Naruto: The Strongest Suiton User

Chapter 17: Sakura's Training

Konoha Ninja Registration Form

Name: Haruno Sakura. Gender: Female. Rank: Genin.

Date of Birth: March 28th. Age: 12.

Registration Number: 012601. Jonin Leader: Hatake Kakashi.

Personal Bio: Interests are researching chakra and Water Style ninjutsu. Favorite thing is water, most disliked thing is impure water.

Attached to it was a photo. In the picture, Sakura was wearing a simple red high-collared tracksuit, looking poised and graceful. Her emerald-green eyes gazed calmly forward, a faint smile directed at the camera.

The Third Hokage exhaled a puff of smoke. His fingers unconsciously tapped on Sakura's registration form before pulling out the second form stacked underneath. The boy on this form had strange patterns on his face and was making a goofy expression, making one unable to resist laughing.

The Third Hokage rolled his eyes, speechless at Naruto's penchant for pranks and mischief. Then he flipped to the next one. It was the last member of Team 7, Uchiha Sasuke. In his photo, he stared coldly at the camera, his gaze sharp and sinister.

Finally, there was Jonin Hatake Kakashi's debriefing report. The Third Hokage flipped through it while speaking to Kakashi, who was standing behind him.

"Kakashi... since they've already passed your test, I'll be counting on you to take good care of them from now on. You need to put more effort into this; you can't slack off with any of the three children... Huh? What's this?" The Third Hokage flipped to the end of the report, where a small slip was attached.

"Training Ground Damage Report..." The more the Third Hokage read, the more uneasy he felt. A drop of cold sweat couldn't help but form on his forehead. As he read the end, "...eighty percent of the exercise forest destroyed... estimated repair cost is around one hundred fifty thousand ryo..."

A large bead of cold sweat slid down the Hokage's face. Kakashi scratched his hair awkwardly. "Um... I didn't expect Sakura's ninjutsu to be that powerful... Ahahahahaha..."

"Next time you train, find a more open area..." Lord Hokage said helplessly, one hand on his forehead.

The ninja career of Konoha's Haruno Sakura had officially begun.

Team Kakashi's general schedule was missions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; training on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and on Sundays, either Kakashi would give Team 7 a review and guidance, practice tactics together, or they would have a day off for free activities.

Under Kakashi's guidance, Sakura's training gradually became more structured.

Learning new ninjutsu was secondary. In terms of Water Style, Sakura had her own system. Although Kakashi had copied many water jutsu, most of them were of little significance to Sakura, merely enriching her jutsu library. Kakashi would teach Sakura a few water jutsu every week, and with her chakra control, she learned these common ninjutsu very quickly.

As for the core of Sakura's ninjutsu—the Water Cutter series and ultrapure water—Kakashi didn't have much guidance to offer. The knowledgeable Kakashi was at a loss when faced with these two strange water jutsu. Especially the ninjutsu constructed from ultrapure water; he had already seen and was convinced of its power, but he just couldn't figure out its principle.

By infinitely purifying water, you can achieve such an effect? Kakashi was completely baffled. He couldn't even comprehend it, let alone offer guidance.

As for improving the Water Cutter jutsu, Kakashi couldn't think of any good methods for the time being. But when it came to the application of the jutsu, Kakashi was experienced.

"The activation speed of your Water Gun Jutsu is still not fast enough. This is its biggest drawback in actual combat. If you could be 0.5 seconds, or even 1 second faster, then you would have had a real chance of defeating me in the previous test!" Kakashi said to Sakura one Sunday after a few weeks of training.

"There are no shortcuts to increasing speed, only through constant practice! I suggest that after you finish missions, if you still have stamina, you should continuously practice this move until your chakra is exhausted. With daily accumulation, you will definitely make great progress."

Moreover, to prevent Sakura from becoming too reliant on the Water Gun Jutsu and neglecting her taijutsu and other ninjutsu, Kakashi forbade Sakura from using this ninjutsu in sparring practice.

"In short, during normal sparring practice, you are not allowed to use the Water Cutter series. Firstly, for safety reasons; the consequences of this ninjutsu hitting someone are very serious. Secondly, it's to prevent you from slacking off in other areas of your training because of it. The Super Water Gun Jutsu is not invincible. If you rely on it blindly, you will be very passive if you encounter an opponent who can counter it, your strength will be greatly diminished, and you may even die because of it."

Of course, there was another reason Kakashi didn't say out loud. The last time he handed the training ground damage report to the Hokage, the Third's face was already ugly enough. If Kakashi had to submit a damage report every time Sakura practiced, the Third would probably kill him... Thinking of this, Kakashi couldn't help but shiver...

"Also, uh... the Water Style jutsu constructed from ultrapure water, since it's not easy to make, you shouldn't use it lightly either. I heard my Fire Style destroyed all of it last time?" Kakashi laughed dryly, a bit embarrassed. "Ahaha, my apologies—have you replenished it yet?"

"How could it be that fast!" Sakura shot Kakashi a fierce glare. She was still hurting from that loss.

The areas where Sakura improved the most were practical combat experience, skills, and taijutsu.

The combination of Water Style and taijutsu—nin-taijutsu—although developed long ago, had been basically in a semi-abandoned state before.

The characteristic of nin-taijutsu was that it greatly enhanced Sakura's strength, speed, and explosive power, while also providing special points of leverage to help Sakura exert force in various situations. For a taijutsu master, this kind of ninjutsu was like adding wings to a tiger, but for a taijutsu amateur like Sakura, nin-taijutsu could only display an amateur level of skill.

Kakashi was very interested in this move at one point. However, after practicing it himself, he quickly discovered that to use this move in actual combat, one must have extremely superb chakra control. With his talent, he optimistically estimated that it would take him more than ten years to reach Sakura's current level.

Sakura didn't stay smug for long. She soon discovered that compared to her chakra talent, her taijutsu talent was mediocre at best. The original Sakura had no taijutsu talent, and the transmigrator, as an ordinary city kid, had no connection to martial arts masters whatsoever. 0.6 + 0.6 was just barely greater than 1, which was nothing compared to her far-beyond-normal talent for chakra control.

As for the legendary Shadow Clone training cheat, it was also useless for Sakura, who didn't have Naruto's monstrous stamina and chakra. The Shadow Clone Jutsu is a technique that creates physical bodies by evenly dividing chakra. If a person's chakra can support them for 8 hours of practice, then after creating a shadow clone, they can only practice for 4 hours. The training efficiency is doubled each hour, but 2 times 4 is still 8. It was completely meaningless.

The real ninja world didn't have as many cheat methods as many people imagined. Realizing that the Shadow Clone training cheat was temporarily unusable for her, Sakura felt her heart grow tired.

A clumsy bird has to start flying early; diligence can make up for lack of skill. Sakura could only honestly improve her taijutsu one punch and one kick at a time. Fortunately, with the guidance of an elite Jonin like Kakashi, Sakura's taijutsu was also steadily progressing.

In terms of practical combat experience, besides mastering the timing of ninjutsu release and the rhythm of battle, there was actually something more important that was not detailed in the manga: the perception of chakra.

All ninjutsu is the movement of chakra.

If chakra is compared to sound, then each person's chakra fluctuation, just like how everyone's speaking voice has its own unique voiceprint, has its own unique chakra signature. Just as we can recognize a person from a distance by their voice after we become familiar with them, the fluctuation of chakra can also allow us to distinguish between different people. Some sensitive people can even memorize a person's chakra fluctuation after sensing it just once.

Similarly, each ninjutsu is equivalent to a sentence—the fluctuation of chakra is the language of ninjutsu.

When a novice like Sakura faced an elite ninja like Kakashi, the opponent didn't even need to look. They only needed to sense the chakra to guess what ninjutsu Sakura and her team were using, because when a novice casts a jutsu, they don't know how to hide their chakra fluctuations, which is no different from loudly telling others what ninjutsu they are using.

This was precisely why the plan Sakura designed during the test was completely seen through by Kakashi. Because Kakashi had long since sensed what ninjutsu they were using. This advantage in intelligence was like playing a game with a full-map hack; it was crystal clear who was the bait and who was lying in ambush.

Sensing others' chakra, and concealing your own.

This was a skill that every ninja had to master, and it was the most important piece of knowledge Sakura had learned after leaving the academy.

A ninja's strength is not only manifested in the visible stats of ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu, but also in these experiences that cannot be measured by numbers.

In terms of perception, the gap between a sensory-type ninja, a Byakugan user, and an ordinary person was as large as the gap between walking with a light on and walking in the dark.

Sakura was not a sensory-type ninja, but with her naturally powerful spiritual energy, her perception was much stronger than that of an ordinary person, especially at close range, where she was sometimes even more sensitive than a sensory-type ninja.

However, learning this skill was no less difficult than learning a foreign language. Even though Sakura considered herself extraordinarily talented in chakra, she could only rely on patient, grinding effort, accumulating experience bit by bit through constant combat and practice. There were absolutely no shortcuts.