They're promoting the "Konoha threat" theory, and spouting nonsense about the Hidden

Chapter 179 New Changes at the Ninja Academy (Part 2)

Just as Tsunade was leading Kato Shizune away from the "veteran ninja tool shop," one of the graduates she had just noticed seemed to sense something and turned back to look at them.

"Haocheng, what's wrong?"

Noticing Amano Hiroshige's turn, his companions immediately followed his gaze out of curiosity.

"It's nothing, I just felt like someone was watching me..."

Hiroki Amano stared at the two figures for a long time before finally shaking his head and replying to his companions.

Back then, Amano Kosei won Hozuki Shingetsu's attention with his amazing perseverance. Hozuki Shingetsu, hoping that Kirigakure would produce a genius with similar hard work as Rock Lee, made an exception and gave him a chance to enroll.

He did not waste this rare opportunity. After enrolling, he prioritized perseverance and did his best in everything he did, often training himself to the point of fainting.

Of course, given his talent, without ninjutsu like the Eight Gates, his diligent training only placed him in the middle of the pack of ninja academy students.

Forget about the top-ranked rankings and ladder battles, he never ranked at the top in any of the class's major exams each semester.

However, with the idea of ​​"trying anything even if it's not a sure thing," Hozuki Shingetsu paid a lot of attention to this guy and took the opportunity to teach him the first two active techniques of the newly developed "Seven-Day Breathing Method."

With the help of this ninjutsu and his talent, Amano Kosei finally managed to establish himself among the genin.

"Hey, did you hear? I heard that starting this year, the Ninja Academy's curriculum is going to be six years?"

After hearing Hiroki Amano's answer, his companion did not ask any further questions and immediately changed the subject.

"Of course I've heard! And I've also heard that starting this year, the children from ninja clans will also be sent to the ninja academy to study alongside children from commoner backgrounds like us!"

Another person immediately chimed in, speaking with great excitement.

"If that's the case, then things like ranked ladders and reward credits will be irrelevant to us ordinary ninjas?"

In the past few years, although no genius student has emerged who won the top spot in the ladder ranking battle in their first year of school and became Hozuki Shingetsu's disciple.

However, thanks to Hozuki Shingetsu's original design, many ordinary elites learned D-rank and C-rank ninjutsu through various means during their studies.

It can be said that after several years of settling down, this period was a time of explosive growth in the number of civilian ninjas in Kirigakure.

It is precisely because of this that Hozuki Shingetsu's reputation among these commoner ninjas is now unparalleled. It can be said that his plan to use these ninja academy students as his base has begun to show results.

Even so, the gap between them and those ninja clans was still very obvious.

A group of graduates couldn't help but sigh when they got to this point.

Although they had already graduated, they, being from humble backgrounds themselves, couldn't help but stand up for their juniors.

"But according to the teacher, the changes at school seem to go beyond that. I heard that this year's students will be learning, practicing, and training in groups starting from their third year. Finally, their graduation exams will include a team score, which means they're practically adapting to ninja team life four years in advance!"

"That way, they can get used to the life of a ninja in advance..."

-

"The above is the new reform plan for the Ninja Academy based on your guidance."

Akiba Masanobu presented a document to Hozuki Shingetsu and explained, "According to the new plan, the Ninja Academy will implement a '2+4' academic system, which consists of two years of basic courses and four years of specialized courses."

"Aside from a significant increase in practical courses, the technical classes are largely the same as before. The most major changes are in the combat classes."

Akiba Masanobu adjusted his glasses, glanced at Hozuki Shingetsu who was reading the documents, and continued, "The combat squads are divided into groups starting from the third year. In daily assessments, in addition to individual scores, team scores are also calculated."

"As you instructed, there will be a month-long summer activity starting from the fifth grade. The main content is to wipe out mountain bandits and make them bleed."

"And the final graduation requirement has changed from assessing the Three Body Techniques to group combat drills, with graduation determined based on the group's final score."

Hozuki Shingetsu tapped the table lightly, flipping through the documents in his hands. After a long while, he finally spoke, "Alright, let's proceed according to this plan!"

Upon hearing this, Akiba Masanobu finally breathed a sigh of relief. Heaven knows how many days he had spent writing this plan, and now that he finally heard the news that it had passed, he could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Since the end of the peace truce meeting, Hozuki Shingetsu has been planning a new round of reforms for Kirigakure.

Now, his strength is already at the peak of Kirigakure. After so many years of cultivating his reputation, he is not only popular in Kirigakure, but also has a great reputation in the ninja world.

After the Industrial Revolution, and with the help of the Second Shinobi World War, Kirigakure had no economic shortcomings, not to mention the funds provided by the gullible Black Zetsu.

It can be said that Kirigakure now possesses all the conditions for another reform, from top to bottom and inside to outside.

This reform of the ninja academy was Hozuki Shingetsu's first goal.

This step is both an adjustment to his core base and the start of a comprehensive reform plan.

Firstly, thanks to economic development and changes in the external environment, Kirigakure now has enough money and is in a stage of quietly accumulating strength. This is why the school system has been changed from three years to six years, reaching the normal learning time in the original work.

Secondly, an order was issued that all school-age children of the ninja clan must attend school, and only ninjas who have completed six years of training at the ninja academy and passed the graduation examination can receive a ninja headband.

The main purpose of this step is to take back all the authority to grant ninjas to the village.

Previously, if a commoner wanted to become a ninja, they had to go through the ninja academy and, after passing the graduation exam, be granted a ninja headband by the village, thus receiving ninja status.

However, prior to this, each ninja clan would conduct its own assessments of newly promoted genin and then submit the list to the village.

Hozuki Shingetsu naturally could not tolerate this, as it concerned the village's authority and the power to appoint ninjas, the cornerstone of the village.

Even though a genin-level ninja is insignificant, as the saying goes, reputation and skill cannot be faked.

This kind of thing, which concerns the power of the Mizukage, certainly cannot be delegated to individual ninja clans to do on their own. Even if it's just a formality, it must be carried out under the leadership of the village.

This is also part of Hozuki Shingetsu's operation to suppress the ninja clan.

Moreover, as far as he knew, not only Kirigakure, but also Konoha, Iwagakure, and Kumogakure ordered their ninja children to attend ninja academies around the same time. It seemed that the various Kage had a consensus on this issue.

Apart from the two points mentioned above, the remaining changes mainly concern the teaching content.

For technical classes, the time spent on practical courses has been significantly increased, which goes without saying.

Those who study chakra technology and ninjutsu development should intern at the Chakra Research Institute.

Medical students would intern at ninja hospitals, dissecting and handling less important patients.

Taking advantage of the Second Shinobi World War, the ninjas in the humanitarian medical relief team sent by Kirigakure gained a lot of practical experience, and the number of medical ninjas who were able to graduate increased significantly. There was no shortage of people to teach these ninja academy students.

The changes to the combat squads are even more significant.

In Hozuki Shingetsu's view, being a ninja is a practical profession, even for students at the ninja academy.

Given the talents of these commoner ninjas and the scenarios in which ninjas are used, Hozuki Shingetsu places greater emphasis on their team combat capabilities.

Guided by this ideology, the students in the combat class began to be divided into groups starting from the third grade, and then carried out group assignments.

Starting from the third grade, students can take on genin missions in villages under the name of a group, such as catching cats and dogs, taking care of children, and delivering messages.

This stage mainly focuses on cultivating teamwork among group members and helping them adapt to the life of a ninja.

Starting from the fourth grade, they conduct red and blue team ninja combat drills every semester.

The content of the drills is unpredictable. They can be categorized by type, such as point-based battles where one side protects items while the other tries to steal them, or where each group is issued a number tag and the winner is determined by the number of number tags they have.

It can also be a simulated siege battle, where both sides have a flag or camp as their home base, and both need to conquer the other side's home base while protecting their own.

It can also be an unrestricted free-for-all, where the team that survives to the end in a designated area wins.

Or it could be a practice of specific abilities, such as one party deliberately hiding while the other searches for them.

In any case, the drills cover a wide range of topics, with the aim of erasing their student mentality as much as possible and teaching them ninja skills as early as possible.

Starting in fifth grade, they would need to be accompanied by their teachers to eliminate bandits who were not accompanied by ninjas.

Thanks to years of war and greedy, incompetent bureaucrats in the ninja world, the ninja world is now teeming with bandits. Even in the Land of Water, many people take risks under the "wise" rule of the noble lords.

These bandits were originally commoners who turned to banditry because they couldn't survive, so there were no ninjas to guard them.

For these mountain bandits who are not under the command of ninjas, they are often classified as Rank C in the ninja mission ranking system, which means that they do not need to fight against ninjas.

Hozuki Shingetsu always believed that C-rank missions did not require the intervention of genin, as these ninja academy students could handle them entirely.

According to Hozuki Shingetsu's prediction, after four years of study, the students of the Ninja Academy at this time have basically completed their ninja training and have gained absolute power to suppress civilians.

By this time, they had learned almost everything a ninja should learn and knew almost everything they should know. The biggest difference between them and a warrior was their fighting spirit and courage.

At this point, with a class of twenty or thirty students, if they performed normally and cooperated well, they could completely wipe out a band of less than four hundred people who occupied a favorable terrain.

The biggest factor affecting their performance is psychological, and learning how to overcome this is a required course for them as ninjas.

This process can also be said to be the focus of Hozuki Shingetsu's training plan. It is a key step in his vision of how to sift through the vast number of ordinary ninjas and discover geniuses.

Because only in real-world scenarios will the difference between geniuses and mediocre people become apparent.

After all, genius is not just about being a genius in cultivation. Command ability, combat ability, psychological quality, comprehension ability... such excellence in all aspects is what makes one fit Hozuki Shingetsu's definition of genius.

Those teachers not only have the function of sitting in charge and keeping order, but also have the important responsibility of scoring and evaluating.

Of course, Hozuki Shingetsu knew that geniuses of this caliber didn't appear out of nowhere, but this kind of mission setup allowed him to notice such a person the moment they appeared and then focus on cultivating them.

According to Hozuki Shingetsu's plan, as long as this step can be completed smoothly, the current ninja academy students will be ready to be used and can graduate.

However, in order to give them a chance to fully understand and make up for any gaps in their knowledge, Hozuki Shingetsu gave them a year to reflect.

The main purpose of this semester is to let them understand what real ninja team combat is like after experiencing actual combat. With the help of teachers, they will reflect on their own fighting style, sort out their own combat system, clarify their role in the team, and use the remaining time to consume credits to make targeted combat skill combinations.

After all the above procedures are completed, the students will finally have to take a graduation exam to determine whether they can graduate, and the level of the supervising teacher will be determined based on their performance in the graduation exam.

The assessment consists of two battle royale scenarios, and the team that survives to the end in the ever-shrinking area is the winner.

To minimize the influence of luck, this battle royale was played twice, and the average ranking was taken.

If a team wins first place twice in a row, they will receive the title of "Outstanding Graduate" and each member will be awarded a B-rank ninjutsu.

In the series of teaching outlines set up by Hozuki Shingetsu, as long as this step is taken, it means that the ninja team has already reached the strength of a genin team that has graduated from Konoha three years ago under the same conditions.

After all, Konoha doesn't offer any academic credits for students to exchange for ninjutsu, nor does it provide teacher guidance or a comprehensive training model that covers team synergy, courage development, and team role positioning.

All their knowledge of ninjas came from their instructors after graduation, and whether they could learn ninjutsu depended entirely on the instructors' conscience.

"This is the foundation of Kirigakure's strength... If we can train several more generations according to this model, when the Third Shinobi World War begins, that will be the time for Kirigakure to truly rise!"

(End of this chapter)