Kuji no In [Training]

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

Having awoken early that morning in the safety and peaceful serenity of his own underground home, Hiruzen continued with what had more or less become his daily routine. Eating a few slices of bread with beef jerky or just leaving the jerky for a later time and drinking a glass of milk, he locked himself in his study where he would work on figuring out more of the world's secrets at a steady pace. One of the bigger secrets that he had been working on in his still short life had taken him to learning very powerful Ninjutsu that could destroy everything humanity could create in seconds. The walls beneath the temples he had visited held no love for those who did not speak their ancient and long forgotten language, but to someone like Hiruzen that had memorized entire languages in a matter of hours, they were a true treasure trove of information. It was in the information taken from the walls that he found the location of yet another temple hidden in the Sanrou Mountain area in the land of Iron. During his stay with the Samurai at the iron temple, he had been trying to find the place but had been incapable of doing so. At the time, all he had done was run into a ruin that had since been inhabited by a family of snow wolves. It had been a rather unfortunate turn of events for him as he had spent several days using the information he had to try and triangulate the position of that temple. Since there was really nothing that he could do about it at the time, he believed that the best thing he could do was to go back to the mainland and further his research as opposed to blindly searching for a place that did not want to be found.

The walls of his work space had been decorated with maps of places he had visited and scouted with his own eyes, as well as pictures from books and personal drawings of his own hand to portray the various landmarks in the area. Even though he was a shinobi, he felt more like an explorer at times, an explorer that went about not only exploring the world, but also the limits of shinobi by pushing himself past boundaries most people would not dare cross. His exploration and studies had taken him to the two main temples in the fire and lightning country, teaching him how to become a Ninja monk and learn the arts they kept between locked doors, shown only when they had to defend their temple. It was thanks to the local monks accepting him into his temple that he was able to further his studies and eventually get accepted into the iron temple by the Shogun of the iron country. Aside from learning the art of Iaido and learning the way of the Samurai directly from the most skilled Samurai that lived in this day and age, he had also been granted insight in the religion they followed and how it was only slightly different from the one followed by the Ninja monks of the lightning temple. It was during his wandering period and visiting a great deal of both temples, shrines, religious communities and even wandering men of the cloth that he learned about Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Hinduism and Shugendo, these being the five main religions he encountered. As a shinobi that became a Ninja monk for the sake of exploration and furthering his knowledge on the various uses of chakra in the world, he did not truly believe in any religion or in an actual god, or gods for that matter.

He had seen with his own the stories about the gods and religions the different temples followed, all sharing similar stories about the gods they served under. To someone like himself that was not blind to logic as so many religious fanatics were, he could see just how many similarities there really were. One of the most notable things he had seen was the god known in the Shinto religion as Bishamonten, but was called Vaisravana in Buddhism. In other religions, he was even known as Namtösé, Duō Wén Tiān, Kubera, Bathala and many more. In every religion, there was one god that was also a warrior king of sorts that was known to have legions of supernatural followers under his control and was often a war deity. The monks in the iron temple worshipped this deity as Bishamonten, a symbol of authority and a protector of warriors, as well as being a member of the Seven Lucky Gods. In the lightning temple, they knew him as Vaisravana, the leader of the Four Heavenly Kings, king of the north and protector of the Dharma. The fire temple had yet another name for him, calling him Kubera, the lord of wealth, god king of the Yakshas and regent of the north. When he went about it in a logical manner, he could tell that they were all in a way related to wealth, being a god king and ruler of sorts, as well as being affiliated with the concept of war or protection during combat. While every large temple went about things differently, it did not take a genius to figure these things out once the proper research had been done. It was because his mind was not immune to logic that he could never follow a religion, nor could he find himself believing that some kind of deity created the world he lived in now, though he would not be beyond accepting it if there were facts backing it up.

While doing his own research about religions, he could not deny that he had gotten closer to learning the secrets behind chakra and it's manipulation. Back in the old days when chakra was still hard to manipulate and most people never truly managed it, those that had the capacity to wield their chakra as weapons were often nicknamed as demigods or sometimes even as demons. It was around these people that a lot of religions could be traced back to, people Hiruzen had learned about due to the information contained in the word walls that were even more ancient than the temples built on top of them. One of the things that had shocked him quite a bit when he was still a shinobi of the Hidden Cloud was the person he saw in his recurring dream that had come into existence ever since he learned how to manipulate hermit chakra. Showing him visions of an underground temple that was filled with a golden light and a slowly opening door that unveiled a golden humanoid reaching out to him moments before he awoke, many sleepless nights had been caused. Thanks to a good amount of training, he had managed to block those dreams out, allowing him to sleep well yet again. Still, it had made him think about what he was doing and how he was certainly on the verge of discovering something big again. For now though, he restrained himself in furthering the variety of things he was looking into. If he was to set out and find what was hidden away from humanity for thousands of years, he was going to have to improve his skills even further and make sure that he was without a doubt as strong as he could possibly be. With that thought in mind, he had already picked exactly what he was going to be training himself in today.

To someone with the perceptive abilities that could pierce every single seal performed with ease, Hiruzen had gone through the trouble of studying the Nine Syllables. In doing so, he had started teaching himself how to mold his chakra by using new hand seals that most shinobi had never ever seen before. These seals were known as the Kuji no in, roughly translated to Hand Seals of the Nine Syllables, also known simply as Mudra. He knew full well that people could train themselves to make their hands so swift that they could wield seals that made it hard for even the strongest eyes to see what they were doing exactly, which was why he had set his sights on mastering all of the mudra there were. Knowing that there were at least twenty-two mudra of which nine were the Kuji-in, he would possess a total of thirty-four hand seals in total when including the original twelve. If he was to ever come across someone with the same perceptive skills he had, he would be able to surprise them by forming seals they could neither understand nor mimic. Already using a handful of mudra for his hermit art ninjutsu, there were still a lot he had to memorize before he could even start connecting them to any jutsu. Going through a scroll that contained drawn examples of every single mudra ever made or used and the philosophy behind them, the Uchiha had a lot of studying to do. The basic five seals were rather simple to memorize, so as soon as he had managed to properly burn the image on the scroll into his brain, he started forming the seals in succession. As the minutes went by, Hiruzen could weave the seals faster and faster without even really having to think about it.

To him, that proved that he had repeated the process enough to have his body memorize the moves. Thanks to his perceptive nature, high IQ and well trained body, he only had to train something for so long before they started happening more naturally. Signifying that he was ready to continue his training by taking it to the next level, he sat himself down in his seat to continue studying the more elaborate mudra seals. Though it was in fact quite a lot to take in, the fact that he had already practiced some of them and knew the basics allowed him to speed up the entire process quite a bit. Reading while performing the seals at the same time, he had all of them in his head in very little time. Understanding the working of kinesthetics and the like very well as an expert when it came to letting the body respond to threats in a moments notice, having his body know what to do when in the heat of battle could save him some valuable seconds that might otherwise get him killed. Now that he had become a widely renowned shinobi for several reasons, the amount of people that wanted something from him had decreased drastically, though the ones that did step up to him looking for trouble were very strong or very stupid. When fighting the strong folk, mastering what could be mastered was a must as those seconds meant all the more when fighting those that could kill a man in a split second. By the time he had every single one of the mudra in his head, several hours had already flown by. Though it felt like it had been much shorter, time waited for no man or woman, not even for him. With so much of the day already gone, he headed over to get some of the food he still had left.

Living mostly on dried meat that could be kept around for a good amount of time before it would spoil, he went to a nearby town every couple of days in order to pick up fresh bread, milk, raw meat, beef jerky and whatever else he felt like taking as extra, usually candy. Working down some roasted chicken, the Uchiha replenished himself before heading back to his office and repeating not only the mudra, but also the original twelve hand seals, even the Tairitsu and Wakai no in. Training his hand seals, creating his own jutsu, mastering techniques made by others and using seals in battle had increased the pace behind them so much that they hardly be called seals anymore. Moving like a blur, even his own eyes had a bit of trouble keeping up with them, which was saying a lot. Training himself for at least another hour, it was time for him to start doing groceries before the small township he went to became too crowded for comfort. In the next couple of days, he would put aside some time to keep pushing the level of control he had over the speed of seals to see to it that he remained at the very top of the food chain.

2098/2000 words
Training Finished