Chapter 22: Ninja Strength Classification
Another week vanished like smoke, and Qifeng had managed to maintain his carefully crafted existence of blissful mediocrity. His daily routine had achieved an almost zen-like simplicity: repair corpses, touch corpses for potential prizes, and pretend to be too busy to deal with the parade of visitors who'd somehow decided his morgue was the new hot social spot.
This, of course, included listening to Asuma's romantic woes. Apparently, Yuhi Kurenai had started treating him with the kind of polite distance usually reserved for door-to-door salesmen. She'd gone from warm and familiar to cordially professional, which was driving Asuma to new heights of cigarette consumption.
Qifeng's response to these heartfelt confessions was, naturally, to maintain perfect silence while occasionally lighting Asuma's cigarettes. He'd mastered the art of being just helpful enough to seem sympathetic without actually getting involved in the emotional carnage of teenage romance.
Then there was Might Guy's daily cleaning crusade. Between Guy's obsessive-compulsive approach to hygiene and Qifeng's single-tomoe Sharingan providing supernatural attention to detail, the morgue had achieved a level of cleanliness that would make hospital administrators weep with envy. It was probably the most sterile corpse storage facility in the history of hidden villages.
And of course, there were the daily visitations from Konoha's most entertaining rivalry: Obito versus Kakashi. They showed up with the kind of precise timing that suggested either supernatural coordination or a shared mental disorder. Kakashi, normally the picture of bored indifference, couldn't help but deliver cutting remarks whenever Obito appeared.
Obito, being Obito, responded to every verbal defeat by immediately preparing for the next round. His resilience in the face of constant humiliation was either admirable or deeply concerning, depending on your perspective.
Before Qifeng knew it, his supposedly remote and deserted morgue had become busier than a ramen stand during lunch rush. This development filled him with the special kind of despair reserved for introverts who'd been accidentally mistaken for social people.
His peaceful afternoon sun-bathing sessions had become casualties of war, interrupted by everything from romantic consultations to cleaning frenzies to verbal sparring matches.
Meanwhile, Kakashi had convinced Sarutobi Hiruzen to disband his chunin team and somehow ended up in Yuhi Shinku's training camp, where he was apparently dominating the competition with the casual ease of someone solving children's puzzles.
Shinku had made several attempts to recruit Qifeng for his program, each time leaving empty-handed as Qifeng deployed increasingly creative excuses. The man's persistence was honestly impressive—like watching someone try to convince a cat to take a bath.
Maybe Shinku couldn't tolerate Qifeng's aggressively leisurely lifestyle and felt morally obligated to intervene. As a fellow practitioner of the ancient art of smoking, perhaps he felt some kind of duty to rescue a brother from a life of productive laziness.
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Daytime might have been simple and surprisingly social, but nighttime was when Qifeng got down to business. Once the village settled into sleep and the morgue returned to its natural state of creepy silence, he indulged in his real hobbies: corpse processing, prize hunting, and the delicate art of integrating supernatural abilities into a combat style that wouldn't immediately get him killed.
He'd been experimenting with the Shikotsumyaku and his single-tomoe Sharingan, trying to figure out how to blend bone manipulation with enhanced perception into something resembling a coherent fighting technique. It was like trying to choreograph a dance between a demolition expert and a watchmaker.
Combat experience wasn't his problem—he had that in spades, courtesy of his Jonin and Quasi-Kage experience cards. But those memories came from ninja without bloodline limits, without bone-jutsu, without fancy ocular powers. Their fighting styles were about as relevant to his situation as a fish's swimming technique was to a bird.
He needed to create something entirely his own, which was turning out to be significantly more challenging than simply copying someone else's homework.
According to the system's brutally honest evaluation, Qifeng still registered as "Chunin-level," which was both accurate and mildly insulting. But after spending time around actual talented ninja like Kakashi and Shinku, he'd developed a more nuanced understanding of where he actually stood in the grand hierarchy of ninja competence.
Without his bloodline abilities, he was what you might generously call a "senior chunin"—someone with decent experience and a respectable bag of tricks, but nothing that would make enemies run screaming.
Activate the Shikotsumyaku and Sharingan, however, and suddenly he was operating at special jonin level, particularly in the taijutsu department. With the element of surprise, he might even manage to take down a weaker jonin before they realized what was happening.
The key word being "might." Confidence was good; overconfidence was a fast track to becoming someone else's corpse-touching project.
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Ninja ranking was, to put it mildly, a complete mess. The whole system of genin, chunin, jonin, and kage levels shifted depending on the time period, the village, the political climate, and probably the phase of the moon.
Take Qifeng himself as an example. Before his system awakened, he'd been the definition of "generic genin"—someone who could manage the basic three jutsu and throw a kunai in roughly the right direction. This was, unfortunately, the standard graduation level for most ninja academy students who didn't have the benefit of prestigious family names or natural genius.
The academy's education was deliberately standardized and, frankly, pretty basic. Standing out there was less about excellence and more about having the raw talent to exceed minimal expectations.
The real differentiation came after graduation, when students got assigned to teams with actual jonin instructors. That's when the talented ones started pulling away from the pack, and the ordinary ones learned to appreciate the value of staying alive long enough to get promoted.
This was why clans like the Uchiha always dominated the academy rankings. They weren't necessarily producing more geniuses—they were just starting with better baseline advantages. The Hyuga, Sarutobi, Hatake, and other established families all benefited from the same head start.
Obito, naturally, was the exception that proved the rule. His academy performance had been so spectacularly mediocre that it bordered on performance art.
Promotion criteria were equally flexible. During peacetime, chunin advancement required passing the formal Chunin Exams—a team-based evaluation that at least attempted to be systematic.
But once war broke out, all bets were off. Field commanders gained the authority to promote genin on the spot, which meant the distinction between ranks became more about political necessity than actual competence.
Still, there were some loose guidelines that most people agreed on, even if they were about as precise as weather forecasting:
Genin level : Could perform E and D-rank techniques, had basic ninja tool proficiency, possessed rudimentary taijutsu skills, and hadn't died yet. Some might have bloodline abilities, but usually hadn't figured out how to use them effectively.
Chunin level : Capable of executing C-rank jutsu multiple times without passing out, had developed some kind of specialized skill set, and could potentially survive longer than five minutes in actual combat.
Special Jonin : Had pushed one particular aspect of their abilities—whether ninjutsu, taijutsu, genjutsu, or specialized techniques like sealing or sensing—to near-jonin level. Basically, they were really good at one thing and hopefully competent at everything else.
Jonin level : Could execute B-rank techniques reliably, demonstrated mastery in at least one of the main combat disciplines, and had developed their abilities to the point where they could reasonably expect to survive most encounters that didn't involve tailed beasts or legendary ninja.
Kage level : This was where things got really vague. Essentially, it meant "among the handful of strongest ninja in the village." The definition shifted with each generation, because raw power was relative to whoever else happened to be alive at the time.
Based on current Konoha standards, Qifeng estimated that if he went all-out without holding back, he could probably earn a field promotion to jonin during wartime. The combination of Shikotsumyaku and Sharingan was exotic enough that most opponents wouldn't know how to counter it.
Not that he had any intention of revealing that information. Anonymity was a survival strategy, and survival was his primary objective.
He'd grown comfortable with his routine of steady improvement without attracting attention. Unfortunately, the rest of the ninja world seemed to be accelerating toward some kind of crisis, and Qifeng could feel the momentum building like pressure in a sealed container.
His peaceful existence was about to become significantly more complicated.
Today, Sarutobi Hiruzen had summoned him to the Hokage's office again. But this time, the usual suspects—Hiruzen and Danzo—had been joined by a rather significant addition.
Standing in the office, radiating an aura of cold intelligence and barely contained danger, was Sarutobi Hiruzen's most accomplished student, one of the legendary Sannin, and the man whose idea of a good time involved vivisecting interesting specimens.
Orochimaru had arrived.
Which meant Qifeng's comfortable, boring life was about to become much more exciting than he'd ever wanted it to be.
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