Hey guys, here is the new chapter hope you will liked and read thru everything.
If we hit 100PW I post a extra chapter
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The relentless clock of the desert does not halt for training, but within the imposing village of Sunagakure, time had become the greatest ally in shaping the future. Eight months had passed since that morning when Haru had dragged his grandchildren out into the open dunes to reveal the best-kept secret of their family. Eight months of daily sweat, burning lungs, and muscles pushed to the absolute limit of human endurance beneath the incandescent desert sun.
In the private training sector of the Kazekage's residence, the impact of time was evident at first glance. The silhouettes of the little ones no longer showed the fragility of nearly a year ago; Daiku, Sunae, and Kimimaro now possessed noticeably leaner, more fibrous bodies, gifted with a postural discipline that only strict shinobi rigor could instill.
The three children stood in the center of the stone platform, repeating a complex choreography of combat movements at medium speed. Their faces reflected an absolute, almost mystical concentration.
"Inhale... two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight..." Daiku's voice resonated within his own mind, maintaining a rigid count as he threw a high side kick.
Beside him, Sunae flexed her legs to evade an imaginary attack, holding the air in her lungs for the mandatory eight seconds. The strain caused the veins at her temples to map slightly beneath her skin. Kimimaro, slightly ahead of the other two, executed a perfect spin, exhaling continuously and evenly during the final twelve seconds of the cycle.
Mechanically, all three had memorized and perfectly mastered the structure of the first breath of the Seven Heavens Breathing Method. They could sit in a meditative posture and maintain the cycle of inhalation, retention, and exhalation for hours without making a single counting error. However, the reality of actual combat was something entirely different.
"Stop!" Daigo ordered from one end of the field, breaking the silence of the area.
The three children broke formation immediately. The second they abandoned the rigidity of the exercise, Daiku and Sunae dropped to their knees on the stone, panting uncontrollably with their hands resting on their thighs. Their chests heaved erratically, instinctively breaking the breathing pattern. Even Kimimaro, whose bone resilience and Kaguya genetics granted him a superior baseline, maintained a noticeably heavy breath, with thick beads of sweat tracing down his forehead.
Daigo approached slowly with his arms crossed, observing them with a mix of pride and analytical evaluation.
"Your bodies no longer collapse under the weight of the ten kilograms on your limbs," the Kazekage began in a firm yet understanding voice. "But you are still struggling with the most important part: synchronization and permanence. The moment you try to coordinate a high-speed strike or an actual dodge with the count of the breath, the rhythm breaks. And you cannot maintain the active state for more than ten consecutive minutes in motion before feeling like your lungs are completely burning."
"It's... it's as if the body forgets how to count when we have to move fast, Dad," Daiku admitted, trying to stabilize his chest as sweat stung his eyes.
"The air feels so heavy inside my lungs when I try to hold it while running or striking," Sunae added, her cheeks flushed with the internal heat of the exercise. "I feel like I'm going to suffocate if I maintain the eight seconds in the middle of a combination."
Daigo etched a small, warm smile, squatting down to the eye level of his children and Kimimaro.
"That is the most natural and difficult barrier of this technique," he explained softly, placing a hand on Sunae's shoulder.
"The Seven Heavens Breathing is not a switch you simply flip on and off; it must become your natural way of existing during battle. You struggle to synchronize because you still see breathing and movement as two separate actions. You have to learn to merge them into one. Do not be frustrated by your current fatigue. Your bodies are barely five and seven years old; your lung tissue needs to mature and expand with time. The fact that you already endure ten minutes without breaking the technique out of laziness is an achievement your grandfather and I deeply respect. Rest for a moment and hydrate your bodies."
The children nodded, grateful for the respite as they headed toward the shaded area to drink water, knowing in their hearts that the path to true family power required a patience as vast as the desert of Suna itself.
While the midday sun continued its implacable march over the great glass dome, Daigo relocated to the central area of the village's training grounds. There, the atmosphere was different, steeped in a deathly silence that was only interrupted by the rhythmic echo of purposeful steps across the compacted sand.
In the middle of the reinforced athletic track stood Gaara. The eight-month journey had wrought a total physical transformation in the young boy. The weak child, prone to early exhaustion and possessing an evasive gaze, who could barely keep up the pace in his first days, was a thing of the past.
Gaara wore a light-colored training suit, tailored tightly to his body so as not to hinder his movements. His legs looked remarkably sturdier, his back had broadened, and the posture of his shoulders denoted a martial firmness he previously lacked. Under Guren's strict and daily tutelage, the boy had fulfilled the regimen of fifty daily laps around the field without missing a single time, alongside a brutal endurance circuit.
In that very moment, Gaara was completing the final section of his morning routine. His movements were fluid, his form was steady, and most impressively, his breathing remained completely under control despite the tremendous physical exertion built up. Stopping at the finish line, the boy exhaled slowly, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a small towel, displaying a highly solid physical foundation and an agility that rivaled the best students of the ninja academy.
Daigo approached with a calm stride, closely observing the coloration of the boy's skin and the stability of his heartbeat. Guren stood a few meters away, leaning against a stone pillar with her arms crossed, nodding slightly toward the Kazekage to confirm the youth's flawless progress.
"Your endurance has reached a superior level, Gaara," Daigo announced, stopping in front of the boy with a gaze full of seriousness and approval. "Your network of chakra pathways has strengthened thanks to your daily physical exertion, and your energy channels finally display the necessary maturity and stability."
Gaara looked up, his eyes shining with a spark of contained expectation. He had waited for this moment through months of pain and silent discipline.
Daigo placed a hand on Gaara's shoulder, transmitting a firm vibration that made the boy straighten even further.
"You are ready, Gaara. Your body and mind have finally built the indispensable foundations. As of today, you leave purely physical training behind and formally begin learning your first chakra nature: the Earth Element."
Gaara swallowed hard, feeling a surge of emotion in his stomach. It wasn't a crystal training, nor a direct attempt to use complex jutsus; it was the birth of his ninja path from the very foundations of ninjutsu.
For the first theoretical and practical lesson of the Earth Element, Daigo guided Gaara to a section of the training field where the stone floor gave way to a deep pit filled with loose sand and dense rock dust. However, they were not alone. Waiting at the edge of the pit, with his arms crossed over his broad chest and a completely relaxed yet imposing posture, stood Arata.
Arata's presence here was no coincidence. Serving as Gaara's prime example for manipulating sand and being a shinobi with massive experience in terrain management and the utilization of Shukaku's chakra, his knowledge on how to interact with the components of the earth was invaluable.
"The earth element, Gaara, is not a nature mastered through speed or mental agility," Daigo began, descending into the pit alongside the child while Arata watched attentively from above. "Many ninjas believe that using Doton is just spitting mud or raising stone walls through mechanical hand signs. That is the approach of the mediocre. The true art of earth demands an absolute attunement with the weight, firmness, density, and immobility of the ground you step on."
Daigo stopped in the center of the loose sand. Without performing a single hand sign, he simply exhaled a small portion of his earth-natured chakra, directing it straight into the ground through the soles of his feet.
Instantly, the soft, shifting sand surrounding Daigo's sandals seemed to completely alter its physical properties. The loose grains compressed against one another with an invisible force, losing all fluidity and transforming into a surface as hard, solid, and compact as polished granite. Daigo gave a soft stomp, and the sound that echoed back was a sharp, metallic strike against the hardened earth.
"So that in the future you are capable of molding, controlling, and utilizing sand with the absolute mastery that Arata possesses, or with the experience I have accumulated, you must first learn to master the opposite state of sand: the immutability of solid earth," Daigo continued, dissolving the flow of energy and allowing the ground to become soft once more. "If you attempt to manipulate loose particles like sand without knowing how to harden, stabilize, and cohere your own chakra within the matter, your control will always be chaotic, noisy, and incredibly easy to break for an experienced enemy."
Arata let out a small chuckle from the edge of the pit, interjecting in his usual deep tone.
"Daigo is absolutely right, kid," Arata said, adjusting his village headband. "Sand is just earth that was crushed by time and wind. If you want to force it to obey you as if it were an extension of your own muscles without possessing the Magnet Release, you must first teach your chakra how to remind that sand of what it used to be: a rock. The key lies in density. You must inject your energy into the empty space between each grain of sand, pressing them from the inside toward the center until no air remains between them."
Gaara listened with almost reverent attention, processing every word from the two experienced shinobi. He removed his ninja sandals to allow the skin of his feet to touch the cold, loose sand of the pit directly, seeking a much purer connection with the element.
"The theory has been spoken," Daigo concluded, stepping back to leave all the available space to the boy. "Now it is time to lay your first foundation."
The challenge Daigo imposed on Gaara to close the afternoon was deceptively simple, yet it carried a brutal technical difficulty for a beginner in chakra nature transformation.
"I don't want you to perform hand signs to invoke a pre-made jutsu," Daigo commanded strictly, pointing to a mark on the ground in front of the boy. "I want you to concentrate entirely. You are going to place your hands directly on the loose sand. Utilizing solely your chakra, you will force the grains of sand in front of you to lose their fluidity. You must bind them, compact them, and force them to fuse until you manage to raise a solid, firm wall of earth. A real wall, born from the sand of the desert."
Gaara nodded with a seriousness that belied his young age. He knelt on the sand of the pit, closing his eyes for a brief moment to disconnect from the visual stimuli of the environment. He brought his hands forward and pressed them firmly against the soft surface, allowing his fingers to sink slightly into the golden particles.
"Feel the sand... feel the density," Gaara repeated to himself, recalling Daigo's precise instructions.
The boy began to mobilize his chakra from the center of his stomach, sending it down through his arms until it reached the palms of his hands. At first, the energy erupted in a crude and uncontrolled manner, causing the sand in front of him to simply blow away to the sides in useless little puffs of dust.
Arata watched in silence, limiting himself to keeping his gaze fixed on the flow of energy emanating from the little one's body. Daigo did not intervene, allowing Gaara to experience the error so he could correct it himself.
Gaara clenched his teeth in frustration, but he did not pull his hands away. He took a deep breath, calmed his racing heart, and slowed the speed at which he was sending the energy. Instead of pushing the chakra with violence, he began to filter it in a subtle, steady, and homogenous manner, just as he had seen Daigo do.
"Don't push them... draw them in. Press them toward the center," the boy thought, visualizing the internal structure of stone.
Suddenly, an almost imperceptible change began to take shape beneath his palms. The loose sand stopped shifting with the wind. A low, dull, and incredibly dense vibration began to resonate from the floor of the pit. The grains of sand in front of Gaara started grouping together rhythmically, pressing against one another with an invisible magnetic force that eliminated any trace of air between them.
With a tremendous physical and mental effort that caused Gaara's hands to tremble violently due to the massive concentration of energy, the ground in front of him began to rise in a crude and heavy fashion.
A crisp sound of grinding stone and compacted earth filled the training area. Inch by inch, a structure began to take form directly from the sand pit. The grains fused with such a level of pressure that the loose texture vanished entirely, giving way to a rough, coarse, but indisputably solid surface.
After several seconds of unbearable tension, the flow of chakra stopped. In front of Gaara, rising firmly from the depths of the sand, stood a wall of compact earth nearly a meter high. It was not perfect; its edges were irregular and it showed a few superficial cracks due to his inexperience with the control, but it was a real, solid, and immovable wall of stone, capable of withstanding a direct impact without crumbling.
Gaara withdrew his hands from the ground, falling back onto the sand of the pit completely exhausted. His forehead was drenched in sweat, his arms trembled from the strain of the canalization, and his breathing was heavy, but his eyes shone with immense joy and pride as he gazed upon the crude earth wall he had managed to create with his own strength.
"Well, well... the kid has a natural talent for earth," Arata commented with a smile of curiosity. "For his first attempt at pure compaction without using traditional hand signs, that wall has a consistency that would take many twelve-year-old genin months to achieve. Not bad, Gaara."
Daigo walked slowly toward the structure, extending his right hand to knock gently on the surface of the wall with his knuckles. The resulting sound was a dry thud, confirming that the sand had correctly fused into a solid mass of earth.
The Kazekage turned toward Gaara, displaying a gaze full of deep satisfaction and unwavering paternal pride.
"You have done an exceptional job, Gaara," Daigo told him with a warm voice that instantly dissipated all the fatigue from the young boy's body. "You have understood the purest essence of Doton in the desert on your very first day: the patience to concentrate the weight and the firmness to sustain it. This crude wall is the first real foundation of all the immense power you are going to develop in the future to become one of the ultimate protectors of our village."
"Thank you, Uncle Daigo, though wasn't I supposed to learn how to use sand like Arata?" Gaara asked.
"That's right, but I want you to at least know how to alter density, as it will help you. We will focus on this for a week, or until I see that you are ready, and then we can focus on what's important: seeing if it's possible for you to control the sand," Daigo said.
Gaara, understanding halfway, nodded, and then Daigo looked at his other two spectators.
"Guren, if I remember correctly, you have a mission tomorrow, so get some rest. And Arata, you can leave to do whatever it is you want now, thank you for coming," Daigo said.
"It's about time. Let me know if you need anything else," Arata said before taking his leave.
"As you wish, sensei. Good luck, Gaara," Guren said before departing as well.
This left only Daigo with Gaara, who stood back up to continue his training.
End of Chapter