Kenji focused on the scroll in front of him. The puppet technique manual was thorough, way more detailed than he'd expected. It was divided into two main sections.
The first section dealt with puppet manipulation. At its core, this was all about chakra threads. The concept was simple enough in theory: release hair-thin strands of chakra from your fingertips, connect them to your puppet, and use them to control movement. The chakra acted as both a physical tether and a command transmission system. Pull one way, the puppet's arm swings. Push another, it throws a kunai. With enough skill, you could even make a puppet perform hand seals, though that required an insane level of control.
The second section was puppet construction, and that's where things got complicated.
It wasn't just about carving a wooden body and calling it done. The scroll went into detail about material selection and treatment. Wood needed to be soaked in special preservative solutions to prevent rot. Animal hides and bones required different chemical baths depending on their intended use. Metal joints had to be forged with tolerances to avoid breaking under stress. And then there was the internal mechanism design. Hidden compartments for kunai, senbon launchers, poison needle dispensers. Every component had to fit together while still allowing for fluid movement.
It read less like a ninja technique manual and more like an engineering textbook.
What surprised him was the section on sealing techniques tacked onto the end. Not advanced stuff, just basic storage seals for keeping weapons and tools inside the puppet, reinforcement seals to protect core components, and control core seals that helped with chakra flow management.
He almost worried about that part until he remembered the state of sealing knowledge in the current era.
Suna's sealing techniques were garbage compared to Konoha's. After Uzushio got wiped off the map, Konoha inherited the Uzumaki clan's bloodline and their sealing expertise. That made them the undisputed masters of the art in the entire shinobi world. Meanwhile, Suna struggled with even basic tailed beast containment. Their seal on the One-Tail was so unstable that Gaara couldn't even sleep without risking the beast taking over his body. That was why the kid had those permanent dark circles and the "I'll kill you all" attitude.
So, it made sense that the sealing techniques embedded in Suna's puppet jutsu weren't particularly advanced. With the basic sealing knowledge from the Academy and his father's annotations on the scroll, Kenji managed to work through the entire section without much trouble.
He looked around the room. Empty. No materials, and tools. He'd need wood, metal components, preservative fluids... That would have to wait until tomorrow when he could ask Ikkaku to help him source everything.
Yamanaka Ikkaku. The name pulled up memories from the original Kenji. Same age as him, neat blond hair, honest face. A clan member assigned to help with daily needs. His parents ran a hardware and general goods shop on one of Konoha's commercial streets, and Ikkaku helped out there regularly. The kid knew his way around materials and pricing. Just a few days ago, when dropping off medicine, he'd offered to help with any purchasing needs.
Kenji made a mental note to take him up on that offer.
For now, though, he could work on the first step of puppet manipulation. Forming chakra threads.
But before that, he wanted to experience chakra itself, not just rely on muscle memory from the original body.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, letting his consciousness sink inward. In his previous life, he'd never touched anything supernatural.
Thanks to the original Kenji's training and physical instincts, he caught onto the sensation quickly. He could feel a strange flowing energy. He focused on it, and with just a thought, the chakra moved.
It flowed along pathways in his arm, chakra channels or whatever the technical term was, and gathered in his right palm. The sensation was bizarre. A thin layer of energy wrapped around his hand, almost like wearing an invisible glove. He could feel it pulsing at his fingertips.
As a Yamanaka, he had naturally strong spiritual perception. That made the chakra fluctuations clear to his senses. But it seemed like the transmigration had enhanced his spiritual power beyond what the original body possessed.
That made sense. The Yamanaka clan was famous for their mental strength. Techniques like Mind Body Switch and Mind Body Disturbance relied entirely on that advantage. You could almost call it a bloodline limit, though not in the traditional sense. The other two clans in the Ino-Shika-Chō formation had similar traits. The Nara clan with their brilliant tactical minds and Yin chakra that let them manipulate shadows. The Akimichi clan with their massive appetites and Yang chakra that enabled size manipulation.
His enhanced spiritual power would be a huge asset for puppet control. It might even help if he ever tried learning the clan's secret techniques.
But the real revelation came from experiencing chakra firsthand.
All those transmigration web novels he'd read in his past life? Complete bullshit.
There was no "meditating to refine chakra" or "special cultivation techniques" described in fiction; these concepts were simply products of authors influenced by wuxia stories. Chakra wasn't something you generated through breathing exercises or mystical enlightenment. It just existed as part of your body.
The best way he could describe it was as a third dimension of human existence.
Normal people in his old world had two aspects: mental energy and physical stamina. You could be smart or strong or both, but those were the only variables. People in the Naruto world had a third one. Chakra. It could be depleted like stamina, but it wasn't the same thing. Losing too much stamina made you tired, maybe pass out. Losing too much chakra could kill you because it was tied directly to your life force and mental energy.
It was like trying to explain height to a being that only understood length and width. Impossible without experiencing it directly.
The original Kenji's memories confirmed his understanding. Chakra training followed a simple logic: increase your reserves or improve your efficiency.
Increasing reserves meant strengthening the foundations. Physical training built physical energy. Running, weight training, sparring, anything that pushed your body to its limits. Mental training built spiritual energy. Life-or-death combat, accumulating experience, tempering your will. And natural physical growth as you aged also expanded your baseline chakra capacity.
Improving efficiency meant better chakra control. Tree-walking exercises taught you to maintain even chakra distribution across your feet. Water-walking refined that control even further. Practicing jutsu until you could execute them with minimal waste. The goal was maximum effect with minimum chakra expenditure.
As for dramatically increasing your total chakra reserves? You either had the bloodline for it, or you were screwed.
The Uzumaki and Senju clans were born with ridiculous chakra pools. Actual monsters by any normal standard. The Uchiha gained a massive boost when they awakened their Sharingan. Most prominent clans in the shinobi world had some bloodline advantage when it came to chakra capacity.
For civilian-born ninjas without special heritage, the options were limited and dangerous. You could try absorbing tailed beast chakra, but that was a death sentence unless you had an ironclad seal and the mental fortitude to resist the beast's consciousness. One slip and you'd explode from the inside out.
"Bloodline supremacy. Of course."
Kenji opened his eyes and stared at the faint glow of chakra swirling in his palm. He wasn't surprised. The entire Naruto storyline was basically the Ōtsutsuki clan's family drama playing out across generations. Every bit of chakra in the shinobi world traced back to Kaguya and her descendants. Bloodline determined everything in this world. That was just how it worked.
He once again tried to channel chakra from within his body That warm energy flowed through the pathways in his body, natural as breathing. A faint blue light began to gather at his fingertips.
He thought back to the original Kenji's Academy memories. The instructors had kept the theory simple. Chakra was a fusion of physical and spiritual energy, released through hand seals to perform jutsu. That was the extent of the explanation.
When it came to practice, there were no detailed instructions on how to merge the two energies. Students were just told to "feel" the chakra inside them, learn the proper hand signs, and figure out how to channel it through those signs.
"Pretty basic teaching method," he muttered. But it made sense when he thought about it. If chakra control required complex understanding, how could a bunch of ten-year-olds master it? Even Naruto, who'd initially been too dumb to pronounce "chakra" correctly, had learned to use it for the Transformation Jutsu. The kid had even invented his own techniques like the Sexy Jutsu and its variants. Clearly, the process had been simplified to something almost instinctive.
It was like physical education. Nobody needed to understand the biochemistry of muscle contractions to run a sprint. You just ate well, trained your body, and pushed yourself. Using chakra worked the same way. As long as you could control it, perform the Academy basics, and hit targets with kunai, you qualified as a genin.
What he found interesting was something buried in the original's memories. Everyone in the shinobi world had chakra, even civilians with zero ninja talent.
During past missions, the original Kenji had detected faint chakra signatures within ordinary people when using sensory techniques. Their chakra was stagnant, weak, nothing like the vibrant energy of trained ninjas. But that tiny spark was what made ninja techniques work on them in the first place. Sensory abilities detected chakra to locate targets. Genjutsu disrupted chakra to affect the brain and senses. If civilians had no chakra at all, they'd be immune to both.
"Having chakra doesn't make you a ninja. Just like everyone can run, but not everyone's an athlete."
He pushed the philosophical thoughts aside and focused on the chakra glowing in his palm. Time to form a chakra thread.
According to the scroll, forming threads required extremely fine chakra control. You had to condense the energy at your fingertips and extend it outward while maintaining cohesion. Too thick and the threads would be clumsy and inefficient. Too thin and they'd snap under any strain. The ideal thread was barely visible, strong enough to support a puppet's weight but flexible enough to allow for precise movements.
He focused chakra into his fingertips again, this time trying to shape it. He visualized thin strands extending from each finger, imagining them as an extension of his hand.
Nothing happened.
He tried again, pushing more chakra into the visualization.
Still nothing.
Maybe his control wasn't as good as he thought. Or maybe forming threads required more than just willing them into existence.
He checked the scroll again, reading the detailed instructions more carefully this time.
Ah. There it was. The key wasn't just visualization. You had to spin the chakra as you extended it, like twisting individual fibers into a thread. The rotation created structural integrity that prevented the chakra from dispersing.
He tried again, this time focusing on the spinning motion. Chakra gathered at his fingertips, and he pushed it outward while simultaneously rotating it in tight spirals.
Then he compressed it until it formed an almost invisible thread. He flicked his wrist, and it shot out, wrapping around a broom leaning against the wall.
The next instant, something incredible happened.
Through the thread, he could feel the texture of the wooden handle. The grain of the wood, the slight roughness where the finish had worn away. And with just a thought, he could make it move.
The broom trembled. Then slowly lifted into the air. The movement was jerky, and he could feel his chakra draining fast since the broom hadn't been modified for puppet use. But it worked.
"This is insane... It's like having telekinesis."
He played around with it for a while, making the broom spin and dip through the space above his head. Pure supernatural bullshit, and it was amazing.
By the time he stopped, nearly a third of his chakra was gone. His head throbbed, but the grin on his face wouldn't fade.
He redirected the chakra thread to his wheelchair instead.
A slight twitch of his fingers, and the chair rolled forward smoothly. Turning was effortless. Backing up, easy. He didn't need to use his remaining hand to push the wheels anymore.
"Finally," he muttered. "No more struggling with this thing."
Being able to control the wheelchair with chakra threads was a massive quality of life improvement. Sure, he still couldn't stand or walk, but at least he had full mobility now. One less frustration in his daily life.
Kenji spent the next half hour experimenting with different objects around the room. The wooden table. A metal kettle. A stone paperweight he'd found in a drawer.
A pattern emerged quickly.
Wood was by far the easiest to control. The chakra thread connected smoothly, and moving wooden objects barely drained his reserves. Metal was harder, requiring more focus and consuming chakra faster. Stone was worst of all. The paperweight nearly exhausted half his remaining chakra just to make it budge a few inches.
As for chakra metal, the legendary material that supposedly conducted chakra perfectly, he'd never even seen it. Back when he was just a genin, spending money on something that expensive would've been insane. His salary had barely covered basic living expenses.
"So that's why most puppets are made of wood."
The scroll had mentioned this. Wood treated with special preservative solutions could reach hardness comparable to metal while conducting chakra far more efficiently. Combined with its light weight, abundance, and low cost, it was the perfect puppet construction material. Chakra metal might offer better performance, but the price would bankrupt any normal ninja. Completely impractical for regular use.
He rubbed the wooden armrest of his wheelchair thoughtfully.
Wood was easier to control. Probably because it was organic matter. Dead plant cells were still biological material, which might make them more compatible with chakra than inorganic substances like metal or stone.
He almost considered the idea that chakra originated from the Ten-Tails, which was technically a tree, so maybe plants had natural affinity for it. But that didn't make sense. The Ten-Tails was as much animal as plant, and ninjas themselves were human. Summoning animals existed too. If plants were truly more chakra-friendly, the shinobi world would look completely different. Probably more like that Plants vs. Zombies game from his past life.
"Wish I had an animal corpse to test on."
The fridge only contained fruit that Ikkaku had brought over. Not even a piece of raw meat to experiment with. But he already knew the answer anyway. In the original timeline, Sasori had created human puppets capable of using bloodline limit. That proved animal and human tissue could conduct chakra perfectly.
A thought flickered through his mind. His expression went blank for a moment. He pushed that idea away.
"Focus on the present."
First, he needed to stand again. Reclaim his status as a ninja. Everything else could wait until after he'd achieved that baseline.
He withdrew the chakra thread and leaned back in his wheelchair.