Tsuna's enigma

Chapter 4: Tsuna's enigma

Crack! Crack!

Tsuna's eyes didn't move. They were silently observing the shape of the flames as the sound of wood cracking and breaking reached him.

He could hear a bunch of people talking, but his ears refused to pay any attention to whatever was happening around him.

There are many ways in which you can describe someone or something, but the truth is that to fully understand what's described, you would need to see it by yourself.

His eyes were currently like that. They lacked movement, color, and feeling.

Why?

What makes something happen, and can he stop it from happening?

This question popped into his mind again and again.

***

"How many died this time?"

"Thirty, the majority were still kids."

"Such a heavy loss for the Uzumaki clan..."

***

There, in between the flames, a hand hanged at the side, uncovered by the white blanket.

'Heigin, from the ashes we came and to ashes we shall return. The weakness of a mortal lies in the failure of understanding such a simple concept, there's no profound meaning to life, there's no heart, there are no emotions, there's no passion, they are but illusions to convince ourselves of the righteousness of our actions... Because we need excuses to justify what we do.'

'Heigin, we create gods to justify anything beyond what we truly are, because we can't accept the truth, that we are not special, that there is no greater good, that evil is just an individual perception of something that he doesn't like. Self-awareness and intelligence are just like any other tool, it's the beauty of natural evolution, a simple and extreme trait focused on intelligence. There's no such thing as ethics and morals, just our true desires... just the will to achieve something... at any cost.'

'Life is too cheap, the only one that matters is yours.'

'Friends? Humph! There's no such a thing as friends, this is just the human way to vocalize pleasure found with another's company. Would one be willing to be friends with someone that doesn't make them feel pleasure? The answer is no, and the reason is that human relations have always revolved around their egotistical and selfish desires of feeling well about themselves.'

It was definitely a curse. He heard similar thoughts for almost all of his previous life.

Maybe it was because of immortality, maybe it was because of something else.

Cultivators most of the time saw no value in life, they weren't bound by the misconceptions guided by a society ruled by the weak and short-lived, whatever they wanted would be done and no one could stop them from doing it so long as they were stronger.

The demonic and righteous sects, for example, were similar in every way, to achieve their goals, any amount of slaughtering, betrayal, and scheming was acceptable, human life only held any value until it wasn't worthy anymore.

By this world standards, you could consider a cultivator as a psychopath, a completely insane individual who was unfit to live in society, but the opposite was also true, society was unfit for a cultivator because the power of a god couldn't be bound by rules and conventions meant for mortals.

Tsuna was like that before, but as he opened his heart to follow his desires, to actually listen to what he had to say, instead of simply repeating what others had to say... he changed.

Of course, he isn't that far from what he was before, the main difference is his goals, power for power is now power for protection, to ensure the life of those around him.

But it wasn't like all lives mattered, that would be naive and simply stupid for him, the only lives that mattered were, of course, those of the people he loved and supported.

All other residents of the Land of Fire could die a horrible death, and he wouldn't give a damn because he owed them nothing, but the Uzumaki meant everything for him.

And seeing something like this made his heart pulse with pain.

"An old soul and an old body, but it's all an illusion, in the end, we will always be stubborn kids being taught by life itself who we are and what are the paths ahead of us."

Tsuna stood up and left the funeral even though it hadn't ended yet.

After one year of having graduated, he finally began to feel the pressure of this world's cruelty, it wasn't time to be drowned in sorrow. No, he had to train, break his limits, investigate his condition, create an appropriate path for himself.

From afar, Michi who was standing beside Ashina, watched as Tsuna left, there was a small frown on his face, for some reason he could comprehend his feelings even though they weren't related.

"Patriarch."

"Michi?"

"I..." Michi opened his mouth but no words came, he wanted to say his thoughts about the way the clan was sacrificing people unnecessarily, but another side of his mind agreed with this, it felt like there was no solution.

Ashina frowned seeing the look on the face of his right hand.

How couldn't Ashina know what was going on in his mind? However, he said nothing. Words held no value, if he wanted to change something he would have to do it through his actions, and the question that mattered in this circumstance is... how?

***

Tsuna was standing beneath the same tree where he awakened. Sweat poured down his face.

He had just finished another set of training, 300 turns around the village, 600 sit-ups and push-ups, 500 punches, and 500 kicks against the tree.

It was the first time he pushed himself so hard ever since coming to this world.

This kind of training became a routine for him, every day he would try to set a new record, forcing his body until he would fall on the ground completely exhausted.

After that, he would proceed to practice his <Sutra>. Thanks to the weird properties of this world energy, Chakra, and the other thing that was similar and yet different, it was very easy for him to increase his amount of energy to try and break through another step of his cultivation.

The <Seven Mysteries Sutra> was divided into three main stages, each with its number of intermediary ranks.

The first stage was <Foundation of the body>, which was divided into 7 ranks.

The first one required you to nurture the flesh with your energy up to a certain point, and he finished it.

The second one required him to strengthen the tendons.

The third was the bones.

The fourth his skin.

The fifth his internal organs.

The sixth his meridians had to be destroyed and reformed.

The seventh he had to refine his bone marrow and heart, which would end up making his pressure points even stronger.

What made the <Seven Mysteries Sutra> special and better than most cultivation techniques was the simplicity and yet ramifications of every step in which you progressed.

To begin with, the first stage for this cultivation technique was enough to accomplish what other cultivations would only be able to in their eighth or ninth stage, immortality.

A body with so much vitality that it could heal any wounds, regrow flesh and limbs, as well rebirth from a single drop of blood. To kill someone in this stage, you would have to destroy his soul, or completely erase his body.

Even though that was the case, one shouldn't overestimate the healing properties of this cultivation technique, regrowing limbs and healing fatal injuries would always take weeks.

But that didn't really matter, if he wanted to increase his body's resilience, healing properties, strength, etc, there were many other means to achieve it.

What he wanted now was pure, and raw power.

Today he was pleasantly surprised, his chakra and its brother energy have become more concentrated and increased in an amount enough so to enter the second rank of the first stage.

He was about to do it but soon stopped with a frown on his face.

"What's going on? Why is it more difficult to control my chakra and its brother energy?"

Feeling weird about the current situation, he suddenly remembered something that his teacher, Ichiro, used to say about chakra.

'One of the main aspects of a shinobi is his control over the chakra, to perform any ninjutsu, one needs to have varying degrees of control levels. Due to the nature of chakra, every shinobi spends a lot of time practicing his control over it, less talented individuals usually don't feel this, but for the others, they'll usually find themselves having to practice their control very often, as they progress too fast, the amount and quality of their chakra change too quickly for them to keep their control in an acceptable level.'

"This must be the reason then..."