Chapter 153: Shocking! A Loving Couple Gave Birth to a Child That Was Not Their Own?
Sample No. 23 was the batch Kenichi obtained after infusing rice seeds with Yang attribute chakra. In his previous lab, Sample No. 23 was the only one that showed any sign of increased yield.
None of the other samples displayed that effect. Only No. 23 had that special trait. So Kenichi chose it as the main line for this entire study.
He also had his shadow clones run a follow up test using seeds taken from Sample No. 23, repeating the exact same method he had used on the original batch.
The plant in front of him now was one of those test samples, a descendant taken from No. 23 and cultivated for verification.
"It really is much thicker," Kenichi said, quickly picking out the unusual stalk in the field.
It stood out too clearly. The grain head looked larger and coarser than the other varieties, almost twice as big. That was why he recognized it at a glance.
"Yes, but we still don't know if the final yield will increase," his shadow clone replied, continuing to tend the plants carefully.
In the shinobi world, ninjas were still people. People had to eat. Rice was the main staple. If this yield problem could be solved, it would be a huge help for everything that came afterward.
More importantly, Kenichi had already talked about this with Nagato. If he wanted stronger support from Akatsuki, he needed to show real results.
Rice was what Kenichi planned to put on the table.
"Take care of these samples. When harvest time comes, we calculate the yield," Kenichi said, staring at the field and feeling his mood lift.
If this succeeded, it would support his future plans in a very direct way.
Kenichi glanced toward the direction of the Land of Fire. The daimyo sat safely in the seat of authority there, and it only made Kenichi's eyes narrow.
In his view, those daimyo were stupid beyond saving.
The shinobi world's order needed a complete overhaul, but compared to Akatsuki's violent reforms, Kenichi's method was far more covert.
After checking the rice, Kenichi went to look for Orochimaru and Anko, but neither of them was at the base. Maybe they had gone out on a mission.
The only movement in the entire experimental site was the cleanup work being done by the supplies Kenichi had taken prisoner.
That made Kenichi set aside the idea of speaking with Orochimaru for now. Instead, he left alone and headed toward Konoha.
He planned to take advantage of the Uchiha clan's current population and quietly obtain some experimental supplies from them.
Kenichi had not given up on fusing thermobaric explosives with chakra, but it was becoming clear that this was a long term project, the kind that demanded endless repetition before producing anything useful.
So he decided to leave that research to shadow clones, while he used this window to quickly collect some consumables from the Uchiha clan.
"Time waits for no one," Kenichi clicked his tongue.
The Uchiha were once a major clan in Konoha. After the future massacre, their numbers would drop to almost nothing, and research in this direction would become painfully difficult.
Kenichi remembered that the extermination night should still be in the future, and at the very least, it should not happen before Shisui's death.
But ever since Kenichi arrived in this world, he had already changed too many things.
If some butterfly effect dragged that night forward, everything would become a mess.
That was exactly why he left the lab now.
During this period, the shinobi world was relatively calm. There were still small frictions between the Land of Earth and the Land of Fire, but the scale and intensity were controlled. They kept fighting mainly because they could not reach an agreement on reparations.
Kenichi did not know how much Iwagakure intended to demand, but it would not be a small number. The Third Tsuchikage was famously shrewd, and this negotiation was guaranteed to drag on.
Fortunately, the Land of Rice Fields was not part of the active battlefield. The main fighting between the Land of Earth and the Land of Fire was still happening in the Land of Grass.
That meant Kenichi's entry into the Land of Fire went smoothly.
This time, he also gave himself a new identity.
A merchant from the Land of Fire.
"I wonder how Konoha is doing now," Kenichi murmured from inside his carriage.
He had already used the Transformation Technique. As the horse pulled the wagon forward, he practiced ninjutsu out of boredom.
He was researching the Rasengan, the technique Naruto used through practically an entire era. People even joked that Naruto, the Seventh Hokage, only knew how to make Rasengan.
Strictly speaking, the fact that Naruto preferred Rasengan over other techniques proved one thing.
Rasengan had something special.
It was practical, reliable, and still had room to evolve.
No wonder Naruto spent his life making them.
Kenichi watched the spinning sphere of chakra in his palm, lost in thought.
Rasengan training was complicated for Naruto. But Kenichi had his own angle on it.
At its core, Rasengan demanded balance. You had to spin chakra at extreme speed, keep it contained within a stable range, and then pack in as much chakra as possible to increase power.
But what if he mixed in two chakra natures?
What if he reduced the size of the Rasengan further?
Could he compress it down to a molecular level and then incorporate other constituent elements of matter?
If he could find balance that way, could he also solve the explosive fusion problem?
Maybe he could even develop entirely new ninjutsu from it.
The thought excited him. He tried immediately, attempting to incorporate wind and lightning attributes into the rotation.
Then the carriage exploded.
"Looks like it won't work," Kenichi said with a tight mouth, disappointed.
He had assumed it might succeed, but the moment he mixed two attributes, the difficulty of maintaining balance skyrocketed into something absurd.
If balancing one chakra spiral was like an adult soccer team playing against elementary school kids, then balancing two attributes felt like trying to qualify for the Men's World Cup.
That comparison made Kenichi's scalp itch.
If two attributes were this hard, then three or more would be exponential insanity, and the starting difficulty was already enormous.
"Wait. Then why can Kaguya Otsutsuki use a Bloodline Limit like that?" Kenichi fell into deep thought.
A Bloodline Limit that encompassed multiple chakra nature transformations was, strictly speaking, a supreme enhanced version of a Bloodline Limit. But the problem was that it seemed to exist only in people connected to the Otsutsuki clan.
The strongest known bloodline ability in the shinobi world was probably Dust Release, mastered by the Third Tsuchikage. It combined three attributes and was called Bloodline Elimination.
Above that were four or five attribute combinations, which had not been demonstrated at all.
"A genetic issue?" Kenichi muttered.
That was the only explanation he could come up with.
Even the Sage of Six Paths possessed that level of power, yet outside the Otsutsuki line, nobody else had it.
Even the two reincarnations of the Sage's children did not seem to naturally display that ability, unless the relevant genes were hidden and never expressed.
Biology was strange like that. Some genes were inherited, but expressed differently from person to person. Some people showed the trait. Some did not.
The simplest example was hereditary disease.
Not everyone with a family history displayed symptoms. Kimimaro was a clear example, carrying a hereditary illness that was difficult to cure.
Some relatives might show nothing, which made it look like they were healthy.
But that did not mean they did not carry the gene. It could simply be unexpressed, hidden, and passed to the next generation.
That was why premarital checkups mattered. You could not see genetic risk with the naked eye. You needed scientific confirmation.
"If that's true, then the Otsutsuki clan must have some special genetic information," Kenichi said quietly, arriving at a clear conclusion. "And that information is what lets them use that kind of Bloodline Limit."
The simplest way to verify it was to obtain genetic information from an Otsutsuki, compare it to Bloodline Limit and Bloodline Elimination samples, and isolate the genes that differed.
Then test them one by one.
The process sounded miserable.
Genetic information was the world's biggest mountain of disgusting code. If you wanted accurate answers, you first had to find a way to crack that code.
That was why biological evolution was so difficult.
The problem was, who could he even use?
Among Otsutsuki related beings currently active in the shinobi world, the only known ones were Black Zetsu, the defective one, and the guy who was fed to the God Tree by Kaguya.
That second one came from the Boruto storyline. After finishing Naruto, Kenichi stopped watching Boruto. He had only heard people complain, so he did not know much about that guy.
Aside from them, there were only Naruto and Sasuke, the reincarnations of the Sage's children.
Which raised an even stranger question.
Could reincarnation affect genetic information?
If it could, then…
"To some extent, if it really changes Naruto and Sasuke's DNA, then Minato Namikaze and the Uchiha clan head are truly doomed," Kenichi's lips twitched.
Did that count as being cuckolded?
But it also felt like it didn't.
If reincarnation altered paternity at the genetic level, then a paternity test would not identify the father as the biological father, because the genetic information would no longer match his own.
Which meant he could not be recognized as the father at all.
What was this?
The child my wife and I had wasn't mine?
Worse still, a pure love story could be twisted into a cuckold story without either partner actually cheating, simply because the genetic signature did not match.
Kenichi sucked in a breath. "If we keep digging into this, it's going to run straight into philosophy and ethics."
He squatted on a tree trunk, leaned back against it, and shook his head. If he kept thinking, he would not get anything done today.
After all, the conditions of this idea were absurd.
The parents were in love. Neither had cheated. The pregnancy happened normally using cells from both parents.
The child grew in the mother's womb and was delivered by the father.
But a DNA test said the child was not the father's.
If this were an old season of Approaching Science, it could have been a year long documentary.
Kenichi thought of the gentle Minato and Kushina, who had an excellent relationship, and his expression turned complicated.
Fortunately, this world did not have paternity tests.
And Kenichi already had biological tissue from Minato and Kushina, along with Naruto's blood. Verifying the issue would actually be simple.
"Those materials are back in the lab," Kenichi muttered. "I'll think about this after I finish the mission and return."
He was honestly eager.
If he were not already in the Land of Fire and so close to Konoha, he would have turned around immediately just to verify the idea, because it fascinated him that much.
And if he could confirm it, he could also study reincarnation itself, this "wonder" of the shinobi world, and find out what it really was.
That would be a discovery capable of shocking the entire scientific community.
While Kenichi was still thinking, Konoha came into view.
Since his carriage had already exploded, he simply changed identity again, drove the horse forward, and approached the village gate.
The inspection process was the same as last time.
Kenichi calmly accepted the search and entered Konoha once more.
But he also noticed something new.
Security had clearly tightened.
This time, there were even Uchiha clan members watching the entrance.
Kenichi admitted he felt a flicker of excitement when he saw their eyes.
But there were only two of them.
Not enough.
"The more, the merrier," Kenichi told himself. "And haste makes waste."
He could only let the two Uchiha at the gate pass for now.
If he tried to fully unpack this whole paternity problem today, even ten thousand words would not be enough.
It was simply too surreal.
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