Chapter 440: Cultivation of Senjutsu (Part 4)
A few days later.
"The fifty-eighth time."
The little slug said calmly.
Through its semi-transparent body, one could see a naked girl sitting inside the slug. Massive chakra aura fluctuated violently on the girl's body, sometimes stable, sometimes undulating like stormy waves. The girl's appearance was also changing constantly: sometimes maintaining a human appearance, sometimes her limbs softened, showing signs of transforming into a slug.
It was Haruno Sakura undergoing Senjutsu cultivation.
At the same time the slug said this number, the chakra fluctuation on Haruno Sakura became more and more violent, finally breaking through a certain limit, like a flood bursting the dam built by Haruno Sakura's spirit. Massive natural energy lost control and poured frantically into the girl's body, eroding her flesh. In an instant, Sakura's limbs softened rapidly, and her skin faintly became transparent!
Seeing its contract master Haruno Sakura fall into danger, the little slug remained extremely calm, leisurely spitting her out, and conveniently drawing away the raging natural energy in her body, resolving the danger.
Haruno Sakura landed in front of the little slug with a splat, her face pale, panting heavily.
The natural energy quickly dissipated from her body. Her hands and feet, which were still a mass of jelly-like soft flesh when she fell, naturally reverted to slender fingers and tender white feet.
"This time you lasted 31 minutes and 7 seconds before losing control, a full two minutes longer than last time. There is progress!" The slug glanced at the naked girl in front of it and said lightly, "If you continue to practice at this rate of progress, trying a few dozen more times, you will be able to maintain Senjutsu Chakra stably!"
"If only it were that smooth." Haruno Sakura shook her head, breathing the air greedily while speaking weakly.
She stood up with difficulty, spread her hands and said: "I already understand all the skills of manipulating natural energy, and I won't make common mistakes again. It's unlikely to make such rapid progress anymore. The rest can only rely on grinding, using a large amount of practice to accumulate experience in manipulating natural energy, and progressing slowly."
Haruno Sakura was actually quite close to success. From the progress of manipulating Senjutsu Chakra, she had mastered ninety percent of the content, but the remaining ten percent was the most difficult part; the time required to complete it would probably be much more than the time spent before.
Cultivating Senjutsu is like maintaining the balance of a scale. One side of the scale holds the weight of natural energy, and the other side holds physical and spiritual energy. Only when the two are exactly equal can the scale be balanced; conversely, with even a slight deviation, the scale will tip instantly. The problem is that on the natural energy side, the weight is constantly fluctuating and increasing, so more energy must be added precisely to the other side constantly. This is the real difficulty of cultivation.
The slug smiled: "Then take a break first, Haruno Sakura-sama."
"It looks like you have reached your limit today. Don't force yourself to continue training. Eat something."
The girl nodded wearily.
For this kind of empirical training, Haruno Sakura knew that the Shadow Clone training method would be very effective and could double the efficiency, but she couldn't use it—just training Senjutsu with her main body was tiring enough. Haruno Sakura also imagined having unlimited energy like Naruto, always training with full vitality, but unfortunately, she was just a mortal. Even cheating with multiple soul cores only made her stronger than ordinary people, still far behind that guy who cheated openly.
Moreover, Naruto's single-minded personality, acting more on intuition than thinking twice, would also greatly reduce the mental pressure of Shadow Clones on the original body. With Haruno Sakura's sensitive mind and habit of extended thinking, she couldn't learn Naruto's way of doing things.
"Sigh." Haruno Sakura sighed subtly.
A characteristic of mortals is that they get mentally tired easily. Senjutsu training didn't consume much physical strength for her, but repeated attempts and repeated failures, the frustration constantly growing in her heart mixed with the nausea every time she was spat out by the slug—after many times, even someone as resilient as Haruno Sakura felt physically and mentally exhausted, subconsciously resisting training.
Sure enough, she was not a superman yet.
The slug felt a little confused about the girl's sudden sigh, only assuming that the training volume far exceeding ordinary people made her unable to bear it; Sakura didn't explain much, just walked aside on her own, stood on the edge of the platform she was on, and looked out.
The magnificent view of Shikkotsu Forest was fully visible.
The magnificent scenery made her tight heartstrings relax instantly.
The platform where Haruno Sakura and the slug stood was actually a huge branch on an ancient tree in Shikkotsu Forest. The fork naturally formed a flat platform, about the size of an ordinary house in Konoha, located extremely high, used as the place for Haruno Sakura's cultivation and living during this period.
Beneath her feet was the misty Shikkotsu Forest. Countless ancient trees exposed their pale and slender trunks, standing like bones on the emerald green lake water. Wisps of white mist rose from the lake surface, lingering at the bottom of the bone forest. A few scattered white clouds floated high or low, far or near in the air, floating close enough for Haruno Sakura to touch.
If not considering that the lake water below was strong acid that would leave no corpse if fallen into, and if not for the white mist actually being highly toxic corrosive acid mist, this grand view could probably be called a wonderland on earth.
Looking down from such a high ancient tree, even the huge Slug Sage shrunk a lot in the field of vision, so that the full view of the Sage could be easily seen. The giant creature, fully two or three thousand meters long, swam faintly in the misty acid lake below.
A cool breeze blew gently, mischievously lifting the soft hair on the girl's forehead, affectionately brushing over her body, bringing a trace of coolness to this hot July, very comfortable. Haruno Sakura only felt that most of her fatigue disappeared instantly. She opened the scroll carrying her belongings, took out food, and accidentally flipped out Naruto's letter.
—Not the one sent from Hoshigakure before, but the letter sent by Naruto after learning that Sakura was going to Shikkotsu Forest to cultivate Senjutsu.
"...Go for it, Sakura! I lend you my energy (Genki), train hard!" When she picked up the letter, she happened to see this paragraph. Haruno Sakura could completely imagine Naruto's passionate expression when writing this sentence, as if he were right in front of her.
Heh, Naruto.
"It's not like I'm cultivating the Spirit Bomb." Haruno Sakura roasted secretly, but a lingering smile unconsciously appeared on her face. When taking out the tableware to eat, the words "Team Haruno Sakura never disbands" on the cup faced her. Haruno Sakura inexplicably thought of those people in the village and those smiles again.
"Tsk." Haruno Sakura felt like she was really replenished with energy and suddenly wasn't tired anymore. Just like those arduous trainings she underwent in the Land of Snow, whenever she couldn't persist, thinking of those beautiful things in this life always restored Haruno Sakura's motivation.
"Katsuyu, let's do it again after finishing the meal!"
"The one hundred and ninety-fifth time."
The slug counted the number of Senjutsu training sessions conscientiously.
Time was already a week later.
After a large amount or even an excessive amount of training, Haruno Sakura had mastered Senjutsu Chakra close to perfection, and the first stage of training was slowly approaching its end. In previous trainings, Haruno Sakura could already persist for more than an hour. Now was the last hurdle: here, the slug would pour a huge amount of natural energy into Haruno Sakura's body in an extremely short time. The unruly energy would instantly break the balance painstakingly maintained in the girl's body, leading to training failure—in fact, she had failed many times.
This was an extremely dangerous process. Massive natural energy had a strong corrosive effect. With a little inattention, even the slug might not be able to save her!
Conversely, if she could overcome this difficulty and tame this natural energy, Haruno Sakura's manipulation of Senjutsu Chakra could be declared passed.
At the same time as the slug finished speaking, the fluctuation of Senjutsu Chakra on Haruno Sakura's body began to become violent.
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