Chapter 500

【Puzzle Solving: You are skilled at solving students' doubts, and your thinking becomes sharper when contemplating their questions.】

Mu Yue showed a thoughtful expression; the system's explanation was far too brief.

What exactly counts as a student recognized for puzzle solving? Someone who has attended his lectures? Or someone who sincerely acknowledges themselves as Mu Yue's student? Or does Mu Yue have to acknowledge the other party as a student in his heart?

Being skilled at solving students' doubts — does that mean Puzzle Solving has an effect similar to Teaching, only activating when the student has a doubt?

The latter half is easy to understand: it simply accelerates thinking, but only for the student's doubts.

Mu Yue felt that the Puzzle Solving skill was a bit like a fusion of Teaching and Enlightenment, with the first half limited to Teaching and the second half limited to Enlightenment.

After thinking it over carefully, Mu Yue concluded that these three skills each had their own strengths, making it hard to compare them.

"Tomorrow morning's lesson is still on chakra nature transformation, covering Wind Release, Yang Release, and Yin Release respectively." Mu Yue withdrew his thoughts and gave the teaching preview for the next day.

The achievement rewards had already refreshed, but the S-rank settlement reward for the advanced class was quite good, so Mu Yue would do his best to teach well over these seven days.

"He's even proficient in Yin and Yang Release? How does he train?" Upon hearing that Mu Yue would also explain three chakra nature transformations, Hanzo was very puzzled.

Hanzo's face darkened. Couldn't he avoid mentioning that? Had Sōsuke's Fire Style never lost to anyone?

"If I entrusted Sōsuke with training, would he agree?" Kitsuchi thought of a good method.

Mu Yue's combat power was worth five hundred ninja, and his teaching ability was worth a thousand ninja!

Unfortunately, there was no "if." Now that the Ninja Sect in the Rain Country was akin to the Rain Shinobi Village, Mu Yue was essentially another Hanzo. They couldn't invite Hanzo to join Iwa, and Hanzo wouldn't agree either.

Iwa had a plan to use the Ninja Sect to wear down Konoha's strength, which involved Iwa's war strategy, so Kitsuchi couldn't decide on his own.

Pakura's words made the dispersing crowd stop and look toward Mu Yue.

Hanzo had already prepared to leave, because if his identity were exposed, it would be very embarrassing.

"Sure." Mu Yue thought it over and agreed.

But Hanzo very much wanted to hear Mu Yue explain Yin and Yang chakra natures, so he prepared to stay one more day.

"If only Sōsuke were a ninja of Iwagakure." Kitsuchi said with a regretful expression.

Moreover, with his current strength, defeating Pakura was a trivial matter.

Since he had only studied for one day, and Pakura himself was considered a notable figure in the ninja world, Pakura simply addressed Mu Yue as "senior" and did not call him "teacher."

For the Ninja Sect, which was about to make a big move in the Rain Country, having the leader accumulate more deeds and a louder reputation was a good thing.

Kitsuchi kept this idea in mind, planning to report it to Ōnoki when he submitted his mission report.

The ninja retreated, creating enough space for the two to fight, and watched them from a distance.

After all, missions for this level of powerhouse were always the most secretive kind, practically invisible; if you saw them during wartime, you were doomed—you might become their enemy.

If Mu Yue were the same age as him, that would be one thing, but the key point was that Mu Yue didn't look that old either—where did he find the time to train so many abilities?

"I have mastered a bloodline limit called Scorch Release, which can release extremely hot flames. I want to witness the Fire Style that defeated the Demi-God." Figuring he was already here, Pakura wanted to see Mu Yue's Fire Style in battle.

"Senior Sōsuke, could you use Fire Style to fight me?" Pakura stepped forward and asked Mu Yue.

The ninja all looked excited—it wasn't often one got to see a powerhouse of Ninja Instructor Sōsuke's level take action.

Although Mu Yue couldn't join Iwa, Iwa could commission missions to have Mu Yue help.

After listening to Mu Yue's lecture, Kitsuchi believed that Mu Yue alone could match a force of one thousand five hundred ninja.

"I wonder how long this Suna hero can hold out."

"Shouldn't be less than three minutes—he is, after all, an established strongman of Sunagakure."

No one thought Pakura could beat Mu Yue; everyone was discussing when Pakura would lose.

Even the other Suna ninja weren't optimistic about their own strongman, after all, Sōsuke had a fearsome reputation—he had even defeated the Demi-God in a disadvantageous matchup.

"Make your move." Mu Yue said.

Pakura nodded without standing on ceremony, directly gathering all his chakra and using his bloodline limit at full power.

"Scorch Release: Overboil Kill!"

Seven head-sized dark fireballs rapidly formed and orbited around Pakura, then under his control, they shot toward Mu Yue at top speed.

Muyue focused his breathing into the Flame Breathing Chakra Mode to enhance his Fire Release abilities.

"Fire Release: Wild Dance of Fire Dragons!"

A massive amount of chakra gathered at Muyue's throat, then under the amplification of the Flame Breathing Chakra Mode, it all transformed into powerful fire-attribute chakra.

Muyue formed the Ram seal, then immediately spat out a vast expanse of terrifying flames of extremely high temperature.

In Flame Breathing Chakra Mode, Muyue generally didn't need to form seals, but he was in the habit of pretending to form seals after transforming into his alternate form.

The fierce flames continuously spewed from Muyue. Because the fire was intense and the temperature extremely high, the surrounding temperature skyrocketed, and the watching ninja quickly became drenched in sweat.

"This is that technique!" Hanzo stared at Muyue. Back then, Muyue had used this ninjutsu to cleanly defeat him.

Hanzo still couldn't forget the scene from that day.

Because it was rainy, the sky was very gloomy. The Fire Release Muyue unleashed brought a great amount of light and heat, extremely dazzling.

As the current strongest Water Release ninja in the shinobi world, he thought that with his elemental advantage and weather advantage he wouldn't lose, and then his Water Release was swallowed up by Muyue's Wild Dance of Fire Dragons.

"Overestimating yourself. With that level of skill, you want to challenge the Wild Dance of Fire Dragons?" Kakuzu said disdainfully.

When he fought Muyue, Muyue once used a single Wild Dance of Fire Dragons to instantly take four of his lives.

Later, when he understood Muyue better, Kakuzu realized that Muyue had already held back at that time. If Muyue hadn't had killing intent, all five of his lives would have died without a trace.

"So this is what a true strong person is like?"

The watching ninja were all drenched in sweat. The pressure on Pakura, who had to face the Wild Dance of Fire Dragons head-on, was unimaginable—maxed out in every sense.

The overwhelming flames surged toward Pakura. Pakura controlled her Scorch Release flames to block, but the gap was simply too large. Soon, the Scorch Release flames dissipated into the sea of fire.

Muyue's perfect-grade fire-attribute chakra, combined with the Flame Breathing Chakra Mode's enhancement—an attack of this level was too far beyond Pakura's league.

The sea of fire split into six giant fire dragons, sealing off all of Pakura's escape routes. In that instant, Pakura seemed to see her own fate of turning to ashes.

But just as the fire dragons were about to reach Pakura, Muyue canceled the ninjutsu, and the sky filled with flames dissipated.

Instant kill, without a doubt an instant kill.

Except for Hanzo, Kakuzu, Kitsuchi, and others who had already seen the might of Muyue's Wild Dance of Fire Dragons, the remaining ninja all wore astonished expressions.

Although everyone knew that the Ninja Master Sōsuke was very skilled with Fire Release, hearing about it and personally seeing Sōsuke use Fire Release to instantly kill a strong person like the Sand Hero were two different things.

"If it's a Fire Release like this, then defeating the Demi-God Hanzo, who is best at Water Release, does make perfect sense." Some ninja seemed to see in that terrifying Fire Release the figure of Muyue locked in fierce battle with Hanzo.

"Yeah, when it comes to Fire Release mastery, no one is stronger than Lord Sōsuke." The surrounding ninja agreed.

Hearing that Muyue used Fire Release to defeat Hanzo had seemed unbelievable, but seeing it on site, it would have been unreasonable if this Fire Release could be easily extinguished by ordinary Water Release.

"Senior Sōsuke, thank you for holding back." Pakura recovered and thanked Muyue.

Because it was a battle she had requested, even if Muyue had injured her, it would have been fine, since she was the one who asked.

"There's no need for that." Muyue replied with a faint smile.

After returning to the Ninja Sect base, Muyue tried testing the effects of his new skill, Enlightenment.

Muyue's method was simple: he casually wrote down some large-number multiplication and division exercises for Nagato, then told Nagato to come ask him if he didn't understand. Muyue would do the problems and explain.

Muyue then made another set of problems that he hadn't given to Nagato, and compared his own performance. Naturally, he could tell whether Nagato was a student recognized by Enlightenment.

The final test result was that Enlightenment was triggered. Muyue could clearly perceive that when he worked on the problems he had given to Nagato, his speed was noticeably faster.

"Does this mean that all disciples fall within the scope of students for Enlightenment?" Muyue speculated inwardly.

This possibility was extremely high, because the system clearly favored disciples—it wouldn't give a teaching-type skill that disciples couldn't use as a reward.

However, since Obito and the others were in Konoha, Muyue couldn't test it for now.

Next, Muyue began testing non-disciples. He first found Konan and Yahiko, and the result was successful—they too were recognized as students by Enlightenment.

Muyue then found a few members who had joined the Ninja Sect not long ago, but Enlightenment was not triggered.

"It seems that at the very least, one must have been studying under me for a while to be judged as a student by Enlightenment." Muyue reached this conclusion.

The judgment of Enlightenment was still quite lenient. Muyue immediately thought of many ways to develop Enlightenment further.

For example, with the Yang Seal he was perfecting—if he deemed Tsunade, who was helping, as a student, then his speed in developing the Yang Seal would increase.

Another example is the various breathing techniques he wanted to develop. If, while lecturing his disciples, he assigned tasks for them to ponder, those could also become doubts, accelerating Mu Yue's research on breathing techniques.

However, as Mu Yue continued testing, he discovered a problem: if the previous disciple's doubt was not resolved, then the enhancement from the next doubt would be smaller, and after five doubts the effect was nearly nonexistent.

Fortunately, triggering doubt resolution also had conditions. The student had to communicate with Mu Yue, the student had to have a doubt, and Mu Yue had to have the intention to resolve it for the trigger to actually occur. Otherwise, if a student could trigger a doubt just by blurting out a few words on a whim, this skill would be useless.

Additionally, there were tricks to resolving doubts. For example, if a student asked how to become the strongest in the ninja world, Mu Yue only needed to devise a training plan for him to count as successfully resolving the doubt, rather than requiring the student to actually become the strongest.