Click.
Suzaku pushed the door open, only to find Hiruzen Sarutobi standing alone by the window, one hand braced against the burning-hot stone sill, head lowered as he gazed at the view outside. The expression on his aged face was dim and unreadable.
There was no one else in the room.
Where did Miss Konome go?
He had been standing guard downstairs the whole time and had not seen her leave.
A trace of confusion rose in Suzaku's heart, but he still maintained the basic discipline of an ANBU and did not let his curiosity show.
"Lord Hokage, the terms offered by the Land of Waves are very generous, but Lord Shikaku believes they should still have some room left. Should we press them a little further?"
Tilting his chin down, he asked carefully.
These past few days, because of the Chunin Exams, the Third Hokage had been in a terrible mood. He had been smoking handful after handful, turning the room into something that looked like it had been hit with the Hidden Mist Jutsu.
Although Hiruzen Sarutobi was usually approachable and kindly, and when he smiled his narrowed eyes looked especially benevolent, Suzaku had followed him for many years. He had personally seen how ruthless the man had been in his youth, so he did not dare show the slightest disrespect.
Strangely enough, it had once been the opposite.
Danzo-sama had been warm, kind, and bright in his younger days. The Third Hokage, aside from being somewhat lecherous, had once possessed a temperament extremely similar to the Second Hokage's, cold, stern, and unsmiling.
Yet somehow, the two of them had completely reversed as they aged.
"The Land of Waves has never had it easy to develop, and their port was destroyed by Konome and the others. Let it be. Draining the pond to catch the fish is not as good as drawing water slowly over time."
Still looking down at the middle-aged shinobi below, slightly stooped as he carried his luggage on his shoulder and led a client out of the village after accepting a mission, Hiruzen Sarutobi continued speaking one grand-sounding lie after another.
"Yes, sir."
Lowering his head reluctantly, Suzaku turned and left the office.
The Land of Waves occupied a special position and could bring great profit to Konoha. If they took this opportunity to tighten their grip a little, the village's development would no longer have to remain constrained at every turn by the daimyo.
What a pity.
After changing, the Third Hokage had many admirable qualities. He treated everyone with warmth and kindness.
He was simply too merciful.
Hopefully the Land of Waves would prove worthy of his generosity.
Tap tap.
The footsteps gradually faded away, and once more only Hiruzen Sarutobi remained inside the office.
He watched the somewhat hunched middle-aged man downstairs walk farther and farther away, his cloudy pupils trembling without pause.
Sometimes, even he no longer knew what it was he was truly doing.
The Land of Fire sat on broad plains with endless fields. It was the nation with the most favorable geography among the Five Great Nations, and its population numbered close to a hundred million.
Compared to the massive number of ordinary people, Konoha's shinobi, all together, numbered only around twenty thousand.
That was the equivalent of one shinobi being supported by five thousand people.
Even accounting for the losses consumed by nobles and officials of the Land of Fire, the wealth gathered every year was still more than enough to support all these shinobi.
The truth was that Konoha did not lack money at all.
The funds the daimyo supplied to the village each year were actually excessive, and shinobi did not live extravagantly like nobles.
Kunai, shuriken, steel wire, and other non-chakra tools had been stacked in the warehouses until they had gathered dust. There was enough there to last twenty years.
Shinobi killing and being killed for mission fees was entirely the result of deliberate manipulation.
First, shinobi were forbidden from leaving the village without permission. Those who disobeyed were treated as rogue ninja.
That ensured shinobi resources would not drain away, while also forcing them to spend all the high mission fees they earned back inside the village.
Next, Konoha land prices were deliberately driven up, and taxes were raised, making the cost of living in Konoha outrageously high.
The money required to spend a single afternoon playing around on bustling Tanzaku Street, with its prosperous gambling dens everywhere, would probably only buy three bowls of Ichiraku ramen in Konoha.
Finally, the village invested heavily in ninja tool shops, sold highly versatile ninjutsu and ninja tools, and raised the cost of medical treatment in the hospital. While increasing shinobi strength, this also consumed the mission money they had struggled so hard to earn.
And so, the system was complete.
The circulation of money stimulated economic prosperity, shinobi savings were constantly consumed so they could not become lazy, ninjutsu was taught to improve average quality, missions were carried out to build battle experience and the village's influence.
This was the Konoha development strategy laid down by the Second Hokage.
After he had explained all of that, Konome had shown no reaction at all, as though this secret, enough to overturn the very structure of the hidden villages, were nothing more than a perfectly ordinary matter.
Once she had confirmed he had nothing else to say, Konome simply dispersed into a puff of smoke.
Only then did he realize that the person who had left the village for two weeks and killed Kuro锄 Raiga and that unknown enemy had actually been only one of Konome's Shadow Clones.
Surprise, relief, and unease.
Hiruzen Sarutobi had no idea whether she, like Tsunade and Jiraiya, would become utterly disappointed in him, in the Kage, and in the shinobi system itself, and leave Konoha forever.
Meanwhile.
Deep in Root, in the hive-like research division.
Inside a cold and spacious room, four Konome clones in white lab coats surrounded an operating table, mincing the cursing Hidan down into fine meat paste bit by bit.
Yang Release Konome, wearing a Root uniform, had her Byakugan glowing beneath the cloth over her eyes. Her vision was darting through Hidan's body as if searching for something.
Behind her, Konome's original body held a heart covered in black tendrils and carefully observed the chakra fluctuations within it, seeking the secret of Earth Grudge Fear.
Just a moment ago, when she had seen Root shinobi carrying a wooden coffin into the laboratory, she had thought her genin clone had brought back Haku. She had immediately abandoned her Wood Release research and rushed over, eager to examine the structure of the Ice Release bloodline.
Then she opened the coffin.
Inside, a heart extended Earth Grudge Fear tendrils as it crawled about like a red spider covered in blood vessels. Hidan, chopped into pieces, had still somehow managed to keep cursing loudly the moment he saw her, turning the whole coffin into a fountain of filth.
It was… extremely grotesque.
Then her head sank, and a huge flood of memories poured into her mind.
Kakuzu. Hidan. Zabuza. The joint Chunin Exams. Konoha. The Kage.
A chaotic jumble of memories flooded her brain. It felt like someone had thrown it into a soybean grinder, leaving it throbbing painfully. And after she finally sorted through all the information contained inside them, her head hurt even more.
The Five Kage gathering?
A super Chunin Exam?
I'm the proctor?
Would Orochimaru still dare come?
What about my Ice Release?
A long string of questions churned endlessly through her mind, tangling together with the still-flashing fragments of memory.
Massaging her temples with two fingers, she felt the plot had completely gone off the rails. She could no longer make any sense of what the future was supposed to look like.
She genuinely could not understand what exactly she had done to somehow get three major villages to join the Chunin Exams at the same time.
Since she could not make sense of it, she gave up trying.
Soldiers would come and be blocked. Water would come and be dammed.
The four great villages keeping Hiruzen awake at night were not enemies she considered unbeatable.
As it happened, she also needed fresh research material to probe the mysteries of a kekkei mora.
Ohnoki's Lightweight and Heavyweight Rock Technique and his kekkei tota were unbelievably important to her.
And Mei Terumi's dual bloodline limits were now practically delivering themselves to her door.
Maybe this was actually a good thing.
Konome bared a pair of small tiger teeth in a grin. Suddenly, even her headache did not seem so bad anymore.
As for the conversation her clone had with Hiruzen inside the office, she truly did not care in the slightest.
There was always a natural class contradiction between rulers and the ruled. It was the same in every world.
If she disliked it, she could simply overthrow the entire thing and rebuild it herself, although that would most likely only lead into some new cycle anyway.
Pushing those chaotic memories to the back of her mind, she focused on what mattered.
There was still at least a month before the Chunin Exams began. She planned to fully digest the gains from the Land of Waves in preparation for any dangers that might come later.
Hidan talked too much, so she left him for the clones to handle first, while she herself studied Kakuzu's heart separately.
Crackle.
Black tendrils climbed along her snow-white wrist. With her Byakugan activated, Konome enlarged the tendrils' structure layer by layer, and their internal composition was immediately revealed in minute detail.
Just as she had expected, this thing was a special mutated form of human tissue.
And not merely one kind.
The tendrils were very fine, pitch-black, smooth, and glossy on the outside. The outer layer of cells was flat and scale-like, almost like the hair of some strange creature. The middle layer contained fibrous membrane-like tissue, and inside were channels that transported chakra.
During the past five years, aided by the accelerated training effect of Shadow Clones, she had completely absorbed all the knowledge in Konoha's and Root's libraries concerning Yin Release and Yang Release.
At this point, she was already a master-level figure in the field of Yin-Yang techniques. Even if the Second Hokage or Orochimaru himself stood before her, they could only discuss and exchange ideas with her. Neither could claim the right to simply teach her.
So merely by seeing the internal structure of the black tendrils, she could already roughly guess their essence.
Without question, it was a product of Yin and Yang Release.
This needed to be clarified.
Yin Release, Yang Release, and Yin-Yang Release were three entirely different things. Their relationship was roughly like Water Release, Earth Release, and Wood Release.
Yin Release created form from nothing. Yang Release granted life to form. Yin-Yang Release created all things.
The first two were not especially rare. All secret techniques fell under Yin or Yang Release.
The last, however, remained only vaguely described even in the records left behind by the Second Hokage. It was a legendary supreme art said to have been usable only by the Sage of Six Paths.
All shinobi techniques in the world that involved Yin and Yang Release were merely combined applications of Yin and Yang, not true Yin-Yang Release capable of creating all things.
Coming back to the point.
Using the five elemental releases too much could already affect a shinobi's body. How much more dangerous, then, would Yin and Yang, which delved into the origins of life itself, be?
There had always been shinobi who, by researching Yin-Yang techniques too deeply, caused their own genes and chakra seeds to mutate.
Because of that, the ninja world had no shortage of freaks. Sakon and Ukon were classic examples.
If her guess was correct, this thing had likely been created by capturing someone whose flesh had mutated, extracting tissues like hair, blood vessels, fascia, meridians, and neural matter from them, and then forging them together through Yin and Yang techniques into a black tendril monster.
Takigakure had named it Earth Grudge Fear, and in the end Kakuzu had stolen it and used it to achieve his ageless, deathless body.
Thump.
Thump.
The crimson heart pulsed in Konome's palm, and she could clearly feel the abundant life force contained within it.
The heart was the part of the human body richest in vitality. It was the final origin point of life itself.
The last gate of the Eight Gates, the Gate of Death, was precisely the gate that opened the heart's spring of life and formed the Eight Gates Formation.
This heart still contained a considerable amount of life force.
The chakra seed inside it flashed with a bluish-purple glow. The blood vessels and meridians within the heart had all been remodeled by the black tendrils, allowing them to constantly squeeze chakra out of the seed.
Interesting.
Watching the Earth Grudge Fear consume chakra and continue to grow, the black tendrils lengthening and climbing from her forearm toward her sleeve, Konome's eyes shone brightly. She found this monster extremely fascinating.
Earth Grudge Fear and her Reverse Eight Gates were similar in one key aspect. Both revolved around exploiting human life force.
It seized the source of another person's life, used black tendrils to remodel the nerves and blood vessels within the heart to seize control, and transformed the organ into a pure extraction core for generating chakra.
After that, it could endlessly grow by feeding on chakra. Once its fibrous tissue structure contracted, it hardened and generated tremendous tension and strength.
This thing was practically a perfect biological material.
In a flash, she immediately thought of Venom from those old films.
Maybe I should turn this thing into a battle suit?
Crackle.
The black tendrils were still crawling upward toward her shoulder. Looking at the way they rubbed against her clothes, Konome silently abandoned that line of development in her mind.
Once Wind-Thunder Mode was activated, she would be naked beneath a writhing mass of tendrils. That image felt… very strange.
"How's the Earth Grudge Fear research going?"
Just as Konome was thinking, her Yang Release clone suddenly turned around from the operating table and asked.
"I've more or less figured out its origin and materials. The manufacturing method still needs work, and I don't yet know how best to use it…"
"Wait. Is this really fine?"
The Yang Release clone abruptly cut her off, pointed at the Earth Grudge Fear that had already crawled into her clothes, and looked deeply uncomfortable.
The two shared the same appearance, and seeing those black tendrils writhing beneath the original body's clothes gave her a strong feeling of revulsion.
"I have a barrier."
Konome acted completely unconcerned as she let Earth Grudge Fear keep moving. A red barrier had already appeared over the surface of her skin. The black tendrils had not actually touched her body at all. They were only crawling over the barrier.
"Oh. I forgot."
The Yang Release clone slapped her forehead lightly, but still walked over, tugged the black tendrils back out along with the heart, and tossed them aside.
"I've more or less finished researching Hidan's undying body."
"What? That fast?"
Konome immediately froze. It had not even been a few hours. Had she really already破解ed Hidan's immortality?
"There's no trace of anything to find."
Sensing what the original body was thinking, the Yang Release clone shook her head with a grave expression.
Ever since fully mastering knowledge of ninjutsu, chakra, seals, and bloodline limits, she could examine any technique from an almost impossibly high vantage point.
No matter the jutsu, she could see through to its essence with ease. Even a bizarre monster like Earth Grudge Fear could be understood in just a few glances.
Only Hidan's immortal body… she could not comprehend it.
"So where exactly is the problem?"
Konome frowned. When it came to the study of chakra as an energy system, she dared claim she stood in the very first tier of the shinobi world.
Yin, Yang, Wind, Thunder, Water, Fire, Earth. All jutsu were ultimately just rearrangements and combinations of those seven properties.
Even if she could not reproduce something, there should not be any technique she could not understand at all.
"The problem is that I can't find one, and yet everything is a problem."
The Yang Release clone pointed bitterly toward the operating table.
Two clones were standing there in horrified silence, each holding a bowl. One was full of brain matter. The other was a lump of minced flesh.
Meanwhile, Hidan, reduced to only a mouth, was still screaming on the table.
"Useless! Useless! You wicked woman! The Evil God is with me!"
"I've already taken out his heart and brain and minced them into paste. I even crushed his chakra core completely. But he still doesn't die. As long as I stitch his mouth and tongue back together, he can speak as if nothing happened.
It has nothing to do with chakra, ninjutsu, or seals.
He really does have a true undying body."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget to add this story to your Library, drop a review, and leave a Power Stone if you enjoyed it!
Craving more chapters? Join my Patron to unlock advance releases and dive deeper into the story!
[email protected]/_theon
Change @ to "a"