As the boy's training continued, the second major breakthrough came from the group of clones practicing Yang Release and Medical Jutsu.
Shiki's Yin and Yang Affinities rose at a rather rapid pace for a while after the awakening of his Ryumon lineage, that much had been said before.
So in these months after returning to active duty as a Shinobi, the boy had started dedicating a portion of his time to train in these two areas.
His Yin Release practice resulted in his sole genjutsu Genjutsu: Meikyo Shisui but his Yang Release practice had yet to give rise to original jutsu, simply because Shiki believed there was a whole lot of already existing jutsu he should make an effort to learn.
The Medical Jutsu: First Aid, which Shiki already knew could be mastered and developed to be a wide reaching substitute for all kinds of C rank medical jutsu such as Basic Healing, Hemostasis, Antidote, Anesthesia, etc. So the boy had made sure to master it completely.
This would give him the necessary foundation to learn the more advanced medical ninjutsu available.
While the original series seemed to treat the Mystical Palm Jutsu as a sort of basic medical jutsu, more often than not, what had likely been used was the C ranked Basic Healing rather than the Mystical Palm which was in fact, an extremely difficult and complex A rank technique.
In fact, for nearly the entirety of the shinobi World, it was basically the be all end all of field based medical ninjutsu, a technique usable for any and all kinds of medical treatment though there were more specialized jutsu of a similarly high level, meant more for surgery in controlled environment.
These were the B rank Delicate Illness Extraction and the Healing Resuscitation Regeneration, an A rank jutsu.
After mastering Medical Jutsu: First Aid, the boy went straight for the Mystical Palm as, in essence, it did everything the former did but at a much higher level.
Additionally, Shiki had no current plans to be a dedicated medical nin so he would obviously prioritize the jutsu best suited for field work.
High ranked medical jutsu like the Mystical Palm could, by their very nature, be deadly if their user did not know exactly what they were doing.
This could result from two types of mistakes, control and output.
The first had to do with the wrong application of the Jutsu, born from either user error in jutsu use or a failure to properly identify the issue being fixed which would mean the solution would also be wrong.
In the end, necrosis, cell death and internal injuries were some of the possible results.
The second however, was when you did everything mostly right but overstimulated the treatment area with "overhealing".
Mystical Palm worked by stimulating a damaged area with special chakra increasing the target's ability to heal. Basically, rather than directly healing, it supercharged the target's innate ability to heal.
If however, too much chakra is used, the target's body functions start to go haywire, hence the need for a lot of practice and great chakra control.
Shiki's goal for the practice was to take the regular Mystical Palm which he had mastered to a decent degree, and create a version meant to deliberately cause the damage a mistake in the original's use could.
Even enhance its deadly properties if possible, to cause as much damage as possible with a single graze, the literal "Touch of Death".
And he succeeded.
Keeping the naming convention simple, the boy named this new jutsu the Mystical Reverse Palm, unimaginative perhaps, but accurate and straight to the point, just how he liked it.
'I'll save the pretentious names for my Nirvana Arts.' Was actually Shiki's thoughts on the matter.
While the boy was aiming for "super cancer" in one touch, he was not that successful, not that he thought it was impossible.
What he achieved was a jutsu that scrambled the body's function, the ones needed to keep it alive and in working order, with a single touch.
The area directly hit could be made to near instantly rot away as the cells of the touched area literally self-destruct.
Normally, penetrating someone's body and cells with healing chakra is not an instant process but with a little help from another jutsu, it became easy.
Chakra Scalpel. With its principles, Shiki could apply shape transformation to the jutsu, turning the harmful Yang Release chakra into countless microscopic needles that would tracelessly pierce through the target and dissolve into the reversed healing chakra once inside.
It was a monstrous feat of control to do such elaborate shape transformations mid battle but chakra control was one thing Shiki did not lack in the slightest.
*
Moving on, the boy's Yin release practice still gave him no great breakthroughs as he just studied the principles of some basic genjutsu in order to better understand the art and create his own without them having big flaws like Genjutsu: Meikyo Shisui did.
Shiki did not even call it a Nirvana Art despite its pretentious name, specifically because it turned out extremely flawed, even if far from useless in the right scenario.
The next breakthrough came from the clones practicing Rasengan, however, said breakthrough invoked mixed feelings within the boy.
Now what could this mean?
Well, success was found in that he found the right range of chakra frequency to make two different Rasengan resonate which was the first step to creating the Taikyoku Rasengan.
But alas . . .
Each failed attempt resulted in an explosion that popped the practicing clone with the bigger ones taking out nearby clones as well.
If Shiki could create the shadow clones in the standard way, that posed no issue at all, it would just be part of the process.
However, since the boy was literally burning his life for the chakra to make the quantity of clones, he needed to make sure the maximum benefit was extracted before they would pop.
And so, with a heavy and reluctant heart, Shiki made the decision to abandon further practice of the Taikyoku Rasengan, all despite the promising breakthrough.
The shadow clones previously assigned to that training were reassigned to help the clones working on the Nirvana Art: Dragon Heart's successor which was quite stalled for the time being.
But with his success on Nirvana Art: Elemental and his increasing affinities, Shiki wished to train a couple of useful elemental jutsu to take advantage of Elemental's massive boost in their power and efficiency and so, the shadow clones working on it were reassigned to this endeavour.
Needless to say, the ease of learning a couple of C rank elemental jutsu, especially with a large number of shadow clones, made sure the next breakthrough came from there. One or two jutsu for each of the basic elements.
For wind:
-Wind Release: Great Breakthrough, a straightforward upgrade of Shiki's first Wind Release: Breakthrough. At a lower output, this upper version was functionally the same but it had a much higher ceiling of power;
-Wind Release: Gale Palm, the boy had learned its principles for application in his Nirvana Art: Elemental and, as a pretty basic C rank jutsu, he decided to go ahead and learn it since it could be used for attack, movement and even for a quick defense against projectiles.
For water:
-Water Release: Water Bullet, a basic but useful and versatile water jutsu that would take the form of a stream, large orb or sometimes even a wave.
For earth:
-Earth Release: Tearing Earth Palm, a basic jutsu learned by almost all Iwagakure shinobi that allows the user to tear up and shift the local earth after slamming their palm on the ground. While simple in nature, it remained an effective jutsu widely used by Iwa in actual combat;
-Earth Release: Rock Gun, simple, direct and powerful despite its lack of versatility, this jutsu allows the user to spit out a high velocity rock from their mouth which will immediately enlarge into a huge boulder and crash into the target with extreme blunt force.
For fire:
-Fire Release: Flame Bullet, an extremely versatile jutsu that uses chakra to create flammable oil in the user's mouth which could be spat out as a big fireball, multiple small fireballs or a stream of continuous fire.
It was essentially the Great Fireball and Phoenix Fire jutsu rolled into one, even if the actual mechanics differed a bit. While those two jutsu directly spat out fire, Flame Bullet spat out oil that instantly ignited on release.
In fact, this property of Flame Bullet was one Shiki had an eye on to develop two future jutsu once his Fire Affinity and Fire Release skills were more advanced.
For lightning:
-Lightning Release: Discharge, the sole original jutsu in the batch, developed ith Elekiter, Shiki's first lightning jutsu, as a basis. The D rank Elekiter generates electricity to shock opponents on contact but Discharge was given a great amplitude of use.
Depending on the user's mastery and Lightning Nature Transformation skill, the jutsu's power and difficulty could vary from D rank to B rank, being usable to shock opponents up close, create direct medium range bolts of lightning or even unleash a targeted lightning storm at max power.
With the boy's current capabilities, its last use was impossible but Elemental's boost made the second application, around C rank in difficulty and power, surge to surpass the original jutsu's maximum B rank capabilities.
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Hey, Author here!
To promote the novel I will be releasing BONUS CHAPTERS on SUNDAYS based on the previous week's power stone count.
100 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter
500 Power Stones = 2 Bonus Chapters
1000 Power Stones = 3 Bonus Chapters
Every earned BONUS CHAPTER on Webnovel will also be posted on Scribble.
Just a reminder that you can read up to a FULL MONTH ahead of this site on pa-treon.
I'm trying to become a full time Author now and I'm not going to be starting any new novels just so I can make sure this one is properly completed.
Find those sweet advanced chapters on pa-treon.com/lusoba without the -