Sarutobi Enjun hurried forward and started speaking to Jiraiya, all while frantically signaling Uchiha Gen with his eyes to bring out the bell.
"Haha, relax. Orochimaru already told me about that little bell, so there's nothing to worry about. That bell uses sound-based genjutsu, while Toad Power's method is all-encompassing. With his level of skill, using both together will definitely work better than either one alone!"
Now it was Jiraiya who looked unbearably smug.
The pits he had fallen into before—he was absolutely going to drag these kids into them too.
Sarutobi Enjun's face went even greener. Even Uzuki Ruri looked more than a little uneasy.
"Very good. Let's begin!" Jiraiya announced.
"Okay, I'm coming! You can start with this little buddy!"
Under Sarutobi Enjun's horrified stare, Toad Power shot out its long tongue and lunged straight at him.
No!
"Ughhhh!!!"
Uchiha Gen couldn't bear to watch and simply shut his eyes.
Jiraiya and Toad Power were clearly holding back, so the scene wasn't truly violent, but it was still bizarre enough to make anyone's scalp crawl.
A few seconds later, Sarutobi Enjun crumpled to the ground in terror. His hands shook as he formed seals, trying to disrupt the genjutsu's hold on his chakra and break free with all his strength.
The illusion itself was far more grotesque and overwhelming than anything happening in reality, so he had no choice but to fight with everything he had.
"Senior Toad Power, please... please don't hold back. I'll do my best too!"
Uzuki Ruri stepped forward with a determined look on her face, bracing herself as she confronted the giant toad.
"A girl? And a cute one at that. Fine, your turn."
Toad Power blew her a kiss. A floating heart and that long tongue brushed across Uzuki Ruri's face, pulling her instantly into an illusion.
"Hey, bell brat, increase the intensity for them." Jiraiya held out a hand toward Uchiha Gen.
Gen passed the illusion bell over. Jiraiya tossed it to Toad Power without even looking.
"They're all yours now, Toad Power, you little rascal. Come on, let's go. It's time for you to witness my amazing teaching ability!"
Jiraiya threw his head back, hands on his hips, and strode off with ridiculous confidence.
***
Two hours later, on the other side of the training ground—
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
"Wind Release: Chaotic Airflow!"
The massive fireball twisted as a stream of wind swirled into it, the flames spinning faster and hotter before smashing into the compacted earth.
A deafening blast followed. Dirt and broken stone sprayed everywhere, and the ground itself briefly glowed red before the heat slowly faded, leaving behind an irregular crater scorched black at the edges.
"Tsk, tsk. As expected of me. With just a little guidance, this kid can already use combined ninjutsu this well."
Jiraiya lounged against a tree in the distance, one hand behind his head, the other holding an adult novel with an entirely shameless cover. Even while pretending to read, his eyes kept drifting toward Uchiha Gen, and he couldn't stop boasting to himself.
Whoever ended up becoming his student in the future really would be lucky.
Not far away, Uchiha Gen studied the crater and let out a slow breath. He was genuinely satisfied with the progress.
Jiraiya and Orochimaru were both top-tier teachers, but if one only looked at the results, Jiraiya's track record seemed even more outrageous. Aside from Yahiko, who had died too young, every student Jiraiya had personally raised would someday become terrifyingly powerful. Konan, who could stand at Kage level, was actually the least monstrous among them.
By contrast, among the people Orochimaru had trained, only Kabuto Yakushi could truly be called extraordinary without qualification—and even Kabuto only reached that point after inheriting Orochimaru's legacy and turning it into his own.
After this period of training under Jiraiya, Gen finally understood why the two of them produced such different results.
Compared to Orochimaru, Jiraiya was obviously more verbose and long-winded. But in many areas, he was also far more meticulous.
Orochimaru was too much of a genius. The kind of genius who looked at problems other people considered difficult and either solved them in one glance or never saw them as problems to begin with.
If you asked Orochimaru how to do something, he would usually skip a pile of steps, hand you the answer, and act as though he had already explained enough. If you still didn't understand, then in his eyes that was your problem, not his.
Jiraiya was different.
His talent still far exceeded that of ordinary ninja, but his comprehension had never reached Orochimaru's level. When he was young, keeping up with his teammates had already been hard enough. Precisely because he had once stumbled so badly himself, he knew where others were likely to stumble too.
Even a fool had a fool's method.
Jiraiya might not be able to learn ten thousand jutsu the way Orochimaru could, but he could practice one jutsu ten thousand times. He could hammer the same foundation again and again until it became rock solid, then use the simplest technique to produce the strongest possible result.
He chased perfection in every detail, even the ones other people would dismiss as basic.
At the start of Shippuden, Naruto didn't actually have many powerful techniques under his belt, but the foundation Jiraiya had built for him was terrifyingly sturdy. That was why Naruto could later erupt forward at such shocking speed once the path ahead opened up.
It had been the same for Nagato and Konan. Jiraiya had not taught them an arsenal of forbidden jutsu, nor had he stuffed them full of Konoha's high-level secrets. Once he judged that they could survive, he left the Land of Rain.
And yet, even after losing his direct guidance, they had still grown into monsters.
That was the value of a foundation. Once someone found the direction that suited them, everything laid down in those early days would start paying back with terrifying interest.
From that perspective, Jiraiya's teaching style really was impressive. There was a guaranteed floor, and the ceiling was also extremely high.
If there was a flaw, it was that his approach was slow in the early stages. It focused on gradual accumulation, on grinding out strength bit by bit. Without either exceptional talent or exceptional opportunity, it could take a very long time before results truly exploded.
Orochimaru's style, on the other hand, was brutally dependent on talent. It suited genius ninja like Sasuke Uchiha or Kabuto Yakushi, people with sharp minds and terrifying comprehension. As for those with more average ability, Orochimaru also had solutions—just not ones any sane person would welcome. Forbidden jutsu, experiments, body modification, black technology. Effective, yes. Also liable to turn someone into a disposable test subject.
Thinking about it that way, Jiraiya's style was actually not a bad fit for him.
When he still had Sakura Haruno's character card equipped, the years he spent with it had already let him fully digest the abilities that version of Sakura possessed. It was almost like attending the Ninja Academy twice over, forcing his foundations to become unnaturally stable. That was why Jiraiya's patient, detail-heavy way of teaching had such a clear effect on him.
"Alright, you've basically gotten the hang of combined ninjutsu."
Jiraiya finally lowered the book and spoke in a more serious tone.
"Wind keeps the air churning. That lets the fire come into contact with more oxygen, so it burns more fully, and it also expands the spread of the flames. That's the most basic principle behind using Wind Release to strengthen Fire Release. For someone at your level, understanding the theory isn't difficult."
He paused, then gave Gen a once-over.
"But if you want to keep improving, you'll need to raise your Wind Release level further. Compared to your Fire Release, your Wind Release is still clearly weaker."
Uchiha Gen nodded, but inwardly he was already sorting through the implications.
That judgment was accurate. His Fire Release foundation had come from years of clan training, constant repetition, and later the accumulated benefits of the system. Wind Release, by comparison, had only been added onto his combat system relatively recently. Even if his natural affinity for it seemed better than expected, time still mattered.
Combined ninjutsu was not some miraculous shortcut. It was the product of one strong base supporting another. If the Wind Release side lagged too far behind, then instead of amplification, it would eventually become a flaw.
He glanced at the scorched crater again.
Even so, the result just now had already been enough to make his heartbeat quicken.
Fire Release on its own was one of the Uchiha clan's specialties. But once Wind Release entered the equation, the possibilities widened immediately. Greater range. More violent spread. More unstable trajectories. Harder to evade, harder to suppress, harder to predict.
And because he now possessed the single-tomoe Sharingan through young Madara's character card, his perception had already climbed into a completely different tier. With that level of visual tracking and control, the room for micro-adjustments in battle had grown wider than before.
If he kept polishing this path, then his future combat system would not merely be "Uchiha standard." It would become something sharper, more complete, and more dangerous.
Jiraiya gave a satisfied grunt when he saw that Gen had not merely listened, but was clearly already thinking several steps ahead.
"You really are different from that idiot Orochimaru. When I explain things, at least you actually react like a human being instead of pretending you knew everything already."
Gen gave him a sideways look. "Jiraiya-senpai, I think you're confusing willingness to listen with lack of talent."
"Brat, don't get cocky."
Jiraiya snorted, but he was obviously pleased.
Over in the distance, Sarutobi Enjun was still lying on the ground with the hollow-eyed look of someone whose soul had barely crawled back into his body. Uzuki Ruri was in much better shape, but her expression was still pale, and every now and then she unconsciously flinched as if recalling something she absolutely did not want to remember.
Toad Power, meanwhile, looked delighted with itself.
Judging by those reactions, the so-called genjutsu resistance training had not been gentle in the slightest.
Gen silently thanked the heavens once more that the Sharingan had spared him from that particular hell.
"Alright," Jiraiya said, clapping his hands once. "No slacking. Since you've got the basic feel for it, next we'll work on control."
He pointed at the crater. "Power is easy to chase. Not blowing yourself up while chasing power—that's where the real difficulty begins."
That part, Gen absolutely agreed with.
In the ninja world, many people spent their whole lives trying to make their jutsu stronger. Fewer people understood that true strength came from control—control over output, control over timing, control over range, control over the exact amount of force needed for one situation and not another.
Overkill was not always an advantage. Sometimes it was just wasted chakra. Sometimes it destroyed terrain you could have used. Sometimes it killed someone you should have captured alive. Sometimes it exposed a weakness the enemy would notice at once.
The better the technique, the more precisely it had to be used.
Which meant Jiraiya was right again. He was not teaching flashy tricks. He was teaching the things underneath the tricks—the skeleton, the muscle, the breath that made the entire body move.
Gen lowered his stance and raised his hand signs again.
If the next few days were really under Jiraiya's control, then maybe this would be a rare chance. A chance to take the foundations Orochimaru had hammered into him and temper them from a different direction.
And if he could combine the strengths of both teachers...
The thought alone made his blood stir.
Jiraiya suddenly grinned. "Good. That's the look I wanted to see. Again."
Without another word, Uchiha Gen gathered chakra in his chest, felt the flow of fire and wind in his body, and prepared to do it all over again.