But she didn't want to refuse Touye's request either. "What about food? And clothes? And everything else?" she asked.
Touye lowered her head. "I'll have to trouble you with that, Auntie..."
Lian sighed. She could see that Touye had made up her mind, so she had no choice but to agree. She added casually, "Honestly, for someone so young, I don't know where you get such a cautious nature..."
Lian could see through Touye's intentions, and her heart couldn't help but feel touched.
Touye's heart skipped a beat at the comment. She pretended not to hear and turned her head away.
Fortunately, Lian had only been musing aloud and didn't press the issue, but it was enough to give Touye a scare. Was she supposed to tell her she was actually from another world?
Lian didn't notice Touye's guilty fidgeting. "Since you've made up your mind, there's no use in me objecting. I have a scroll of Yuki clan ninjutsu. I thought I'd never use it again, so I kept it as a memento. I'll bring it to you tomorrow."
Touye was first shocked, then overjoyed. She had been worrying about how to train, and now Lian was offering her a scroll. Even if it didn't contain many advanced jutsu, just having some basic training methods would be enough to make her happy.
She was a bit curious, though, how Lian had managed to grab a ninjutsu scroll while being hunted.
Lian seemed to sense her curiosity. "When the clan was wiped out," she explained, "the elders were not completely unaware of what was happening. They were just powerless to resist. But in order to preserve our bloodline, they took some precautions. The clan's top ninja were tasked with protecting small groups of clan members and helping them escape. To ensure the Yuki clan's secret Ice Release techniques were not lost, each person who escaped carried a copy of the secret scroll. My sister and I were in one of the groups that were escorted to safety."
It all clicked for Touye. She had often wondered how her parents, who hadn't awakened their Kekkai Genkai, had managed to escape the massacre. Now she finally understood.
"What about those who didn't escape?" she asked. "Wouldn't the scrolls have fallen into enemy hands?"
Lian shook her head and patted Touye's small head. "No. The scrolls are sealed with a restriction. Without the specific technique and the blood of a clan member with awakened Ice Release, if someone tries to force it open, the contents will self-destruct. The entire scroll becomes something like an explosive tag, giving the enemy a nasty surprise. So even if someone got the scroll and learned how to open it, it would be useless, because the Ice Release blood required for unsealing must be from a living person. And none of those who escaped had awakened their bloodline."
Lian took a breath after the long explanation. "And even if someone did manage to get one, so what? Ice Release requires the Yuki bloodline to use. Even if they got their hands on it, they would only learn more about our clan's jutsu. But the Yuki clan has already been destroyed. What good would finding our weaknesses do them now?"
As she spoke, Lian's mood soured. Touye reached out and patted her hand comfortingly. Lian managed a small smile but said nothing more.
Suddenly, Touye remembered a question she had always wanted the answer to in her past life. "Oh, right! Auntie, I never asked. Is Haku... a boy or a girl?"
Lian looked at her, bewildered. "Huh? Haku is a girl, of course!"
And with that, Touye finally understood.
***
"Hah! Hyah! Hah! Hyah!"
Touye leaped and bounded through the trees, the 20 kg weights strapped to her body a constant torment. The slightest misstep would send her tumbling to the ground in a clumsy fall.
Ever since Lian had brought her the scroll, Touye had begun training. To her delight, the scroll contained a systematic training regimen for Ice Release techniques, a large number of ninjutsu, and even some crude taijutsu designed to complement Ice Release. While there were no super-advanced techniques like Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals, it was more than enough to make Touye ecstatic.
But what pleased her most was that it contained the method for one-handed seals. Although Touye had previously created ice daggers with one hand, that wasn't true sealing. It was more about using hand gestures to speed up the flow of chakra in her body. She could create ice daggers without seals, just a bit slower. But ninjutsu that could be performed with one-handed seals was a different matter entirely. In the original story, Touye could only remember two people who could do it.
What puzzled her, however, was that the last section of the scroll seemed to end abruptly, as if something had been left unsaid. When she asked Lian, her aunt told her that the very end of the scroll recorded the Yuki clan's greatest secret ninjutsu. The clan's standing in the ninja world was largely due to this technique. Unfortunately, Lian didn't know what it was.
Lian held the technique in high regard, though, saying that if it weren't for the fact that no one in the clan had managed to master it for a long time, not even the Land of Water would have dared to move against the Yuki clan so easily.
This made Touye incredibly curious, but Lian's knowledge was vague, so there was nothing she could do but suppress her curiosity and begin her training.
Training, of course, meant weights. Touye had been full of confidence at first, but she quickly learned it wasn't so simple. Just 20 kg of weight was enough to make her collapse. She had to gradually reduce the weight, finally settling on 10 kg, which she could barely manage. Touye couldn't help but smile bitterly. It was the body of a four-year-old girl, after all. She had overestimated herself.
Touye set a training schedule for herself. Two hours a day were dedicated to practicing basic Ice and Water Release ninjutsu. Four hours were for developing her bloodline. She slept for six hours, and the remaining time was for taijutsu, eating, and other miscellaneous things.
She believed that since her body was not yet fully developed and her chakra reserves were insufficient, flashy ninjutsu was out of reach for now. She had to start with taijutsu. Besides, only with good physical conditioning could she have the stamina for long battles.
And so, her physical training began.
However, she had once again overestimated her body. After a month, her weights had only slowly increased to 20 kg, and that was already her current limit. Carrying 20 kg, she could only train for about five hours a day before she was too exhausted to get up. She had tried to push past her limits once by carrying 30 kg. The result was that for the next few days, it was Haku who had to come and retrieve her from the forest.
Speaking of which, it was strange. Whether it was due to their bloodline or something else, Haku and Touye seemed to share a strange connection. As long as they were within a certain distance of each other, they could sense each other's location. As a result, every time Touye overdid it with her training, it was Haku who found her and dragged her back. Over time, Touye grew to care for her gentle and adorable younger sister more and more.
While her progress in taijutsu was slow, her ninjutsu and bloodline training advanced rapidly, making Touye lament that she was truly built for large-scale, area-of-effect combat.
In ninjutsu, although she was limited by her chakra and couldn't even use a B-rank technique, her chakra control was astonishing even to herself. She mastered tree climbing in an hour and water walking in just three. One might point out that Sakura spent years at the academy learning this, but Touye had only just begun her chakra training.
The next step in her ninjutsu training was to learn how to create sharper, more durable ice daggers while using less chakra. To do this, she used the ice-aspected chakra in her body to create ice sculptures. The more lifelike the sculptures, the better her control. The longer they lasted, the higher the quality of her chakra.
As for her bloodline training, there wasn't much to say. She just continuously stimulated the ice bloodline within her according to the methods recorded in the scroll, deepening its awakening. The awakened bloodline, in turn, would gradually transform her body, making it more suitable for using Ice Release.
At the very least, Touye already felt that creating ice daggers was much smoother than before, without the sense of stagnation she used to feel.
Reviewing her month of training, Touye defined her body's strengths and weaknesses: suited for using uncanny Ice Release secret techniques and superb chakra control to engage in ninjutsu duels, but with a weakness in taijutsu. (This would likely define the protagonist's fighting style in the future.)
Of course, she wouldn't give up on taijutsu. Weaknesses had to be compensated for, not hidden. Touye understood this. Therefore, her taijutsu training time would not be reduced in the future; on the contrary, it would become even more brutal.
***
"Haaah!"
Ignoring the sweat streaming down her body, Touye estimated her remaining chakra, then sent a kick that snapped the wooden training post in front of her. The broken piece flew upward and diagonally. Touye leaped after it, her left hand flashing through seals. "Ice Release: Breath of Flowers Technique!"
She held her right palm open, facing upward, near her mouth. Taking aim at the wooden block, she blew a gentle breath. A visible stream of cold air shot from her palm, instantly catching up to the block over ten meters away. With a crack, it was frozen into a solid chunk of ice and shattered into pieces as it hit the ground.
In the air, Touye flipped and landed, then immediately collapsed into a sitting position, propping herself up with her hands and gasping for breath. Her chakra was nearly depleted, and her stamina was all but gone.
In a blink of an eye, two years had passed. Touye was now six years old. She had spent these two years living in the forest. Her daily needs were met by Haku and her mother, as well as by hunting and gathering in the mountains herself. Fortunately, Lian had often gone out to find food in the forest before, so her trips didn't arouse suspicion. Though she had encountered a few villagers a couple of times, Touye had always spotted them first and stayed hidden. All in all, the past two years had been relatively peaceful.
Her skills, however, had progressed rapidly. Touye could now use B-rank ninjutsu. If she pushed herself to the limit, she could even manage an A-rank jutsu, though it would leave her completely drained.
The weights on her body had increased to 120 kg. It sounded impressive, but in reality, it was far from enough. Look at Rock Lee—by the time of the Chunin Exam, the weights he wore were well over a ton. Touye could only feel a sense of awe. She couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of effort Lee must have put in to achieve that; she was sure it was nothing as simple as what was shown in the manga from her past life.
These two years had also allowed her to somewhat adapt to her female identity. She no longer did clumsy, boyish things that made Lian and Haku laugh.
As for Haku, she had grown over the past two years. The baby fat on her face had slowly disappeared, revealing an even prettier girl. Her playful personality had gradually become gentler, making her more and more like the Haku from the original story.
Just as she was thinking of Haku, she heard a faint rustling behind her. Without needing to turn, the connection between them told Touye it was Haku. She flopped onto her back without even turning her head and said, "You're here, Haku."
A soft, gentle voice replied from behind her. "Yes, it's me. Are you done with your training, Sister Touye? I brought you lunch."
Haku walked closer and sat down beside her. She carefully lifted Touye's head and placed it on her lap. "You need to be careful not to catch a cold, sister," she said. "You're covered in sweat, and you're lying on the snow. It's easy to get sick..."
Listening to Haku's gentle nagging, Touye didn't feel annoyed at all. Instead, she felt a warmth spread through her. She mustered the last of her strength, tackled Haku, and started rubbing her face against Haku's, muttering, "Mmm, Haku, you're so cute, so adorable..."
Haku didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but she didn't dislike the feeling. In fact, it made her happy.
Still, she pushed Touye away, puffing out her cheeks playfully. "Sister! It's time to eat! And get up from the ground! What if you catch a cold?"
"Alright, alright, I'm getting up. Don't be mad." Touye obediently sat up, took the lunchbox, and started eating. Haku watched from the side, her eyes crinkling into a smile as she saw how happily Touye ate.
In reality, after continuous bloodline development, Touye's body was very different from a normal person's. Her body temperature was even lower than average, so catching a cold was practically impossible for her. But she never told Haku this, because she found she liked the feeling of being cared for by her.
As she ate, Haku said, "Sister, tomorrow... tomorrow is my fifth birthday. So I can't bring you lunch. But you have to eat on time! Don't skip it just because it's a hassle! Or else... I'll be angry!" She puffed out her cheeks again. Clearly, this was something Touye had done more than once.
Touye put down her lunchbox and scratched her head with her right hand, laughing sheepishly. Grains of rice were stuck to her face. Haku shook her head, took a handkerchief from her sleeve, and leaned in to wipe them off one by one. Touye stared blankly at Haku's approaching face, feeling the warm breath on her skin, and couldn't help but blush. It was a heartwarming picture of affection between two young girls.
After she finished eating, Haku left with the empty lunchbox. Touye had regained a bit of strength and sat up. But an uneasy feeling crept into her heart, and her temples began to throb.
*What is it? I feel like I've forgotten something... what could it be? Damn it, I can't remember. I have such a bad feeling... what is it...? Damn it!*
Touye punched the snow in frustration, but she couldn't for the life of her remember what she had forgotten. After all, she had been in this world for so long that many things from her past life were already fading from memory.
She didn't know that this one oversight would lead her to experience another heart-wrenching loss.
"Forget it, I can't think of it." Since she couldn't remember, she decided to put it aside. Touye refocused her attention on Haku's birthday. "Tomorrow is Haku's birthday... What should I get her? Right, Haku loves small animals. I'll go catch a snow rabbit for her tomorrow..."