The second-year curriculum wasn't much different from the first year.
The academic subjects were still the same few — just taught at a higher level of difficulty.
In the afternoon, physical education aimed at strengthening the body was gone. By now, none of the students had been persuaded to drop out, which clearly meant that all of them had already succeeded in extracting chakra. As long as they made it through the six years step by step, they would either become genin recognized by jonin and prioritized by the village for training, or become fresh recruits in other departments.
The chance of wasting six years only to revert to being an ordinary person was extremely low.
The next five years would focus on teaching them skills like intelligence gathering and assassination.
These subjects posed no challenge for Izayoi — in fact, they were outright boring.
After only a few days of classes, he couldn't help but abandon his original plan and once again sent a shadow clone to attend school in his place.
As for himself, he stayed home to train.
Although he couldn't practice elemental ninjutsu at home, he could try to develop new jutsu.
Even though developing ninjutsu typically required a strong foundation in nature transformation or shape transformation, Izayoi — being a transmigrator — knew there was one jutsu that didn't require such a foundation. As long as one's chakra reserves were sufficient, it could be learned.
That jutsu was the Rasengan, a technique developed by the Fourth Hokage after being inspired by the Tailed Beast Ball. It took him several years to create — a non-elemental, no-hand-seal A-rank jutsu.
As Naruto's signature jutsu from childhood to adulthood — and the only jutsu in the original story to have its full training method publicly shown — the Rasengan left a deep impression.
Anyone who liked watching Naruto wouldn't forget how it was trained, and Izayoi was no exception.
However, Izayoi didn't train in the Rasengan to use it as a trump card. As mentioned earlier, he intended to use it as a foundation — to develop his own jutsu.
The Rasengan, developed by the Fourth Hokage, held a special significance in Konoha.
Besides the Fourth, only his teacher and students had ever used it.
If Izayoi suddenly used this jutsu out of nowhere, it would definitely draw the attention of Konoha's higher-ups.
Without a reasonable explanation, it could trigger all kinds of suspicion.
That wasn't something Izayoi wanted.
So instead, he aimed to create a new no-hand-seal jutsu based on the Rasengan — called the Super Hurricane Sphere.
Also known as the Multi-Great Gale Sphere, this was an original jutsu used by Ōtsutsuki Asura in the anime to fight Ōtsutsuki Indra.
This jutsu was similar to Naruto's Planetary Rasengan.
Its principle involved first forming a large energy sphere — slightly smaller than the Giant Rasengan — and then inserting five smaller, rotatable Rasengan-sized energy balls into it.
Like the Rasen Shuriken, this jutsu could be thrown or launched.
Once it exploded, it would produce six consecutive detonations.
If the outer sphere was destroyed by force, the five inner spheres would scatter and continue attacking the enemy.
Just like how Naruto infused different chakra natures into his Rasengan variants, this technique could also be infused with elemental chakra, even combining multiple elements together — similar to the Third Hokage's Five Nature Great Combo Technique.
At that point, its destructive power would be akin to a cataclysmic force.
If Izayoi didn't possess the Ōtsutsuki bloodline (Red) and the All-Elemental Affinity (Purple) traits, he never would've dared consider such an idea. Just learning the Rasengan would have already been enough for him.
But with the no-hand-seal talent granted by the Ōtsutsuki bloodline, the all-element affinity, and his already upgraded Purple-grade chakra control, Izayoi now had the potential to bring this anime-original jutsu into reality.
Thanks to his incredible chakra control, it only took Izayoi one week to fully master the Rasengan.
After that, all Izayoi had to do was keep injecting chakra, enlarging the Rasengan to the size of a basketball, and maintaining its stability without letting it explode. Once he achieved that, he could begin trying to condense smaller energy spheres inside it.
However, this stage of training couldn't be done at home.
If the energy sphere exploded, the consequences would be unimaginable.
So, Izayoi began to patiently wait — for the massacre of the Uchiha clan.
When the date finally reached May 15, Izayoi's long wait came to an end.
Afternoons typically only had two or three classes, and survival exercises were scheduled only every few weeks to evaluate students' recent progress.
Even in these special cases, school would usually end around 5 p.m.
But on this day, the second-year Class 1 students unusually had four full periods in the afternoon.
The final survival exercise didn't end until twilight had fallen.
The Uchiha compound was located near the Naka River, on the outskirts of the village.
Without using Body Flicker to travel, by the time Uchiha Sasuke returned home, night had already fallen.
In the sky, a full moon had appeared — and in the glow of the setting sun, it looked faintly blood-red.
Izayoi's shadow clone watched silently as Sasuke left the school and jogged toward home.
He knew that after tonight, the version of Sasuke who was neither cold nor obsessed with grades, would cease to exist.
From tomorrow onward, the Sasuke that would stand before Izayoi would be someone radiating icy hostility, deeply concerned with strength and family honor, easily provoked by words — someone emotionally volatile and prone to breaking down.
Although this version of Sasuke would be miserable, Izayoi still looked forward to that moment.
After all, he had been waiting an entire year for it.
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The next day, a piece of shocking news rocked Konoha and quickly spread beyond its borders. Thanks to information relayed by spies, the entire ninja world learned of it within hours.
The Uchiha clan — once Konoha's greatest noble family after the decline of the Senju — renowned throughout the ninja world for their invincible kekkei genkai, their Copy Eyes, and Genjutsu Eyes — had been annihilated.
And the one who wiped them out wasn't the rival Hyūga clan, nor the village elders, nor other hidden villages…
It was none other than the eldest son of the Uchiha patriarch, a 13-year-old boy: Uchiha Itachi.
From that day on, the name Uchiha Itachi swept through the entire ninja world, becoming known as Konoha's youngest ever S-rank rogue ninja.
That very morning, as Izayoi left his house, he could already hear villagers discussing the news.
This was no ordinary event.
The shockwave it sent through the village was no less than the Nine-Tails' attack on Konoha in Year 48.
In just a few short years, Konoha had lost the Fourth Hokage and his wife, many elite ninjas, and now its most powerful ninja clan.
Without a doubt, Konoha had entered the weakest era since its founding.
Once, the village had so many Kage-level ninjas that they couldn't be counted on one hand — strong enough to fight four other villages at once and still win.
Now, it was left with only the aging Third Hokage as its last remaining Kage-level fighter.
After the Nine-Tails' rampage, Konoha became a target for Kumogakure's schemes.
And now, with the loss of the Uchiha clan, the village should've been even more vulnerable — ripe for enemies to pounce.
But oddly enough, in the years that followed, Konoha remained eerily peaceful.
Clearly, the other hidden villages had realized something was off.