***
Tobirama looked like he'd eaten shit.
Kushina looked like she was having trouble keeping her laughter to herself since she was currently biting her lips and trying her best to keep the strange sounds she was producing to herself.
Minato and Sakumo tried appearing calm but they too had slightly embarrassed smiles on their faces.
Mito had a faint redness on her cheeks as well while Hashirama and Izuna were the only ones openly laughing while hitting their thighs.
"Hahahahahaha~!!!! Tobirama you fool!!!" Hashirama said, slapping his brother's back.
"That's what I expect from someone who thinks about the destruction of the great Uchiha clan all the time!!! A failure!!" Izuna taunted.
It was at this point that tick marks formed on Tobirama's forehead. "Enough!" He said harshly, causing Kushina to jump in place, slightly afraid until Mito calmly placed her hand on her shoulder.
"He is a spy. And I know it! He definitely doesn't have any good intentions."
"Are you sure, Tobi?" Hashirama asked softly, this time with a pleading look in his eye that sort of asked Tobirama to drop the matter, but Tobirama stayed firm. "No. I know and I trust my instincts. There's something off about this boy. He's moving with too much purpose for someone afraid to even attend the shinobi academy."
Hashirama sighed audibly as did Mito but the two of them said nothing more knowing that whatever they did wouldn't change Tobirama's mind.
Tobirama however continued, "There's still that unresolved connection this boy has to Madara. Until we know how he knew that 'secret' information about Madara and my brother, we can't rule out the possibility that he's working as Madara's agent in Konoha."
Minato nodded thoughtfully while Sakumo looked slightly unconvinced. But in the end no one else said anything and the matter ended there.
After a short bout of silence, Sakumo however said something that caused Minato to give him a wry smile, "It seems Kakashi feels good being relied on by someone once again…"
***
Kakashi standing in front of the memorial stone looked lost like always, but this time his voice was slightly lighter as he spoke to his fallen comrades.
"Rin… Obito… someone once again told me that they'd rely on me today. It's been so long since I've heard those words… It reminded me of the time we spent as a team under lord fourth. Do you think I'll be able to keep him safe this time?"
"He said that someone contacted him to make him reveal sensitive information about the village. I told him to take it easy and leave it to the professionals, but I'm still worried… do you think I can keep him safe? I hope I am… he's a really naive kid… but he's a good kid."
What Kakashi didn't notice however was that there was someone else in the graveyard paying attention to his one sided conversation, a man with an orange spiral mask with a single hole for his right eye.
The man heard the words Kakashi spoke about before whispering into the wind.
"Another teammate Kakashi…? Let's see how long this one will last… I shall make you feel the same despair you made me feel when you stabbed Rin through the heart."
***
Haruto, blissfully unaware of all the chaos his actions were causing continued reading ahead in the textbook now that he had mastered the art of making chakra within himself.
'Chakra is a peripatetic energy. It is always moving inside the body through the chakra circulatory system, nourishing every part of the body it touches.'
'Stopping this movement requires chakra control and guiding this movement towards selected organs in particular is called chakra circulation.'
'Described below is the basic chakra circulation pathway which lays a stable foundation of the body and the mind and helps it grow gently by nourishing just the right parts at the right time with the right amount.'
Below was a diagram that showed a chakra circulating in a human body, moving from one tenketsu to the other.
It started from the stomach, moving up to the lungs then turning around the heart and splitting into the limbs before joining up and reaching the spine and then the brain itself before reaching the stomach again to complete the loop.
The circulation started and ended in the stomach, but it moved through the entire body before ending back up in there.
'Since the chakra circulation method continuously supplies fresh chakra to the brain, maintaining this chakra circulation pathway regardless of the situation you are in will help you remain calm and collected in times of great need.'
'The chakra will slowly seep into the cells connected with the natural chakra pathways and strengthen them along the circulation pathway. This will help you grow a strong and well nourished body that is sensitive to chakra changes.'
Haruto read the lines and became instantly smitten by the process.
'Isn't this just like those cultivation novels?'
'Can I get a super powerful chakra circulation method and grow my cultivation by leaps and bounds?'
'Especially since I remember from the earlier chapters that chakra passing through certain tenketsu gives the chakra certain properties…'
'By the way I remember that Chakra couldn't interact with the body directly… then how does the chakra from the circulation method nourish the body exactly?'
Haruto looked at the textbook again but the method was never explained. So he made an educated guess.
'Is it because of the tenketsu?'
'The tenketsu gives the chakra some properties which allows it to interact with the body?'
'Then does that mean the secret to Tsunade's Monstrous Strength is hidden in this circulation method?'
Haruto didn't have an immediate answer to the question, yet, excited beyond belief at the possibilities that this method posed, he began his first attempt at the Chakra circulation method.
He, while sitting cross legged, first memorised the pathway through which chakra would flow through his entire body.
'Stomach first, then lungs, then heart, then the limbs, then the spine, and finally the brain before it all loops back together.'
And then slowly began to move the chakra sitting like a coiled dragon in his stomach around his natural chakra pathway system.
As soon as Haruto nudged the Chakra in his stomach tenketsu to move, it obeyed his command, but only partially.
It wasn't as if the Chakra wouldn't move or stayed static after a single jerk. No the problem was the exact opposite.
The Chakra wouldn't stop moving as soon as Haruto gave it the initial nudge.
It seemed like Chakra had its own inertia it wanted to follow through the natural Chakra pathway system. As if it were preprogrammed to move in a certain way on its own.
Haruto sat there with his eyes closed and let the Chakra first move on its own. He observed as it moved throughout his body, reaching various tenketsu, flooding them all with chakra before passing onto the next tenketsu and repeating the process.
The Chakra had no set pathway it followed, it moved towards wherever it found space and filled that area before moving elsewhere. Much like a gas moving from high pressure zones to low pressure zones.
Yet, each tenketsu the chakra filled enabled Haruto in a strange way. It gave him the sensation of fulfillment as if his body were suddenly lighter and as if he could literally step on clouds.
After a few minutes, when his Chakra was thoroughly distributed across his body, Haruto finally began the chakra circulation method. And to do so, he first regathered all the chakra back to the central tenketsu, his stomach.
It took about half an hour to do so, but Haruto managed to bring back the entire repository of the chakra he had generated back to his stomach's tenketsu.
The feeling of walking on clouds vanished and he returned back to a low.
And then Haruto slowly and finally began the Chakra Circulation method by gently coaxing the chakra into moving in the directions he wished.