"Hmm, eating crabs..." Inuzuka Tsume thought for a moment and said, "It seems there are crabs in the artificial lake in the park, and quite a few shrimp as well."
Don't ask how she knew; the Inuzuka Clan's dog brigade often raided the artificial lake at night. Fish, shrimp, shells—they'd bring back a bunch every few days. They never had to spend money on seafood or meats like rabbit, chicken, and duck. Konoha sat upon mountain forests rich in resources, and naturally, no one cared about such things.
Even if a pack of dogs went hunting and fishing every day, how much could they actually catch? As soon as one batch was caught, another would migrate from the rivers into the artificial lake, filling it up again... Ino's eyes lit up as she heard this and asked, "Really?"
She truly didn't know that there were crabs and fish—and plenty of them—in the Konoha Park artificial lake. Otherwise, she would have gone to catch them long ago.
"Of course..."
Inuzuka Tsume reached out and scooped Ino from Kuro Maru's embrace, placing her on her own lap. Ino's attention was diverted by this clever "Great Shift of Heaven and Earth" to the artificial lake in Konoha Park—
Guiding Ino to formulate a slightly wicked, bratty plan while simultaneously cultivating a junior's thinking ability was one thing.
Doing it, however, was another matter.
Thinking about it was fine, but one absolutely could not actually do it. Inuzuka Tsume had a cheerful and generous personality; she seemed careless, but in reality, she was extremely meticulous and quite skilled at fooling children—even a little one like Ino, who possessed memories of a "past life," was successfully fooled.
"Wait until the Chunin Exams are over. After the second exam, there will be a break of about a month. When there's time, I'll have Kuro Maru find you. Then, I'll bring Kiba and his sister Hana, and we'll all go to the artificial lake to catch crabs together."
After promising to catch crabs after the second exam, Inuzuka Tsume pulled up the data from the various assistant proctors.
This point-deduction data was captured by the computer program, forming a real-time, dynamic ranking list.
The "computers" in the Ninja World were similar in shape to the computers Ino was familiar with, but their fundamental principles were entirely different—
Their collection of data and information used analog signals. What processed these signals, however, was Chakra—the method of calculation wasn't logic circuits, but an analog brain Chakra formation built into the computer. It used the power of the formation to replicate a human brain and then operated via Chakra, possessing unique advantages in certain aspects.
For example, when the Yamanaka Clan read memories from a human brain, they relied heavily on these computers. They could intuitively turn a person's memories into real-time graphic and text information, saving a vast amount of categorization and organization procedures.
Another example was calculating Ninjutsu... it could collect human body data in an instant and manifest the phenomena of various Ninjutsu—the range of the technique, effective lethality, power, and so on.
In terms of data calculation, it was slightly inferior; the built-in method was a visualized 38-column Super Abacus... This was the first time Ino had seen such "black technology," and naturally, she found everything novel. More than half of the data charts on the screen remained at full marks—those were the candidates still in Class A.
After a while, the candidates in Class A finally received notice and followed the proctors into Class B. A new and more intense round of competition began.
An invisible dark war.
The charts showed that the "scholars" who had written down the "answers" early on were already at negative points; they hadn't realized their answers had been stolen. Most of these "scholars'" teammates were doing much better, but once combined, their scores weren't necessarily good.
This group of Ninjas newly appearing in Class B was the most miserable. Facing candidates who had basically become familiar with the rules, they were like pieces of fat meat.
Some intentionally passed along false intelligence, some obtained false intelligence, and some were intercepted while stealing intelligence.
As for that strange logic question at the end... Ino could only lament: this batch of candidates is no good!
With so many candidates, the last question was actually left blank... Standing on the podium, every detail below was clearly visible. Inoichi Yamanaka put on the sour face of the Intelligence Screening Squad Captain, remaining silent as he looked down upon the candidates in the examination hall.
The cheating that the candidates thought was rigorous and hidden was exceptionally clear in his eyes. The spread-out Mind Transmission Network was rapidly relaying various obvious cheating attempts... Compared to that future Joint Chunin Exams, the candidates in this one were truly miserable—they had run into Inoichi Yamanaka.
As the head of the Yamanaka Clan and a genius Ninja of the previous generation, Inoichi's innate sensory abilities from his family's Secret Techniques were beyond doubt.
Especially now, this "Enhanced Version Inoichi" who had been personally strengthened by his daughter; his sensory abilities were at least twice as strong as the original—and it was foreseeable that he would become even stronger in the future. Being monitored by such a proctor truly left them without a single chance.
The chief proctor was ruthless in deducting points... Inoichi wasn't worried at all about the number of people who would pass the first exam—after all, it was based on a percentage.
No matter how bad the scores looked, letting one-third of the people pass the first exam was a certainty. If the scores looked a bit better, he'd just loosen up a bit and let half of them pass.
Compared to the imperfections in the design of the written portion of the first Joint Chunin Exams, this version processed by Ino undoubtedly offered many more flexible options, allowing for both offensive and defensive strategies—if there were many qualified candidates, they'd pass based on the passing line; if there were few, they'd take the top percentage. It would absolutely not result in an embarrassing situation like the first Joint Exams where too few people passed the first round, requiring an emergency meeting to decide.
Amidst the rise and fall (mostly fall) of the chart data, the first phase of the exam gradually came to an end.
"Everyone, please put down your pens—"
Inoichi Yamanaka's voice rang out, and everyone stopped their movements.
"The scores will be tallied now, and the data will be transmitted shortly. Candidates on the second chart, please leave the examination hall—you have been eliminated."
Following that was a period of oppressive, suffocating waiting as the computer in the monitoring room frantically burned through its 38-column abacus.
Ino:...Did the Ninjas who created these programs never consider one thing: actually, if you change the calculation to use Congruences and then perform statistics, it would be much simpler? Also, if you transform some formulas into the simplest addition and subtraction and calculate them separately, wouldn't it be faster?
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