Chapter 19: Cultivation
At dusk, a silver moon hung high in the sky, and a faint chill spread throughout the entire village of Konoha.
Inside an izakaya near the village entrance called One Bowl of Wine, Ryuya, Sagawa, and Yūhi Teru sat facing one another.
"Ryuya, you've had it way too easy these past few months!"
Sagawa drained the sake in his cup in one gulp, then looked at Ryuya with an envious expression.
During these three months, Ryuya had been staying in the Sealing Class, leisurely studying, while he and Yūhi Teru had been far less fortunate, constantly following Ichikawa Shin around on missions.
Although they were only C-rank and D-rank missions, they still exhausted the two of them.
"How's your study of sealing techniques coming along?"
Beside them, Yūhi Teru looked much calmer. He glanced at Ryuya and asked.
"Not bad,"
Ryuya nodded, answering without trying to hide anything.
Hearing this, both Sagawa and Yūhi Teru paused mid-motion and looked at Ryuya in unison.
After spending so much time together, they both knew Ryuya's temperament well. When he said "not bad," it meant he had made significant progress.
"You two should also hurry up and train,"
Ryuya said solemnly as he looked at Sagawa and Yūhi Teru, who were studying him with curiosity.
"In some time, something big may happen in the village."
Sagawa opened his mouth, about to ask something—
"Don't ask me why. It's just a gut feeling,"
Ryuya cut him off first.
After that, the three of them had a few more drinks in the izakaya before parting ways.
After bidding farewell to Sagawa and Yūhi Teru, Ryuya returned home, picked up a sealing scroll, and headed toward the clan cultivation chamber he had rented.
What he had just said was deliberately revealed to the two of them. After spending so long together, Ryuya did not want them to die innocently in the upcoming "Nine-Tails Incident" storyline.
Kushina's pregnancy was the highest-level secret in the village. Given Ryuya's status, it was naturally impossible for him to know about it directly. However, some of Konoha's future "Twelve" had already been born one after another, so Naruto's birth could not be far off.
Moreover, through his deliberate observation, Ryuya could clearly feel that as time passed, the village's security forces were gradually increasing.
This was obviously in preparation for Kushina's pregnancy. When she gave birth, her ability to suppress the Nine-Tails within her would drop to its lowest point.
Because of this, Ryuya was also making his own preparations.
Inside the Akimichi clan's cultivation chamber, Ryuya rapidly formed hand seals with both hands. Then, with his right palm, he pressed firmly against his chest, instantly activating the Gluttony Sealing Mark.
In an instant, the seal pattern of the Gluttony Sealing Mark spread rapidly across Ryuya's chest, quickly covering it entirely.
As soon as the Gluttony Sealing Mark was activated, Ryuya felt an intense wave of hunger surge from his chest.
He immediately took out the food he had prepared in advance on the experimental table and began to eat voraciously. Only after consuming food equivalent to dozens of people's portions did Ryuya finally stop.
As the food entered his stomach, vast amounts of life energy were rapidly refined and transformed by the Gluttony Sealing Mark, flooding into every part of Ryuya's body.
At the same time, the chakra within Ryuya's body, under his guidance, began circulating along a pre-established operational model in his mind. Streams of chakra, as if equipped with artificial intelligence, continuously stimulated Ryuya's body cells.
The cells throughout his body began to grow excited, and even more chakra surged forth unceasingly.
As large amounts of chakra poured out, countless body cells—like hungry infants—began rapidly absorbing the life energy flowing through the body.
Under the constant stimulation of chakra and the continuous replenishment of life energy, the activity and toughness of Ryuya's body cells slowly increased. Both his chakra reserves and his physical constitution were improving at a rapid pace.
What was happening to Ryuya at this moment was precisely the effect brought about by combining the Gluttony Sealing Mark with the Body Activation Forbidden Technique.
The Gluttony Sealing Mark Ryuya used on himself was different from the one engraved on the green snake. It incorporated additional functions from the clan's innate seal pattern. The purpose was not only to rapidly increase his chakra, but also to use the abundant bodily energy to remodel and strengthen his physical constitution.
This was the optimal cultivation plan proposed by the biological chip after integrating the Body Activation secret technique.
Back in Kikyo Mountain City, due to his wariness of Shennong, Ryuya had not immediately practiced the Body Activation technique after obtaining it. Instead, he had only studied it in secret during his spare time.
Over this past period, Ryuya had already used the biological chip to thoroughly analyze both its effects and its drawbacks.
The so-called Body Activation Forbidden Technique was, in essence, a method of stimulating the cells in all parts of the body with chakra, forcing them into an "activated" or "excited" state, thereby greatly enhancing one's strength, speed, flexibility, and other physical attributes in a short period of time.
Moreover, long-term practice of the Body Activation technique could slowly—but permanently—increase cellular activity. The higher the cell activity, the easier it became to extract the bodily energy stored within those cells.
All of this sounded extremely wonderful, but it did not come without conditions.
The more active human body cells are, the faster they divide. However, the number of times human cells can divide is limited. Using chakra to stimulate cellular division to gain strength was essentially equivalent to artificially accelerating growth and overdrawing one's lifespan.
Simply put, the Body Activation Forbidden Technique was a technique that exchanged life and future potential for power.
Furthermore, the human body contains a vast variety of cell types—muscle cells, red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, cardiac muscle cells, skeletal muscle cells, and many more. Each type of cell has different properties and tolerances, and the methods required to stimulate them into activation differ as well. Even the slightest mistake could cause varying degrees of damage to the body.
This required an extremely fine level of control over both chakra and the body, making the technique extraordinarily difficult to cultivate.
However, none of this was a problem for Ryuya, who possessed a biological chip.
After a long period of gradual experimentation, Ryuya's body had become capable of precisely controlling the degree of chakra stimulation applied to his cells, like a supercomputer. This avoided excessive cell activation and prevented irreversible damage to his body.
With this capability, the Body Activation secret technique posed no difficulty to Ryuya at all.
When combined with the Gluttony Sealing Mark, the Body Activation technique became a perfect match. Their flawless synergy was what created Ryuya's current monstrous cultivation speed.
After several days of training, the results far exceeded Ryuya's expectations.
He could feel his physical attributes and chakra reserves rapidly increasing day by day. That sensation of power growing at a visible rate was deeply intoxicating.
In just a few short days of cultivation, Ryuya's overall strength had increased by at least fifty percent.
The only worrying issue was that the rate of "spending money" was simply too fast—Ryuya's wallet was on the verge of collapse.