Chapter 161: Gene Programming
"That demon is here."
The moment Kenichi walked in, the four Uchiha who had been sneaking glances around the cell instantly became far more obedient. He heard the whisper clearly.
He did not care.
After what he had done before, the title "devil" was well earned. If anything, it was the sort of work that would make an actual demon nod respectfully and ask for pointers.
"Relax. It's just a blood draw," Kenichi said, keeping his tone even as he reassured them. He had no interest in using them for experiments right now.
More importantly, he did not want extra trouble.
If he frightened them too badly and they lost control of their bladders again, cleaning up would be a nuisance. Even though he had moved them from the sterile laboratory to ordinary cells, cleaning a cell was still annoying, and Kenichi hated hassles.
A prison cell did not need the same level of hygiene as a sterile lab. In a sterile environment, even one puddle meant filth had spread far more than it looked, and it had to be scrubbed down meticulously.
Even with his warning, the three shinobi still showed obvious fear when he drew their blood. Their bodies shook as if they were ill. Their trembling nearly made Kenichi jab the needle into a carotid artery.
He did not care about their feelings, but he cared about efficiency.
"If you keep shaking and I hit a major artery," he said calmly, "you'll be the next one on the operating table."
That single sentence made them stiffen and behave.
Even so, their hands still trembled faintly.
When he reached the fourth person, a steady arm extended in front of him.
Kenichi looked up.
It was Shiori.
He remembered her. She was the only one among the captured Uchiha who had not awakened the Sharingan. The others all had one tomoe, but Shiori had none at all, making her look like an ordinary person.
"Aren't you scared?" Kenichi raised an eyebrow, genuinely curious.
During the blood draw, the two men and the other woman had been shaking like they had caught some strange disease. Shiori, by contrast, stayed calm.
"I'm scared," Shiori replied without hesitation.
Kenichi had expected something like "I'm not," so the honesty caught him off guard.
"Oh?" he said. "Then why aren't your hands shaking?"
"Drawing blood won't kill you," Shiori answered, voice steady. "But shaking might."
Kenichi could not decide whether to laugh or sigh.
She was right. A blood draw would not kill you, but a trembling arm that pierced a major artery absolutely could.
For someone her age, Shiori had a knack for cutting straight to the point.
"Not bad," Kenichi said.
He drew a vial of blood, labeled it, ordered his shadow clone to deliver food to them, and left without wasting another second.
He needed to extract and separate the DNA from these four Uchiha as soon as possible.
If he found a case similar to Obito's, it would prove there was a real possibility of ancestral atavism within the Uchiha clan, and that the Mangekyo Sharingan required ancestral genes.
As for the four Uchiha behind him, Kenichi gave them no further attention.
After he left, faint sobbing echoed through the dim cell.
Kenichi's shadow clone glanced over, then touched his own pants and let out a long sigh.
What a perfect opening for a story.
What a shame it was all nonsense.
Kenichi had no idea what ridiculous thoughts his shadow clone was entertaining. With the blood samples secured, he returned to Orochimaru's laboratory and worked with his teacher to separate and extract the DNA.
As he fed the samples into the machine, Shiori's calm eyes surfaced in his mind again, and a strange thought slipped in.
She had not awakened the Sharingan, but what if she carried the same kind of genes as Obito? What if she was also beyond ordinary people in a way that did not show on the surface?
"It can't be that dramatic," Kenichi muttered, shaking his head.
Curiosity was useless right now. All he could do was wait for the machine to finish.
After the anxious wait, the tedious comparison began all over again.
In the dim underground lab, Kenichi lost track of time. When he got hungry, he ate whatever he could find, mostly soldier rations. He did not even remember how many he had eaten. He only knew that once the comparisons were finished, he wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep.
"Teacher, the comparison results are in," Kenichi said, rubbing his temples. "They're similar to samples two and three. No new additions. Compared to sample one, the difference in quantity is the same as before."
"It's the same here," Orochimaru said, frowning as he held the file. He leaned back in his chair.
There were differences between the samples, but none of them were major, which was normal and matched what they had seen earlier.
The key point was this.
Every sample differed from sample one by the same amount of genetic information.
That proved sample one truly was not an ordinary Uchiha shinobi, at least in some sense.
"Is there something special about Shisui?" Orochimaru stared at the information and fell into deep thought.
"He's strong," Kenichi answered honestly. "And he should have a three tomoe Sharingan."
Shisui had never shown Mangekyo in front of him, so Kenichi did not mention it.
"Three tomoe…" Orochimaru's eyes went distant, as if he had fallen into a separate chain of thought.
Kenichi did not sit idle either. He admitted he was disappointed, but only slightly.
At first, he had hoped one of these four might be an exception, maybe even Shiori. He found her strangely compelling. A powerless underdog turning out to have the same rare genes would have been the most classic story imaginable.
But reality did not cooperate.
The results were ordinary. Shiori was ordinary. They were all ordinary.
In the end, there were never that many protagonists in the world. Most people were just people. Ordinary was the true shape of most lives.
"Even if I don't know what these extra genes are," Kenichi murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose, "if it were possible to insert this genetic information into someone else's genome…"
He stopped himself.
"No. That's too difficult."
Inserting a gene did not mean gene programming was complete. At best, it was a crude cut and paste. At worst, it created entirely new problems.
In theory, it could be done.
The risk was not the issue. With so many consumables, if they died, they died. That did not matter.
The real problem was difficulty. The technical barrier was brutal.
And genetic information was usually inserted in infancy, or even while a fetus was still developing. These people were adults. Doing it now would be extremely hard.
It would have been a nightmare even in his previous life. In this world, it was worse.
He could only ask Orochimaru later and see if there was any room to work with. If there was, great. If not, he would accept it and move on.
Kenichi glanced at Orochimaru and noticed his teacher was staring blankly at the ceiling, still deep in thought. Kenichi did not disturb him. He returned to the data and kept studying the tangled genetic sequences.
"Damn it," Kenichi breathed. "No wonder people call genes ready made garbage code. Just looking at them for too long gives me a headache."
Still, there was no other path. He could only take it step by step.
First, he could temporarily ignore the genes that were nearly identical. He could study those later when he had time.
Right now, Kenichi's focus was the extra genetic information Obito had shown.
That eye had been given to Kakashi when Obito believed he was going to die. That meant the extra genetic information had nothing to do with White Zetsu or Madara.
Just as Kenichi rubbed his eyes and prepared to rest, he noticed Orochimaru had already moved and was doing something nearby.
"Kenichi," Orochimaru said, tossing a scroll without even looking. "Take this and study it."
Kenichi froze for a moment, then opened the scroll immediately.
[Gene Editing Ninja Technique]
His eyes lit up.
He read carefully and quickly realized the technique was most likely Orochimaru's own creation. The effect matched what Kenichi needed, but the limitation was absolute.
It could only be performed during the fetal stage.
Adults could not be altered with it.
"Teacher," Kenichi asked, unable to hide his curiosity, "is there a ninjutsu that can be used directly on a normal person?"
Orochimaru was like some mythical toolbox. Kenichi had learned not to assume anything was impossible until he asked.
"Yes," Orochimaru replied, raising an eyebrow as he looked at Kenichi. "But it's extremely risky. Basically, everyone who uses it dies. So far, nobody has survived. Do you want it?"
Kenichi nodded immediately.
The risk was high, but there was at least a chance. If he could take it apart and improve it, then the value would be enormous.
In the future, gene programming could reshape a person directly, without needing to start from early childhood. It would save a ridiculous amount of time.
Of course, it was also far more troublesome.
A baby only needed one session.
An adult would need their entire body rewritten.
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