"Bloodline limits really are convenient…"
Feeling Yuu's steady improvement firsthand, Dai sighed inwardly.
But he quickly adjusted his mood. The green steam around him surged higher.
"If you've only opened the Gate of Rest, there's not much more I can teach you with that alone," Dai said, voice turning heavier. "So take a good look at this."
"Eight Gates… Sixth Gate: the Gate of Joy—OPEN!"
The moment the Gate opened, flames seemed to cling to Dai's fist.
Yuu's pupils tightened. He flashed backward several meters without thinking.
"Daytime Tiger—"
"Morning Peacock!" Dai roared instead.
A storm of burning fist-shadows swallowed the space in front of him, scorching and pulverizing everything in its path.
So Dai taught Gai this… Yuu thought with a quiet chill. No wonder it's terrifying.
When Gai opened the Sixth Gate in the future, he'd trade blows with Kisame like it was nothing.
Right now, if Yuu stuck to the Leaf's Strong Fist style and only used the Gate of Rest—without weaving in Gentle Fist techniques—he couldn't possibly take a Sixth-Gate signature move head-on.
"Yuu," Dai said seriously, the heat still hanging in the air, "you're only fifteen. You'll open the Sixth Gate someday for sure."
"But the Seventh…" His eyes sharpened. "Even I can't say for certain."
"From today on, I'll pass you every taijutsu technique I created," Dai continued. "Whether you can use them or not… that depends on you."
"Yes!" Yuu nodded, solemn.
They trained until deep into the night before going their separate ways.
The next day, an ANBU messenger arrived.
The jōnin exam would begin in one day.
Jōnin weren't just "promoted shinobi." They were a village's backbone—one of the key metrics by which military strength was judged.
In wartime, excluding tokubetsu jōnin, Konoha only had around a hundred jōnin left. Each one was a squad core, a captain, sometimes even a regional commander when things got desperate.
Their status—and what they carried—spoke for itself.
On the day of the exam, ANBU escorted Yuu to an underground training arena.
Twenty candidates had already arrived.
Yuu quietly scanned them. Most were familiar—at least, he knew their names and abilities from the intelligence he'd collected over the years.
Only the last one stood out: a boy wearing the Uchiha crest.
Yuu didn't recognize him.
And the moment Yuu's gaze lingered, the Uchiha boy sensed it, turned—
—and met a pair of Byakugan eyes.
"…Hyuga," the boy muttered, expression visibly souring.
Then he laughed with a sharp, mocking edge.
"So your clan's done imploding, huh? You've got time to take a jōnin exam now?"
Recently, the Hyuga mess had caused the Military Police plenty of headaches.
Some bodies hadn't been discovered by patrols in time—civilians had seen them first—and the cleanup had fallen on the Uchiha.
And after all that, the higher-ups still acted like they didn't want to dig deeper.
The Police had been stewing for weeks.
Yuu regarded him for a moment, calm and unreadable… then looked away and returned to observing the others.
"Y—" The blatant dismissal made the boy bristle.
But then he remembered what most Branch House Hyuga were like—quiet, withdrawn, grim.
Maybe this was just how they were.
He clicked his tongue anyway.
"Tch. Watching won't help you. The jōnin exam is about strength."
"If you don't have it, don't show up. I'm Uchiha Yakumaru—tokubetsu jōnin."
"Pray you don't get matched with me."
Yuu's expression twitched—just for a heartbeat.
"Uchiha… Yakumaru?"
"Oh?" Yakumaru's face eased when he finally got a reaction. He crossed his arms, smug. "You've heard of me?"
"Fifteen, right? First time taking the jōnin exam?"
"If you run into me, you won't even get the chance to show what you can do—forget becoming tokubetsu jōnin."
Konoha didn't run a separate promotion test for tokubetsu jōnin. The only official exam was the jōnin exam.
Tokubetsu jōnin were simply those whose specialized skill stood out, even if their overall combat package didn't meet full jōnin expectations.
If a candidate was eliminated during the exam but demonstrated exceptional value in a particular area, the village could still assign them tokubetsu rank.
But if you performed poorly…
You stayed a chūnin.
So—
"If you want to represent the Hyuga and apologize properly," Yakumaru said with a sneer, "I might go easy on you."
Yuu didn't respond.
Yakumaru clearly thought he was talking down to a chūnin.
So Yuu gave him the truth—without sugarcoating it.
"I've never heard your name," Yuu said evenly. "I just thought it sounded a lot like Yakumi-senpai."
Yakumaru… It was absurdly fitting for an Uchiha.
Whoever named him had frightening foresight.
"Yakumi-uncle?" Yakumaru's arrogance faltered. He studied Yuu more carefully. "You're from the Mist front?"
Uchiha Yakumi was Fugaku's direct subordinate, a high-ranking Police officer—and family.
Because the Mist front needed manpower, Yakumi and Fugaku had both been active there.
Yakumaru's tone softened immediately.
"If you're Yakumi-uncle's comrade, fine. I won't make a thing of it."
"If we get matched, I'll even hold back a little—give you a chance to show off."
"Talking like that before the exam," a gentle voice said from behind, "are you trying to get disqualified?"
Yakumaru stiffened. Slowly, reluctantly, he turned around.
Standing there—smiling as if nothing in the world could trouble him—was the Fourth Hokage.
"Hokage-sama, I wasn't—"
"I know," Minato said, still smiling. "But underestimating your opponent is a bad habit, Yakumaru."
Then Minato's gaze slid to Yuu.
"Yuu is the same as you—tokubetsu jōnin."
"…?!"
Yakumaru's eyes bulged as he snapped his head back toward Yuu.
Fifteen. Tokubetsu jōnin. Here for the jōnin exam.
A genius—on the same tier as him.
And yet this Hyuga Yud been calmly "observing chūnin" like he was taking them seriously, so Yakumaru assumed he was some clueless first-timer.
What is wrong with this guy?
Ignoring Yakumaru entirely, Yuu bowed slightly.
"Hokage-sama."
"Mhm." Minato nodded, satisfied. "Keep that caution."
In the end, Yuu was a shinobi forged on the battlefield.
Yakumaru might also be tokubetsu jōnin, but he was one of the Uchiha who stayed in the village.
And he'd grown up in the relative peace between the Second and Third Great Wars.
His temperament hadn't been tempered the same way.
Combined with the Uchiha's particular brand of pride…
He was treating this exam like a formality.
But for shinobi, even a single explosive tag could kill you.
A chūnin was far more dangerous than a tag.
Underestimating them was exactly how you ended up bleeding out in a ditch.
Minato remembered the day he saved Kushina.
The shinobi who'd abducted her had underestimated him too.
And they'd paid for it.
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