Fire gives rise to earth.
Earth gives rise to metal.
That was the theoretical cycle of the Five Elements in Daoist thought from Blue Star in his previous life. According to that theory, Uchiha Yoru had started from fire, and after Foundation Establishment, naturally brought in earth.
Since the earlier stages had truly worked—
Then the next breakthrough should logically have required metal.
But the ninja world had no such thing.
That had become a major problem troubling Uchiha Yoru, and it was also the fundamental reason his inner demons had been acting up so frequently recently.
When the mind was tense, the psyche was much more prone to breaking down.
If he hadn't been able to resolve those heart-forms by certain methods, directly erasing the mental afflictions, Uchiha Yoru would have ended up with some high-end nonsense like depression or PTSD sooner or later.
Today, under the persuasion of his own body, he had eaten that metal fragment containing peculiar chakra.
And in doing so—
He replenished some indescribable element.
That, in turn, stirred a reaction from the natural energy.
The Foundation Establishment stage officially entered its next phase.
Wind—
Formless, yet substantial—
Began to surge.
The wind-aspected natural energy between heaven and earth was drawn toward him, repelling every other attribute, and poured into Uchiha Yoru through his nose and mouth as pure, singular wind-aspected natural energy, gathering in his lungs.
Metal transformed into wind.
It was actually metal transforming into wind.
This made no sense.
Absolutely no sense.
But mysticism and science were, in the end, the same thing.
Verified fact always outweighed theory.
So there was nothing more to say.
The Five Elements theory from his previous life could be discarded now.
If it could not match reality in this truly transcendent world, then it was simply wrong.
The moment wind-aspected natural energy entered him, Yoru's lungs were strengthened to an unprecedented degree.
Each breath he drew sounded like the roar of a tiger or the bellow of a lion, full of terrifying force.
Even though Miwa Masayo knew very well that this was Uchiha Yoru, instinctive fear still made her whole body tremble.
She even took an involuntary step backward.
At the same time those thunderous breaths rolled out, Yoru also felt a lump of air stuck in his chest.
Like a terrible stitch.
He couldn't spit it out.
He couldn't swallow it down.
It lodged there, unbearably suffocating.
As time passed, he even began to feel a thread of real fear—
The fear of suffocation.
His face gradually flushed dark red.
Veins bulged one after another, standing out high and throbbing visibly, making him look even more horrifying than a Hyūga opening the Byakugan.
Miwa Masayo was frightened out of her wits.
She circled her contractor over and over in a panic, utterly at a loss for what she could do to help him—
Even a little.
Then, as she brushed against Yoru's ankle in her frantic circling, a faint bit of chakra and fire-aspected natural energy entered her body through her tail, naturally fusing into senjutsu chakra.
At the same moment—
Yoru's voice sounded directly in her mind.
[Miwa Masayo, run. Run farther away. I can't hold it in anymore!]
[Meow? What can't you hold in anymore? Poop?]
[Don't ask, just run! I'll be fine. If you don't run, you'll be the one in trouble!]
[Okay, meow!]
Out of trust in her contractor, Miwa Masayo immediately hurled a flame arrow at maximum speed, striking the trunk of a distant tree on the hillside.
The power of that senjutsu was pitifully small.
At most, it could ignite wood. Trees. Houses.
Other than being fast, it hardly had any advantages at all.
But for Miwa Masayo—
Speed was the advantage.
The instant the tree caught fire, she slapped out a burst of flame before herself and leapt into it, arriving in the next instant on the branch of the burning tree.
[Is this far enough, meow?]
[I don't know either. Miwa Masayo… cover your ears…]
Seeing the calico cat crouched on the blazing tree, pressing her little paws over her ears, Uchiha Yoru finally relaxed.
He opened his mouth.
Then—
With all his strength—
He exhaled the breath jammed in his chest.
"Zha——!"
Thunder exploded.
Dust flew.
In truth, the sound Uchiha Yoru made wasn't loud.
The breath he expelled could only stir the dust on the ground.
But that single bark went straight into the soul.
It could shock wandering spirits.
It could cow inner demons.
It could seize the heart and shatter illusions.
This was Zhálei.
This was a divine ability.
And yet the first thought in Uchiha Yoru's mind was:
Why isn't this the Hum and Ha Twin Qi?
In the next second, he laughed at himself.
Being able to grasp a soul-related divine ability like Zhálei while still only in the Foundation Establishment stage was already a heaven-defying blessing.
As for the Hum and Ha Twin Qi—
That was the sort of supreme divine ability even true immortals would envy.
What level was he at?
And he still dared dream of the divine arts from Investiture of the Gods?
If the current Uchiha Yoru possessed that kind of ability, it would be pure suicide.
If he tried to use it, the best possible outcome would be dying together with the enemy.
But in reality, what would probably happen was that he'd hum himself to death first, and the divine ability wouldn't activate at all.
In truth—
Zhálei was already powerful enough.
Although its physical side effect was laughably weak, so weak that it could only blow dust around, the true power of Zhálei lay on the spiritual level.
Far away on the mountaintop, Miwa Masayo had fallen into a state where body and mind felt out of sync the moment she heard the rebuking cry of Zhálei.
Forget running.
She felt so dizzy that even lying flat made the world spin.
A ninja battle was often decided in an instant.
To fall into a state like this in combat—
Was death.
Of course, that shout of Zhálei had been the first cry of a newborn divine ability, blessed by heavenly resonance.
It represented the absolute peak of its power.
There was no way Uchiha Yoru could reproduce such terrifying might through his own strength alone.
Who knew how long he would need to train before he could once again recreate the power that heavenly resonance had lent him today?
But when that day came—
Uchiha Yoru would be truly monstrous.
In a decisive battle, all he'd need to do was step onto the battlefield and howl once.
Whatever side he stood on—
Would win.
A true strategic weapon.
…
With this stage breakthrough in Foundation Establishment, his cultivation had reached a new qualitative level.
Before this, the rise and fall of the meridians' "breathing" had already undergone a fundamental transformation.
If previously the cycle had been something like three and one—
Now it had become thirteen and four.
Even at its lowest ebb, it was stronger than his highest peak before the breakthrough.
That meant the techniques Uchiha Yoru used in his weakest state now were stronger and faster than the ones he used at his best before.
As for control…
Control had gotten worse.
Yoru brought his hands together.
Natural energy surged through his meridians, stimulating the chakra within his cells and indirectly forming ninjutsu.
Although there was an extra layer in the process, the speed of casting was still astonishing.
Almost the instant the thought arose, the fire-style ninjutsu took shape.
Fire Release: Great Fire Annihilation.
Unlike Madara, who exhaled it from his mouth, spiraling flames erupted from Yoru's entire body.
The towering flames gathered above his head, turned, and blasted outward toward wherever his gaze fell, instantly boiling a stretch of lake as large as a football field.
But in the next moment—
He realized he couldn't control the fire.
Not that it was completely uncontrollable.
But the feedback was terribly sluggish.
There was no way to withdraw it.
He couldn't even quickly adjust the direction of attack.
Clearly, his essence, qi, and spirit had fallen out of balance.
His body, which represented essence, had become too strong.
During the breakthrough, the natural energy and chakra representing qi had become too powerful as well.
Which meant the spirit—his mind—no longer had sufficient control over them.
But Yoru immediately rejected that conclusion.
A robust essence could indeed nourish qi—
But it couldn't be instantly converted into natural energy and chakra.
That should have been a gradual process.
So there had to be another reason why his qi had swelled too far, too fast.
And that reason was easy enough to identify.
[That seed-shaped metal… the one I digested just a little of?]
[It can only be that. What exactly is its origin?]
[Essence, qi, and spirit affect and promote each other. If one of them becomes too strong because of an outside force, it's easy for things to go wrong.]
[For now, there shouldn't be a problem… probably…]
[Shit!!]
[It's going out of control!!]
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