Chapter 281: Don't Close Yourself Off Socially
A minor interlude, and now it was over. Obito — Madara's carefully cultivated asset — was in the hospital, broken and under Kakashi's care. The way events would unfold from here was anyone's guess, and Ryū had no particular investment in predicting it.
Madara had no way of knowing what had happened. Ryū had cleared out every surveillance rat in Konoha's drains before leaving for dinner — he had no interest in being watched, and the cleanup had been thorough. Whatever Madara expected to receive back from his operatives in the village, he was going to receive silence.
Whether Obito forgave Kakashi or didn't, whether he talked or stayed quiet, whether he slipped out of the hospital and resumed his plans or completely reconsidered his direction — all of it was downstream of decisions Ryū had no part in. He'd said his piece. What anyone did with it wasn't his responsibility.
He shook the afternoon off and went home.
First order of business: Ki cultivation. The group file was open. He settled cross-legged on his bed, closed his eyes, and began working through the method Master Roshi had described.
His constitution handled the physical prerequisites without any difficulty — almost everything in the early stages came easily to him. The sticking point was the same one the document had flagged as the hardest part: finding the "sense of Ki." The initial perception. The first moment of contact with what the Dragon Ball world called the fundamental energy that existed in everything.
Once you felt it once, you could find it again. Until you felt it even once, the entire endeavor was a search without landmarks.
Meditation, as Master Roshi described it, was not sleep, not thought, not daydreaming. It occupied a category that was genuinely difficult to put into language — a state that sat between all of those things without quite being any of them.
The clock battery was dead. The alarm clock's hands didn't move. The laptop on the nightstand was the only timer, its corner display counting steadily upward.
One second. Thirty seconds. Five minutes. Thirty minutes. Two hours. Ten hours.
Time had its own texture in this state. When Ryū's eyes opened, it was with the sensation of something having slipped away — a presence that had been there, briefly, and then wasn't.
He looked at the laptop.
7:05 AM. The next morning.
He'd been in the meditative state for an entire night without noticing.
And the result: something. Not nothing. A sensation that had appeared and immediately vanished, too fine to hold onto.
Not a natural fit for this, apparently. He filed the observation without disappointment. If the feeling didn't solidify before his balance reached 20,000 Points, he'd just spend them. The Ki system was worth 20,000 — the ceiling it offered was worth the pain.
He checked the Chat Group.
The group was discussing, as it turned out, almost exclusively Ki.
Not a surprise. When the topic was "cultivation system whose ceiling includes casually destroying planets," interest was essentially universal.
Edward Newgate: Old Whitebeard felt something like a flicker last night during the attempt — something small and brief, difficult to pin down. Hard to grasp but there. Still, it's a good sign. It tells me I have the capacity. Gurararara!
Edward Newgate: Age hasn't dulled the talent, apparently.
Kaguya-sama: I didn't feel anything yet, but this was only the first day — not giving up. @Master Roshi — how long did it take you to first sense Ki?
Master Roshi: Me? I believe it was approximately three years after I began training under my master Mutaito.
My True Form Is Cola: Three years! In three years I'll be starting university!
Master Roshi: Your starting point is hundreds of times higher than mine was, though. I had no Point-enhanced constitution — just an ordinary person relying on years of physical conditioning. You've all skipped that step entirely. Your floor should be considerably higher than where I began.
Terrible Tornado: Even with a higher starting point, it's probably still difficult for some people. Not everyone may be suited to Ki cultivation by nature.
Master Roshi: …That possibility does exist, yes.
Miyaa Miyaa Miyaa: The new member with only 170 Points is watching all the experienced members from a respectful distance.
Terrible Tornado: 170 Points in two days of membership? That's 30 short of the daily maximum — that sign-in luck is on par with Admin-sama's.
Miyaa Miyaa Miyaa: Really? But I don't feel like my luck is very good — two days in a row without hitting 100.
Eternally Seventeen: I was about to surface and then I saw that, which was quite painful. Why would anyone persecute a beloved youkai sage — waaah—
Eternally Seventeen: Recovered! Anyway, I did feel something when I was working on Ki sense this morning. Something I almost caught. One more week and I think I'll break through. Excellent! I'm clearly the Chat Group's most gifted—
Kaguya-sama: Yukari-nee, you lasted less than two days of your "seclusion." You couldn't help surfacing.
Eternally Seventeen: Ahem, ahem… a person can't just lock themselves away socially. It's not healthy to become a shut-in, ahaha!
"…"
The pattern was taking shape. Some members had caught a flicker of something during their first attempts. Others had felt nothing at all.
Ki cultivation was a two-factor problem. Physical constitution was essential — but the talent for perceiving Ki was a separate quality that existed independently of constitution. Both mattered. Deficiency in either created a ceiling. Genuine rapid progress required both to be working together.
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