Harmony is a mental state, and all its practitioners need to maintain their emotions in balance. It's not about becoming devoid of emotions, but rather about balancing positive and negative emotions.

That's why, for its practitioners, it is important to always be careful. Strong and intense emotions like anger and hatred are poison. If a Harmony practitioner feels these emotions too intensely and disrupts their mental state, they may succumb to the emotion and become a murderous monster who does not distinguish between people. In the end, the chances of returning to normal are low, and only death remains.

Whether becoming a target of someone who no longer wants to see them hurt anyone or spending all their energy and dying while killing and destroying.

Since he began his training in Harmony at a young age, Yujin was shielded from these negative emotions by his master. Despite a long-standing war happening in the lands, Yujin's master never allowed him to even get close to affected areas or battlefields.

According to Yujin's master, painful experiences help people enter a state of Harmony, as these experiences become fuel for finding balance. People without painful experiences struggle to find balance precisely because they have nothing to balance.

It's like having a scale, and on one side, you put something heavy, and on the other side, there is nothing. It's easy to simply add something to the other side to balance the scale.

It is different, however, when you are already in a state of Harmony.

The scale is already balanced, and your job is to maintain the balance. If suddenly a strong and intense emotion like hatred overwhelms you, the pendulum, which was in balance and keeping things running, swings heavily to one side, destroying the balance completely because of the weight.

Yujin was a blessed child after meeting his master. He had everything he needed to grow well. His master ensured that he had all the good things that a normal child would not have, and so when it came time to balance things, his negative and positive emotions formed a perfect balance, and he achieved Harmony at a profound level, with noticeable improvements over the passing years.

That's why Yujin's decision, at the age of 18, to understand the war was controversial.

He almost experienced a breakdown in balance when Xu Rong died, so what would happen when he witnessed the war?

Although Yujin's master tried to stop and convince him otherwise, Yujin was determined.

He sought revenge for Xu Rong, and that's when he found her tormentors dead, abandoned in the middle of a forest.

It was the first time Yujin realized how insane war is.

When he saw the scene of death, of hundreds of people in a camp, with mutilated and destroyed bodies, the smell of death, rotting flesh, and insects everywhere; all the feelings of hatred and anger he was feeling disappeared, and he achieved an even greater balance than before.

He finally understood the chaotic essence of war.

He buried the bodies, not because he cared about the people who died, but because he didn't want anyone else to have that hellish sight.

After that, Yujin continued visiting war-torn regions. He saw entire villages destroyed, with bodies exposed to the open sky. He saw orphans amidst ruined buildings, with nothing to eat or anyone to turn to for help. He saw villages being invaded, people being killed, women being raped.

He walked through many places, always helping as he could. He took orphaned children who had no one to villages that were still standing; he buried the bodies of the dead; he defeated invaders who were killing and raping.

The more he saw, the more uncomfortable he felt, but at the same time, his good deeds filled him with pride. He had the power to help people, and he helped. The negative emotions were balanced by his positive actions, and he felt that, although it wasn't enough, he was still changing the lives of many people.

***

Yujin was currently in Tsunade's training facilities. He had been training there in recent days, partly for privacy, partly because he hoped to find her here.

He didn't want to confront her again, but he believed that as long as he didn't actively seek her out, and they happened to meet, it wouldn't be bad.

But she never came to the underground facilities.

Today, once again, Yujin was here, not to train but to reflect.

He sat in a lotus position in one of the training halls, thinking about the past, about everything that happened. He was trying to make a decision.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

When he was talking to Jiraya about his ideals, Yujin didn't want to discuss his not-so-admirable philosophy. Initially, he didn't plan to speak, but as Jiraya grasped the nuances of what he had talked, he decided to speak, hoping it would be a reference for him to complete the book he was writing.

But as he began to speak, Yujin remembered a passage from the magazine about relationships.

'8. Have ambitions and goals: Having objectives and consistently seeking personal growth is attractive. Share your ambitions and goals with the woman, and be willing to support her in her own dreams. This creates a partnership based on shared aspirations and a joint pursuit of a meaningful future.'

He recalled this passage, how he had no ambitions or goals beyond perfecting his martial arts, and every time Tsunade broke down in tears in front of him.

The images of her tears falling and the rare smiles she gave merged, and he realized only now that he had a dream.

He wants to make her happy, more than anything.

He wants that smile to perpetuate on her face.

But how will he do that with his current life philosophy?

Since that day, Yujin had been paralyzed, running from the past. How can he grow and evolve if he's stuck in the past? How can he nurture a dream if he can't dream in the first place?

Yujin stood up when he thought about this and began to train. He started a series of movements; punches, kicks, stomps, he began to destroy the place without even realizing it. His punch could crack walls just with the air pressure, and his stomps broke the ground. His kicks dragged the air around and generated hurricanes within the limited space.

As he moved, he thought about his past and how he dealt with that scene he saw.

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This is a story that Yujin didn't tell Tsunade.

For almost a year, Yujin traveled through war-torn zones, doing what he could to help people. Sometimes, he had to face invaders or deserters from the feudal lord's army.

The fights were small, usually only a dozen enemies, which wasn't very difficult.

There were two villages to which Yujin always took war orphans in the region. The chiefs of the two villages were the only ones to accept refugees and orphaned children. In that region, intact villages were rare, so it was the only safe place he knew.

Yujin always kept an eye on the region of the villages, worried about enemy attacks, ready to protect them, but fortunately, it never happened, and he could continue his work of helping people for almost a year.

Until one day, a group of soldiers was heading to one of the villages, and he intercepted them. They were soldiers of the feudal lord; due to the intense war in the region, soldiers would sometimes attack villages in search of supplies or relief; therefore, Yujin wanted to know their intentions.

The leader of this group of soldiers was not hostile and explained that the lord wanted to recruit more soldiers for the war, and he just wanted them to go to the village to see if there were interested people.

Yujin followed them to the village and made sure they wouldn't do anything wrong; a mistake.

The soldiers tried to recruit people, and while Yujin was watching the recruitment calls, the village leader and the leader of the soldiers met; he only found out about it later.

After the soldiers left, Yujin continued with his work, protecting the villages until one day he noticed some children missing among the orphans in one of the villages. It couldn't be a mistake; he remembered all the children. When he questioned the village chief, he was told they had run away, something that didn't make sense.

He searched for the children and didn't find them, but as time passed, even in the other village, children were disappearing. He knew each of the children, so he knew something strange was happening; they couldn't simply run away.

After a thorough investigation, he discovered that the village chiefs were selling the children to the lord, and this made him furious. He called the people of the village and questioned if they knew, and most didn't respond, with guilty expressions on their faces.

Yujin confronted the chief of one of the villages. With no choice, he said it was getting difficult to feed the orphans, and that's why he needed to sell some children to feed the others.

But how? If the harvest was plentiful? Yujin didn't believe it and ultimately banned the village chief from selling the children, not believing his lies. People who knew what the chief was doing sided with Yujin, and the chief resigned. Another person took his place. He did the same in the other village, and apparently, everything was fine in the villages.

When he was thinking about what to do about the sold children, soldiers arrived at the village. Perhaps because one of the residents or the village chief himself had informed; the lord learned that Yujin was trying to interfere with his plans and sent soldiers to subdue him, but he didn't expect Yujin to be a Grandmaster.

Yujin subdued the thirty soldiers and asked to negotiate with the feudal lord. He would exchange the thirty hostage soldiers for the twelve children that the feudal lord had bought from the two villages.

The feudal lord's response was silence, and then the invasion of a detachment of invaders of more than two hundred men. They divided into two groups and attacked the two villages at the same time. With no time to question how these invaders attacked the village at such a coincidental moment, Yujin could only defend them, driving away the invaders in the end, but when he arrived at the second village, it was too late.

He arrived in the village to find the soldiers having a party, committing all kinds of atrocities with women and even the dead bodies of other residents.

That's when something snapped inside Yujin. At that moment, they didn't seem like humans but monsters.

...

The next thing he remembers was the most horrendous sight he had ever seen in his life.

He was in the middle of a plain, with mutilated bodies scattered everywhere; blood in puddles. Arms, legs, heads everywhere.

He never knew how many people he had killed, but it was in the hundreds. There were invaders and soldiers of the feudal lord by their armor. The balance had been broken for a while, and that's why he lost his mind, killing everyone who appeared in front of him.

In the distance, Yujin saw his master watching him. When he realized he had returned to normal, his master approached and sighed. He looked like a sixty-year-old, with a tall and muscular body. His hair was extremely long, reaching the ground, tied in braids. He exuded vitality, even though he was old.

"You had the first break. Given your mental state, there's no turning back in the next."

Yujin didn't know what to say; he could only look around at what he had done in silence.

"Go isolate yourself in the mountains, find your balance again, and if you feel you must come back here, come back. I'll handle things here."

Yujin accepted his master's will and isolated himself in the mountains for five years, with no desire to return even after such a long time.