In six months, Ling Han planned to leave the sect and travel the outside world, seeking strength that would allow him to return and dominate the Inner Sect Tournament. In his mind, once he achieved first place, he would finally be able to open Su Yan's eyes—and if Itachi dared to participate, he would defeat him too.
First, though, he waited patiently for the sect to issue his reward for reaching the finals. Afterward, he planned to take a mission near a location that held something valuable, using it as the first step in his journey.
Meanwhile, in the training grounds, Itachi stood calmly, hands flying all over the place to meet Su Yan's attacks, while Su Yan launched attack after attack with her sword.
"Not bad," Itachi said with a faint smile. "It's rare for someone to use the Sharingan with your level of precision this early. But try mixing in the Body Flicker Technique during your attacks, not just when you're dodging."
His hand moved casually, effortlessly blocking each of Su Yan's strikes without even needing to shift his footing.
At this moment, Su Yan had awakened the one-tomoe Sharingan. Originally, she had possessed the Uchiha bloodline, but it was too weak when she first reached level 6 Body Tempering. That was why her eyes had initially shown no tomoe.
But everything changed when she broke through to level 10 Body Tempering. Only then did she fully awaken the true form of the Sharingan. The stages of the Body Tempering Realm were critical, each one tied directly to the development of her eyes:
Levels 1 to 3: Eye Strengthening
Levels 4 to 6: Eye Sharpening
Levels 7 to 9: Eye Purification
Level 10: Eye Ascension
Each step was vital, and each brought her closer to unlocking the true power of her bloodline. In simple terms, the Sharingan's evolution paralleled these stages. A one-tomoe Sharingan corresponded to Eye Strengthening.
A two-tomoe Sharingan aligned with Eye Sharpening. And so on, stage by stage. Eye Ascension nearly rivaled the next stage of Sharingan evolution. Of course, that wasn't taking Itachi into account.
For Itachi, even at level 1 Body Tempering, his eyes already rivaled a three-tomoe Sharingan. His natural foundation was on a completely different level.
In other words, Itachi had crafted the cultivation path so that each stage of the Body Tempering Realm reflected the traditional evolution of the Sharingan, without requiring the cultivator to awaken an actual Sharingan… and one sharingan would be many times stronger compared to those found in the shinobi world.
Even without the bloodline, a cultivator following this path would gradually develop vision and perception to rival a true Uchiha. They could even perform basic Sharingan genjutsus purely through their enhanced control of spiritual energy and visual prowess.
But, of course, using those techniques without the real Sharingan wasn't exactly safe.
If Su Yan had tried to forcefully cast genjutsus through eye contact before awakening her Sharingan, she would have risked blinding herself if she kept using it over and over again..
But now, with her true Sharingan awakened, she no longer had to worry about such dangers.
"The burst of speed from the Body Flicker is too great…" Su Yan said, coming to a stop. She lowered her sword slightly, frowning in thought.
She wasn't sure how to use the Body Flicker Technique mid-combat. The technique temporarily flooded the body with energy, allowing the user to move at extreme speeds—but that sudden surge of momentum made it difficult to control precision attacks, especially in the middle of a fight.
The Body Flicker Technique was simple enough to use for short or long-distance travel. But the overwhelming burst of speed it granted made it nearly impossible to use effectively in the middle of combat.
Su Yan wanted to fight while moving at such overwhelming speeds, but there was a problem: her eyes couldn't keep up.
To make matters worse, the speed granted by the technique scaled directly with the strength of her Qi. Meaning, the stronger she became, the faster the technique would make her—and the harder it would be for her body and senses to keep up.
At this rate, she might never reach a point where she could fully react to her own movements.
"Then control that speed," Itachi said calmly, breaking her train of thought. "Why are you moving at such a high speed that even you can't react to it?"
Su Yan opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again, at a loss for words. Of course, she had tried it before… but anything she wanted to say now sounded like a weak excuse. And she wasn't willing to voice excuses in front of him.
"Qi control," Itachi said calmly. "Take some time to master it. For example, try doing this."
He walked up to a nearby wall, lifted one foot, and casually began to walk up its surface without using his hands. Su Yan watched, stunned.
With her Sharingan active, she could clearly see the way Qi gathered and concentrated at Itachi's feet. It acted almost like glue—strong enough to hold him firmly against the wall, yet not so overpowering that it restricted his movement. It was a delicate balance, perfectly maintained.
"I'll have it done within the week," Su Yan said, her eyes burning with determination.
Itachi gave a simple nod of approval, and a moment later, his body burst into a cloud of smoke, vanishing from sight.
Su Yan was currently at level 10 Body Tempering. She was more than ready to break through to level 1 Qi Refinement. But Itachi had other plans. He wanted her to first awaken the three-tomoe Sharingan before allowing her to step into the next realm.
Meanwhile, Itachi's main body stood calmly atop a strange cube that pulsed faintly with energy. The cube was held a pocket space he had created.
Creating a pocket space wasn't all that impressive on its own. In this world, items like storage rings and storage bags also hold their own miniature pocket spaces. But what made Itachi's work different wasn't the mere existence of the space.
What made Itachi's pocket space special wasn't just that it could store items. It could hold life, and even allow it to grow.
Such a feat was unheard of in the lower realms. Storage items here were crude by comparison, only capable of freezing objects in stasis.
But this was Itachi. Given enough time to study and experiment, there was very little he couldn't accomplish.
Inside the pocket space, the true brilliance of his work was revealed. Hundreds of intricate formations buzzed quietly, all working in harmony to maintain a perfect, self-sustaining garden. Some formations stabilized the environment. Others accelerated the growth of herbs and plants. And a few, even more complex, actively worked to improve the DNA of the lifeforms growing inside.
All of it was powered by a nearly endless source, drawing energy directly from the void.
Itachi had grown increasingly annoyed by the limited amount of Qi around him. Rather than complain, he did what came naturally: he found a solution.
Why settle for what the lower realms offered when he could simply draw high-grade energy from elsewhere? So, he created a formation designed specifically for that purpose.
Not stopping there, he even improved his breathing technique, enhancing it so that with every breath he took, he was subtly pulling in energy from the Immortal Realm. But it wasn't ordinary Immortal Qi he was absorbing.
It was what Itachi called Origin Qi, a perfect blend of all forms of Qi, balanced in such a way that it nourished his body without harming it.
It was this very Origin Qi that fueled his growing garden, allowing it to mature at an extreme speed, far beyond anything the lower realm cultivators could hope to achieve.
Itachi plucked one of the herbs from his garden, inspecting it briefly before crushing it in his palm. A burst of bright light exploded from between his fingers, filling the pocket space with a soft golden glow.
When he opened his hand, a single pill rested in his palm, one so potent that even a peak Nascent Soul Realm expert would have paid handsomely for it… Yes, that was how Itachi handled alchemy.
Itachi had always been a bit lazy. That laziness was what had driven him to create a genetic editing technique that didn't rely on clumsy tools or complicated machines.
So why should alchemy be any different? Rather than rely on cauldrons and endless refining processes, Itachi had designed a technique that mimicked the sun itself.
The sun wasn't truly on fire. Its appearance came from its immense mass, which constantly crushed atoms together, sustaining itself and producing what seemed like an endless amount of energy.
When Itachi crushed the herb in his palm, he mimicked that process on a much smaller scale. For a brief moment, he created enough mass in his hand to crush the herb down into pure atoms, which he then quickly rearranged into the structure of a pill.
Of course, he couldn't do this with random materials. Not all atoms were the same, and not all elements were compatible. He needed herbs that contained the right elements before he could crush them down and reshape them into the pill he had in mind.
The herb Itachi had crushed wasn't ordinary. It was equivalent to a Core Formation Realm cultivation in rank.
Thanks to how much energy atoms released when split apart, Itachi was able to create pills that jumped an entire rank higher than the original herbs used to craft them. If he combined more herbs into the process, the resulting pill would be even stronger.
So, without hesitation, he did exactly that. Itachi created a formation designed to automatically gather the herbs, crush them down, and reshape them into pills, delivering them straight to him.
He popped them like candy, casually absorbing their power as if it were nothing.
Itachi didn't care about impurities the way most alchemists did. In fact, he aimed for his pills to be fifty percent pure, fifty percent impure.
Why? Simple.
He had studied cultivation arts that made use of impurities during cultivation, treating them as an additional resource rather than a hindrance.
At the end of the day, everything under the heavens was a resource. It just depended on how skillfully one could use it.
In Itachi's eyes, all things were simply energy. E = mc². Mass and energy were interchangeable. Even so-called "solid" objects like atoms were just frozen energy, compressed and compacted beyond normal comprehension.
Itachi had once come across a cultivation art that allowed practitioners to devour metal to strengthen themselves and break through bottlenecks. But even then, those techniques never truly tapped into the full potential.
They focused on digesting the physical material, not on breaking down the atoms themselves into pure energy for cultivation. Of course, pursuing something like that would be incredibly dangerous, but in Itachi's eyes, it was another clear sign that cultivators had only scratched the surface of what was possible.
Time continued to pass.
While Su Yan devoted herself to mastering her Sharingan, refining her energy control, and integrating the Body Flicker Technique into combat… Itachi took a much more relaxed approach.
He simply sat back, tossing pills into his mouth one after another, popping them like candy without a care in the world.
Of course, many people from the sect came by, trying to persuade Su Yan to leave Itachi. They believed she was wasting her potential serving under him and thought she deserved better opportunities.
But Su Yan shot them all down without hesitation. She even went as far as to make a public speech, telling everyone to stop bothering her. She was focused on training, and all they were doing was getting in her way.
Naturally, this didn't make Su Yan many friends among the elders. Itachi, by extension, became a target of their dissatisfaction. After all, who wouldn't want a talented disciple like Su Yan under their own name?
But Itachi ignored all of it. He wasn't interested in the petty politics of the sect. And before he even realized it, an entire month had passed since the Outer Sect Tournament.
By now, word of what had happened during the tournament had spread far beyond the sect. Recordings and stories had traveled across the cultivation world, and it didn't take long before guests started showing up at the sect gates.
"Crown Prince, it's a pleasure," the Sect Master said with a bright smile, personally welcoming the Crown Prince who had stopped by the sect. A visitor like this wasn't someone a small sect like theirs could afford to offend.
The Crown Prince clearly understood the gap between them. He didn't even bother looking the Sect Master in the eyes.
"I heard your sect had three promising disciples," the Crown Prince said indifferently, his tone casual, as if he were discussing something beneath his notice. "I came to see for myself if they are worthy of being my followers."
He didn't seem the least bit bothered by how disrespectful his words were. It was almost like a man walking into someone's home and saying, "I heard your wife was beautiful. I came to see for myself if she's worthy of spending the night with me."
It was an unbelievably rude thing to say, but the Sect Master could only nod his head with a look of forced honor, quickly ordering someone to bring Su Yan and Itachi over. As for Ling Han, he wasn't currently in the sect, so there was no way to summon him.
Behind his calm smile, the Sect Master was secretly sweating buckets. He knew all too well how dangerous this situation could become.
Over the past few months, Itachi had made it very clear that he didn't tolerate disrespect lightly. He carried himself with a pride he often called the pride of the Uchiha clan, and it wasn't just words.
The Sect Master still remembered the day when Itachi had bitch-slapped an elder across the face simply for giving him a wrong look. And even then, he hadn't dared to punish Itachi for it.
The Sect Master had long since realized something important about Itachi. Although he seemed calm and humble on the surface, it wasn't because he lacked pride.
It was because no one in the sect was worthy of him showing off to. Itachi wasn't the type to bully the weak, he only directed his attention toward the strong.
So when Itachi took his time arriving, the Sect Master wasn't surprised. If anything, he was just thankful that Itachi had allowed Su Yan to join him.
"You called?" Itachi asked lightly as he took a seat directly opposite the Crown Prince, not even bothering to spare the man a glance. Instead, he kept his eyes on the Sect Master, waiting for an explanation.
"Itachi, this is the Crown Prince," the Sect Master said quickly, forcing a polite smile. "He heard of your talent and came all this way to see you." His voice carried a subtle pleading tone, practically begging Itachi to behave himself.
"For a brat, you're quite arrogant," the Crown Prince sneered. "You think just because you have some talent, you can stand before me with such disrespect?"
He didn't even give Itachi a chance to respond. The Crown Prince's aura exploded outward, filling the room with crushing pressure as he showed off his cultivation level 7 Core Formation Realm.
But to his growing shock, Itachi simply threw him a glance. At first, the Crown Prince struggled to understand the look. Then he realized, It was the same kind of look someone might give to an insect on the side of the road.
"This was a waste of my time," Itachi said calmly, rising to leave. That's when a backhand strike came rocketing toward him.
Itachi dodged easily, fluidly turning on his heel to lock eyes with the Crown Prince, who had finally made his move.
"You're fast…" the Crown Prince sneered, only for his words to freeze in his throat. Itachi's backhand struck him across the face with overwhelming force, sending him rocketing backward.
The Crown Prince smashed through wall after wall without even slowing down. It was worth noting that the Sect Master's main building wasn't made with ordinary materials.
The walls were specially reinforced, designed to withstand the aura of the Sect Master himself if he ever lost control of his emotions. And yet, under Itachi's casual strike, those walls crumbled like paper.