Chapter 37: Sage mode
“Just now we talked about the power of elements, roughly it is divided into 7 elements. Each and every one possess one of this 7 elements. Some may possess single element, some may possess 2 elements or even 3 elements. But no matter how many element one possessed, the elemental power of each and every one of us are absorbed from the void.”
“In the future, after we absorb these elemental power inside our body, we convert it into our own power. But these power in itself do not count as our own power, as this is the power we absorb from this world. As a result, we should deepen our understanding in controlling the power we possess.”
“Only after you have the ability to control your own power as you wish, can you bring out the true power of these elemental battle qi. Let’s take a fire element as an example.” Wang Jia Fei slowly continued to explain.
“Among the 7 major elements, fire element is the most ‘violent/wild’ in nature. It can also be said that it has the nature to destroy anything. And as a fire system warrior, first of all, they should be clear about the meaning of fire.”
“Although fire is one of the most common element, but once your energy reach high enough, you can easily burn and destroy everything. And just like the meaning of fire element, we as a fire system warrior, must have courage to destroy every obstruction before our willpower.
“Before Saint Class, we all just use the elemental power which we absorb from the void. But since this elemental power is not ours, our own strength is always limited. After reaching Saint Class, everyone begin to learn their own elemental power, and oppose against the elemental power of void and learn to use the endless free power of Void. After reaching God class, they can combine their own power with the power of void and make their own unusual domain. [T.L: before saint class they can absorb only the elemental power of void *not free power of void*]
Listening to the explanation of Wang Jia Fei, inside his heart, the power system of this world gradually became clearer. In this Divine Wind continent, all the powers are originated from elemental power of the void. According to the words of the Earth, you can say ‘power of nature’.
Cultivating this way is good, because from the start their power comes from nature. After their strength reached high level in accordance with Divine Wind Continent’s strength rank, i.e. after Saint Class, they can easily communicate with the power of nature and form a resonance. Thus they can use the preliminary power of the nature, in the words of Naruto world, we can say, learning Sage mode.
But their cultivation method also have 2 extremely big drawbacks. First, since from the beginning they absorb the power of nature, and we should know that the power of nature is extremely violent, so it is not easy to control it. This is also the reason why, after reaching Saint Class, they learn to communicate with the power of nature. Thanks to this, from the beginning they have to spend very large amount of time to grasp and assimilate this power. But unexpectedly initial cultivating method of ninja is to extract the power from inside the body, as a result, compare to battle qi, chakra is far easier to use, and also can be used freely in many different ways. For example, you can use chakra to climb trees without using hands, run on the water, also after reaching high level can learn form and nature change and so on. But trying to do so by using battle qi is very difficult.
Second, since their power is completely originated from the nature, this is also one of the fatal weakness, i.e. if any warrior arrived at the place which is completely isolated from the power of natural elements, then in a short time the battle qi inside their body will be consumed and become powerless, as they won’t have any method to replenish their power. In addition, if earth system warrior come to the area of sea or ice, then their power will be heavily oppressed and weakened as well as it would be very difficult to replenish the consumed power. But the chakra of ninja is extracted for inside their own body, if they arrived at the place which completely cut off the natural elements, they can easily recover their consumed power by extracting chakra from inside their body and eating foods and resting can restore the energy within their bodies. Also if earth system ninja arrived at the area of sea or ice, then there will not be any oppression or weakening effects.
But battle qi also have merit, i.e. compared to ninja, they could easily comprehend the power of nature, which is Sage mode. In Naruto world, those who had grasped Sage mode are very few in number, such as Jiraiya, 1st Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto, and finally Kabuto.
Chakra is created when two forms of energy—-namely spiritual energy and physical energy of the human are molded together. And adding the power of nature in the chakra gives Senjutsu chakra. Before introducing power of nature, the chakra is maintaining a balance between spiritual and physical energy, so when power of nature is introduced in chakra, this balance is broken. And it is harder to maintain balance between these 3 types of energy. It is required to have 1/3 power of nature to execute sage mode. If it is more than 1/3 then the user is swallowed by the power of nature and if it is lower than 1/3 then they can’t use sage mode. In the Naruto world, Jiriya had put on a great effort to master it but even he couldn’t maintain the absolute balance, so when he execute Sage mode, he became a bit like a frog. [T.L: is senjutsu chakra correct term? If not then what is the correct term for the power of sage mode?]
In Naruto world, if you lose control while practicing Sage mode, then you would gradually become frog forever, and slowly turn into a stone. And only the person with a huge amount of chakra could learn this Senjutsu, otherwise, the power of nature would quickly swallow that person. From this we can see that it is very hard to learn sage mode.
Nevertheless, from the viewpoint of Ren Tian You, the Saint Class warriors are only able to use fake-sage mode. Because then can only use the energy produced from combining their own energy with only the preliminary power of nature. Only after they reach God class, they can use true Sage mode. They can combine their own power with the power of nature and form a domain, and their every movement are combined with the power of nature.
Senjutsu chakra is at least 2 or 3 times more powerful than normal chakra. Power of nature is boundless, you can depend on the power of nature to easily recover your consumed senjutsu energy. Also using this senjutsu chakra can make user substantially stronger. For example, normally if you cannot lift a given huge boulder, then after using senjutsu chakra, you can easily lift that huge boulder.
In Naruto VS Pain battle, Naruto had depended on the Sage mode’s enhanced strength to fight because he couldn’t directly resist against Pain. But at that time, Naruto had just completed his training, so he could maintain Sage mode for only 5 minutes. So he had to use his shadow clones to cultivate senjutsu chakra while he himself fought Pain. But controlling the absorption of power of nature was very hard so he could only left 2 shadow clones to absorb it. And these moves let him successfully defend against Pain.
The Sage mode cultivation methods are also available in the Naruto system of Ren Tian You. But currently he hadn’t even completely mastered his chakra elements first, so how can he have time to learn Sage mode. So Ren Tian You intends to learn Sage mode after time was right for him to cultivate.