After seeing his parents leave, Higashino Makoto sat silently on the bed, sensing the extracted chakra slowly dissipating.
Chakra is not internal energy or magical power or anything like that. It cannot be accumulated; once extracted, if it is not used, it will slowly return to the body.
Unless special methods are used to store it, such as Tsunade's Strength of a Hundred Seal.
After Higashino Makoto waited for the chakra to finish dissipating, he immediately formed the Unseal with both hands and continued extracting it. This is what chakra training is.
Because chakra is energy that is extracted and used immediately, shinobi always extract it in advance before battle, making it convenient to use during combat.
But the problem is that your enemy will not stand there waiting for you to slowly extract chakra.
Shinobi are not wandering heroes. They do not talk about chivalry, nor will they wait for you to be ready before deciding victory or defeat.
Shinobi is a profession that values efficiency. Completing the mission is the primary objective. For that purpose, no methods are off-limits—ambushes, poisoning, kidnapping relatives to threaten them—those are all basic operations.
So when you spend time extracting chakra right in front of the enemy, the opponent's choice will definitely be to come over and send you on your way.
Given a shinobi's speed of attack, even a tiny amount of time is enough for them to kill you in nine different ways.
For a shinobi to have combat power, chakra extraction must be trained until it becomes a bodily instinct.
The standard for this instinct is that there is no need to deliberately adjust the ratio of physical energy and spiritual energy, no need to form hand seals; instead, in the moment a thought arises, chakra is successfully extracted within the body.
When trained to the extreme, the body will even autonomously synthesize some chakra during normal times.
The function of the Strength of a Hundred Seal is to collect and compress this chakra that is autonomously synthesized during daily life and then naturally overflows, making it convenient to unleash it during battle.
This is equivalent to having, for no reason at all, one extra massive mana bar compared to others—naturally a huge advantage—and it can even preserve eternal youth.
It is said that Tsunade does exactly that. She is already several decades old, yet she pretends to be young all day long, her apparent age constantly wavering between ten and thirty.
Extracting chakra again, Higashino Makoto discovered that after having one successful experience, the second time was a bit easier. There was no longer a need to carefully fine-tune the ratio between the two kinds of energy.
It was as if the body had developed a memory, beginning to slowly solidify the chakra synthesis pathway. The synthesis speed also became a bit faster, though it still required forming the Unseal to assist.
Very good—this would be the nightly training assignment from now on, continuing until it was cultivated into a bodily instinct.
After the chakra naturally dissipated, Higashino Makoto began the third extraction.
After repeating this cycle several times, Higashino Makoto glanced at the alarm clock and ended tonight's training, because it was almost time to sleep.
After being reborn into the shinobi world, his daily schedule became extremely disciplined. He went to sleep on time every day, leaving the body ample time to recover, and never allowed fatigue to carry over to the next day.
The next day he also got up on time to train, never allowing himself the thought of being lazy or sleeping in.
Upon arriving in the living room, he discovered that his parents had already gone to sleep, and many empty liquor bottles were placed on the dining table.
Both parents were young people in their early twenties. Originally, a short separation makes a reunion feel like a new marriage, so at night they surely would have engaged in some activities pleasant to both body and mind. But now the master bedroom was completely quiet.
It seemed that after realizing their son was a genius, the couple had been a bit too happy. Without noticing, they drank a few bottles too many, and were now sleeping soundly.
Shinobi are a profession that must maintain vigilance at all times, which is why alcohol is one of the three prohibitions. For them to indulge like this once, aside from happiness, family is also a harbor that puts people at ease.
Humans are an intelligent species prone to extremes, and shinobi who wield great power are even more so.
Those behind-the-scenes masterminds either lost too many little brothers, or lost a goddess, or lost their best buddy, and as a result, each and every one of them became mentally unbalanced.
And a happy family is the cure for all of that.
Unfortunately, this is precisely what many shinobi lack.
Higashino Makoto quietly gathered up the empty liquor bottles and side dishes on the table, did a simple cleanup, and then prepared to wash up and go to sleep.
After returning to the bedroom, seeing that there was still some time, he silently sat by the bed practicing his hand seal speed.
At present, he was not yet certain about his future combat style.
Because he still did not know whether ninjutsu, taijutsu, or genjutsu would suit him better. But no matter what, boosting his hand seal speed first was definitely the right move.
When it reached the bedtime he had set for himself, Higashino Makoto performed his final chakra extraction for the day. After sensing that his cells were beginning to feel fatigued while his body was filled with strength, he lay down and went straight to sleep, letting the chakra naturally dissipate.
The biological clock he had developed over several years made him fall asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, and he quickly entered dreamland.
But something went wrong today. Very soon, he realized that he was still awake—awake to an unusual degree. It seemed as if all his senses had become much sharper.
That shouldn't be the case!
After being reborn, his family life was complete and happy, and he lived each day in a very fulfilling way. There was no mental drain to speak of, so it was impossible for him to be suffering from insomnia.
Could it be that successfully refining chakra for the first time had made him overly excited from the joy of success? Or was it caused by the chakra that was dissipating within his body?
Since he couldn't fall asleep, Higashino Makoto decided to go to the study to look through some books on chakra theory. Perhaps he could find an answer there.
But very quickly, he discovered that he couldn't move at all. His body felt as if it were confined to the bed.
This situation felt somewhat familiar to him. Soon, he thought of having experienced something similar before—back in his previous life, before the college entrance examination.
At that time, there had been several nights with similar circumstances. His eyes could see clearly, but his field of view was fixed. His body was completely unable to move, and fear spread uncontrollably.
It had terrified him back then. Only later did he learn that it was sleep paralysis caused by excessive stress, commonly known as "ghost pressing on the bed," brought about by overwhelming pressure during adolescence.
Since he had experienced it before and knew the cause, there was nothing to be afraid of.
Higashino Makoto even observed the familiar bedroom ceiling with some interest while in this state.
Then he realized he was wrong.
This damn thing was completely different from the sleep paralysis he had experienced in his previous life.
His body was indeed fixed in place, completely unable to move, and his eyeballs could not rotate.
But his viewpoint could move. He could look wherever he wanted, freely, like a fixed camera that could adjust its angle at will.
Then he "saw" the body sleeping soundly on the bed.
At this moment, it seemed as though he was floating above his body.
What was this? An out-of-body experience?
Calm down!
Higashino Makoto began to analyze carefully.
This was the Naruto world, different from his previous life. Here, souls truly existed and could be perceived, and there were several types he already knew about.
Setting aside the dead who lie in the Pure Land and can be pulled back by Impure World Reincarnation, among the living, Orochimaru would, after a few more years, likely begin researching how to put a blade to his own soul. In the past, Katō Dan enjoyed letting his soul drift out to put a blade to others.
Shadow Clones can even divide consciousness.
But all of those can move freely, unlike his current state, where he could only see but not move.
After thinking over the known information for a while and realizing that none of it matched his situation, Higashino Makoto began observing this world from this perspective, trying to analyze the cause from it.
Then he discovered how the viewpoint of this state differed from normal.
The world was still the same world, and the environment was still the same environment.
But beyond that, the space seemed to be permeated everywhere with an extremely faint, omnipresent mist.
This was something that could neither be seen nor perceived from a physical perspective.
Under this special viewpoint, the mist displayed a banded, flowing quality, like rivers freely flowing between heaven and earth, showing faint white, red, green, purple, and cyan hues, among others.
What was this?
Higashino Makoto tried to manipulate them with his will and found that he could actually pry some of them slightly.
He tried to draw in the red mist, which was the most numerous. When a trace of red mixed into his consciousness, Higashino Makoto immediately felt an incomparably violent aura invading him.
Danger! Danger!
He instinctively cut off the connection at once and expelled that trace of red mist.
So it could be expelled autonomously? In that case, there was nothing to be afraid of.
He then tried the other colors and found them all to be very dangerous. But unlike the invasive nature of the red, the other colors seemed to want to assimilate him.
Only the white was different. The white mist seemed to be trying to decompose him, but its power appeared to be too weak, causing the decomposition to be very slow and still within tolerable limits.
Higashino Makoto discovered that after these white mists mixed and intertwined with his consciousness, they then flowed toward the body sleeping on the bed.
He observed calmly and found that the body did not show any abnormalities. The consciousness-form floating above the body seemed to have become a filter, contending with the decomposing force of the white mist and delivering the filtered mist to the flesh.
While filtering, Higashino Makoto was also thinking.
What exactly were these mists?
After reviewing all the information about the shinobi world that he knew, only one answer remained: natural energy.
But were there really that many kinds of natural energy? The original work never mentioned this. Could this be his golden finger?
Yes— as a reincarnator, how could Higashino Makoto not want to turn on cheats? After all, in this world, cheating is legal and won't get you banned.
Setting aside the various minor bloodline cheats, in the later stages even the administrator himself, the old man of Six Paths, personally stepped in to open cheats for his own reincarnated offspring.
After giving bloodlines, he gave his own son reincarnated chakra; after giving chakra, he gave on-the-spot resurrection; after resurrection, he gave the Six Paths Yin–Yang power.
After that, there was nothing left to give.
Absolutely shameless.
After reincarnation, Higashino Makoto was just an ordinary civilian. He was not a descendant of the Six Paths, had no Sage Eyes, no Sage Body, and there was no one stuffing a pet into his belly to serve as a warm little baby.
There was even a period when, before going to sleep at night, he called out to System-kun, Panel-kun, and Deep Blue-kun, but there was no response at all.
So he began forcing himself into strict self-discipline and study, trying to become strong through his own training.
He had even already thought it through: if this body truly had no talent in the future, then he would go acknowledge Might Duy as his godfather and practice the Eight Gates to trade his life for power.
As for seeking out Orochimaru, he never considered it. That guy was too twisted—ordinary people couldn't handle him and would easily end up as experimental material.
He never expected that today, it seemed his golden finger had finally arrived. Didn't that mean he wouldn't need to work so desperately hard anymore?
If I work hard before the golden finger arrives, and still work hard after it arrives, then wouldn't this golden finger have come for nothing?
No. On the contrary, Higashino Makoto felt that he would need to work even harder in the future.
At that moment, he suddenly felt that the consciousness-form was starting to fail. If this continued, he would disappear and become part of the white mist. He immediately took the initiative to cut off the connection, like a scumbag who vanishes after tricking a girl into giving up her body.
The consciousness-form felt a wave of exhaustion. With a thought, it returned to the body on the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
It seemed that this cheat was not so easy to use. One careless mistake, and he could end up turning himself into a vegetable.
Natural energy may be good, but you can't be greedy—take in too much, and you'll easily ascend to the heavens!