Chapter 177: Tsunade Is Actually a Humanoid Causal Weapon of the Shinobi World?
Kenichi watched Orochimaru sink into thought and let a small smile tug at his lips. If his teacher was willing to entertain the idea, then the day the shinobi world gained telephones, and even mobile phones, might not be that far off.
To be honest, this world already had radios. Compared to that, telephones and cell phones were not some impossible fantasy. If anything, Kenichi found it stranger that they still did not exist.
"What you said is interesting," Orochimaru said at last. "When I have time, I'll look into it."
He clearly understood what Kenichi was getting at, and he had to admit that if it could be realized, the result would be genuinely useful.
Still, Orochimaru had no intention of shifting his main focus right now. His current project was moving quickly, and it might produce results soon. He did not plan to split his attention until then.
Kenichi did not expect instant success anyway. Orochimaru was brilliant, but not the kind of monster who could casually pull a complete communications revolution out of thin air in a day. If he could, Kenichi would start wondering whether his teacher also had some kind of system hidden up his sleeve.
After chatting for a few minutes, Kenichi returned to the long, mind numbing comparison work.
It was boring. It was repetitive. It was the kind of task that made time feel thick and sticky.
But he had no choice. The thing he wanted was buried somewhere inside these sequences, and he needed to dig it out with his own hands.
The worst part was that even Kenichi did not know for sure whether he would find it. He was not even fully certain the thing existed at all.
"But the probability is close to seventy percent," Kenichi muttered to himself, staring at the screen. "That's high enough to gamble on."
The thought made him pause.
"Huh. Speaking of gambling…" Kenichi blinked, remembering something. "Tsunade has that gambler's curse. She always loses, and when she wins, someone connected to her ends up dead."
In a way, that sounded like a weapon built on causality.
Kenichi's gaze sharpened as his mind started running.
"If I make a bet with Tsunade," he thought, "about whether I can find the Sharingan gene information in the Uchiha, and she bets that I'll lose… then with that level of causality…"
He fell into deep thought.
Tsunade's constant losses were not the normal kind of bad luck. Anyone with even a little knowledge of gambling understood that the house always won. Even when the house lost occasionally, it was often bait, a way to keep gamblers chasing hope.
And the house had countless tricks. Some dealers were trained so well that they could cheat right in front of you without you noticing. For an ordinary gambler, "winning" was usually just part of the house's plan.
But Tsunade was different.
She was one of Konoha's Legendary Sannin. Her strength was no joke. If someone tried to cheat her, they would need to seriously consider whether they could survive the consequences.
So when Tsunade gambled, it was often truly about luck.
And even then, she always lost.
In her entire life, she had only won a handful of times, and every win was followed by something severe.
The Third Hokage died in battle.
Jiraiya died in battle.
From the perspective of the Naruto world, Tsunade was practically a walking glitch in reality.
"The most likely explanation," Kenichi murmured, grabbing a pen and writing it down, "is that Tsunade will lose any bet she participates in unless someone close to her dies. That death corrects her luck at the cost of their life."
It sounded absurd. It sounded far fetched.
But gambling was probability, and probability under fair conditions had rules. If fairness could be guaranteed, then some outcomes were so unlikely that they were effectively impossible.
Kenichi tapped the paper with his pen, thinking hard.
He had considered Tsunade's "law" before. If he calculated it properly, the chance of someone losing continuously in fair gambling for that long was infinitely close to zero.
Once you counted how many times Tsunade had gambled, the probability of always losing might as well be zero. No one could be unlucky forever. Whether it was lottery tickets or slot machines, even the worst luck would stumble into a small win eventually.
Even scammers running pig butchering schemes knew to let their victims "win" at first.
But Tsunade still could not win.
It was as if someone had set the probability of Tsunade winning to zero, and only the death of another person could allow one exception.
"So is this real?" Kenichi wondered. "If it is, is it a curse… or some twisted tradition?"
Verifying it was simple in theory.
Find Tsunade. Propose an outrageous bet. If Kenichi succeeded, it would suggest Tsunade truly was a human shaped bug. If he failed, it would prove his idea was wrong.
But he could not gamble on the Sharingan gene. That was almost guaranteed to exist. The problem was not existence, it was the hassle of locating it.
Kenichi shook his head at the monitor. "That won't work."
He was confident he would find it eventually. He had already proven what he could and run experiments, and the two Uchiha test subjects still could not reach three tomoe through emotional stimulation. That supported his conclusion.
The Uchiha were not all equal in talent. Some were gifted enough to reach Mangekyo. Others spent their entire lives stuck at one tomoe or two tomoe.
He had confirmed that from the two Uchiha test subjects. Their parents were close to retirement age and still only had two tomoe.
So he needed a different bet.
Something that was theoretically difficult enough that failure would mean nothing, but success would be shocking.
"Tsunade neechan," Kenichi muttered with a faint grin, "whether I can find a way to fuse chakra and explosives depends on you."
He planned to use that as the wager. He had left a shadow clone in charge of that experiment, and progress had been almost nonexistent. If it suddenly succeeded, his conjecture would gain real weight. He could test it further with a few more bets after that.
"So I'll have to trouble you," Kenichi said, looking at his shadow clone.
The clone stared back with dead eyes. "You idiot. Just admit you want to slack off."
Kenichi coughed twice. "Ahem. My main concern is that sending a clone might not be enough to verify it properly."
The clone looked even more unimpressed. They were all him. There was no point pretending.
Kenichi ignored the look and focused on the real reason.
His goal was to verify the conjecture. If it was true, he would seize the loophole and exploit it until it bled dry.
With that decided, Kenichi finally escaped the tedious genetic identification work and went to ask Orochimaru about Tsunade.
To his surprise, Orochimaru actually had an answer.
"Tsunade?" Orochimaru said, lounging on the sofa as if the lab was his personal living room. "I saw her on a mission not long ago. She was at a casino in Yusen Town, in the Land of Water. Where she is now, I don't know."
"Alright. Thank you, Teacher." Kenichi nodded.
The Land of Water was far, but Kenichi did not plan to chase her all the way there.
Tsunade's reputation was too loud. She could not stay in the Land of Water for long, especially with the Blood Mist turmoil. She would leave sooner or later. If Kenichi went to the dock closest to the Land of Water, chances were he would run into her on the way out.
Kenichi glanced at Orochimaru again. His teacher was curled up on the sofa, looking almost harmless for once.
Almost.
Kenichi shook his head hard, as if trying to fling the thought away. Wake up. That is Orochimaru.
That night, Kenichi fled the experimental base, boarded a hot air balloon, and rose into the sky.
When time mattered, air travel was simply faster.
Still, trouble followed him even into the clouds.
As the balloon lifted off, Kenichi saw Sasori. Sasori saw him too.
Sasori even waved enthusiastically.
Then Sasori's giant puppet exploded.
The blast threw Kenichi a long distance through the air. He managed to stabilize himself, but if he had lost control for even a moment, he would have been discovered by Konoha shinobi before he even reached the Land of Fire.
As the balloon continued forward, Kenichi frowned thoughtfully. "Hot air balloons are convenient, but the load capacity is still an issue. Keeping an experimental base in the air all day isn't realistic once it's up there. Maybe an airship would be better in the future."
He used chakra to create a gentle wind and pushed the balloon toward the Land of Waves.
The Land of Water was an island nation far from the mainland, with a strong geographic advantage. In theory, it should have been thriving. But the Blood Mist policies had kept it unstable for too long.
Tsunade could not remain in a chaotic place like that for long. Kenichi judged she would leave soon. The most likely destination was the Land of Waves.
The Land of Waves was small, and while it was not especially close to the Land of Fire, it was not absurdly far either. Tsunade also could not go back to the Land of Fire, not with her current wandering habits.
Other ports were farther, some even in the Land of Lightning. So the Land of Waves felt like the most reasonable option.
Even if she was not there, it did not matter. Kenichi could keep searching. Tsunade was easy to track down.
Walk into a casino. Ask if anyone had seen the big fat sheep.
The only person famous for losing nonstop and still living to tell the tale was Tsunade.
Kenichi could not help wondering how she paid off her debts. Did she still have access to Senju savings?
That did not add up. There was no clear mention of a Senju legacy, and the clan had faded into obscurity. If they still existed, why had Kenichi never seen a Senju compound in Konoha? If they did not exist, why were there still shinobi in Konoha related to Senju blood?
Nothing about the Senju's current state was explained clearly, so Kenichi could not confirm the truth.
Moving fast, the balloon soon reached the skies above the Land of Waves.
Kenichi used Fire Release to burn the balloon, then jumped.
The ground rushed up toward him, but Kenichi remained calm.
As he neared the surface, he formed hand seals and used Wind Release: Great Breakthrough to cushion the impact, landing smoothly.
The Land of Waves looked the same as ever. Quiet. Small. Peaceful.
There were no famous figures here, or if there were, they were insignificant in Kenichi's eyes. Compared to a wealthy merchant from the Land of Fire, the so called "big names" of this place felt like nothing.
Gato's influence had not spread here yet. The people lived in relative harmony.
Even so, casinos still existed.
Kenichi pushed open the door and stepped inside.
At a table near the center, a young girl slammed her palm down excitedly. "Big, big, big! I want big!"
She looked young, but Kenichi's eyes immediately found the girl beside her, the one holding a pig.
Tsunade.
"I'm really lucky," Kenichi thought, a smile forming. He had not expected to find her this quickly. All he could say was that this time, his luck was actually decent.
He moved closer. Tsunade did not look at him, but Kenichi knew she had noticed the instant he entered. She was Tsunade. If she lacked that level of awareness, she might as well be raising pigs for a living.
Kenichi did not intend to disturb them. He simply watched from behind, curious.
The game Tsunade was playing was simple.
A single die. One through six.
Six was the biggest. One was the smallest.
Kenichi's gaze slid to the dealer.
In a game like this, the dealer had an absolute advantage. She was the one rolling the die.
Kenichi could tell immediately that she had tricks. She could control the result with precision.
That should have been routine for a veteran dealer.
Yet Kenichi noticed something else.
She was sweating.
Kenichi watched more closely, confused. "What's going on?"
There were no formidable gamblers at this table.
Except Tsunade.
But Tsunade was disguised. The others should not have recognized her at all.
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