Chapter 37.5- One Thousand Hands

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It turned out the answer was a lot. One would be forgiven for assuming that it didn’t matter that I knew about mud release being a kekkei genkai now since I’d always been using it instinctively, but there was a difference between doing something by instinct and doing it with full cognizance. One of those differences? Control. I could control the mud in ways that I hadn’t ever actually considered doing before because I’d thought it to be basic earth release and nothing more. I flashed back to the fight against the Raikage when I had essentially commanded the mud to bury him without using any handseals or even anything that resembled a jutsu. Just like Hashirama with the trees, I’d asked the mud to help and it had done so.

I turned the ground around me into mud and with a twist of my fingers, commanded several clones of me to rise from the mud. Looking at them with my eyes, I could see how they differed from the standard shadow clones. For one, they didn’t split my chakra in half- in fact they were far from that. It only took a silver of chakra to grant consciousness to the mud. For another, I could tell that they would prove much harder to dispel than shadow clones. You’d need an actual fatal blow to take one down. And better than water clones, they weren’t limited to just 10% of my power- it was closer to 70, if I had to make an estimate.

With that jutsu done, I attempted the next one. One of my clones stepped forward and I watched him focus his chakra until his left arm had transformed back into mud. As a mud limb, it shifted into a mace, and then a Hammer, and then a sword. I nodded at that before the clone fell apart back into mud and I turned the ground back into the loose earth it had been before I used may jutsu. Even doing as much as I just had so close to an enemy encampment was just shy of reckless. Doing more as I was tempted to would be suicidal. I jumped back atop the tree that I’d been scouting from and activated my meisagakure no jutsu to return to my camouflaged state. The scouts were still a few minutes off so I had to spend some time standing still before they landed in the clearing I’d been using.

They looked around for a few seconds before continuing along on foot. I took a breath out and deactivated the jutsu once I could see that they were far enough. They’d changed the schedule of their patrols, I noted as I sat down on the branch and took out my own journal. A seal for transporting prisoners was the project I would be targeting today. Definitely something for their chakra, to prevent them breaking out from within or from their chakra wearing against the storage seal would be the first. Something for storage as well- a standard corpse matrix should be a good basis. Stasis? I’d seen something like that in the scrolls the Uzumaki used to transport their food.