Kazekage Ninja-Chapter 46: The Great Training Exercise

"Sigh, still no good. Looks like the Flying Thunder God Technique really isn't something just anyone can master."

Jinghang stood in the training grounds, shaking his head in exasperation.

Ever since he'd mastered the Flying Thunder God Technique, Jinghang had nursed a bold ambition—to train an elite "Flying Thunder God" squad for Sunagakure. But when it came time to pour his heart into teaching, he discovered, to his dismay, that not a single person in the entire village could grasp it.

Not Rasa, not Pakura, not Yamashita Tetsu, not Akasuna no Sasori—none of the village's prime fighters. Even among the famed Twelve Earthly Branches—Sasori, Hidan, Guren, Rokusho—not one could even scratch the surface of the Flying Thunder God Technique.

It left Jinghang with a pounding headache. Was everyone else just that dense, or was his own talent simply off the charts? Was it really that hard? Surely not!

After countless research meetings and heated debates, the top minds in the Ninjutsu Research Lab came to a rather hilarious conclusion: for most people, this jutsu was simply impossible to learn.

They pinned it down to three essential requirements.

First: chakra reserves. A hard cutoff. That alone eliminated most candidates—only Rasa, Pakura, Hidan, and Sasori even made the cut.

But that was just the start.

Second: a grasp of spatial ninjutsu. Not just understanding the theory, but actually forming a multi-dimensional spatial model in your mind. It wasn't something you could teach—either you had the talent, or you didn't. Sadly, Pakura lacked that spark and was mercilessly eliminated.

Third: a requirement involving summoning beasts. It sounded absurd, but the evidence was clear. The specifics were murky, but one thing was certain: anyone partnered with the scorpion clan of Mount Dokutoku—like Rasa and Sasori—was out of luck. The Flying Thunder God Technique was forever beyond their reach.

That left only the "immortal" Hidan as a candidate.

But even then, it didn't work.

Thanks to his unique constitution, Hidan's soul was bound to that so-called evil god, making it impossible for him to form a contract with any summoning beast clan.

No summoning contract, no Flying Thunder God. End of story.

So after all that effort, it turned out Jinghang was the only one in Sunagakure who truly mastered the Flying Thunder God Technique. If the day ever came to face Konoha's "Yellow Flash," it'd have to be Jinghang himself stepping up. Fortunately, Konoha only produced one of those, too.

Now, with the armies gathering in Sunagakure, over ten thousand battle-hardened shinobi transferred from every division needed to be reorganized and streamlined. Otherwise, you'd end up with soldiers who didn't know their commanders, and commanders who didn't know their troops—a recipe for disaster on the battlefield.

Luckily, the command headquarters handled it all. Every armed force in Sunagakure fell under its jurisdiction, with "political officers" assigned from regiment down to battalion. The reorganization went off without a hitch. With a single stroke of his pen, Kazekage Jinghang merged the twenty-six regiments into the Sunagakure Field Army. Division-level commands were temporarily scrapped, and the three former division commanders joined headquarters to assist Jinghang with management and daily training. The entire Field Army was now under Jinghang's direct command, with all twenty-six regimental leaders reporting straight to him.

No one knew when the real fighting would start, but with so many shinobi packed together, idleness would only breed trouble. Jinghang made the call: training! Organize a grand military exercise—not just to boost the Field Army's combat power, but to hone tactical coordination between regiments, battalions, and squads. Everyone would compete, learn, and push each other—more sweat in peacetime meant less blood in war.

Shipments of training gear and building materials flooded into the Field Army's camps. The shinobi built everything themselves—training grounds and competition arenas sprang up in just half a month. The great training movement had officially begun.

From the moment Jinghang's orders landed, the Field Army's days were anything but restful. Each morning, as the sun crested the horizon, every shinobi—bare-chested—ran a full lap around Sunagakure. To build stamina, use of chakra was strictly forbidden—pure, old-fashioned endurance.

Only after the run could they eat breakfast. Then came a barrage of drills: one-on-one, squad versus squad, battalion against battalion, even full-on regiment clashes. They used rubber ninja tools, but bloody noses, cracked heads, and broken bones were a daily occurrence.

No big deal—Sunagakure's medical resources were top-notch. As long as you weren't dead, they'd patch you up. In this village, a ninja without a couple of scars was hardly worth a second look.

The training grounds rang with shouts and cheers. The whole camp was thick with the scent of testosterone. Since the anti-bandit campaigns, Sunagakure hadn't seen real war in years. The shinobi's killing intent had lain dormant for three or four years, but now, this kind of training was slowly rekindling their long-lost fighting spirit.

But just waking it up wasn't enough—Jinghang wanted true wartime readiness. Training quickly moved to phase two: Blue Force confrontation.

This "Blue Force" was no joke. Its roots lay in the Standing Army's instructor inspection team, later merged with Maki's special forces and the top combat veterans from each division. With 360 members, it barely counted as a regiment—but it was the most formidable fighting unit in the entire army. Every member had fought in the Second Shinobi World War—three years of hard battle. Veterans, every one. They reported directly to headquarters, standing apart from the four main divisions as the "Independent Regiment." And their commander? None other than Sunagakure's own Shadow Assistant, Rasa.

The confrontation was simple: a field exercise. A huge swath of land outside the village became the battleground. The Field Army would send out a regiment to clash with the Independent Regiment. Whoever "survived" was the winner.

Of course, no one was actually going to die. Jinghang assigned the Twelve Earthly Branches and thirty Intelligence Division elite jōnin as referee-observers, weaving through the battlefield to judge "life and death." As Jinghang put it, "Everything's real—except the dying."

You don't know quality until you compare. The usually boastful Field Army elites ran headlong into the battle-hardened Independent Regiment—like wooden clubs smashing into iron walnuts. The difference was obvious.

According to the Field Army, the guys in the Independent Regiment were more ninja than ninja—never engaging head-on, always slipping away, setting traps, laying clever bait, and throwing shuriken with ruthless precision.

In the first round of Blue Force exercises, all twenty-six regiments lost. And not just lost—they were utterly crushed.

That lit a fire under the Field Army. Each regiment started studying the Blue Force's tactics and reflecting on their own shortcomings, determined to score a win in the next round.

And that was exactly what Jinghang wanted to see. Only through competition could they truly improve.

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