The Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning didn't actually share a border.
Between the two great nations there was only a thin trade route—barely more than a trail merchants used to haul goods.
And between them sat two small countries like padding in the middle.
But Kenichi had no plans to go through those.
He wanted to cut through the Land of Iron instead—and while he was at it, sweep the area for the graves of Kinkaku and Ginkaku.
He wasn't interested in their combat power.
What he wanted was their bloodline as descendants of the Sage, and the Six Paths tools they'd once wielded.
So this trip to the Land of Lightning was something he'd planned for a while anyway.
Testing the thermobaric bomb was just… a bonus objective.
As for whether blowing a hole in the Land of Lightning would cause some kind of chain-reaction disaster?
Kenichi honestly didn't care.
Worst case, Konoha tanks the political fallout, he thought.
I'm just a money-loving war mercenary passing by. Who knows—maybe one day Kumo will hire me to drop one on Konoha too.
On the boat, he sat beside Sasori and watched him fiddle with his new toy.
"Hey, Sasori, ever been to the Land of Iron?" Kenichi asked.
"No," Sasori replied, not looking up. "Only heard it's a permanent neutral country. None of the great wars ever reached it."
He was completely absorbed in disassembling components from his Unit-01 puppet.
The metal from the Executioner's Blade was unique—it could absorb iron from blood and repair itself.
Sasori planned to melt the blade down and turn it into armor plating for Unit-01.
Kenichi actually approved.
The sword was powerful, sure, but its real value was the material. If you could make a whole mech suit out of that stuff…
"Sasori, just a reminder," Kenichi said lazily, "even if two things are made from the same metal, changing the way you smelt or treat it can give completely different results."
That was experience talking.
He'd once fired up three identical crucibles, with the exact same raw materials and procedure…
and only one batch came out right. The other two were trash.
Materials science was a strange, mysterious beast.
Sometimes you did everything "by the book" and still rolled a natural 1.
"Sometimes you get that one 'miracle batch'," Kenichi added. "Then you have to go back and figure out why it worked—temperature, humidity, timing, even the angle you tossed it in and your mood that day might matter."
Back in his previous life, one of his senior labmates used to daydream:
"If I could accidentally sinter a batch of room-temperature superconductor one day…"
Kenichi had been this close to telling him not to dream so big—
but then thought, honestly, if you did pull that off, you'd deserve a Nobel and a cult.
The real nightmare wouldn't be making it once.
It would be reproducing it.
"Mm," Sasori hummed. He understood.
Still, he felt that this particular metal should be relatively stable—its strange properties weren't likely to vanish after one smelting.
Kenichi leaned on the railing and glanced at the system panel in his mind.
[Current Research Target: Chakra Parasite]
[Progress: 5.72%]
The progress bar crawled along depressingly slowly.
But that was expected. This was an ancient parasite from god-knows-when; the fact he could study it at all was already progress.
What it would eventually yield… he was curious himself.
"Kenichi," Sasori asked suddenly, head still lowered, "I heard you're Orochimaru's disciple, right?"
"Yeah," Kenichi nodded. "That's my teacher."
"Is your teacher a woman?" Sasori looked at him, eyes full of serious curiosity.
"?"
A big, bold question mark appeared in Kenichi's head.
What the hell kind of question is that?
Technically speaking… right now Orochimaru was living in a woman's body.
But that didn't change who he was.
"How do you even know that?" Kenichi narrowed his eyes slightly.
Something like Living Corpse Reincarnation was one of Orochimaru's deepest secrets.
He'd only ever let Kenichi see the edges of it—never the full technique.
"Earlier, the leader was talking to Konan," Sasori said calmly. "He said, 'Hard to believe one of the Three Legendary Sannin, Orochimaru, turned out to be a woman.' I heard it."
Kenichi's mouth twitched.
So that's what happened. Nagato noticed during their meeting, huh?
"Yeah… my teacher's currently using a girl's body," Kenichi admitted, scratching his cheek.
His mind drifted to that blonde girl's face—Yuki's face.
No matter how you looked at it, she was a high-tier beauty. Pity the soul inside now was Orochimaru.
And then he remembered something else.
Lately, Orochimaru's movements had gotten a little… feminine.
The way "she" brushed hair back, the subtle hand gestures—it wasn't quite the same as before.
Is the body starting to influence the soul? Kenichi wondered.
Would there come a day when Orochimaru completed the evolution from Snake-Uncle to Snake-Aunt?
…Or worse, Snake Little Sister?
He suddenly imagined Orochimaru calmly analyzing hormone levels while dealing with monthly "visitor" issues and shuddered hard.
"This is… disturbing," he muttered under his breath.
"One of the Three Legendary Sannin turned out to be a girl," Sasori said with a faint smile. "That really is a shocking piece of news."
Then he glanced at Kenichi again, his gaze… subtly different.
Kenichi stared back.
"…Why are you looking at me like that?"
Sasori didn't answer—only kept that unreadable little smile.
"Come on. We're here—Land of Iron," Kenichi called a little later.
The ship docked at a quiet port. They disembarked, dressed in merchant clothes and still wrapped in the Erase-the-Face Technique disguises.
As far as anyone else could see, they were just two ordinary traders.
This was the easiest way to move between countries without attracting attention.
The Land of Iron's inspections were… relaxed, to put it mildly.
After Kenichi casually slipped the checkpoint guard a thousand ryō, they didn't even bother to open the cart.
Wave of the hand. Done. Welcome in.
"If this is what peace does to a country…" Kenichi clicked his tongue. "Not sure if that's good or bad."
What if I really was hauling a thermobaric bomb in the back? he thought.
One bribe and I'm strolling through customs.
Still, he couldn't deny—it was convenient. Good for his line of work.
"A nation like this…" Sasori shook his head as well, following him through the gate.
They stepped into the snow-dusted streets of the neutral samurai land, already heading toward the next stage of Kenichi's insane plan.