A few days later, Ryusei was back in the southern lands of Hot Water again.
The air shimmered faintly from heat, steam rolling in waves over the rocky ground as he trained alone.
Each strike he threw released bursts of white vapor and heat, traces of that new chakra he'd stolen from the Five-Tails.
He exhaled sharply, fists blurring as they struck the air, shockwaves cracking through the terrain.
Every movement left faint scorch marks across the stone.
The steaming chakra coated his body in a faint white aura, flickering like boiling mist, the same kind Han had once used, but now refined, sharper, purer.
"Not bad," he muttered, watching the steam rise off his knuckles.
"I'm even faster. Stronger, too."
Through the Byakugan, he tracked every pulse of heat and chakra flow across his muscles, bones, and tenketsu, adjusting in real time.
Every hit became cleaner, every reaction tighter.
He was integrating, blending the Five-Tails' energy with his own Gates, current taijutsu techniques, and medical-based regeneration techniques until it felt natural, almost effortless.
He paused for a moment, breathing evenly, recalling everything that had happened just a few days before.
After taking Han, his clones had covered his retreat.
Most of his chakra was spent by the time he'd finally slipped through the western ranges, avoiding Iwa's scouts and sensory teams.
He'd gone far, deep enough into the Land of Fire's rear border to hide in peace.
He'd chosen a cave surrounded by forests and stone, quiet and completely sealed off from chakra detection.
That was where he began.
Han had been unconscious the entire time, sealed in layers of restrictive marks Ryusei designed himself, Uzumaki-style sealing, reengineered with precision to block any sudden tailed beast surges.
For hours, Ryusei had loosened the seal, piece by piece, his hands weaving calmly and methodically.
He entered Han's mindscape after stabilizing the host's body and spiritual link, slipping in with his own spirit using a fuinjutsu interface technique that linked their chakra systems.
The inner world he found wasn't calm.
Kokuō, the Five-Tails, towered before him, bound in chains of light, the air around it rippling with heat and steam.
Its white fur glowed faintly, and its enormous eyes fixed on Ryusei with immediate hatred.
"So, you're the one tearing away my chakra," the beast's voice echoed, deep and heavy.
Ryusei smiled faintly. "Only what I need. You'll live. Probably."
The tailed beast roared, steam pressure rising like a storm, shaking the entire mental space.
Ryusei didn't bother fighting back physically; he let the seal absorb the shockwaves, letting Kokuō's own leaking chakra funnel into the binding marks.
"Keep struggling," he murmured. "The more you fight, the more I take."
Minutes turned to hours as he carefully drained it, balancing Han's physical stability and Kokuō's chakra resistance in parallel.
The Byakugan's vision let him track the flow between the host and the beast, monitoring where the tailed beast chakra crossed the soul barrier.
Eventually, Kokuō's aura dimmed, its body slumping in exhaustion, fur fading from brilliant white to dull gray.
The beast gave one last furious roar before its form flickered, shrinking back into the shadows of Han's mind.
Ryusei stopped there, sealing what he'd taken, roughly a quarter of the total chakra, the maximum his body and that seal could handle safely for now, into the special seal on the right side of his chest.
The seal glowed faintly before fading, embedding itself under the skin, where his Yin Seal network connected to it like veins of light.
Han collapsed afterward, alive but pale.
Ryusei was no lover of strange, oversized chakra beasts, so he didn't feel even a flicker of guilt about leaving the Five-Tails weakened.
To him, it was just another resource, something to use and discard. Creatures like that weren't even natural.
They were products of Hagoromo's Yin–Yang Release, fragments of the Ten-Tails split into sentient masses of chakra.
They were anomalies, immortal, self-reconstructing, and barely bound by the laws of life or death.
Even if Kokuō was drained half to nothing, Ryusei knew it would eventually regenerate, maybe in years, maybe decades, maybe more.
It didn't matter. He'd already taken what he wanted.
Ryusei then stabilized Han, restored the host's basic functions, and, after a short rest, carried him back near the border of the Land of Earth.
He left him there in a half-collapsed mine tunnel, unconscious but stable.
He didn't bother killing him.
Why make Iwagakure weaker?
Why make Iwa panic, rebuild, and struggle to reseal their beast?
That would only further tilt the balance toward Konoha, his real enemy
He thought that Iwagakure would never publicize the incident too much; they couldn't afford to. To the rest of the world, it would look like someone, perhaps Konoha, had humiliated them again.
No Kage would ever admit something that shameful.
They'd stay silent, cover it up, pretend nothing happened, while scrambling in secret to fix the damage.
Besides, it would take them a long while to connect that attack to Ryusei Nishida at all.
And even if they eventually did, Ryusei didn't worry in the slightest. What could they possibly do about it?
His job was done.
He'd gotten what he came for, not just raw chakra; this is why he didn't even feel the need to steal more, but that unique boiling essence.
Another free Kekkei Genkai, essentially, stacked right on top of the natural recovery boosts and physical enhancements that tailed beast chakra granted its host by default.
Now, as he trained, he could feel it, its living heat running under his skin, mixing with his own chakra network perfectly.
The Gates and Creation Rebirth both harmonized with it, enhancing his speed and physical pressure even further.
He struck again, the steam trailing from his fist spiraling into a coiling mist that hissed across the ground.
"How strange," he thought, watching the vapor fade.
"Chakra that changes temperature like this… that can increase force through heat and pressure. It's not just energy—it's alive."
That thought led him back to one question he'd been asking himself since the sealing process.
How could something like chakra be stored in the first place?
The answer, he'd realized, was simpler and deeper than the old theories ever explained.
It wasn't just energy; it was consciousness fused with life-force.
Tailed beasts existed both physically and spiritually at once, their bodies and souls intertwined so tightly that they transcended normal matter.
That was why they could be sealed into people—half of them lived in the host's body, half in the host's mind.
So when Ryusei stored chakra, he wasn't just sealing "energy."
He was anchoring a fragment of will, memory, and spiritual imprint, all compressed and stabilized through Yin-Yang balancing.
In his case, the Kokuō chakra was stored in both places: the physical seal on his chest, and the mirrored structure of his own mindscape.
He could sense it faintly there now, white mist swirling somewhere deep inside, calm but hot, radiating faint pressure.
Kokuō's chakra wasn't just contained.
It was his now.
Ryusei then thought about another, completely unexpected gain from that operation, something smaller in scale but still significant.
An ability he stumbled upon entirely by accident.
He hadn't even known Kitsuchi would be there that day, and
the decision to probe into his mind had been made on impulse, almost out of curiosity, without any specific plan in mind.
His logic was simple: as Ōnoki's only son and Elite Jonin, Kitsuchi had to have come across at least fragments of the Tsuchikage's personal teachings, even if he lacked the talent or affinities to master all of them himself, so there might be something useful there, perhaps.
For example, Ryusei hadn't been hoping for the Dust Release itself; of course, he lacked the elemental combination for that, and his own advanced fusion path followed a completely different direction.
But even fragments of knowledge, theoretical notes, or underlying transformation principles could be priceless.
Anything tied to elemental fusion on that level could serve as fuel for his own pursuit, the creation of a unique kekkei tōta he already knew he had the natural predisposition for.
And while Kitsuchi indeed hadn't inherited the right chakra nature mix to use Dust Release, what Ryusei did find was still more than worth the effort.
Buried within Kitsuchi's tangled memories were two hidden treasures, two of Iwagakure's most prized techniques, passed down directly from Ōnoki to his son, along with his hopes, and later, his disappointment when Kitsuchi failed to master them completely, the: Earth Release: Added-Weight Rock Technique and Earth Release: Light-Weight Rock Technique.
Both looked simple on paper, but their potential was anything but.
One could amplify a target's mass, literally crank up its gravity, until movement became a crushing, immovable burden, whether the target was living flesh or inert stone.
The other reversed that principle entirely, stripping weight from matter, air around, stone, or even human flesh, granting buoyancy, effortless leaps, or even outright flight.
With enough control, a skilled user could weave through the air like a bird, pick and throw large targets, by first down-weighting and then up-weighting, or even share that gift with others.
To Kitsuchi, they'd been little more than useful support tools he never had the talent or patience to perfect. But to Ryusei, they were huge gifts, perfect puzzle pieces falling into place.
He saw the synergy instantly.
Lighten the body mid-fight to move faster than sight, then switch in an instant to the Added-Weight technique at the point of impact, each blow becoming a small-scale meteor strike.
This was something only he could pull off.
The Byakugan's microscopic internal vision gave him unmatched control; he could fine-tune the exact instant, force, and angle of every strike with surgical precision.
It turned the fusion into something flawless, a perfect extension of his body.
Stacked on top of his already monstrous physical power and taijutsu arsenal, it would push him into a realm few shinobi could even imagine reaching in terms of close-range combat and physique.
It was as if the world itself was finally stacking blessings in his favor, at least for a little bit.
As for why Ryusei was so certain he could learn it, well, the jutsu itself wasn't the obstacle.
He already possessed Earth Release affinity and mastery, in his back pocket, just like with the other four nature chakra elements.
The technique also might be complex, however, but not for him.
Between his Byakugan's microscopic vision and his spiritual sensory mode, he could perceive and analyze every subtle property behind it.
In fact, he already had.
Within just a few days, he'd grasped the principles clearly enough to start training, ready to fuse this new weapon into his already peak-level, world-leading, expanded physical arsenal.
Ryusei was now genuinely thankful to his past self that he had developed that unique soul-searching technique back then.
Also, like all his other abilities, it hadn't stagnated in the last half year; it evolved with him.
The jutsu itself had been born from everything he'd learned about souls since the time he'd existed as one, long before taking over this body.
Its speed on the battlefield, barely a few dozen seconds, came from the way it worked.
Ryusei would send multiple fragments of his soul into the target's spirit from different angles, probing, tracing, and peeling through memories all at once.
His real soul and mind would then guide those fragments in real time, dynamically narrowing in on whatever he sought.
The reason he could recall everything afterward so perfectly, like a flawless technique manual, often better than the victim themselves, was simple.
Each soul fragment returned as a perfect mirror of what it had captured, bringing back clean, undistorted data.
Ryusei, meanwhile, still stood in the silent clearing, the ground still fractured from his earlier steam-powered blows.
Without hesitation, he then began testing the new, creative concept, his thoughts already racing ahead, dissecting every possible way to weaponize gravity itself inside close combat.