Chương 15: Before the Assessment

Mitarashi Anko. A disciple of Orochimaru, one of the Sannin. It was originally a prestigious status. But ever since Orochimaru used his fellow villagers for forbidden jutsu experiments and defected, her position had become highly awkward. Anko and Shuji were both born in Konoha Year 40. They were in the same Academy graduating class but assigned to different homerooms. The original owner of his body had merely seen her around. They were not close.

After months of ANBU confinement and interrogation, Anko had finally been cleared of suspicion and given her freedom. It was likely just a procedural formality. Up to this point, Orochimaru's ultimate sin was murdering his comrades to harvest them for jutsu experiments. That was a line even the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, could not cover up. For over fifty years, the very foundation of the ninja villages relied on a basic bottom line of security between the clans: no harming one another.

That was the core condition allowing these clans to coexist. Orochimaru had not respcted that condition. Staying in the village was no longer an option. Yet his situation was extremely complex. As one of the Sannin, he had made massive contributions to Konoha and retained countless loyal subordinates. As the Hokage's student, he shared decades of emotional history with Hiruzen. The end result was a gray zone. Orochimaru could be killed, or he could be spared, but he absolutely could not stay.

Hiruzen chose to spare him. He defeated his student, deliberately let him escape, and then simply followed the standard missing-nin protocol, leaving Orochimaru to wander the outside world. Since the master received this kind of quiet leniency, the disciple and former subordinates were naturally let off the hook with light warnings. Otherwise, given Konoha's true nature as a military dictatorship, this defection should have triggered a brutal, bloody purge.

It would never have ended with so much noise and so little actual action. For Shuji, this made his current squad composition quite messy. Two teammates. One was far too young. The other had just walked out of an ANBU interrogation cell. Both carried massive political baggage. But overthinking it was pointless. He still had to wait for the Third Hokage's notification regarding his evaluation mission. Word was that his designated examiner was still out on a mission.

Shuji pushed the politics aside and focused entirely on his training. Deep in the forest behind the Senju old estate, Shuji sat cross-legged on the ground. After his recent period of meditation and experimentation, his perception of the ripples caused by his Wood Release constructs had grown much sharper. He could feel the subtle spatial tremors when natural energy was unconsciously disturbed. It was no longer a vague fluctuation. His mental senses could capture the distinct rhythm of that raw, primordial power.

It felt like a silent undercurrent surging through the deep ocean. He was finally ready to attempt absorbing natural energy. He had crossed the threshold of perception. The next step was actually guiding this omnipresent force into himself. But touching it directly with his real body? That was playing with fire. Without an experienced Senjutsu master watching over him, a single mistake meant eternal petrification. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

He remembered the original storyline. Uzumaki Naruto had used Shadow Clones to practice and sustain Sage Mode. Compared to Naruto, Shuji had a massive advantage. As a Wood Release user, he could use Wood Clones. Aside from being much harder to distinguish from the original body, a Wood Clone inherited the user's physical strength and remained highly flexible in combat. Most importantly, Wood Clones shared their senses with the main body in real time.

A Shadow Clone had to be dispelled for the user to receive its memories. A Wood Clone bypassed that hassle entirely. This meant he could use a Wood Clone to absorb natural energy. Even if it lost control and petrified, he would only lose a wooden construct. His real body would remain completely unharmed. With the path forward clear, a Wood Clone split off from Shuji's body. Shuji closed his eyes. His mental focus tightened.

He projected his perception outward, linking his neural pathways with the Wood Clone to fully synchronize their senses. He sent a clear command: Attempt to perceive, guide, and absorb the natural energy permeating the surrounding space. The Wood Clone followed the order. At first, the forest remained quiet. Only the rustle of the wind blowing through the leaves broke the silence. But soon, a heavy, sluggish weight began to gather around the clone. The air seemed to stagnate.

Even the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy felt strangely slow. Through their shared senses, Shuji felt it with perfect clarity. It wasn't a vague ripple anymore. He felt as if he had been plunged into an invisible ocean of life, gentle yet containing a terrifying, boundless power. Countless microscopic particles carrying the raw breath of life flowed slowly around the Wood Clone like transparent stardust.

Using its own chakra as a bait, the clone carefully reached out to touch and guide a single wisp of it... The moment that thread of natural energy entered the Wood Clone's body, everything went wrong. An indescribable torrent of power exploded inside the clone. It was bursting with vitality, yet violently destructive. It felt like pouring boiling molten life into a freezing container. The Wood Clone shaked violently. The chakra structure holding its body together destabilized in an instant.

Even more shockingly, clear wood grain surfaced on the clone's skin at a visible rate, looking exactly like ancient tree bark. Its human shape began to twist and expand uncontrollably. The joints popped and cracked with the sound of snapping wood fibers. The entire figure was rapidly transforming into a literal tree.

"Ugh!" Shuji grimaced, his face going slightly pale. The sensory feedback from the clone was brutally realistic. It felt as if his own limbs were being warped and turned to wood by that berserk energy. He endured the discomfort, focusing entirely on observing the transformation. Just as the Wood Clone was about to completely lose its human form and become a twisted, monstrous tree, an ashen gray color began to spread rapidly from the wooden sections like a plague. Cold, dead silence swallowed the wild vitality.

The gray petrification was seconds away from covering the entire deformed tree... Shuji formed a hand seal and barked a single word.

"Release!" Bang! With a muffled thud, the bizarre half-tree, half-stone construct collapsed into a charred, rotten log. It hit the dirt and crumbled away into a few wisps of fading energy and dust. Shuji slowly opened his eyes. He let out a long breath and raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. It was a failure, but the data he gathered was important. After absorbing the natural energy, the inherent 'wood' nature of the Wood Clone had been drastically amplified.

It became so dominant that the clone's structural balance collapsed. It couldn't maintain a human form and forcibly reverted into a tree. Only after it fully lost control did the natural energy backlash and petrify it. This confirmed a crucial detail. Natural energy did not amplify things blindly. It enhanced and transformed the user based on their foundational traits. The toads of Mount Myoboku and the snakes of Ryuchi Cave gained Senjutsu traits specific to their species.

His Wood Clone was built purely on the power of Wood Release. And that power inherently carried faint traces of the God Tree. Therefore, when the natural energy flooded in, it prioritized amplifying that core 'wood' essence. It forced the clone to rapidly grow and transform until the physical container broke under the strain. Shuji stared at the charred remnants on the ground. A calculating light flickered in his eyes.

While he was deep in thought, a pitch-black hawk glided down from the sky as silently as a shadow. It landed steadily on a low branch right in front of him. The hawk's sharp eyes locked onto him. In its beak, it carried a small, rolled-up message tube. The tube was made of ordinary wood, bearing a single mark: the crimson wax seal exclusive to the Hokage's office. He unrolled the small slip of paper inside. It bore Sarutobi Hiruzen's familiar, slightly messy, yet forceful handwriting.

"Shuji, the examiner has returned. Three days from now, noon, Third Training Ground."