Xingye's next test was the core of his heritage: the Transparency Release. He had speculated that the System's "Assault" skill had forcibly awakened his Bloodline Limit early. Now, in the silence of his room, he wanted to see if he could walk the path without the System's training wheels.
He stood in the center of the room, eyes closed, muttering half-remembered incantations and twisting his fingers into experimental hand seals.
Nothing. He remained stubbornly visible.
Alright, let's do this the hard way, he thought.
He activated Secret Skill: Assault. Immediately, that cold, tingling sensation flooded his Mukuro. This time, he didn't focus on the world outside. He turned his gaze inward, tracing the exact path the chakra took as it spiraled from his gut to his skin.
Because he remained motionless, the drain was slower. He maintained the shroud for nearly eight minutes, memorizing every turn and junction of the spiritual energy. When he finally deactivated the skill, he collapsed onto his bed, his head spinning.
So this is what chakra exhaustion feels like, he groaned. It was a hollow, nauseating dizziness—the "Kakashi special."
He rested for two hours until his "blue bar" felt half-full. Then, he tried to replicate the flow manually. He pushed the energy from his dantian, guiding it along the path he'd mapped on a meridian chart.
The tingling returned. He looked at his hands. They were covered in a faint, wavering distortion—but it was a mess. The shroud was uneven; deep shadows pooled at his elbows while his fingertips remained perfectly clear. He walked over to the mirror and winced.
His reflection looked like a low-resolution mosaic. It was a "camouflage" that might work in a dark forest at fifty yards, but face-to-face, even a blind man would notice the shimmering air.
Chakra control, Xingye realized. The System handled the fine-tuning perfectly, but his manual control was amateurish. Until he mastered exercises like tree climbing or water walking, his manual Transparency would remain a glitchy mess.
Still, he thought as sleepiness finally washed over him, using it like this is a hell of a workout for my capacity.
The next morning, the "overload" from his night of training claimed its price. Xingye woke up late and had to sprint to the Academy.
He slipped into class as Mitsui-sensei was beginning the lecture. The teacher's eyes lingered on the wooden sword strapped to Xingye's back and the glint of the dagger in his pouch.
"Start training early, did we?" Mitsui asked, his tone surprisingly soft. He knew the Gekkō and Hatake legacies. "Just don't go cutting yourself, Xingye. Sit down."
Xingye offered a polite bow and headed for his seat. Despite his attempt to be low-key, the wooden sword made him a magnet for attention. The girls watched his graceful stride with renewed interest, while a group of boys in the middle row exchanged sour looks.
"Look at him, trying to act like Sakumo," one boy whispered loudly enough for the whole room to hear.
"If you want to show off, just say it. Why bring a toy to school?" another snickered. "Bet he wouldn't dare spar with Uchiha Iwa for real."
Jiraiya stood up, his face reddening as he prepared to launch a street-style verbal assault in Xingye's defense. Even Sakumo, several rows away, narrowed his eyes at the hecklers, his hand straying toward his own desk.
But Xingye didn't even look at them. To a man with a thirty-year-old soul, the "bitter grapes" of six-year-olds were less than an annoyance—they were invisible. He gently pushed Jiraiya back into his seat and sat down with a calm, ethereal composure.
He didn't argue. He didn't defend himself. He simply opened his notebook, the wooden sword leaning against his desk like a silent promise of future violence.
Behind him, Tsunade leaned forward slightly, her amber eyes fixed on the back of his head. He's not even mad? she wondered. For the first time, she found herself genuinely curious about the quiet boy with the ghost-like smile.
The hecklers, seeing their insults bounce off him like rain off a roof, felt their blood pressure rise. It was the ultimate defeat: they had tried to start a fire, and he hadn't even given them a spark.