Chapter 187: Armament Punch

It was early January, the coldest time of the year, but the morning chill could not dampen the ninjas' training enthusiasm.

The disciples' eyes followed the movement of Muyue's arm as he swung it; they held their breath, watching his punch, afraid that any sound might affect his performance.

Muyue did not use any other abilities; he simply converted a large amount of chakra into Armament Haki to harden his fist, wrapping the Haki around it.

He aimed at a nearby river and, with his fist now like iron under the Armament Haki covering, suddenly swung it forward.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Just as Muyue swung his fist, a fierce wind arose. Kakashi could feel the strong gusts howling past his ears, and the leaves rustled noisily under the wind's force, like a prelude to an impending downpour.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

In the next instant, a huge roar rang out, as if the very air had been blasted apart.

The shockwave from the punch instantly shattered and felled the large trees in front of Muyue, and even Shisui and the others behind him were rocked by the residual force, struggling to keep their footing—they had to use chakra to adhere to the ground.

"What an incredible punch!"

Kakashi shielded his face from the flying debris and leaves, squinting as he watched the shockwave annihilate everything in its path, his face filled with uncontrollable shock.

Kakashi had seen more than Obito and the others, but he had never witnessed a scene like this.

Might Guy stared at Muyue, his heart pounding with excitement that just one punch could produce such terrifying destructive power.

After all, Muyue hadn't used the Eight Gates or any Breathing Technique. If he combined all of them, one punch could probably blast straight through the entire Southern Forest.

"Both attack and defense are outstanding. Mastering this would be far more important than learning a few more Fire Release techniques," Shisui judged in his mind.

Without a doubt, Armament Haki's importance could rival that of the Breathing Techniques.

"Bless me, Muyue-sage, let me learn Armament Haki as smoothly as the Flame Breathing," Obito began praying to himself that he would master Armament Haki without trouble.

After annihilating all the trees along the way, the powerful shockwave plunged into the river. With a loud boom, the water erupted continuously, sending huge amounts of water and various river creatures flying.

Nohara Rin, who had been training, paused briefly and glanced curiously in Muyue's direction.

Muyue was fairly satisfied with his control. Such an attack was conspicuous in the open, but in the Southern Forest, which occupied thirty percent of Konoha's territory, it was only a minor disturbance.

"Apart from strengthening your own body, you can also use Armament Haki to harden your weapons."

Muyue canceled the Armament Haki on his fist, pulled out a kunai, coated its edge with hardened Armament Haki, and then wrapped the Haki's power around the kunai.

Muyue casually picked a nearby rock and threw the kunai at it.

With a sharp whoosh, the kunai flew swiftly toward the rock, and the moment it struck, it blasted the rock apart.

"Such a versatile secret technique!" Kakashi couldn't help exclaiming. He had thought it was already impressive for offense and defense, but it could even be applied to weapons.

Kakashi felt this secret technique would suit his fast, precise, and deadly sword style. His already sharp White Light Chakra Saber, further enhanced by Armament Haki, would be so powerful that it would feel wasteful not to cut something truly hard.

Might Guy didn't have much reaction to this. He wasn't very good with shuriken and rarely used kunai, relying mostly on hand-to-hand combat.

Shisui, however, brightened, feeling that the short blade Muyue had given him would finally serve a great purpose.

"Once you train this secret technique to a high level, you can reinforce a lot of things—even ninjutsu is possible."

With that, Muyue reached out his hand, concentrated a large amount of chakra, and performed a Lightning Release chakra nature transformation. Immediately, brilliant purple lightning appeared in his hand.

Muyue had Kakashi summon an Earth-Style Wall, and then he shattered it with the Purple Lightning.

After destroying the Earth-Style Wall, Muyue had Kakashi use Earth Release to summon an earth wall again.

This time, Muyue did not use ordinary Purple Lightning, but an armed Lightning Release Purple Lightning strengthened by Armament Haki.

Boom! Boom!

Under the attack of the terrifying black-purple lightning with its destructive power, the thick, solid earth wall instantly disintegrated, leaving only a patch of blackened scorched mud and rock.

Although both instances of Purple Lightning displayed considerable power, the four disciples could clearly sense that the version reinforced with Armament Haki was far stronger.

"This technique is way too overpowered. If we learn it, won't our overall strength undergo a qualitative change?" Obito felt that the Haki secret technique Muyue was teaching was absurdly strong.

The Breathing Techniques were strong, but Flame Breathing only enhanced Fire Release, and Rock Breathing only excelled in boosting physical capabilities.

Armament Haki was different—it could withstand ninjutsu defensively, deliver punches comparable to ninjutsu offensively, and also strengthen weapons and ninjutsu.

"You will indeed gain a lot of strength from learning it, but it's not as exaggerated as you think." Muyue shook his head and said.

"First of all, Armament Haki can't enhance all jutsu—for example, a Fire Release like the Great Fireball is hard to boost. Also, using Armament Haki to strengthen a jutsu costs a fair amount of chakra, and spamming it in battle will burn through a huge amount."

Obito was oversimplifying things. Armament Haki might be strong, but it guzzled chakra—unless you had chakra to burn like crazy, you couldn't afford that cost.

Especially for someone like Muyue, who had a bunch of high-proficiency skills. He felt that even two hundred thousand chakra might not be enough to fuel it.

High-proficiency nature transformations could convert a ton of chakra in one go, the marks from the various Breathing Techniques were also huge chakra consumers, and now on top of that he had a bottomless pit like perfect-level Armament Haki.

"Ah, so Fire Release is out?" Obito scratched his head, suddenly feeling that Armament Haki wasn't so overpowered.

"It's not that Fire Release is out, it's that most Fire Release techniques are out," Muyue corrected.

"Next, aside from Shisui, you three will learn Yin Release nature transformation." Muyue began arranging the next part of training.

Most shinobi are born with one chakra nature, but that doesn't mean they can never learn nature transformations outside their innate one—it's just that learning your innate nature is faster and has a higher ceiling.

Of course, there are exceptions. It's possible to have more or fewer natures. For example, Rock Lee has zero chakra natures, and when Muyue tested Might Guy's chakra natures, he found that Might Guy had two innate natures: Lightning and Fire.

Even though Might Guy had two innate natures, it was almost the same as Lee having none—learning jutsu was way too much trouble, so he'd rather spend that time training his body.

The Yin and Yang natures can't be detected by chakra paper, so Muyue started teaching directly. But to trigger today's disciple-teaching reward, Muyue chose to have his main body teach Shisui Armament Haki while his clone taught Kakashi and the other two Yin Release chakra nature transformation.

"The essence of Yin Release is to create form from nothing using spiritual energy. You could say the core of using Yin Release is spiritual power." Muyue explained.

In Naruto, if you see a weird, hard-to-understand jutsu, it probably has something to do with Yin Release, because Yin Release's specialty is creating something from nothing.

As Muyue continued explaining, Might Guy started to zone out. He recognized every single word coming out of Muyue's mouth, but when they were strung together, he had no idea what they meant.

"Aaah, this is so hard!" Obito grabbed at his hair, feeling that compared to Fire Release nature transformation, Yin Release nature transformation was really elusive.

"I see, so compared to the five basic natures, it's quite special." Kakashi showed a look of sudden understanding; he was starting to grasp Yin Release.

At this point, the difference in their jutsu talent became clear. Though all three had S-class potential, Obito and Might Guy's ability to learn jutsu was far below Kakashi's.

Even though this was a Shadow Clone of Muyue, his Yin Release proficiency and teaching level were genuine. He just didn't have the skill boost from the teaching trait.

On the other side, Muyue's main body began formally teaching Armament Haki.

"Armament Haki is a Yin Release technique. Yin Release techniques use chakra and imagination to create something from nothing. When training Armament Haki, you can imagine an invisible armor covering your body, then use chakra to manifest that armor." Muyue said to Shisui.

"Invisible armor…" Shisui fell into thought.

Armament Haki was harder than he'd imagined. He'd thought that with his experience learning Yin Release genjutsu, it would be easier, but once he started learning, he realized how different the two were.

"Don't try to apply your experience from learning genjutsu to Armament Haki. Every Yin Release secret technique is quite different." Muyue saw through Shisui's thoughts and warned him.

Yin and Yang are listed as two special nature transformations for a reason. The difference between Great Fireball and Great Fire Annihilation is just that Great Fire Annihilation produces more flames—anyone can see at a glance that it's Fire Release.

But if you showed someone who didn't know about nature transformations the Shadow Imitation Technique and the Mind Body Switch Technique, no matter how hard they thought, they'd never guess that controlling shadows and invading someone's mind both belonged to the same nature transformation.

Different Yin Release and Yang Release secret techniques can have completely different effects.

【You taught your disciple Armament Haki. The disciple was extremely grateful, triggering a big critical reward. You gained the ninjutsu: Earth Release: Added-Weight Rock Technique (Proficient Level).】

He got a jutsu that had nothing to do with Shisui, but Muyue was used to it—the disciple-teaching reward didn't always give something related to the disciple; the probability was just higher. He'd even gotten a Water nature transformation from Might Guy once.

Still, it was a decent haul. Added-Weight Rock was a top-tier Earth Release technique. It could petrify enemies, increase their weight to slow them down, or increase the user's own weight to boost attacks.

As for something like the Super Added-Weight Rock Technique, that's essentially just using Added-Weight Rock to its fullest extent—it's not a separate jutsu, just like Super Shinra Tensei isn't really a different technique.

If Muyue was willing to pour all his chakra into Armament Haki for one punch, he could call it Super Armament Haki Fist.

Similarly, there's the Shadow Clone Technique and the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique. Multiple Shadow Clone Technique is a forbidden jutsu, but if you're really proficient at the regular Shadow Clone Technique, you automatically master Multiple Shadow Clones. Still, most people wouldn't waste that much chakra on clones.

This chapter is 3.2k words. If I can write it out, there's another 6.8k left.

I found Might Guy's chakra natures in the Book of Seals. I figured with Might Guy's jutsu talent, he wouldn't bother much with nature transformation training, so I set him with two innate natures.

Don't think of Yin nature transformation as too high-level. Genjutsu is also Yin Release, and genjutsu is considered a basic skill in the ninja world.