Uchiha’s grimoire guide to winning: Chapter 13: The art that curses and twist the world

"Exactly. Because of our seals."

Shusei's words hung in the air, heavy with implications I was still processing, still trying to fit into the framework of what I knew, what I'd learned, what made sense.

Outside, I felt more than heard the device begin to hover, rising smoothly off the ground with a hum that vibrated through the floor beneath my feet. Through the windows, I could see the others begin to depart, moving with that effortless shinobi speed that made things look like slowed down, blurs of motion that would carry them, and by extension us, across countries.

The device followed, tethered to Yoru's chakra like a balloon on a string, pulled along without resistance, without friction.

I looked back at Shusei, frowning.

"I know seals are important, can be versatile and strong, but strong and needed to the point where the entire ninja world allows neutrality for one clan? That's something hard to believe."

Sure, I'd seen in canon how powerful seals could be. I'd seen Minato use the Flying Thunder God to teleport across battlefields, seen Hagoromo and Hamura stop their mother using a seal, seen Orochimaru use cursed seals to turn people into monsters, warping their bodies, corrupting their chakra, making them stronger and more broken in equal measure. I'd seen storage seals compress matter, barrier seals protect entire villages, explosive tags level buildings.

But still.

This was shinobi land, a world of punch wizards masquerading as ninjas, a world where people could breathe fire and summon tsunamis and crush mountains with their bare hands. I was sure that while impressive, while versatile, there must be or must have been things existing in this world, things most people had access to, that would not make seals so singular, so irreplaceable, so valuable that an entire clan could leverage them into neutrality.

Shusei smiled, reading my skepticism like it was written on my forehead in ink.

"It seems you don't believe me, that you're skeptical, which is understandable."

He leaned forward slightly, his expression shifting into something more teacherly, more patient.

"Tell me, Ren, what do you think seals are?"

I gave him the textbook answer, the kind you'd find in an academy primer, curt and clinical.

"Seals are methods of inscribing formulas using chakra-conductive ink or blood to create effects that manipulate, store, or redirect chakra and matter. They're tools for achieving results that would otherwise require sustained chakra expenditure or specialized techniques."

Shusei nodded, acknowledging the definition.

"Indeed, this is true, but what does it really mean? It's like when people are told that some hand signs correspond to a technique, but most seem satisfied with not trying to understand why."

I frowned.

"People know about hand signs, their capabilities, how they've been studied since the dawn of the shinobi world. There are entire libraries dedicated to the theory, entire branches of study focused on optimizing sequences, reducing signs, increasing efficiency."

Shusei waved a hand dismissively.

"They were studied just to be studied, not to be understood, not to understand chakra. People memorize the signs for Fireball Jutsu, but they don't ask why those specific signs, why that specific order, what the signs are actually doing to the chakra pathways, to the chakra itself."

He paused, letting that settle.

"Anyway, what makes seals so important, what makes our innate talent for them so important, is that it is less that we created them and more that we discovered them and made something of them, the same way a carpenter takes wood to make shapes or a painter takes ink to make paintings."

His tone shifted, becoming more intense, more focused.

"What makes seals so interesting, so versatile, so important, is how they circumvent the rules of chakra itself."

I blinked, processing that, turning it over in my mind.

"Circumvent the rules of chakra?" I said out loud, testing the words, trying to understand what he meant.

Shusei's smile widened, sharp and pleased.

"Exactly. Chakra itself has already few rules, but the few rules it has, its limits, can be broken. And so far, the Uzumaki clan with their seals were the ones to find how."

He leaned back, watching me.

"Tell me, what do you know of Yin and Yang?"

Yin and Yang?

I thought about it, pulling from both lives, both sets of knowledge.

From my past life, Yin and Yang were feminine and masculine, negative and positive, cold and heat, push and pull, one in two, separate, opposite, yet one part of a whole. Dualities that defined each other, that couldn't exist without each other, that created balance through opposition.

From what I knew of this world, both from past life memories about the manga and anime and the memories of the original Ren, Yin was spiritual and Yang was physical. Yin was shape, lifeless form, potential without substance. Yang was content, life, substance without definition. It was only when the two were together that anything became possible, and that was literal in this world.

Banbutsu Sōzō, the Creation of All Things.

The technique that had supposedly been used by the Sage of the Six Paths to create the Tailed Beasts, to shape reality itself, to bring imagination into existence. It required perfect balance, perfect mastery, both Yin and Yang working in harmony to turn thought into matter, concept into reality.

In canon, I'd seen fragments of it. The Izanagi, used by Uchiha and later by Danzo, could rewrite reality for brief moments, turn death into illusion, undo injuries, reshape events, all at the cost of a Sharingan. It was said to be an incomplete version of Creation of All Things, using only Yin chakra, shaping reality without the Yang to give it permanence, which was why it required sacrifice, why it cost an eye, why it was temporary.

The Izanami, the counter to Izanagi, trapped people in loops of cause and effect, forced them to confront their actions, their choices, their nature. It was also incomplete, also Yin-dominant, also cost an eye.

You grew your Yang by physically training, by pushing your body, by breaking it down and building it back stronger. Muscle, bone, blood, all Yang, all physical, all tangible.

But for your Yin, your spirit, you needed to break yourself mentally and reforge yourself again and again. You needed to read until you couldn't take it anymore and still continue reading. You needed to experience life-changing, life-altering things. You needed to be spiteful, angry, mad, jealous, envious. You needed to experience heartbreak, to come as close to death as possible, to suffer, to hate, to grow stronger through pain.

The power of hatred was literal in this world.

Someone fucking kill me.

It was in doing all those things that you trained Yin, which would explain why clans like mine, clans like the Uchiha, people with high Yin, were all a little mad, because it was requisite if you wanted to be stronger using Yin. You had to break, had to shatter, had to rebuild yourself from fragments, and every time you did, you lost a little more of whatever made you stable, made you sane, made you normal.

Wasn't it said in canon that the more an Uchiha hated, the more powerful their Sharingan became?

Hadn't I awakened my own Sharingan, three tomoe in each eye, mature and fully developed, because in a way I had died twice? The part of me from a past life where this world existed only in a manga, and the part of me, the original Ren, who died because he tried to make his parents proud, doing something stupid when they were already proud of him.

Two deaths.

Two lives.

One body.

I looked at Shusei, choosing my words carefully.

"I know that your clan and the Senju clan thrive when it comes to Yang, and my clan does when it comes to Yin."

I thought about the Izanagi again, about how it was incomplete, about how if Yang could be used at the same time, in perfect balance, maybe the need to sacrifice an eye wouldn't exist. Maybe you could rewrite reality without cost, without sacrifice, without burning out part of your soul to pay the toll.

Shusei nodded, his smile turning sharp.

"Exactly. We Uzumakis are Yang-natured, our chakra is Yang-dominant, which means what we are able to do should have stopped at our powerful bodies, our vitality, our longevity, our healing."

He spread his hands.

"Yet when you look at my clan, at our creations, what does it seem to you, Ren?"

I thought about it, really thought about it.

The Uzumaki clan was Yang-favoring, that was obvious, documented, proven. Their bodies were strong, their chakra reserves massive, their life force potent enough to heal others through transfusion, through bites, through sheer vitality.

But their specialization, their seals, didn't seem Yang.

If anything, seals seemed Yin, because Yin chakra was what went against the rules of the world, defied them, warped them, perverted them. Yin was imagination made manifest, reality rewritten, physics made optional.

And seals did all of that.

Seals stored things that shouldn't fit. Seals created effects that shouldn't exist. Seals manipulated chakra in ways that should require constant focus and control but instead operated autonomously, independently, like programs running in the background.

That was Yin.

That was shape without content, form without substance, given permanence through formula and ink.

Understanding hit me like a punch to the gut.

"Your seals allow you to use Yin chakra without needing to grow it yourself inside of you, to be able to use Yin as much if not more than someone with naturally high Yin chakra like people in my clan."

I stared at him, feeling something between awe and resentment.

"That's so fucking unfair."

Shusei laughed, bright and unapologetic, and then, with the most infuriating grin I'd ever seen, said:

"My aunt taught me one thing to say in case I was in such a situation: get good, scrub."

I glared at him.

"Fuck you," I said in English.

One thing I knew was that the language spoken in the Elemental Nations wasn't English. The best way to describe it was that it was akin to being the mixed cousin of Hindi, Chinese, and Japanese with a lot of other weird linguistic influences thrown in, a pidgin that had evolved over centuries of clans and cultures colliding. Which meant that Shusei didn't understand my words, at least not literally.

Still, I was pretty sure the Uzumaki understood what I meant by tone and context alone.

But at least, like this, it couldn't be argued that I insulted a client, even if I was sure, deep down, that the boy before me wouldn't snitch.

Shusei tilted his head, curiosity replacing smugness.

"What's that language? It sounds strange yet, fascinating. Can you tell me more?"

I answered with the second Uchiha signature response:

"Hmm."

He leaned forward.

"Common."

"Hmm."

"I was just teasing," he said, half-pleading now.

"Hmm."

Shusei's expression shifted, mock-threatening.

"I will kick you out of this device and make you walk the rest of the way."

I shifted my tone, speaking in a polite yet sarcastic way, channeling theatrical offense.

"Oh, my poor heart, such a disgraceful thing, indeed, I should fare better outside, exposed to the elements, abandoned by those I trusted."

Shusei snorted.

"You're not as good an actor as you think."

I reverted back to normal, sighing.

"It seems I'll have to work on that."

Shusei grinned, then his expression shifted back to serious, back to the topic at hand.

"Anyway, this is why we are left alone, because we found a way to cheat, and thus we cheat, and thus others who need to cheat come to us."

He gestured expansively.

"What a seal can do can probably be done one way or another by someone good enough at using chakra, but those people are rare. Most ninjas, warriors, they focus on simple elemental chakra natures instead of the esoteric ones like Yin or Yang. And when they do master those, and they die, they can't transmit their knowledge to the next generation as easily as we can, because we don't need to have a strong Yang or a strong Yin to make something only someone with a strong Yang or a strong Yin should be able to make."

His tone grew more intense, more passionate.

"Why rely on medic-nin when their numbers are not enough and you can instead buy seals that can do the same anywhere? Why sacrifice Suiton specialists on the front when you can buy a seal that creates, in the hand of even the weakest genin, floods in a desert? Why train hard when you can use a seal that triples your muscle gain? Why not buy a seal when you can use it to change how you look?"

The Uzumaki looked almost crazed as he spoke, eyes bright, voice rising, caught up in the implications of his own words.

I stared at him, my mind racing.

If what Shusei was saying wasn't false, if it was truth, if the Uzumaki could through their seals use both Yang and Yin without needing to necessarily cultivate either, didn't that mean they were encroaching on the domain of the Creation of All Things the same way Uchihas did with the Izanagi and the Izanami, but with seals instead of dōjutsu?

Didn't that mean that an Uzumaki proficient enough with seals could theoretically do anything?

But if this was true, how could they have been genocided in canon?

Sure, they'd fooled multiple villages, multiple Kages, fought against more than half of the great ninja villages and gave them a pyrrhic victory if not a two-sided defeat. Their fall had been apocalyptic, costly, devastating to everyone involved.

Still, if what I was hearing was true, they shouldn't have lost.

They should have been unstoppable.

They should have been gods.

Even then, there was something I felt was missing, something I knew Shusei wasn't telling me.

I could believe that seals could do all those things, could cheat reality, could bypass the normal rules of chakra.

But I was sure there must have been a cost, something sacrificed, some price paid, the same way the Uchiha lost an eye using the Izanagi and the Izanami.

Nothing that powerful came free.

Nothing that broke the rules didn't demand payment.

There had to be a catch.

There always was.

I looked at Shusei, watched him settle back into the couch, watched the passion fade from his expression into something more controlled, more guarded.

He wasn't lying, I was sure of that.

But he wasn't telling me everything either.

And that, more than anything else, made me wary.

Made me curious.

Made me realize that maybe, just maybe, my aunt wasn't wrong.

Maybe this mission would be interesting.