Deep within a remote mountain range, a concealed cavern mouth posed as an ordinary cave. Two Oto-nin lounged against the rock, keeping watch.
"When is Orochimaru-sama coming back?"
"No idea. But this is his most important lab—shouldn't be long. Still… what's the point of all these experiments? Can you really turn the dead into the living and swap flesh like white to red meat? I don't buy it."
"Who knows. Even the Second Hokage, Tobirama, created Shiki Fūjin (Dead Demon Consuming Seal)—dragging a soul from the Pure Land to the living world. If that's not defying heaven, what is? And the crazier thing happened a few years ago in Konoha: a kid actually resurrected the Fourth Hokage. Minato came back even stronger. How do you argue with that? Anyway, let's just do our job."
Neither noticed the two scarlet Sharingan watching from the shadows behind them.
In the next instant, Shisui and Itachi flickered into being at their backs.
Shisui traced two simple signs in the air—against small fry, he and Itachi scarcely needed to hunt for an opening. The two guards froze, eyes vacant, then slumped—still upright against the wall—into sleep.
Itachi stepped forward, swiftly formed hand signs, and pressed his palm to the glamoured rock face.
"Genjutsu: Kai (Release)!"
The camouflage peeled away, revealing a steel gate etched with dense fūinjutsu.
"Shisui, hold on. My Sharingan will be better for this one—let me handle the sealwork." Itachi's tomoe spun as he read the pattern. He extended a finger and fed in his own chakra, disrupting the seal's rotation.
Click.
With a soft chime, the gate—tough enough to shrug off a kage's strike—split and slid open.
They slipped inside in a blur, drawing the door shut behind them to keep the disturbance minimal; the guards were merely knocked out, not killed.
The lab sprawled vast beneath the mountain. Wide corridors, bright lights… and the stench: reagents, formalin, and the wet rot of creatures and plants long steeped in viscous fluids. It clawed at the throat.
If not for Itachi and Shisui's iron wills, most shinobi would have retched before meeting an enemy.
Rooms lined both sides of the hall, each with its own noise.
"Split up," Shisui whispered. "I'll neutralize security. You go for the core archive. Five minutes—rendezvous here."
"Understood."
Itachi vanished into the corridor's shade.
Shisui stayed put and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his Mangekyō Sharingan had bloomed.
"Genjutsu: Kasegui no Jutsu (Demonic Illusion: Shackling Stakes)."
Invisible ocular power rippled outward, saturating the lab—undetectable to any sensory ninjutsu. In the same heartbeat, everyone patrolling or conducting experiments went rigid. Their bodies locked in their previous poses; their awareness fell into stasis.
Silence consumed the facility in seconds.
Outside, a silver-haired youth with glasses approached the entrance to report to Orochimaru.
Kabuto.
At the threshold he halted, frowning. Too quiet. The air was wrong. Not a hallucination—never that. His extraordinary perception had sniffed out foreign chakra.
Kabuto spun and flashed through seals. He might favor medical arts, but he was no stranger to ninjutsu; in raw capability he wasn't beneath Kakashi—and with time would climb even higher.
"Doton: Moguragakure no Jutsu (Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole)!"
His body slipped into the earth and surged away from the mountain. He didn't know what had happened inside, only that anything that could smother the entire base in an instant wasn't something he could handle. However strong he was, the enemy was…
Unanswerable.
He escaped by luck alone, drenched in cold sweat at the lingering terror.
In the core archive, Itachi dispelled the final seal and pushed open a heavy door.
What lay beyond wrenched at his gut.
Giant glass cylinders stood like pillars, each cradling a nightmare: warped bodies spliced toward serpentine forms, failed vessels of Hashirama's cells.
"Shisui, we found the right place," Itachi said over radio. "This should never have existed."
He tore his eyes from the tanks and fixed on the circular racks at the room's heart.
Rows upon rows of scrolls, hundreds in all.
On each, the sum of Orochimaru's sins:
"Fushi Tensei (Living Corpse Reincarnation), Complete Notes"
"On the Possibility of Fusing Bloodline Limits"
"Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei (Summoning: Reanimation), Revisions and Applications"
…
Knowledge enough to drive any power-hungry shinobi mad.
Itachi unrolled an oversized sealing scroll and swept every valuable document into its folds.
Five minutes later, he and Shisui met at the entrance.
No wasted words—just a glance.
Itachi formed signs.
"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique)!"
A blazing sphere roared from his lips and thundered down the corridor. Heat blossomed, and the lab became a kiln. Everything burned—devices, notes, and the wretched test subjects who had never been given a choice—until nothing remained but ash.
Silhouetted by the inferno, the two figures slipped away without a trace.
Far away, in another hidden base, Orochimaru paused mid-experiment as a violent shiver ran through him.
On his forearm, a serpentine curse mark—linked to the lab in the Land of Fields—seethed, then cracked apart, flaking into black cinders.
"No!!!"
His roar was fury and refusal in one. The most important facility he possessed—the one he had poured the most blood and years into—was gone. Priceless data, irreplaceable specimens, entire lines of research—obliterated.
"Konoha! It must be Konoha!"
Hatred flared in his slit pupils.
Few had the ability to achieve this. Only one made his skin crawl: the boy called Shinju.
"Shinju… very well…"
"If you've destroyed my life's work, I'll destroy your village."
He made his decision—no matter the cost, he would accelerate the "Konoha Crush Plan."
(End of Chapter)
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