Chapter 358: The Masked Man Was Deeply Worried
After discovering that nearly all the graves were empty, the masked man fell into a brief daze.
There were grave robbers, of that, there was no doubt.
And he quickly identified who the culprit was.
Who else but Orochimaru, the one capable of using Impure World Reincarnation, would bother stealing a pile of remains?
In truth, the masked man had long anticipated that Orochimaru might secretly collect and store the remains of powerful shinobi.
What he had never expected, however, was that Orochimaru's collection would be this thorough, even his utterly unremarkable grandmother had been taken.
And Konoha hadn't noticed a thing.
If he didn't know better, he might think White Zetsu had infiltrated Konoha to help Orochimaru gather materials.
"Could it be that Konoha's Hokage, Tsunade, is colluding with Orochimaru and deliberately selling the remains from the village cemetery to him?"
After thinking for a long time, this was the only possibility the masked man could come up with.
But that had nothing to do with him. He wasn't some righteous hero or loyal supporter of Konoha.
The only thing bothering him was that his grandmother's grave had been robbed.
He made his way to the archives, which had recently had their security temporarily reinforced due to Naruto's earlier theft. Moving like a ghost, he slipped inside and retrieved Sasuke's file.
Sure enough, there was a newly added entry describing Sasuke's Mangekyō ability.
"Capable of observing and 'writing' information about a target?"
The masked man's expression beneath the mask turned serious.
He had never imagined that Sasuke's Mangekyō ability would be this terrifying.
Did this mean that as long as Sasuke became aware of his existence, he could uncover his identity at any moment?
In front of Sasuke, the mask was meaningless.
This completely disrupted the masked man's plans.
Moreover, Sasuke having this ability meant that even if his grandmother's grave had remained intact, relocating her remains would still ultimately be futile, they would be found anyway.
Why not hide them in the Kamui dimension?
Because the Kamui dimension wasn't suitable as a "personal storage space."
First of all, it wasn't "personal."
Kakashi's Kamui didn't just absorb things, it could also release them.
If one day Kakashi mastered the ability to retrieve objects, he could take out anything stored in the Kamui space at any time.
The masked man understood this very well. That was why he never stored anything there, not even important items.
He was afraid Kakashi might one day accidentally retrieve something and notice something was wrong.
So even for extremely important items, he chose to hide them somewhere secret in the ninja world.
This included a large number of Sharingan taken during the night of the Uchiha massacre.
And also Uchiha Madara's corpse.
Now a new problem has emerged.
The masked man now knew about Sasuke's Mangekyō ability.
This meant that as long as Sasuke, or Orochimaru, wanted to, they could use that ability to precisely locate where Madara's body was hidden.
Of course, even the masked man himself didn't know the exact location of Madara's corpse.
It had been taken and hidden by Black Zetsu, the embodiment of Madara's will.
Only Black Zetsu, and the individual White Zetsu assisting him, knew where the body was.
Still, the masked man believed that if he informed Black Zetsu about Sasuke's Mangekyō ability, and if he himself could provide a safe hiding place, then Black Zetsu might hand over Madara's corpse to him.
After all, their goals were largely aligned.
But he had no good solution.
If it was hidden somewhere in the ninja world, it could be discovered by Sasuke's ability at any time.
If it was hidden in the Kamui dimension, it could be discovered by Kakashi.
After thinking it over for a long time, the masked man could only settle on one idea: assign a White Zetsu to act as a gravekeeper, constantly guarding the location.
At least this way, if it were stolen, he would know immediately instead of being completely in the dark.
Right now, the masked man had a splitting headache.
Problems were piling up from every direction.
He was, of course, aware of the current state of the Akatsuki.
The ninja world had changed so drastically, it wasn't as if he had deafened himself or blinded himself. He could see it clearly.
According to Black Zetsu and White Zetsu, this was a deliberate strategy by the organization to lull the Five Great Nations into complacency and avoid direct conflict, a form of calculated tactics.
As "dim-witted Uchiha", the masked man wasn't particularly skilled in such matters, so he accepted the explanation without much thought.
But regardless, the current state of the ninja world had completely slipped beyond his control.
Originally, he had planned to find an opportunity to appear as Uchiha Madara and try to reshape the situation.
But now, with Sasuke's Mangekyō ability in play, that plan had been completely crushed before it could even begin.
The moment he dared to appear as Madara, Sasuke could expose him instantly, revealing his true identity.
On top of that, he had recently noticed that Black Zetsu, the so-called embodiment of Madara's will, hadn't contacted him for quite some time.
This even made him start to wonder whether Black Zetsu had gone off on his own and devised a different plan to revive Madara.
And that wasn't impossible.
There was a reason Madara had planned to wait until all the tailed beasts were gathered before being revived to reap the benefits, instead of reviving immediately and using his power to crush the ninja world and collect them himself.
If he were revived directly using the Rinne-Rebirth, he would come back as an old man.
Without his eyes, with a body already at the end of its lifespan, even if the technique restored his vitality somewhat, his strength would still be far inferior to his prime.
In that condition, trying to collect the tailed beasts would be risky and prone to failure.
On the other hand, following his original plan, being revived after everything was gathered, even with an aged body, he could become the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki and undergo a complete transformation, effectively becoming a second Sage of Six Paths.
At that point, his old body wouldn't matter anymore.
Even Impure World Reincarnation had been taken into account.
If revived through Impure World Reincarnation, he would still appear in his aged form.
Even with immortality and infinite chakra, it wouldn't help.
An already weakened old body, further reduced by Impure World Reincarnation, would make it even more impossible to collect the tailed beasts that way.
However, what Madara never anticipated was that after his death, someone like Orochimaru would emerge.
Orochimaru and Kabuto had improved Impure World Reincarnation, creating specially prepared bodies that could revive Madara in his "prime" youthful state.
And in that form, even if brought back to life using the Rinne-Rebirth, he would retain that youthful body.
It could only be said that Madara had been too impatient, and had underestimated powers outside of the Uchiha.
If he had chosen Orochimaru instead of the masked man, and technology instead of the Sharingan, he might have already conquered the ninja world.
In short, this was exactly what the masked man was worried about.
But he already had too many things to worry about.
"It shouldn't come to that… right?"
After thinking it over, the masked man felt that Black Zetsu probably wouldn't go so far as to cooperate with Orochimaru to revive Madara through Impure World Reincarnation.
However…
Amegakure.
After successfully reviving Rin as a proof of concept, Senju Tobirama proposed the idea of reviving Uchiha Madara through Impure World Reincarnation to Orochimaru.
It was exactly the method he had been considering all along, creating a "suitable" body in reverse.
(End of this chapter)