Konoha: The Absolute Justice of the Uchiha.

Chapter 407 Stable Range

Chi Quan stood next to a folding table at the edge of the training field.

On the table were nautical charts, waveform diagrams, a stopwatch, an open notebook, and a bottle of water.

He wasn't wearing a white lab coat today, but a dark gray training uniform, with a black sports knee brace strapped to the outside of his right trouser leg—the knee brace contained a thin steel plate to support the knee joint when standing for too long.

I switched to a lighter, aluminum alloy walking stick with a rubber tip, which made it sound a bit muffled on hard ground.

"The goal for our first joint training session isn't precision." Chi Quan's voice wasn't loud, but the training ground was quiet, and the mixed trees filtered out the outside noise, so his words clearly reached the three of them. "The goal is for each of you to find your own rhythm at the 7.3 Hz frequency."

Kai controls the rhythm of his punches with his breathing, Neji controls the frequency of his bare hands with chakra pulses, and Tenten controls the timing of vibrations by rotating her shuriken.

The three people have different senses of rhythm, but their frequencies must be consistent.

It's like three players on different instruments playing the same note in the same beat—the instruments are different, the sounds are different, but the vibration frequencies must be the same.

"How do you determine if the frequencies are the same?" Tian Tian asked.

She held two kunai in her hands, each containing a fragment of the Divine Tree. One fragment had been ground into a small rhombus and fixed to the end of the kunai's handle by wrapping it with thin steel wire.

The number of turns of the wire was precisely calculated: exactly twelve turns, with equal spacing between each turn, so that the fragments would not be thrown out by centrifugal force when the kunai rotates at high speed.

Chi Quan took out a simple device made of wood and strings from under the table.

The main body of the device is a rectangular pine board with three parallel strings nailed to it. The tension of the strings has been adjusted. At the end of each string is a small piece of mineral powder taken from a fragment of the Chiquan knife. The powder is ground to an extremely fine grind and glued to the string.

"Simple resonance detector." Chi Quan placed the device in front of the table and gently plucked the leftmost string with one finger. The string vibrated, and the other two strings also began to tremble slightly. "If the attack frequencies of the three of you are exactly the same, the powder on the three strings will vibrate simultaneously, and the amplitude of the vibration will be amplified."

If the frequency deviates, the vibration amplitudes of the powder will cancel each other out.

This thing is crude, but it's enough.

Kai walked to the hitting post in the center of the training field.

The impact stake is a wooden stake about forty centimeters in diameter, wrapped with hemp rope, and buried in the ground at the bottom.

He stood in front of the stake and took a deep breath—not a normal deep breath, but the kind of rhythmic breathing he had practiced on the breathing trainer for three weeks: four seconds to inhale, four seconds to stop, four seconds to exhale, and four seconds to stop.

Once the breathing rhythm is established, the heartbeat will synchronize with this rhythm within thirty seconds, and then the frequency of muscle contraction throughout the body will also synchronize.

"Start." Chi Quan pressed the stopwatch.

Kai took his first breath.

His right fist struck out the instant he finished inhaling—the sound of his fist hitting the wooden stake was heavy, and the hemp rope dented in less than a centimeter under the impact before springing back.

Pull your fist back, pause for four seconds, exhale, and then throw the second punch.

The sound of the second punch was almost exactly the same as the first punch—not in terms of force, but in that the timing of the punch hitting the wooden stake fell on the same phase of the four-second rhythm.

Chi Quan's eyes were fixed on the stopwatch, while his ears discerned the intervals between the punches.

The stopwatch ticks once per second, while Kai's punching frequency is about once every 1.3 seconds, which is too fast.

7.3 Hz corresponds to a cycle of 0.137 seconds. The punching frequency must reach at least 7 times per second to resonate with the fundamental frequency of the Divine Tree Chakra.

However, Kai cannot use the Eight Gates Formation, as his ribs cannot withstand the impact of high-speed, continuous attacks.

Chi Quan did not call a halt.

He knew that Kai didn't need to throw seven punches per second. The principle of the resonance array was that three people triggered vibrations from different directions and in different ways. After the frequencies of the three vibration sources were superimposed, a frequency doubling effect could be generated at the center of the target.

If Guy attacks 1.3 times per second, Neji releases his empty palm twice per second, and Tenten's shuriken rotates three times per second, the superposition of these three frequencies at the intersection point can approach 7.3 Hz.

The key is that the rhythms of the three people must form a precise integer multiple relationship.

"Every day, the speed drops to two and a half revolutions per second."

Neji adjusted his palm strike frequency to twice per second, creating a 5:4:3 ratio with Guy's punching frequency.

The harmonics at the intersection point will fall around 7.5 Hz, within the tolerance range of 7.3 Hz. Chi Quan flipped through his notebook, which contained several frequency combination schemes he had calculated last night, each marked with its applicable range using a different colored pen.

Every day, I would walk to the throwing position on the left side of the training field.

Her throwing method was unique; instead of shooting the shuriken directly at the target, she first threw it into the air, letting the shuriken draw an arc in the air and cut in from the side and rear of the striking post.

This angle of entry avoids the container's frontal defenses and also provides more time for the shuriken to spin and accelerate.

She calculated that the arc from the throwing point to the striking post is about fifteen meters long. The shuriken rotates two and a half times per second at this distance, for a total of thirty-eight rotations. The vibrations of the fragments caused by the rotation will be continuously released during these thirty-eight rotations.

She threw out the first kunai.

The kunai tumbled in the air, and the fragment at the end of the handle flashed in the sunlight—not the reflection of ordinary metal, but a dark luster that was released after absorbing light, like obsidian in deep water.

The kunai passed three meters to the right of the impact pile, without directly hitting the pile.

Its function is not to penetrate the target, but to create a vibration field in the air around the target by using the vibration waves generated by the fragments at the moment of passing by the target.

Then came the second one, and the third one.

Three kunai flew in a crisscross pattern in the air, their trajectories not overlapping, but all passing within a range of three to five meters around the striking post.

Each time a kunai flies by, the hemp rope on the striking post trembles slightly—not from the wind, but from the vibration wave passing through the air and hitting the hemp rope.

Neji stood eight meters directly in front of the impact pile.

His posture was exactly the same as usual—his feet were shoulder-width apart, his center of gravity was slightly low, and his left hand was in front of his right hand behind him.

However, he did not adopt the standard starting stance of Baguazhang, but instead let his palms hang naturally at his sides with the palms facing backward.

Chi Quan advised him to perform five complete chakra circulation cycles before releasing the empty palm, allowing his meridians to adapt to the pulse-like chakra release rhythm.

The speed at which chakra flows through the meridians can be regulated by contracting the meridians. One of the most basic aspects of Gentle Fist training in the Hyuga clan is switching the speed of chakra flow between different meridian segments. Neji's precision in performing this action ranks among the top three in the entire Hyuga branch family.

After completing the five chakra transfers, Neji pushed forward with his right palm.

The chakra released from the palm wasn't a complete burst of energy, but rather a series of extremely short pulses, beep, beep...

The beeping sound occurs twice per second, with each pulse lasting no more than 0.1 seconds and an interval of 0.4 seconds between pulses.

The sound of the energy striking the striking post was completely different from the sound of Kai's punches—the punches were deep and muffled, like a heavy bag falling to the ground.

The sound of the breath is sharp and crisp, like tapping a taut drumhead with your fingers.

The attacks from both individuals overlapped on the striking post.

The vibrations of the pile began to change.

Kai's punch landed from the front, causing the stake to vibrate in both directions.

Neji's energy struck from mid-range, causing the stake to vibrate in the left and right directions.

Every day, the intense heat sweeps past the periphery, causing the vibrations of the air surrounding the pile to be superimposed on the vibrations of the pile itself.

Three sets of vibrations converge at the center of the impact pile, and the fibrous structure inside the pile begins to bear periodic stress from three directions.

Chi Quan looked at the resonance detector on the table.

All three strings are vibrating, but the amplitude of the vibration varies.

When the amplitude is large, the mineral powder on the strings jumps up and produces a very fine, continuous tapping sound on the pine board.

When the amplitude is small, the powder hardly bounces, and the vibration of the string can barely be seen with the naked eye.

This indicates that the attack frequencies of the three individuals are not stable enough. Sometimes the frequencies of the three vibration sources match perfectly, and resonance occurs; other times, if one person's rhythm deviates slightly, the resonance weakens.

"The stability is not enough." Chi Quan closed his notebook. "It's not a frequency issue—the integer multiples of the frequency are correct."

The problem is that the rhythm of the three of you will experience phase drift during the process.

Kai's breathing rhythm paused for 0.2 seconds shorter at the fifteenth second, causing the punch phase to shift forward.

The third kunai fired every day was 0.3 revolutions slower at the end of the arc because the air resistance was greater than you expected. The humidity was higher and the air density was greater.

Neji's fourth pulse interval was 0.1 seconds too long because your meridians experienced a very brief delay after the third pulse, a symptom of the low chakra period.

The three people stopped and took off their earplugs.

The training ground suddenly fell silent, with only the rustling of leaves in the mixed forest.

Every day, he retrieved the kunai that had been thrown out and examined the fragments on the handle. There was a very fine vibration mark on the surface of each fragment, as if something had pushed it back from the inside. The mark was very shallow, but it was evenly distributed across the entire surface of the fragment.

This indicates that the debris did indeed vibrate during flight, but the frequency of the vibration was not completely synchronized with the other two vibration sources.

"Give me ten minutes." Chi Quan sat down at the folding table, reset the stopwatch, turned to a new page in his notebook, and began to recalculate the phase matching scheme for the three people.

His pen moved quickly across the paper, writing not complete sentences, but numbers and brief symbols: Kai's breathing rhythm correction, Tian Tian's rotational speed air resistance compensation coefficient, and Neji's meridian lag compensation pulse width.

His cane rested on his knee, and his right leg adjusted its position slightly under the table. The steel plate in his knee brace made a very faint metallic scraping sound when his knee bent.

Neji stood by the training ground drinking water, his gaze drifting across the horizon to the edge of the mixed forest at the foot of the distant mountain.

Bai Yan's ability to see into the distance allowed him to spot the thinnest branch in the forest. On a dead branch stood a grayish-brown titmouse, its head constantly turning, stopping every few seconds to tilt its head and look in the direction of the training ground, probably attracted by the low-frequency noise of the resonance.

Tits are more sensitive to infrasound than humans; their hearing frequency threshold is two octaves lower than that of humans.

The titmouse perched on the dry branch for less than a minute before flying away, heading in a direction far from the training ground.

"Even birds don't like that sound." Neji put down the water bottle.

"Birds have smaller internal organs than humans and higher resonance frequencies, so 7.3 Hz has less of an effect on them than on humans," Chi Quan said without looking up, his pen still writing on the paper. "They don't like infrasound because they feel unwell, but because it interferes with their ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field."

Birds navigate using the Earth's magnetic field, and infrasound can interfere with these magnetoreceptors.

After writing the last line of numbers, he put the pen on the table and tore off the page.

The numbers on the paper were densely packed, looking like a jumble of gibberish to a layman, but Chi Quan had already memorized all the corrections by the time he stood up.

"One more time."

The second joint training session was conducted under the guidance of the revised plan.

Kai's breathing rhythm was slightly adjusted by distributing the pause time ratio. Instead of dividing it into four equal parts, he would inhale for four seconds, pause for three and a half seconds, exhale for four seconds, and pause for four and a half seconds, using the long pause after exhalation to compensate for the slight delay in the ribs when exerting force during inhalation.

Tenten increased the kunai's speed by 0.2 revolutions, using a faster initial rotation to counteract the deceleration effect of air resistance in the latter half of the flight.

Neji added a 0.1-second meridian warm-up action between the third and fourth pulses—his right palm rapidly drew a small circle on his side, stimulating the meridians through the contraction of his arm muscles to counteract the sluggishness.

The second round of joint practice lasted forty seconds.

The powder on the strings bounced much more steadily than in the first round, and the range of amplitude fluctuations narrowed from the original ups and downs to a small fluctuation within a relatively stable range.

The sounds of Kai's punch, Tenten's kunai, and Neji's empty palm striking the striking post began to create a peculiar superposition effect—each sound was independent when heard individually, but when the three sounds were superimposed, they periodically produced a dull, buzzing sound, as if emanating from inside the striking post. This buzzing sound appeared three times within forty seconds, each lasting about two to three seconds.

"Resonance capture." Chi Quan tapped the table with his finger, the rhythm of the tap as crisp as the rhythm of his speech. "Three captures, the longest lasting two and a half seconds."

In actual combat, a continuous resonance lasting 2.8 seconds is enough to tear a gap in the chakra pathways of the container, triggering a rejection reaction.

"Only 2.8 seconds." Tenten put the kunai back into her ninja tool pouch and wiped the thin layer of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

The clouds above the third training ground were thickening, and the sunlight that peeked through the gaps in the clouds was grayish-white, offering no warmth to the skin.