Naruto: The Strongest Suiton User

Chapter 10: Progress on the New Jutsu and the Graduation Exam

After the daydream ended, the huge gap between the glorious vision and the grim reality caused Sakura to strike a new pose—the orz of complete despair.

Extremely pure water has never existed in nature. Due to water's solvency, many substances will dissolve in it to some extent, including the glass container holding the water itself. Even distilled water absorbs trace amounts of gas during the process of evaporation and re-condensation. Even with the advanced technology of her previous life, it was still impossible to produce water that was purified to the absolute extreme.

Even if ultrapure water could be sealed in a clean ninjutsu space using sealing techniques, producing water of this purity was still a problem.

Water created by chakra was merely a mimicry of water, not real water, so it obviously couldn't be used to create ultrapure water. Therefore, she could only rely on purifying natural water to prepare it.

Under the pretext of improving her first new jutsu, Sakura consulted most of the Water Style ninjutsu recorded in Konoha. Sakura wasn't even hoping to find a way to mass-produce ultrapure water during combat; she just needed information on how to produce it in a lab. However, as expected, there really was no one in the ninja world who was so bored that they felt compelled to purify water to the tenth decimal place.

Sakura felt her requirements were already very low. In the Water Style system she envisioned, ultrapure water wouldn't be used for ninjutsu that required large amounts of water. So, as long as she could produce it in small quantities normally and seal it in a formula to be used temporarily in battle, it would be fine.

But the road to ultrapure water was fraught with thorns.

Adopting the physical methods from Earth, after repeatedly distilling water seven or eight times, Sakura discovered in despair that the purity was still not enough. Some impurities stubbornly remained in the water, evaporating along with it, and no amount of distillation could remove them. In theory, distilled water produced in a process where the container, vacuum, and heating were all accomplished with chakra should be completely pure water. But in actual practice, there were always many problems, and sometimes you didn't even know where the problem was, let alone how to solve it.

The development of the new jutsu was filled with pain.

Sakura began to feel a special respect for those webnovel protagonists for whom developing new ninjutsu was as easy as eating. It was said that they could develop a series of powerful and practical ninjutsu on their own without the help of any reference materials.

But the ninja world had existed for so long. Since the Sage of the Six Paths, there had been countless people with ideas. If there really was a ninjutsu that was so powerful, practical, and could be developed by a single person, someone else would have developed it hundreds of years ago. If Sakura didn't have the scientific knowledge from Earth as her backing, creating a knowledge-based domination over these ninja who lacked fundamental research in physics and chemistry, how could she have thought of such a new jutsu? Or one had to be as brilliant and stunning as Namikaze Minato to be able to develop the Rasengan by imitating a Tailed Beast Bomb. As for Orochimaru, let's not even mention him; that was just a freak of nature.

In the midst of her difficult research, to give herself a tangible goal, Sakura divided the development of this jutsu into several stages. The first stage was to find a way to produce a little bit of ultrapure water, even just a drop, to at least prove that this path existed. If she couldn't even complete the first stage, then she would have to find another way.

As for her first new jutsu, its development progressed by leaps and bounds at the end of her fourth year. After one summer vacation, Sakura had overcome all the technical difficulties. By the first half of her fifth year, she had finalized a series of new jutsu based on this principle, ranging from A-rank to beyond S-rank. These included a low-pressure, low-volume "Water Arrow" type that emphasized activation speed, a balanced medium-to-high-pressure "Water Gun" type, and an ultra-high-pressure, high-volume "Water Cannon" type that excelled in offensive power.

Forgive Sakura for being a science student in her previous life with no artistic cells. After becoming a ninja in this life, she had further distanced herself from the path of art. She gave all her new jutsu names like "Water Style: Super Water Arrow Jutsu" and "Water Style: Super Water Gun Jutsu," which were completely devoid of aesthetic sense. Then again, while the names seemed to imply that the caliber was getting larger, in reality, the caliber of the water stream in all versions was the same small size. This naming convention was to conceal the principle of the jutsu.

This series of new jutsu, represented by the Super Water Gun Jutsu, later became a standard for evaluating chakra control: the difficulty of maintaining an ultra-high-pressure water mass while simultaneously opening a tiny nozzle on it was extremely high. The smaller the opening, the higher the difficulty and the greater the power of the ninjutsu. The qualifying standard was a water jet of five millimeters, while Sakura could achieve a caliber of nearly one millimeter.

With the help of some of the results and insights from her high-pressure water cutter series of new jutsu, by the end of her fifth year, Sakura's second jutsu finally completed stage one: the micro-production of ultrapure water.

The specific method was to use chakra to create a permeable membrane and then use ultra-high pressure to slowly force distilled water through it. In this way, she could get one drop of ultrapure water that met the requirements in an hour.

Apart from verifying the existence of ultrapure water, this achievement was basically useless. Sakura stubbornly spent two semesters collecting two liters of ultrapure water, after which she swore she would never do such a stupid thing again. She would rather spend her time researching stage two: a method for small-scale production of ultrapure water.

As for when the ultrapure water series of Suiton truly completed stage two, that was something that happened after the Land of Waves incident.

Time flies.

Six years of Ninja Academy life were about to pass in the blink of an eye. As a transmigrator, Sakura had been in this world for 12 years.

In her previous life, there was a term called the butterfly effect, which said that a butterfly flapping its wings a few times in South America could cause a tornado in Texas two weeks later. However, this phenomenon only occurs in chaotic systems that are sensitively dependent on initial conditions. The naturally cautious Sakura had tried her best to flap her wings, but some things were what you would call the "major trend," which could not be moved by a butterfly.

However, Sakura never expected that her butterfly wings couldn't even knock this matter off course—

From a conspiracy theorist's point of view, could this have been deliberately arranged?

"Listen up, the topic for the graduation exam is the Clone Jutsu! When your name is called, go to the next classroom in order," Iruka-sensei said to the candidates below, holding the roster during the graduation exam.

The Ninja Academy's graduation exam is held three times, and the best result is taken as the final score. In other words, the minimum requirement was to pass just one of the three exams to prove you have the potential to become a ninja! As for actually becoming a ninja, you still needed the approval of your Jonin team leader.

"What?" Hearing this news, the expression on Naruto's face was as disgusting as if he had eaten shit.

One had to lament that this was the will of heaven—the first exam was also the Clone Jutsu, and Naruto failed. Before the second exam, he drank expired milk and got a stomachache, so his Transformation Jutsu failed, and he failed again. This was his last chance!

And it was the Clone Jutsu again! The exam topics were drawn by lottery, so it wasn't impossible for the same topic to appear three times. But for it to be Naruto's worst jutsu twice, his luck was just too bad!

Even Sakura was a little speechless.

"You can do it! Don't be nervous, you'll definitely pass this time!" Sakura patted Naruto's shoulder and encouraged him weakly.

However, although the Clone Jutsu was simple, due to the troublemaking of that old fox inside Naruto's body, even after practicing for two years, Naruto still couldn't learn this simple basic ninjutsu. Sakura, who had been helping him practice ninjutsu all this time, could only say that this was fate.

Naruto was not without talent. His Sexy Jutsu from the original story showed that his talent was much higher than that of a mediocre person who just follows the rules. But abilities can't beat destiny, and talent can't beat fate. With a fox who loves to cause trouble inside him, you couldn't blame Naruto for not learning this jutsu well.

Sakura remembered this part of the plot very clearly. After failing the exam, under Mizuki's instigation, Naruto would go to steal the Scroll of Seals tonight, thereby learning the Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu and gaining the qualification to graduate from the Ninja Academy. In fact, even if he failed the exam and even if Mizuki had found someone else, Naruto would still have been able to graduate. Even Rock Lee, who couldn't use a single ninjutsu, could graduate, so how could the son of the Fourth Hokage and the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki not be able to?

Sakura knew she didn't need to worry about this, and she had no intention of getting involved.

That fool Mizuki was being completely controlled. The Hokage was just using this as an excuse to give Naruto a welfare package. After all, as the son of the Fourth Hokage, he was fully qualified to learn one or two ninjutsu from the Scroll of Seals. Although Sakura usually looked out for him, with a fox causing trouble innately and his Water Style affinity not matching, the ninjutsu Naruto had mastered so far was unimpressive and not much better than in the original story.

After the exam, as expected, Naruto failed to produce a qualified clone. Failing all three exams meant that the candidate was completely incapable of becoming a ninja. Normally, what awaited Naruto was either to leave the ninja world and become a commoner.

Those who had already finished and passed the exam were gathered excitedly on the playground, congratulating each other and celebrating the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. Sakura, who had read the original story, knew that a good number of them wouldn't actually become ninja so smoothly. Before getting the approval of their Jonin team leader, they were only considered preparatory graduates from the academy. Those who were not approved were mostly assigned to various civilian or obscure departments. Such people were not uncommon; Kakashi alone had failed his students for several consecutive years. Of course, he was an elite, so his standards were relatively high.

Sakura nodded to a few of her calmer friends. It was clear that those from ninja families knew there was still one more hurdle to cross before they could officially become ninja.

Then Sakura saw a lonely figure sitting on a swing in the corner, looking over here with envy. It was Naruto, who had failed all three exams.

"Ah, Naru-Naruto... my family is having a big celebratory dinner this afternoon, um, you—" Sakura had come over with a sudden mischievous impulse to see Naruto's rare dejected expression. Since there would be a big reversal tomorrow, she thought it would be very interesting. But looking at Naruto's expression, which was like dead ashes, Sakura couldn't bear to continue.

"I know. Congratulations on passing the exam." Naruto's voice was as flat as a dead person's.

"O-okay, well, see you tomorrow—!" Sakura walked away a little awkwardly.