Put simply, some acupoints were bigger than others.
In Li Yao's perception, eight stood out—significantly larger than the rest, dozens or even hundreds of times larger.
The largest one was in his chest near his heart—its capacity rivaled his dantian. It could be considered his second chakra core.
The other seven?
Two in the brain.
Five aligned vertically from the center of his chest to just below his navel.
It resembled… the Eight Gates from the Eight Gates Released Formation… Wait?
"These eight acupoints… they match the Eight Gates exactly!"
Suddenly, it clicked.
He remembered the diagram of the Eight Gates from his past life. Having studied human anatomy in medical school, he had a decent understanding of meridians and acupoints.
And now he realized—the acupoint where he was storing chakra was the position of the "Death Gate" from the Eight Gates.
Which meant… his extra chakra was being stored in the Death Gate.
"This… might be a bit of a problem."
(END CHAPTER)
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