With that thought in mind, Seimei decided to continue nurturing his Byakugan.
But before he could even start, he realized it was already getting late.
Just moments ago, he'd spent a good chunk of time testing how his boosted "mental" attribute affected his theoretical chakra cap and recovery speed.
If he kept testing now, it'd probably drag into the middle of the night.
That would definitely mess with his training tomorrow.
Plus, not long ago, he'd spent three and a half hours nurturing his Byakugan. Even though its advancement seemed to reset its state, letting him nurture it further, there was always a chance something could go wrong.
So, it wouldn't hurt to wait a day before running more tests.
With that decided, Seimei didn't hesitate. He got up, walked outside the wooden cabin, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
---
The next day.
Early morning.
Seimei woke up early, finished washing up, and popped a few enhanced soldier pills to fill his stomach. Then he headed to the open clearing in the center of Moon Island.
He didn't jump straight into training. Instead, he wanted to test what had changed with nurturing his Byakugan after its advancement.
Yesterday, this question kept him from sleeping soundly, so he had to figure it out today.
With that in mind, Seimei sat cross-legged, channeling the seal at his forehead to connect with his Byakugan.
Then, he drew a large amount of chakra from the special space in his forehead. After compressing it a second time through the seal, it formed a higher-energy state and flowed into his Byakugan.
Instantly, that familiar tingling sensation hit him.
This time, though, Seimei didn't focus all his attention on it. Instead, he split his focus, using part of his mind to sense how quickly his Byakugan was absorbing the chakra.
Based on his last advancement, the change in this aspect should be the most noticeable.
And sure enough, it was.
Just a few minutes later, Seimei could feel the difference.
Compared to before, his Byakugan was absorbing chakra way faster this time.
Time ticked by, second by second.
About half an hour later, Seimei had his answer.
After this advancement, his Byakugan's chakra absorption speed had jumped from one million points per hour to two million points per hour.
In other words, in just that half hour, it had soaked up a whopping one million points of chakra.
That speed was almost on par with how fast it devoured chakra during its advancement last night.
Last night, the seal in his forehead couldn't keep up with compressing and transferring chakra fast enough, and now, it still couldn't.
So, just like last night, he had to pull chakra from his body's meridians to make up for the shortfall.
Luckily, things were a bit better now than last night. He didn't need to draw as much—one million points from his meridians was enough to keep him going for a while.
In other words, he could keep nurturing without stopping.
The thought flashed through his mind, and Seimei quickly refocused, continuing to nurture his Byakugan.
Next, he wanted to test its endurance.
After the last advancement, his Byakugan went from handling one million points of chakra infusion per day to two million.
Later, two boosts to his "physique" attribute raised that limit by 500,000 and one million points, bringing it to 3.5 million points per day.
Seimei wasn't expecting this advancement to double the limit again. An increase of one or two million would be plenty.
With that thought, he sank deeper into the evolution of his Byakugan.
Soon, two hours passed.
Finally, Seimei felt that familiar swelling sensation at the Byakugan in his forehead.
Clearly, his Byakugan had hit its limit again.
Seimei opened his eyes, checked on his Byakugan, then pulled back his thoughts to review the test results.
Including the initial half hour, he'd spent a total of two and a half hours nurturing it.
At two million points of chakra per hour, that came out to exactly five million points.
As he'd expected, the chakra infusion limit hadn't doubled this time, but the increase fell within his predicted range of one to two million—it went up by exactly 1.5 million.
---
That didn't mean his evolution progress would hit 25 points, though.
"Panel!"
With a thought, Seimei opened his proficiency panel.
After two and a half hours of nurturing, his Byakugan's evolution progress had increased by 17 points, about the same as before.
Doing the math, it took about 300,000 points of chakra to gain one point of evolution progress.
Before, it was 200,000 points.
No doubt about it—with each advancement, this rough nurturing method was getting less efficient.
Seimei was somewhat prepared for this.
After all, during the last advancement, his Byakugan nurturing efficiency dropped from one point per 100,000 chakra to one point per 200,000 chakra.
The fact that it hadn't doubled again this time was honestly a relief.
Still, 17 points a day—well, 18 if you counted the one point he got passively from strengthening his body with Man's Control—was way too low.
To evolve his Byakugan to the next stage, he needed a whopping 10,000 evolution points.
At 18 points a day, even if he nurtured nonstop, it'd take 555 days—about a year and a half.
No question, that was way too long.
And the chakra cost was massive.
For a moment, Seimei was tempted to head back to the village right away, team up with his shadow clone, learn all the Hyuga clan's techniques for awakening the Byakugan, and optimize them on the spot.
But he still had some sense. After taking a few deep breaths, he pushed that impulse down.
As the saying goes, you eat one bite at a time, walk one step at a time. Take too big a step, and you might trip.
Since he'd already made a plan, he couldn't just change it on a whim, no matter how impatient he was. A few weeks wouldn't make or break him.
So, he'd stick to the plan and take it step by step.
Plus, this advancement wasn't all bad news.
Sure, nurturing his Byakugan now required more chakra, but it took one hour less.
In other words, he had an extra hour of free time.
He planned to use all of it to practice the Wood Clone Technique, bumping his daily practice from two hours to three.
That way, his proficiency gains would jump from 400 points to 600 points per day.
This would cut down the time needed to max out the technique significantly.
Not only that, but practicing the Wood Clone Technique more would also speed up the growth of his Wood Release kekkei genkai, which would shorten the time needed for his next physical transformation.
As for the extra 50,000 points of chakra that'd cost? Honestly, Seimei didn't care much.
Last time, after shortening the casting time for the Reflection Technique, he saved a million chakra points daily.
Before, he used 100,000 of that to practice Reflection Technique and 300,000 for the Uchiha Flame Formation. The rest was stored in his forehead's special space.
But three days ago, he'd maxed out Uchiha Flame Formation, so he still had about 900,000 chakra points left daily.
Spending 50,000 of that on Wood Clone Technique was no big deal.
However, he couldn't store all the remaining 850,000 chakra points anymore.
After this advancement, nurturing his Byakugan required an extra 1.5 million chakra points. The 800,000 extra points from his recent "mental" attribute boost weren't enough to cover it.
So, he'd have to pull 700,000 points from that daily surplus to fill the gap.
That left him with just 150,000 chakra points to store each day, after accounting for the chakra saved from body enhancement.
For most people, that'd be a ton of chakra, but for Seimei, it felt a bit meager.
Luckily, he mostly relied on that one rest day every ten days to stockpile chakra. The rest was just pocket change.
So, it wasn't worth stressing over.