Chapter 7: Hachimon's origins

Ryuuji was sitting cross-legged in his home, three thick books were placed on top of his head, while he also held a leaf on his forehead. His hands forming the most simple of jutsu hand signs as he made sure to circulate his chakra according to the scroll placed in front of him.

It was one of the many training techniques he had been using to practice his chakra control. Usually, he would have been training with Itachi, but today was some sort of holiday for then it seems, and his friend went out with his family to pray in a Shrine.

Not wanting to waste this opportunity, Ryuuji who had been preparing himself for a long time, finally decided to make a bold move! Kushina and Jiraiya had always hindered his progress in a certain sense, no matter how much he asked, they refused to teach him ninjutsu, and since he had no way to put his hands in ninjutsu scrolls, for now, he had to do focus on the only alternative he had, fuinjutsu.

Sweating he sighed and put down the books, now that he finished practicing it was time to do the one thing he had been postponing for a long time now.

Taking out the scroll from behind him, he put it on the ground, Jiraiya's words resurfacing in his mind, 'When the time comes for you to inherit the abilities of your clan, all you have to do is let a single drop of your blood fall on the center of the seal.', and so he did.

When the drop of blood hit the seal, the many symbols that formed it became grey, gulping, he took the scroll and opened it.

Seeing the complex information on it he couldn't help but gasp.

What is this!? Why I can't understand even half of it?

Ryuuji was mesmerized by the scene in front of him, rows of texts and symbols filled the paper from top to bottom, the more he opened the scroll, the more information appeared, it was seemingly endless.

Gulping he started from the very beginning.

***

Many hours later, Ryuuji was looking through the windows of his house with a lost expression on his face, after studying the scroll up till the end, he realized something...

"This... why is the easiest thing here for a Chunin?!" It couldn't be helped, the requirements for Fuinjutsu were so heavy that most of the techniques under this branch of jutsu were simply at rank B with very few being rank C.

Under normal circumstances, those interested in becoming Fuinjutsu masters would have first to achieve an amount of chakra comparable to that of a Chunin, or in layman terms, being able to cast at least five rank C ninjutsu without depleting his or her reserves, and even with this harsh requirements, the scroll warned from the very first paragraph how most people can only practice when they become Jonin due to the heavy requirements in terms of chakra control.

Still, this scroll actually taught him many things that he wasn't aware of before due to Kushina and Jiraiya never talking about them, for starts, it seems that Fuinjutsu is the predecessor of Genjutsu, while their means had deviated extremely over the years, the connection could still be seen just by the way 'Body Seal' was used to release Genjutsus, the 'Kai' term was something first developed by the ancestor who created Fuinjutsu, the idea behind it was to make sure that chakra in the form of soundwaves was used to disrupt the flow of energy within the seals.

Genjutsu worked under almost the same premise and were created based on the previously mentioned Body Seals, however, the idea was using Body Seals to interfere with the person's chakra in order to create Illusions and Hallucinations.

According to the scroll, the chakra pathway system could be considered a seal in and on itself, it was because of this peculiar characteristic of Chakra that the Uzumaki managed to develop the first-ever Jinchuriki in the world, not only that, but they were also the first to name the pressure points and meridians even though the Hyuga Clan had always been able to see them.

From the many techniques developed on Body Seals, the most famous and widespread one was Hachimon (Eight Gates).

The Hachimon was created by Uzumaki Shinji, a member of the clan who was said to have been a failure when it came to ninjutsu techniques, the idea behind Hachimon was based on an assumption he made in ancient times.

Based on the observation of the many Fuinjutsu masters from the Uzumaki clan that studied the Body Seals, besides the 361 pressure points, there is also the existence of twenty meridians in the body.

The twelve principal meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.

Uzumaki Shinji believed that his difficulty with casting Ninjutsu came from the fact that his Meridians weren't as they were meant to be. According to him, every meridian worked as some sort of limiter.

Through observation, he believed that the production of chakra and vital energy from the body was related to them and that their potential was actually far beyond what humans could even imagine, and that the reasons meridians existed was to prevent them from imploding due to excess of energy in the body, however, biology is something funny, and things are not always as they were meant to be, meaning one could be born with completely sealed meridians, which would make the practice of Ninjutsu close to impossible.

Based on this, he believed that it was possible to make a human completely unable to access chakra, and the opposite also was true... after all, if closing the meridians could prevent one from having chakra, what opening them fully would cause?

Willing to test his theories, Shinji first wrote down the technique and this explanation.

Apparently, no matter how much he tried at first it was close to impossible to open them, it was only after trying for many years that he discovered that some Meridians were weaker than others and could be accessed more easily with brute force, with this development path, the current Hachimon came to exist.

The reason Ryuuji knew so much of it, was due to its low requirements since most of the energy used to activate the Hachimon was actually vital energy, even kids could learn it, but of course, there were three pages worthy of warnings regarding the side effects of practicing this technique. In the end, the creator himself said many times that the Hachimon was an incomplete and even failed technique that, if taken to the extreme would result in death.

Even though there were so many warnings, Ryuuji was very interested in this technique, after all, it was the only thing in his scroll that could be practiced... The physical requirements discouraged him a little, but he was willing to put in the effort, who knows, maybe he could one day improve the Hachimon?

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A/N: Sorry for the small chapter, take a look at the author note bellow for a more detailed explanation.