I will be available for the next month due to working on my thesis. Regular updates will be back when it is done.
I have noticed that the quality of my work has decreased in the past few months due to being busy with my thesis and my part-time job. I don't think it's fair to my readers to put a half hearted attempt for them to read. I will still be available to answer every single comment and question. But I will not publish new chapters until mid to late July, when I will graduate.
Today was the day. She passed the first step. She could now create a chakra zone around herself and change its shape and size. While it still took her quite some time to change the shape or size, and she could only do one at a time, it was progress. Her shapes were also a lot rougher than she wanted them to be.
Akira showed him his own, which was perfect—precise and sharp, exactly how he wanted it. Still, he told her that it was all practice from here on and that she would get there with time.
"Now, we are going to work on the second step. It's about focusing on the chakra inside you. When you are connected to your chakra zone, anything with chakra inside the zone will cause a disturbance in the zone. You can feel these disturbances passively and actively."
"The difference is that when you are passively feeling the disturbance, you can feel the general information. Where something is, how big their reserve is, and maybe a bit more. But when you are actively sensing, you get the in-depth information."
"Depending on how strong of a sensor you are, you can feel people's chakra nature if they are hostile. Some of the best sensors can tell if someone is injured just from the chakra. However, this is not easy."
"You need to be aware of your zone and feel everything in it. Even if you are actively focusing on one thing or area, you should still be aware of the rest of the area. Also, sometimes multiple sources may be very close to each other, so you should learn to tell them apart."
"To do all this, you must hold your chakra zone. Once you have the zone, the information will be in your hands. It is in the chakra that is connected to you, your zone. What you should do is to let yourself feel. Let the information pass through you. And when it does, you will process the information inside you."
"If you try to focus on what the chakra source is doing on the outside, you will shift your zone towards it, causing you to lose balance and the flow. You will be too focused on the source, and as I explained to you before, you will get dragged to it and lose control, so this is a delicate step."
Akira took out a bag out of his robes. "In the beginning, I will not enter your zone. You will hold it while I will poke at it from the outside. You have to guess where the tapping happened and how long it lasted. After that, I will throw these marbles into your zone. They are small chakra-conductive marbles; you must guess how many have passed through your zone and where. Finally, once that is done, there will be another exercise that I will keep as a surprise for now." Akira said with a smile.
With that, Shiori sat in her meditative position and created the zone. It took her a few minutes to stabilize it, but she knew from practice that rushing would only make the zone unstable.
Once she was ready, she waited for instructions. She suddenly felt a slight pull on her chakra. "You felt that. That is how it feels for something to be in your chakra zone. Now, focus on your inside and try to determine the direction. You don't have to think of the distance for now." Akira said.
With that, their new training session began.
They trained for a couple of hours, and she made good progress. Although not very accurate, she could now tell the disturbance was coming and the general direction, which was still suitable for her first session.
It was a hard feeling to describe. The best way she could describe it was how someone can feel a hot or cold object when it is close to them but not yet touching. The feeling inside her was similar, but it was like the presence of a chakra in a direction.
While she had sensor training, it was different. Most people sensed by actively sending chakra to the world around them to find what they are looking for. It was like chakra echolocation.
However, the training she was getting was using the natural connection to the world around her and using the information coming towards her instead of reaching for the information outside.
It was strange yet somehow felt natural to her. After her training session, she felt tired yet very light, like a weight was off her shoulders. Akira instructed her to train her chakra zone when she was alone since she needed assistance with this step.
Shiori couldn't believe it had already been 10 days since she arrived here. She had learned so much from Akira and the books in the library. It was like a treasure trove.
She was doing her best to learn more about medicinal and poisonous plants and how to counter them. She also expanded her knowledge on scavenging the said plants. She was also studying maps of the nations.
She wanted to see the world and expand her knowledge. There were so many undiscovered places in the shinobi world, and she wanted to be the one to discover them.
She didn't have any grand plans to change the world. She wasn't trying to be a hero. She just wanted to understand the world around her and the people who lived in it.
Nature was so beautiful to her, and she wanted to learn all about it. She went to see Kenji with her task for the day.
She was tasked with folding the dry laundry today. The clothes were dry and piled up beside her on the deck. All she had to do was fold them into piles based on the article of clothing, separate her own, and leave the rest to others who would give them to their owners.
It was an easy enough task. She just sat on the deck, meditating and folding clothing. Her own clothing were easy to find since they were the smallest and styling was different.
She missed wearing her own colorful clothing, but she respected the temple and wore the white robes provided for her. She snapped out of her thoughts to the sound of croaking. It was Scar.
Shiori was immediately excited but tried not to overreact and scare the bird. she reached a hand to her seed bag and grabbed a handful of seeds. Just like last time, the bird jumped on her head and started eating.
"Where have you been? I didn't see you around for a while." Shiori said. Unsurprisingly, the bird didn't react and continued eating. After a few minutes, when he was done, he turned his head and looked up to Shiori.
They stared at each other for a few seconds before the bird said, "Green Book," and flew away.
That shocked Shiori. She knew ravens were capable of mimicking human speech. Still, it usually happens when they spend a lot of time with humans. Besides Akira and the guardians, others were not allowed to talk, so it was surprising to see the bird speak.
Also, it was strange. A green book? To repeat words, they need to hear them repeated over and over again. But what makes people talk over and over about a green book? She was probably overthinking it and decided to let it go.
After dinner, she realized she couldn't get it out of her head. She decided to check the library. Her sense of curiosity was overwhelming, and there was no danger in exploring.
She had permission to use the library, so she wasn't breaking any rules. However, since she was looking for a green book, the indexes were not going to be helpful. She had to search the entire place manually.
She ended up finding around 20 books with green covers. There was nothing distinct about them. They all had simple green covers with the name written on them. There was also no similarity between all of them. They were on different subjects.
She still had an hour before she had to go to her room, so she decided to search the insides of the books. There was nothing inside them, either. They were just ordinary books.
Until she found one—a book about the history of some clans. It was old and worn out and missing a few pages. This was strange since Akira was careful with the books, and a historical book missing a few pages could mean a piece of history that could not be retrieved.
She decided to take the book for a more in-depth look. She quickly put everything else back on their shelves and took the book. There was no code for the book, and she didn't know how to put it in the records logs.
She decided to leave the book where she found it, and tomorrow, she could ask Akira or one of the guardians about it or just read it in the library.