Chapter 2: The First Step to Dominating the Sage of the Six Paths is Dominating Little Kids
Sakura hadn't seen Naruto since their last encounter.
Several months passed just like that. During this time, Sakura continued to be the "king of the kids" in her neighborhood, playing ninja games with the other brats every day. It wasn't that she particularly enjoyed it, but a five-year-old kid staying cooped up at home training all day would only make people suspect something was wrong with her. Sakura would have preferred to be a shut-in—playing house and ninja games with those kids was incredibly boring—but her dear mother would never allow her child to become "reclusive and unsociable." Thus, this daily "outdoor time" was also Sakura's most boring time. In truth, there wasn't much for Sakura to train right now anyway. A child's delicate body couldn't handle refining much chakra. She was only allowed to refine a little after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Once it was used up, it was gone. Whether for practicing Suiton or the Three Basic Academy Jutsu, she would run out after just a few attempts.
What Sakura was practicing now was chakra control. Readers can simply understand this as the tree climbing and water walking mentioned in the original story, though of course, the actual world of Naruto contained more than just that.
The first stage, called tree climbing but in reality wall walking, Sakura practiced on her bed at home. After her butt received a proper scolding for the several holes she'd kicked into the walls of their wooden house, she successfully completed it. A few weeks after mastering wall walking, she suddenly remembered there was also water walking. She filled the bathtub at home with water and mastered it in a single bath time. The reason it took such a short time was, of course, because she had already done many simpler control exercises before this (you didn't really think the entire ninja world only had these two training methods, did you?). However, this still couldn't hide Sakura's astonishing talent for chakra control, especially since this Sakura's spiritual strength was several times higher than the original's.
After completing the two basic exercises of tree climbing and water walking, the subsequent training was a case of "to each their own." To put it nicely, it varied from person to person. To be blunt, the entire ninja world's understanding of chakra hadn't reached a level where there was a consensus on how to proceed with advanced training.
No matter. As long as it improved her chakra control, it was fine. Sakura's method was to infuse her chakra into water and then control it to perform various movements. This sounds simple, but to control it as if it were an extension of her own limbs—for instance, making water take the shape of a cat that could even hop and jump—was incredibly difficult. If she had to control the chakra in a location beyond her line of sight, she could only rely on her senses. Yet, this was the foundation of most Water Style jutsu: one must be able to control water to form Suiton ninjutsu. The more powerful the jutsu, the more complex the water manipulation required. Most people use hand seals to assist in this process. The more proficient one becomes with a jutsu, the more they can omit the intermediate hand seals, as they are no longer needed as an aid. In Sakura's eyes, casting a ninjutsu was like solving a middle school math problem. More powerful jutsu corresponded to harder problems. Memorizing hand seals was like rote memorizing the solution process. With enough practice, one could even skip some intermediate steps, eventually reaching the point of single-seal or no-seal casting.
But there was a more fundamental method than simply practicing ninjutsu, and that was to directly practice manipulating water with chakra. This was equivalent to facing a math problem not by memorizing the answer, but by actually learning middle school mathematics and then solving the problem with that understanding.
The world of ninjutsu is as vast as the ocean, numbering in the thousands. An ordinary ninja might learn no more than a hundred jutsu in their entire lifetime, and the ones they truly use often would be just twenty or thirty of them.
In this situation, would you rather memorize dozens of math problems, or would you rather learn mathematics from scratch just to solve those few dozen problems?
Most ninja chose the former because the latter was far too inefficient. Ninja were busy; their time had to be spent on training and fighting.
Sakura chose the latter because she was very idle, very bored, and to her, this kind of practice was very interesting.
As mentioned before, despite not having any unscientific cheats, Sakura still had a huge advantage. Her spiritual attribute was strong, and her talent for chakra control was even stronger. It was an ability that was already outstanding in the original story, and after her spiritual enhancement, it became truly exceptional. She quickly got the hang of it and was advancing towards the pinnacle of mastery. In just two years, Sakura could manipulate chakra-infused water as if it were an extension of her own body, and she could already apply it preliminarily in children's fights. As an aside, in this world that judges by looks... no, by talent, the time required for a ninja of average aptitude to practice this to a combat-ready level was probably...
A lifetime.
Once, Sakura even bought a water balloon, wanting to practice the Rasengan. Halfway through her practice, she happily burst the water balloon, getting a face full of cold water, when she suddenly realized she didn't have the "copyright" for this move. If she really managed to master it, how would she explain its origin in the future?
This lord... ah no... this mistress just came up with it in a flash of genius? Go tell that to the Hokage, see if he believes you. Sakura didn't consider herself the protagonist of a novel—even though she literally was—and felt it was better to be cautious in this realistic world.
Besides, this move was a huge chakra consumer. The Fourth Hokage could one-shot opponents by combining it with his Body Flicker Technique, and Naruto had so much chakra he didn't care about the cost. What about Sakura?
Sakura used her chakra to manipulate a stream of water, accelerating and changing its direction to burst a second water balloon. Then, she truly had a flash of inspiration. She thought of Gaara.
To be precise, she thought of the scene at the beginning of Shippuden where Gaara was... well, where Gaara was standing on a pile of sand, flying through the air.
Come to think of it, chakra was a miraculous thing, practically omnipotent. It could transform from energy into matter, like water, fire, wind, and lightning. It could change a person's size and appearance, like the Transformation Jutsu. It could allow a person to traverse space, like the Body Replacement Jutsu or the Flying Raijin Jutsu. It could apply force to a person, like making their feet stick to a tree. It could create a mimicry of a person, a shadow that not only looked identical to the original but even had its own thoughts and could transmit its experiences back to the original upon dissipating—that was the Shadow Clone Jutsu. It could enhance the physical body, boosting its explosive power, speed, agility, strength, and durability. It could also manipulate objects, making them float or crush things, like Gaara's Sand Coffin and his flight.
Back then, Sakura had genuinely thought that Gaara's all-in-one offense and defense with sand was so cool it was off the charts. Throughout the entire battle, Gaara could just stand still while his enemies couldn't even touch him. He could obliterate weaker opponents with a flick of his fingers. His coolness level was sky-high!
Thinking about it carefully, you could actually do similar things with water! Sand could be used to defend against most taijutsu and ninjutsu, and also for offense. Water Style could actually do the same. The reason no one had used Sand Style or Water Style this way before was because the difficulty was too high. Gaara's sand seemed to be infused with his mother's spirit, allowing him to control it so freely. Sakura's own control ability was likely even better, perhaps by several orders of magnitude. Although her chakra reserves couldn't compare, if she was just manipulating water without using a formal ninjutsu, the chakra consumption wasn't high. What it consumed was her mental energy.
Sakura silently calculated in her heart. It seemed like a good idea to model her own ninjutsu system on Gaara's sand techniques. This system was characterized by high difficulty but low consumption, making it highly cost-effective and particularly suitable for a ninjutsu-type ninja like Sakura, who had unremarkable chakra reserves and average taijutsu.
The difference between Water Style and Sand Style was that water was more flexible. A Suiton user could even wrap themselves in a membrane of water. Water enhanced by chakra could become incredibly resilient and durable. This way, every movement could be augmented by chakra-controlled water, and any impact or damage would first be reduced by the water layer. Besides requiring a freakishly high level of chakra control, this was an effect that Sand Style couldn't achieve due to the nature of sand.
In Sakura's mind, her future self had already developed countless powerful ninjutsu. Under this system, she would be completely immune to physical and magical attacks, have 99% resistance to genjutsu, a point of her finger would cause the earth to crumble and mountains to fall, a stomp of her foot would connect heaven and earth, and any enemy she encountered would be steamrolled. In the end, she would discover that the Sage of the Six Paths was the final boss, leading to another world-shaking, cataclysmic battle...
After blocking out the tens of thousands of words of her daydream, Sakura finally came back to her senses, realizing that she was still a little weakling who couldn't even cast more than a few ninjutsu. She was still tens of thousands of miles away from dominating the old Sage. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Sakura believed she should start from the most basic things, achieving her goals step by step.
So, what was the first step?
—Playing with bratty kids.
I'm being serious! Sakura's heart roared. Integrating training silently into daily life and even entertainment is the best way to practice! It's definitely not because my mother nagged me for half a day with her demonic voice, saying things like "children should play outside more," "what does it look like to be cooped up at home all day," and "Sakura can't be a reclusive child," forcing me to come out and play with these brats!
To integrate ninjutsu into every action—this was Sakura's idea. For example, when she needed to move while playing ninja games, climbing trees, or fighting with other kids, she would start practicing the system she had envisioned.
In short, she comfortably passed the days of training(ing) chakra(kids). Sakura's control ability and her permitted chakra capacity steadily increased. She soon celebrated her sixth birthday and quickly entered the Ninja Academy.