Obviously, Shiki was not planning on knocking on the front door of the Fire Temple and asking for training.
No, much like his usual style, the boy planned to rely on his abilities to infiltrate them and steal their secrets.
Beni's assistance would make it even simpler but Shiki's own abilities in that area had improved over the last three years.
The sensory skills that enabled him to pick on all of his targets' secrets were still pretty much the same but his skills at hiding were far, far better.
Nirvana Art: Kukyoshin, it was a sort of inversion of Kukyo that substituted the combination of the Chakra Camouflage, Transparent Escape and Hiding is Surface Jutsu.
While Kukyo ensured perfect control of himself, allowing for various abilities like the tuning and expansion of his senses in the Kukyo - Seven Sense, Kukyoshin used the same perfect control to eliminate all traces of his existence . . . to a degree.
While it was in use, Shiki moved without sound, giving off no scent and showing nothing on any type of vision or heat based detection while also being able to slip through most solid surfaces.
He could still be touched though and if a surface he was slipping through was attacked with him inside, the boy would take damage so he was not invisible.
Good enough barriers and sealing arrays were really the only issue towards passing by undetected.
Alas, once he arrived at the Temple of Fire, Shiki and Benihime were faced with exactly that, a barrier.
It was called the Sealed Iron Wall and the only way in or out without breaking it was the front gate which could only be unlocked with the special chakra of the monks, the mentioned Gift of the Hermit Group.
'I could probably unlock it with pure fuinjutsu but opening this massive physical gate would alert everyone.' Shiki thought to himself.
'The Sealed Iron Wall is touted as impenetrable but I could definitely bust the gate down through force, Kakuzu could do it with a couple of punches so I refuse to believe I can't if I go all out with my ninjutsu.' He mused.
Regardless, if he wanted stealth to remain as a priority, neither method was viable.
"Have any ideas?" He quietly asked Beni.
"Wait for someone to open the gate normally and sneak in, same for sneaking out." The girl suggested.
"Guess that's the only choice, let's hope there is some daily traffic or we could be stuck waiting here for a while." Shiki responded.
There was no daily traffic.
*
After a short investigation by extending their sensory powers inside, it was discovered that the temple only opened once per week on Sundays, barring any special occasions.
Being that the pair arrived mid week, they would have to wait at least a few days.
The pair fell back to a nearby forest and Shiki made a temporary house using Earth Release, close enough that they could use their respective sensory abilities to survey the entirety of the Temple of Fire..
There, they spent a few days performing a restrained version of their usual training routines, after all, their full training almost always involved the practice and testing of rather destructive techniques.
Soon enough, the promised day came with Shiki and Beni being posted up near the door, fully cloaked by their respective jutsu, ready to infiltrate.
Inside the Temple, a Senior Monk performed a special stance, with his left hand making a half-ram hand seal in front of his body and his right hand being extended downwards, his palm facing down while being parallel to the ground.
A golden aura was emitted from his body, a physical manifestation of the Gift of the Hermit Group chakra, and the gates of the Sealed Iron Wall opened.
While a few monks left on trips with the well wishes of their compatriots, Shiki and Beni snuck in while paying no attention to the ceremonial and sentimental show taking place at the gates.
Said gates would remain unlocked for the full day so if the pair of infiltrators could gather all that they required in a single day, then they would not be forced to hide inside for an entire week or attempt a high profile escape.
Truthfully speaking, if it was just about stealing secrets, Shiki's Kukyo - Seven Senses and Beni's Shuigan could not be stopped by the monks' barriers and seals so they did not even need to enter the temple but, while making his initial survey, the boy had discovered something else.
A sacred vessel with sealing jutsu imbued into it.
Shinobi Monks near the end of their lives, would pour the special Gift of the Hermit Group chakra that they accumulated over decades of training into it.
In times of great need, the Head Monk of the generation, who possessed the key to the seal, could unlock the vessel and use the power stored within to defend the temple.
Shiki wanted this vessel because the power within it could expedite his future training in the Shinobi Monk Arts.
The boy had already seen potential in them by reading the secret manuals of the temple using his Kukyo - Seven Senses from the outside so he desired this treasure to skip the long period of accumulation usually required before the training produced the powerful results he needed.
The Gift of the Hermit group chakra was a product of long and harsh physical and spiritual training.
Each monk refined their body and spirit through daily practice, enabling them to mold progressively more special chakra and in greater quality.
Basically, that special chakra required one's body and spirit to be honed in a specific way, the more one trained, the greater the quantity and quality of the Gift of the Hermit Group chakra that one could mold from their refined physical and spiritual energies.
However, with the Sacred Vessel that contained a massive amount of the special chakra, one could use a sort of reverse process, taking that stored energy and using it to rapidly attune one's body and spirit to the Gift of the Hermit Group.
In the end, one would get results equivalent to decades, possibly centuries of dedicated training.
The creator of this technique was a traitor monk that renounced the Temple's teachings, it made sense considering it ran completely contrary to the monks' philosophy of unrelenting practice and harsh conditioning of body and spirit.
Shiki waited until the dead at night when the guard around the temple's inner sanctum was the weakest due to most monks starting to turn in for the day.
There was a smaller version of the Sealed Iron Wall barrier protecting the inner sanctum and two guards were permanently posted at the door which could only be opened by a powerful enough wielder of the Gift of the Hermit Group.
The boy had spent most of his waiting days, after mentally recording all of the Temple of Fire's secret methods and techniques, analyzing these sealing formulae.
He and Benihime took position near the guards and with a silent imperceptible signal, both guarding monks were rendered unconscious with a swift hit to the back of their neck.
Now under a tight time constraint, Shiki quickly got to work unlocking the Sealed Iron Wall doors,
Each minute passed with suspense but under the boy's increasingly sublime mastery of fuinjutsu, the Temple of Fire's work could not hold for long.
Three minutes and Shiki was in.
With Beni watching the door, he quickly entered and secured the Sacred Vessel inside a storage scroll before quickly setting out to leave but in the moment before the girl could even warn him, a single old monk appeared in the antechamber to find the two unconscious guards and the inner sanctum's doors ajar.
+++++
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 -