Monkey Geri Technique

After the ritual, Enma returned to the other side of the mountain. Previously, Natsume's activities were limited to the nearby area and directly up the mountain. However, since the light surrounded her earlier, she felt that she could explore the whole mountain without resistance. Saru came to her side and wanted her to follow him. He led her around the mountain to an empty cave.

"Thanks for your help, Saru-san." She smiled and gave him a polite bow. Saru just hollered in happiness and gave her a thumbs up. She laughed and waved him off. Saru jumped up a tree and quickly returned to his friends. Natsume entered the cave and saw that it had a stone bed and stone table. 'Someone used to live here.' She thought.

Natsume took out her storage scrolls and unraveled them on the ground of her residence. After releasing the seals, she took inventory of her remaining supplies. She still had a month's worth of rations and water. The mountain had plenty of water sources, so she wasn't worried about that. However, she had not seen any food sources on the side of the mountain she was on previously. She guessed that there would be edible plants on the back of the mountain.

On the remaining scrolls she counted the kunai and shuriken she had left. It was enough for two more large scale attacks. Normally she would gather up the spent weapons and reuse them, but many were destroyed in her jutsu, exploded, or abandoned due to circumstance. Her reserves of chakra paper were also running low since she planned to buy more on her travels. Unfortunately, she never had the chance to do so.

Since she didn't know what the situation outside would be in a year, she needed to make sure she was prepared to fight her way out of the Land of Earth. Fortunately, she had time to prepare and wouldn't need to do anything immediately. On the last scroll, she sorted out her spare clothes. She left the finer fabric clothes in the scroll and took out the training kimonos. After changing out of her worn outfit, she felt a lot more comfortable.

Natsume was unconscious before this and slept for a while. Because of the new technique that was imparted to her, she was full of energy. Therefore, she exited her little cave abode and looked for a suitable place to practice. Fortunately, the previous occupant had created a training field nearby. It had various stones placed all over the ground of different sizes and heights. Anyone would think this was random, but since Natsume knew the full Monkey Geri technique, she saw the cleverness of the arrangement.

The full Monkey Geri technique required one to master senjutsu to practice. However, the first three layers of the technique were foundational and could be practiced by anyone. It was also the testing criteria for Mount Kakazan. The first layer was called Monkey Acrobatics, the second layer was Monkey Strength, and the third was Monkey Impact. Natsume realized that the final move Enma used to break the cloud barrier was probably a combination of the three foundational techniques.

Natsume calmed her breathing and mind and focused only on the first technique. She activated her three tomoe sharingan and burst out across the training field. Although the technique could be used to move between trees, the essence of the technique was control over the body's movement while midair. Without trees around, it was a lot more difficult to execute, but had more benefit to her mastery of the technique.

She repeated the moves a hundred times and took a minute to catch her breath and recover chakra. Then, she went down to two tomoe and repeated the move a hundred times. She repeated that for one tomoe and finally began to struggle. After completing three hundred sets, she completely deactivated her sharingan and tried to do the moves without her dojutsu. The result was complete exhaustion after thirty-two repetitions.

Although she was accumulating fatigue, she could tell that her chakra expenditure increased significantly in order to match the same quality as with her sharingan. The sharingan was a great tool to an Uchiha to become a powerful warrior in a short amount of time, but it was also a wall for many. Improving oneself became secondary to relying on the sharingan's growing prowess. Eventually, the Uchiha would become complacent and stagnate.

After resting for a longer period of time, she attempted to do the course again without utilizing chakra and wasn't even able to complete a single lap. Thinking of how Enma was able to accomplish the combination of three techniques without chakra, she came to realize just how physically strong the Monkey King was. Although he had the advantage of species, in a world of chakra, anything was possible.

Natsume walked over to a small stream near the training area and washed off her sweat before returning to the cave abode. On the ground near the entrance was a hollowed-out log filled with various fruits and vegetables. Natsume smiled and picked out a particularly appetizing fruit and bit into it. These didn't contain any Nature energy like the peaches, so she readily accepted them. The fruit was refreshing and filling, so after finishing it, she stored the rest in a scroll and went inside to rest.

After her physical training, she started doing experiments on fuinjutsu. Since her body was exhausted, she would take advantage of the period of rest to expand her knowledge. Natsume took out her remaining chakra paper and quickly counted it. She had a little under three hundred sheets. If she used both sides of the paper, although it would destroy the integrity of the final product, it would double her available testing material.

And like that, Natsume began to write out various ideas she had been accumulating since her last practice session. Her main project was to deduce the basis of the curse seal's ability to absorb Nature energy. After exhausting her brain, she looked over at the dozen or so slabs of rock and smiled. Drawing in Nature energy proved to be easier than she expected. The problem is stopping it.