2 Cultivation For Scrubs
Naruto entered her run-down apartment like every other day. Most would expect someone with her personality to have an apartment that was completely trashed, but that wasn't true. Naruto actually wasn't that messy of a person. The outside only looked rundown because she couldn't buy any other apartment. And only this land-owner was willing to sell an apartment for her to the Hokage, but as soon as she moved in everybody left so now she practically owned the place. Which made it all the more lonely.
She entered her room and sighed. She had very few personal belongings. Aside from a couple of stuffed animals, her Jiji got her for her birthday, she didn't own anything.
"Alright, let's read this book!" She hyped herself up and opened it up. "Cultivation is an art lost to the world, created before the Sage of Six Paths taught humankind how to produce chakra from their own bodies instead of using the chakra in the atmosphere. Humans have long forgotten how to cultivate, making them much weaker and having significantly lower life spans. To be able to cultivate the 'Eight Gates Sutra,' one is recommended to be able to gather chakra from the atmosphere into their body, but it is possible to use your own chakra. The first step to learning is to be able to sense the natural chakra that runs through the air. This chakra is much different from the chakra produced by the body, being purer and having higher energy. To locate this energy, one must meditate in the lotus position and connect themselves to the natural chakra and let it flow through your chakra network. Cultivation will be much easier if one uses the natural chakra to open their tenketsu and chakra veins, since it will make them larger and able to store and let out more natural chakra, making cultivation faster and more fruitful. But it is possible to cultivate if you unlocked your tenketsu and chakra veins through your own chakra, just much more difficult and a lot slower." Naruto beamed at this. Luckily, she had yet to experiment with chakra, due to the warnings her Jiji gave her to wait until the academy told them to unlock it. But this looked like a much better way.
"Once you draw in the natural energy, run the chakra through your body in the way the diagram at the bottom of this page shows. This pattern will unlock your tenketsu points, strengthen the chakra veins, and expunge your body of impurities so it is fit to cultivate. So it is recommended to do it by a lake or some source of water you can clean yourself with. The tenketsu points opened through this way will be the size of a chopstick, compared to a needle. Once you complete this, you can move on. If you have already unlocked your tenketsu and chakra veins, then you can move onto the next step because you can only use your own chakra for cultivation. Someone who uses natural chakra can still unlock their own chakra, but it will be much different from others who haven't. It will be a more greenish-blue compared to the regular blue of chakra. But it won't be the pure green that senjutsu, or natural energy, is. Another fact is, someone who cultivates will not be able to sense natural energy, because their body is attuned to natural chakra." Naruto closed the book and set it aside.
"Alright let's do this!" She exclaimed. Going to the bathroom, she turned the water on and let it get warm, before getting undressed and sitting down in a lotus position under the calming water.
She started to expand her senses, and search for this natural chakra the book talked about. Before she felt a tiny spark in the air around her, and then everything turned white. Her senses were suddenly overwhelmed as she felt some of the natural chakra slowly coming into her and piling into her gut. Feeling like she was getting full she remembered that all her tenketsu points were closed so the chakra was trapped. She pushed it in the direction like the books said and almost screamed as she felt like something was wriggling inside of her and forcibly making her chakra veins wider.
It felt like something was carving out her insides as she hung on with sheer willpower and as she grit her teeth, she pushed the chakra through her first tenketsu point, like a battering ram. The pain only seemed to multiply, but she hung on. Just barely staying conscious she felt as she rammed through the second tenketsu, then the third, fourth, fifth, she stopped counting on that, putting most of her effort into staying conscious at that point.
Eventually, after what seemed like ages, she felt herself go through the final tenketsu point, as the natural chakra finally flowed through her in a circle without any blockage points, she only had time to think 'finally,' before promptly passing out from the mental strain.
The first thing that hit her when she woke up was the smell. It made even the worst of sewers smell like a flower field. The second was the cold water hitting her, and yet she wasn't that cold. Even though she was naked, the natural chakra flowing through her was keeping her body temperature perfect. And finally, she felt weightless. Like a huge burden was lifted off of her, but she didn't know why she felt like that. Blearily opening her eyes, she realized she was still in her shower. She looked around only to plug her nose, there was black gunk all over the floor and the smell was terrible. Pulling out the drain, she watched as it all flowed away into the drain. Fortunately, she still had an air freshener that she didn't use in a prank yet. It was funny to replace the inside with all kinds of terrible smells, a perfect prank if she said so herself.
Naruto turned around only to see herself in the mirror and almost gasped. Her old bright, blonde hair was now long silky threads of gold like they were spun by Athena herself. Her face was flushed with vitality and energy and her skin seemed to glow with health. Her lips were a ruby red that was more tempting than even the most devious of a succubus. And her previously blue eyes were now the brightest of blues that put the skies and seas to shame.
Her previous body, which was slightly malnourished due to ramen being her only source of nutrition, was now perfectly balanced between flexibility and power. The only unfortunate thing, she was still flat as a washboard.
"So that means the black gunk was impurities? Damn, maybe ramen isn't as good as I thought. She grumbled to herself, before putting back on her orange jumpsuit, which was still two sizes too large. She turned off the shower and put the drain back in before exiting the bathroom, once outside she looked at her clock and was shocked. Apparently, she'd been in there for a little under twenty-four hours! She thanked whatever god was out there that the day before had been Friday or she would've missed a whole day of the academy, and her record couldn't handle that.
She then heard her stomach let loose a mighty roar and realizing how long it had been since she ate, she was about to eat more instant ramen, before remembering the black gunk that came out of her body and swallowing a gulp. She instead made a salad and lean meat that her Jiji sent her, claiming that instant ramen was stunting her growth. Usually, she just tossed this stuff out, but now she was glad she saved it. It didn't taste bad, actually, but she couldn't help but compare it to the savory taste of ramen in all its hot, steamy goodness.
"Oh well, might as well read the next part now." She exclaimed before picking the book back up again and reading it. "Now that you have connected yourself to the natural chakra, you should feel it going through your body in a constant flow. Next, you will have to use this chakra to strengthen your whole body in preparation for opening your eight gates, all these stages will be split into three stages, small attainment, large attainment, and perfection. Advancing to the next stage at small attainment will make your foundation bad, and prevent you from going far in the future. So most people will work their way to perfection before advancing. The first stage of this process is flesh training. You will use natural chakra to temper your flesh using natural chakra. This will push your strength past the human limits without using chakra to boost it, it will also let your skin become hard as steel if you bring it to perfection. Bleed your natural chakra into the flesh surrounding your bones and muscles. Initial attainment will be attained when they have been filled to 50% percent of their maximum capacity. Large attainment at 75% percent, and perfect at 100%."
Naruto nodded to herself, before setting a timer so she isn't late for class again. Before getting into the lotus position and taking a deep breath. She focused on her insides and felt the natural chakra flowing through her whole body. She started to let the natural chakra in each of her 361 tenketsu points slowly and guided it into her flesh. It felt like a cool river was flowing over every part of her body, and she slowly let in more and more chakra. Slowly she felt herself fall into a trance, absorbing chakra from the atmosphere, flowing through her chakra veins, and then bleeding it out into her flesh. If anyone else could sense natural chakra, they would notice a whirlpool of it being sucked in the direction of her apartment. She finally snapped out of her trance as she felt the chakra stop being able to flow into her flesh, signifying her to have gotten to the stage of perfection in flesh training.
Usually, this would take much longer. But since Naruto had unlocked her tenketsu and chakra veins using natural energy, they were much larger and could extend more energy. And due to no one cultivating in thousands of years, the atmosphere has a large influx of natural chakra. This made her progress significantly faster.
She looked at her timer and saw that classes start in only five minutes! Luckily she kept her orange jumpsuit on, she quickly stuffed her excess hair into a messy low ponytail and put it in the back of her jumpsuit, from there she slipped on her normal blue ninja sandals and put her green goggles on before rushing out of the door and slamming it behind her and scurrying her way to the academy and praying Iruka will let her off the hook. Not even realizing she was now just an orange blur to the civilians.
