“Let’s see… Dog Talisman?” Its stasis effect should allow me to keep my finger inside without it disintegrating and protect me from any other oddities. I could also use the Horse Talisman to regrow my finger and mend the gash on my back. “I think I left the bag on the table, and I’ll need some pills.”
Holding out my arm for the Silverscreen to approach, my Bloodborn snaked out to retrieve the sack of Talismans sitting on the round table. At the same time, I opened an image on the ptop's desktop and pulled out a bottle of pills. Once my Bloodborn returned, dropping the sack in my hand. I wasted no time popping a Replenishment Pill in my mouth while fishing out the required talismans.
Taking out the Horse and Tiger Talismans first, with the thought of healing my body, the Horse Talisman began to glow. Energy was drawn from the flow within my body towards the Tiger first, then into the Horse. After 5 units of Primordial Energy were drawn into the talismans, the burnt flesh on my charred finger started to peel away.
From there, new bone started to grow. Once the segment finished, muscles, nerves, and tendons started to stitch together before the next section began. The process took 30 seconds before I had a new finger, complete with a perfectly manicured nail. In addition to the new finger, the rge gash on my back was also mended. I was completely healed within a minute, only feeling a bit ticklish while the muscles on my back stitched together.
Looking at my new finger, "Am I going to need to reforge this?" The tip of my right index finger was the only finger bone I had finished forging so far, and from the look of things, I might have to start over.
Getting over it quickly, I swallowed the pill, absorbing the energy that I could while trying my best to painlessly release the excess. Once I was full, I began cycling the energy following the pathway of the Lost Immortal Sutra. The basic Ki was quickly converting into Primordial Energy within three minutes. It would take three times as long to regen naturally. (approx. 1 unit every 1 1/2 minutes).
With the full 9 units of Primordial Energy refilled, I held both the Tiger and Dog Talismans in one hand and threw another Replenishment Pill in my mouth. As I swallowed the pill, I activated the Dog Talismans. In the same manner as the Horse, Ki was drawn towards the Tiger Talisman before being transferred into the Dog Talisman. All the energy within my body was then drawn towards the octagonal stones in my hand; if not for the Dog's effect, I'd feel like a shriveled raisin.
With this as a sign, along with the Dog depiction of the Talisman glowing, I knew the talisman had activated. Bringing back up the video editor and the white screen, pressing my finger inside the screen, it felt fuzzy. To be fair, this sensation was likely the result of my finger being destroyed over and over by the energy, thanks to the talisman; any damage done would revert to zero shortly after.
Leaving my finger inside to experience the deadly fuzzy sensation, I started adding time. Jumping forward several hours, I wanted to see the result of this reaction. After 8 hours, the bright white remained, though it looked slightly weaker than before; the fuzzy sensation from my finger remained unchanged. Cutting the fat from the video, I skipped forward again, adding another several hours. This time, the blinding white had receded somewhat, a storm of dust seemed to be taking pce beyond the blinding light. The sound of wind billowing in the background could be heard from the speakers. Continuing the process of cutting the video every several hours and starting from the test endpoint, a week's time had quickly passed. The blinding light had finally started to fade, but the area behind it remained obscured by smoke and dust. Adding another days worth of time, the area was finally clear enough to make out. Gone was the forest, and anything that remained, the only thing left was a deep crater of charred bck ground.
Due to the camera angle, I couldn't see the edge or tell just how deep it went, it looked like a bomb had gone off. “Or a nuke - I wonder if there’s any radiation?” If there is, would it be Chakra?
Despite the screen clearing up, the fuzzy feeling on my finger remained, if slightly reduced. A part of me wanted to know what it was, while another was busy warning me, and for as much as I'd like to find out, I had no idea what I needed to do so.
Pulling my hand back from the screen, the sensation lingered for a moment before disappearing due to the Dog's effect. If I had Ki right now, I'd be checking if there was anything different in my hand. Pcing my hand back into the image, the sensation was definitely weakening with time. How long it would take before it disappeared, I'm going to find out.
Continuing the process, I could only go several hours at a time due to the ptop's hardware. But the hours soon compounded, days into weeks. I kept fast-forwarding again and again as the fuzzy sensation lingered, slowly growing weaker with time.
As the time continued to compound the environment, the bckened crater slowly began to change. Small green shoots and leaves began to sprout all over the crater as life began anew from the devastation.
By now, the fuzzy sensation was gone, and the Dog Talisman's effect had worn off. Pulling it up on the TV, I was about to kill two birds with one stone.
Passing through the screen, I didn't feel anything unusual, though I did end up falling towards the ground, due to the new height difference created by the new crater. Thanks to my increased agility and the height difference, I was able to catch myself midair, nding gracefully after falling several feet.
Looking down toward the center and deepest point in the crater, I could have fallen several more.
Standing inside the crater, there was a faint breeze that protected me momentarily from the assault on my senses by the smell of burnt carbon.
Gncing around the outer ring, the new growth that had started sprouting struck me as a little odd, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Looking down towards the center of the crater at its deepest point, there grew an odd, thin, gangly sapling with sparse leaves on the tips of its branches.
Taking a few steps towards the center on the hardened, charred ground, I realized why these pnts struck me as odd: "How did they grow?" I don't know if there are any water sources nearby, and more concerning, how did they break through the charred surface?
Putting a decent amount of strength into my leg, I stomped the ground, causing sparse cracks to form. After smashing the ground enough to take a chunk out. The charred surface was at least a solid inch thick, likely thicker in certain spots. "How did they grow? Where would the seeds even come from?" I know at least a month of time had passed, but that made these peculiar irregurities that much more apparent.
Making my way down the crater towards the odd tree, my Ki had started to regenerate, and I was starting to feel something faintly saturating the area. What it was, I can’t be sure.
Standing at the bottom of the crater, I got a better look around. Small shrubs and grass shoots appeared sporadically around the circumference. Few and far between, there didn't seem to be any pattern in their appearance. While their appearance looked normal, how they appeared bugs me.
In the crater's center, I looked over the only remnant, a thin, gangly sapling. It had a little under a dozen leaves, dotting its space few branches. Seeing this as the epicenter of the energy, this sapling might be the only remains of the goblin. After biting the fruit, its energy was released, turning into a massive explosion. "But why the tree?" I wondered. (Something to do with the Ten-tails?)
Now that I was standing at the epicenter, the odd feeling of foreign energy was that much more abundant. It saturated the soil but remained invisible to the naked eye.
“I should be able to see it, if I add Ki to my eyes, right?” pulling some of the Ki from the cycle and into my right eye, “Guah! Fuck!”
My eye popped, letting out a strange noise and momentary pain before my vision went out like a light. Holding my hand up to my face, it was still in the socket, but I couldn’t see from it anymore. “Did I burst the nerve? Great...” I know the comics say that adding Ki into your eye haphazardly is dangerous, but the protagonists always seem to be able to do it right away.
I guess going blind in one eye isn't the worst outcome. “Haa~ Should have just used the Pig.” I still don’t know what ‘seeing the unseen’ means. Maybe something to do with souls? On that thought, was the goblin’s soul around anymore, or was the energy from the fruit enough to completely destroy it as well? “I think I left the Resurrection Stone in the b…and I need to fix my eye.”
Holding out my arm, the screen approached, “What does the screen look like now that I'm inside a second screen?” Once the screen was close enough, I could see two different views from it. Instead of the two screens I was expecting, the screen had two views. One from the living room, the other from the operating room. Touching the screen caused one to maximize while the other shrank away. Tapping the other, I could swap between them. Touching both, they equally shared the space on the screen. Pressing again the screen, my hands sank in, all the same. As much as I'd like to see what this did to the TV in the living room, for now I tapped the operating room and passed through.
Returning to the operating room through the TV attached to a cart, I quickly headed for the shelf of colorful liquids on the right side of the room. Sifting through the various bottles and vials for a crimson red potion, I found the set of healing potion bottles towards the back. Taking the crimson-colored high-grade healing potion from the shelf and spshing the liquid on my face, the vision in my eye slowly returned.
Once my vision was restored, I tried again using a different method. Instead of filling my eye with Ki, I tried to cover it with the energy. But like my st attempt, it ended up in failure.
“Gyah!"
*SPLURT!*
"Ok, no." I hunched over, supporting myself using the shelves; it hurt more this time. I was clearly not skilled enough to use this method.
It was the weirdest sensation that alerted me to the results. The blood that leaked from my now-empty eye socket felt like that of a finger in my eye, and I could move it. Flexing it, mangled flesh hanging by a thread came into view. "Looks like I destroyed my eye this time..." And with how bad it was, "at this point it would be easier to grow a new one.”
Turning the blood into a scalpel, I cut loose the lump of flesh into my hand.
Once it was removed, I poured more of the crimson liquid onto my face, making sure that most of it went into cupped blood around my eye, funneling it into the empty socket. Retracting everything back into the empty socket, I started to feel something shifting around inside.
Putting the bottle back on the shelf, “Guess I’ll just use the Pig.”
As I was about to turn around, a bloody figure started to tug my wrist. Turning around, it was my Bloodborn, in his humanoid form. He was holding my wrist and pointing at the healing potion. "You want it?" I asked for a reply of furious head shaking. “What would happen if you drank a healing potion“?
(Is there anything to heal? Also, you don't have a mouth, how would you...)
"Whatever." Taking the rest of the bottles from the back, "Here." I said presenting the bottle.
Receiving the bottle, my Bloodborn wasted no time pulling the stopper before entering and becoming one with its contents.
“What does that do for you?” I wondered. From the looks of it, it would take some time before he absorbed the contents.
(If I gave it Dragon blood... Am I strong enough to survive that? …Probably not).
Leaving him to... ferment? I pced my spttered eye onto one of the metal trays that dotted the room before heading back over to the computer. By the time I got there, my new eye had regenerated, and I quickly used it while taking a picture of the tray, before pulling it up on the ptop. Once the picture was up, I reached out for it.
I was expecting this to fail, but to my chagrin, my hand entered the screen. “Seriously…?” This was clearly breaking the rules.
It should not work. It is/was my eye, this should count as me being on the screen… but my hand went through the screen anyway.
Like the Ship of Theseus, does a body part still count as yours despite no longer being attached? Genetically, it's still mine. If I took the DNA or a blood sample, they would say it’s mine. But for a ship, the captain decides whether the ship is the same or not… but what is the captain of the body?
It might be the brain, since that's what most people believe controls our actions. Or it might be the heart as it influences our decisions. Or at least this is what I'd be telling myself if I didn't discover the real captain.
“So...my soul?” That’s a can of worms I wasn’t expecting to open today. (The more I learn, the weirder it gets. What the hell is my ability? Is anybody else's like this?)
Shaking my head, I looked around the cart for the bck diamond, otherwise known as the Resurrection Stone. Once I found it, I grabbed both the Tiger and Pig Talismans before returning to the crater.
Since I reentered from where I st left in the video, this time I didn't have to drop in.
Holding the bck stone in hand, I began rotating it, rolling it over in my hand three times to no avail. "Looks like the bst destroyed him completely." My previous attempts with the stone typically resulted in the corresponding spirit appearing while thinking about them after rolling it in my hand three times. So far, the only reason I found that prevented the reappearance of the spirit was after a substantial amount of time had passed since death. Otherwise, if I had to guess, the soul would have been damaged or destroyed in some way that would prevent them from appearing.
Pocketing the Resurrection Stone for now, I activated the Pig Talisman. Once again, Primordial Energy was drawn towards the Tiger before being transferred to the Pig. As the depiction on the octagonal stone began to glow, energy began to well up in my eyes. Since I wasn't trying to fire off the energy, its consumption was very low. But it still caused irritation, especially with my newly regenerated eye.
Looking around the crater, I was finally able to put a face on the strange feeling from my sixth sense. It was a faint mist-like substance, orderless, colorless, it appeared in small patches sporadically within the crater. Coincidentally, these patches also appeared to be where the pnts happened to grow. Turning around, the area with the highest density was right behind me.
The sapling and the ground directly around it were substantially more saturated with this energy. To the point, it was a solid glowing light, rather than mist-like. It seeped into the ground and the tree, its bark glowing like a lightsaber, and its leaves radiated like stars. But for as brightly as it glowed through the Pig's vision, my sixth sense wasn't screaming at me like it did with the fruit. It just alerted me of the presence of something strange.
Reaching out tentatively, touching the leaves, nothing happened. Plucking a leaf, nothing happened. Inspecting the leaf, it felt and looked like any other leaf; if not for the Pig Talisman, there wasn't any discernible difference.
"I should probably have the goblin test this first." But my senses were telling me it was safe.
Pcing the leaf on my tongue, nothing happened.
Reaching out with Ki, I did feel something as some of the Ki was consumed from the interaction. Beyond that, nothing happened.
Slowly, I started to chew the leaf, but nothing happened.
Swallowing the leaf, I stood still holding my breath for a solid minute, but nothing happened.
Scanning my body with my Ki, there weren't any oddities.
"Well, so much for Chakra." It was back to the drawing board. "...Wait..." Scanning inward again, my senses delved deeper, following an odd interaction, a small portion of Ki seemed to be disappearing at a very slow but constant rate. Deep within my dantian, a small fme had joined the contents.
END
Spoilerkidmonkey94
I have a rant/expnation on Chakra here if you want to read it:
SpoilerRant:
Ignoring the real-world inspiration of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sanatana Dharma that were likely the initial ideas behind its creation, what is Chakra in the Naruto series?
“Chakra is created when two more primal energies, known collectively as one's "stamina" (スタミナ, sutamina), are moulded together. Physical energy (身体エネルギー, shintai enerugī) is collected from each of the body's cells and can be increased through training, stimunts, and exercise. Spiritual energy (精神エネルギー, seishin enerugī, English TV: Mental Energy) is derived from the mind's consciousness and can be increased through studying, meditation, and experience. These two energies becoming more powerful will in turn make the created chakra more powerful. Therefore, practicing a technique repeatedly will build up experience, increasing one's spiritual energy, and thus allowing more chakra to be created. As a result, the ninja is able to do that same technique with more power. This same cycle applies for physical energy, except the ninja needs to increase their endurance instead…“ (Transcript from Wiki: https://naruto.fandom.com/wiki/Chakra)
As described, Chakra is an energy that forms with a combination of ‘physical energy’ and ‘mental energy’. However, as described, these energies seem odd in context. For whatever reason, many seem to interpret Physical energy as Ki/Chi, and Spiritual energy (Poorly transted but technically more accurate as Mental Energy) ends up becoming Mana. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand why people do this, but it is wrong.
Starting with Physical energy, it has an easy expnation. It is literally the energy collected from the body due to natural processes. Energy is produced from “the body's cells and can be increased through training, stimunts, and exercise.“ If we look at the Akimichi cns’ entire system, we get a better picture as it revolves around consuming calories and burning them for more ‘Physical Energy’.
In essence, it's Vitality, which more or less becomes interchangeable with Ki/Chi.
With that settled, the question now is, (WTF) is Spiritual energy? Returning to the quote, “Spiritual energy (精神エネルギー, seishin enerugī, English TV: Mental Energy) is derived from the mind's consciousness and can be increased through studying, meditation, and experience.“ This is likely where we get the O so often comparison with Mana. But unlike Physical energy, this is referencing the mental fortitude needed to create Chakra and not the specifics of the energy.
If read literally, it’s saying the more you use/temper your mind, the stronger it gets. Thusly improving your Chakra's strength and capacity. Looking at the story, instead of mental power, it's more accurately a spiritual/soul power.
Since Chakra is an energy that reincarnates, following a specific structure according to the original owner’s soul, can transfer thoughts/emotions/memories and is a form of maniputable lifeforce (you die if you run out) made from the combination of two (+?) energies, then how is the second half of the combination not Soul Energy? (Reshi if you will)
Think of it more from a cultural perspective, the "mind's consciousness" derives "Spiritual energy" and this energy comes from the soul.
To get a clearer picture, we need to look at the origins of Chakra. According to lore, Chakra didn’t exist on the Naruto world until after Kaguya ate the Chakra Fruit, then bore her two sons. Who, (after sealing her), spread it around the world.
Until this point, Chakra did not exist in Naruto’s history. (But something else did: abundant Nature Energy).
Now, looking at the 'Ancestor of Shinobi' Hagoromo, he wanted to connect people with his Ninshū religion by spreading Chakra. Because Chakra could connect people, ”The teachings of ninshū were meant to give people a better understanding of themselves, as well as others, and lead the world into an era of peace.” (Transcript from Wiki: https://naruto.fandom.com/wiki/Ninshū )
It wasn’t until his second son, Asura created Hand Seals that the combination of the two energies and the molding of Chakra became commonpce. This weaponized transformation of Chakra and the two energies was dubbed Ninjutsu.
Now, as we look here, the two energies are separate from Chakra. Yes, they are used in the creation of Jutsu, but are not the energy itself. (They’re more like a fuel for the reaction and its growth)
Putting it together, what is Chakra?
Chakra is separate from the other two energies. But the two energies are needed for its use.One energy is physical, the other is spiritual. (Thus the combination brings fourth 'supernatural phenomina')The mind is used when forming this combination into the desired shape/form.The more a person with Chakra trains and experiences, the more they'll have/the stronger their chakra will become.The amount of Chakra a person can hold has an upper limit per the individual. Chakra can be molded and weaponized easily with Hand Seals (among other methods).This requires mental and physical strength to use effectively (stamina)Chakra has connections with the soul, with some directly stated (Reincarnation, Connecting people, its color, etc), and some not (various soul-based abilities, Konpaku).Spreading a religion of peace through easily weaponizable energy isn’t the smartest decision.To put it another way, Chakra is not the combination of the two energies, they are more of a fuel source that reacts with the spark known as Chakra. The resulting combination is then molded into the desired form through Hand Seals, Nature Transformation/Elemental Natures (that are a 1 for 1 approximation of spiritual roots), and mental acuity, producing various reactions like water/fire/lightning on command. Or a 30ft tall giant energy construct.
I could continue but I think the point has been made. Chakra is not Ki+Mana. Physical energy and Spiritual energy (mental strength) are used in Chakra reactions, they also assist in its growth (more fuel, more fire). But together they do not make Chakra. Unless you already have some. In which case, you're growing them proportionally until you cap out at the limits of your body or soul (Whichever comes first).
Little funny note while researching:
In Sanatana Dharma, "chakra energy" refers to the concept of spinning energy centers located throughout the human body, considered to be points where spiritual energy intersects and flows through subtle energy channels (nadis), with each chakra associated with specific aspects of consciousness, emotions, and physical functions; the word "chakra" itself transtes to "wheel" in Sanskrit, signifying the whirling motion of this energy.
What does Uzumaki mean?
TLDR: Chakra is not Ki+Mana. (Why does everyone do this?) A closer approximation from the story makes Chakra in Naruto closer to that of Spirit Ki you see within cultivation stories. Specifically, it’s the Physical Yuan Ki (Normal Ki) + Spirit Ki (Soul energy/Reshi, if you will). Chakra itself is a separate energy that bridges the gap, allowing these energies to react, resulting in various phenomena. (They both even come with hand signs)
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