On the giant rock at the heart of the island, Seimei suddenly opened his eyes, halting the use of Shōsen Jutsu (Mystical Palm Technique) and Hito no Go (Human Guidance).
He carefully assessed his condition. Since he'd just stopped training, his senses were still sharp.
Compared to an hour ago, his physical strength and cellular vitality had indeed improved slightly.
But trying to estimate when his body would reach its next transformation threshold based on this tiny bit of progress—and only from using Shōsen Jutsu and Hito no Go—was clearly unrealistic.
Seimei figured he'd need to wait until evening, cycling through Raiton Chakra Mode (Lightning Release Chakra Mode) a few times, to get a rough estimate.
With that thought, he didn't dwell on it further. Instead, he turned his attention to the countless shadow clones training both on and off the island.
Suppressing the excitement bubbling within, Seimei raised his hand and dispelled the Tajū Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Technique).
Poof! Poof! Poof!
With bursts of chakra smoke, all the shadow clones he'd sent out across the island disintegrated.
In their place, streams of memories flooded back into his main body along with the returning chakra.
The sheer volume of memory information hit him hard, making Seimei frown.
"No good. Next time, I've gotta use fewer shadow clones," he thought to himself.
It wasn't that his mental capacity was lacking. With his 26-point Seishin (Spirit) attribute, his ability to process memories far surpassed that of an ordinary person.
The issue was that each shadow clone carried an enormous amount of memory data.
If he used them for combat like Uzumaki Naruto did, he could handle splitting into a thousand clones in a short burst without issue.
What's that? You say Naruto used tons of shadow clones for training too?
First off, Naruto was utterly exhausted after training like that, looking way worse than Seimei did now. Plus, the gap in comprehension between Seimei and Naruto wasn't something you could just ignore.
When it came to training, Seimei's shadow clones achieved far more in the same amount of time compared to Naruto's.
As a result, the memory data they generated was naturally much larger.
And that wasn't even considering that Seimei was training multiple skills at once.
The flood of complex information pouring into his mind all at once was far more overwhelming than a single stream of data.
That's why, with just under two hundred shadow clones, he was already struggling to keep up.
Luckily, everything could be adjusted.
With that in mind, Seimei closed his eyes and focused on sorting through the memories in his head, converting the training experiences into proficiency for the corresponding skills.
Time ticked by, second by second.
About half an hour later, Seimei opened his eyes.
His expression wasn't great.
During the sorting process, Fūton: Kaze no Tsubasa (Wind Release: Wings of Wind), Izanagi, and Izanami had progressed as expected, with steady gains in proficiency.
The refinement of Eishin no Jutsu (Mind Reflection Technique) was also on track. Just as he'd predicted, with a massive investment of chakra, progress was promising. It'd probably succeed in just a few days.
The problem lay in the development of the three Kekkei Genkai (Bloodline Limits).
First off, since it wasn't his main body doing the training, the experience accumulated by the shadow clones couldn't be fully transferred back to him.
The reasoning was simple.
A Kekkei Genkai, at its core, was a genetic mutation.
Whether inherited from ancestors or developed independently, mastering one required changes to the user's physical body—specifically, their genes.
Shadow clones might look like real people, but they were essentially chakra constructs, lacking true flesh and blood.
As a result, their training outcomes couldn't sync with the main body.
Likewise, the shadow clones couldn't receive physical feedback from the body during the process.
This inevitably led to low training efficiency.
Worse, Seimei could foresee that for certain critical breakthroughs, if his main body didn't step in, relying solely on shadow clones would likely be impossible.
This would undoubtedly eat into the limited time his main body had.
Seimei hadn't forgotten that once Eishin no Jutsu was refined, he'd need to dedicate time to using it to boost the evolution of his Sharingan.
When that happened, his main body's available time would shrink even further.
The thought gave him a headache.
And that was just one issue.
On top of that, he'd discovered that developing three Kekkei Genkai at once caused the training experiences of the shadow clones to interfere with each other when they returned to his main body.
How to describe it?
It was like reading three similar books at the same time. During the process, you'd often mix up the characters and plotlines.
Correcting those mix-ups required extra time.
That's why it took him a full half hour to absorb and process all the shadow clones' training experiences and memories this time.
He already had limited time in a day. If training for an hour required half an hour to process the results, his overall training efficiency would plummet to who-knows-what.
After some thought, Seimei decided to pause the development of Yōton (Lava Release) and Ranton (Storm Release). Instead, he'd focus on fusing water and earth chakra nature transformations to develop Mokuton (Wood Release).
This way, he could significantly cut down on the time needed to absorb and process the shadow clones' experiences while slightly boosting development efficiency.
Why Mokuton? As he'd analyzed before, the integration of Hashirama's cells had drastically lowered the difficulty of developing this Kekkei Genkai.
So, naturally, he'd start with the easiest and work his way up.
Decision made, Seimei didn't overthink it. He opened his ninja pouch, pulled out a few enhanced Hyōrōgan (Soldier Pills), and swallowed them to replenish his recent chakra expenditure.
After a brief rest, he raised his hand and performed Tajū Kage Bunshin no Jutsu again.
This time, he'd learned his lesson and only summoned about a hundred and fifty shadow clones.
Of those, just over fifty were assigned to continue training Fūton: Kaze no Tsubasa, Izanagi, and Izanami, same as before.
Another fifty were tasked with refining Eishin no Jutsu.
The final fifty were all dedicated to developing Mokuton.
This number was noticeably higher than before.
And that was intentional.
Since he'd decided to focus on Mokuton, Seimei wanted to maximize its efficiency.
So, within the limits of what he could handle, he was pouring as much effort as possible into it.
Hence, the current allocation.
Soon, the shadow clones were assigned and sent off.
Once they were gone, Seimei leapt down from the giant rock, found an open clearing, and began activating Raiton Chakra Mode.
Crackle!
With the sound of thunder ringing out, Seimei's training resumed.
(End of Chapter)