Chapter 94: The Combination of Hashirama Cells and Nine Tails Chakra
"I hope to use some of Shodai sama's cells to conduct a few experiments, and I hope to receive your permission, Mito sama."
Looking at Uzumaki Mito in front of him, Kei spoke calmly.
Compared to the Kinkaku Brothers, the cells of the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama, were even more exceptional research material.
Or rather, for Kei, the latter was far more important than the former.
The Kinkaku Brothers were only suspected atavistic inheritors of the Six Paths bloodline, but Hashirama was the reincarnation of Ashura, one of the Sage of Six Paths' direct sons.
As the reincarnation of Ashura's chakra, Hashirama's cells naturally carried the power of Ashura's chakra within them.
That was something Kei could not afford to ignore.
"Hashirama's cells?"
Hearing Kei's words, Mito could not help but fall silent.
After a long while, she finally spoke.
"If I refuse, what do you intend to do next?"
"Then I will seal off this experiment."
Kei's expression remained calm.
"I will wait until after your passing, Mito sama, and then I will reopen it."
As those words fell, the atmosphere in the room froze once more.
Behind them, Kagami and the others, who had come with Kei, all lowered their heads at once, desperately trying to reduce their presence as though afraid of drawing Mito's attention.
Kei had not hidden his words from them at all.
Listening to the exchange between the two, Kagami and the others could not help wiping the cold sweat from their backs.
At that moment, they all felt a bit resentful toward Kei.
Hokage sama, even if you wanted to do this, couldn't you at least do it in secret? Why say it directly in front of Uzumaki Mito herself?
Asking a wife to her face whether you could use her husband's cells for experiments...
No matter how anyone looked at it, that really did not seem appropriate.
The people present all felt the same.
Mito remained silent for a long time before finally speaking again.
"You truly dare to speak plainly."
"Still, it can be considered honest."
She seemed to think of something, then let out a quiet sigh.
"In this regard, you are different from Tobirama."
"If Tobirama were here, he probably wouldn't say anything at all and would simply do it in secret."
"I know that he was also secretly researching Hashirama's cells. He just never mentioned it to me."
"In that sense, you are better than he was."
The Second Hokage, Tobirama, had indeed carried out many forbidden experiments.
Among them, Hashirama's cells, as outstanding research material, had naturally been studied by him as well, though he had not produced many visible results.
Still, the related research had clearly continued all along.
Otherwise, where would that stockpile of Hashirama cells in later Konoha have come from?
"Do as you wish."
Mito spoke softly.
"I do not intend to interfere with whatever experiments you carry out, and researching Hashirama's cells is not something I will stop."
"But there is one thing I must remind you of."
"I do not care what sort of experiments you conduct, and I do not care if you research Hashirama's cells."
"But you cannot place the people of the Village on your operating table, nor can you turn your hand against your own people."
"Do you understand what I mean?"
Mito looked at him seriously as she spoke.
"I understand."
Kei smiled.
"Even if you had not reminded me, I would never do such a thing."
"I am Konoha's Hokage. I cannot allow Konoha's people to be sacrificed for nothing."
"It is good that you think that way."
Mito nodded slightly.
On this point, she was still willing to trust Kei.
Compared to others, the way he handled things was undoubtedly more open and restrained.
He would not easily descend into that sort of extreme.
Her words just now had only been a warning.
Afterward, Kei accompanied Mito for a short walk around the area, and only then did she prepare to leave.
Before departing, however, she suddenly offered a reminder.
"That child Tsunade misses you very much. If you have time, you should go see her."
"You are both young. Getting a little closer to one another would not be a bad thing."
She looked at Kei meaningfully, the implication in her words quite obvious.
Kei paused for a moment, then smiled and nodded.
"I see."
"I understand. Once I finish the work at hand, I will go find her."
"As it happens, I have a few ideas about techniques lately that I would like to share with her."
"Just ideas about techniques?"
That thought flashed through Mito's mind, but in the end she only shook her head inwardly.
Granddaughter, Grandma can only help you this much.
Thinking of Tsunade's worried expression from earlier, that was the thought that crossed her heart.
"Let's begin the testing."
A moment later, after Mito had left, Kei stood where he was and addressed the people around him.
"Start with Ginkaku."
He had not brought Mito here merely to take a stroll.
There was work to be done.
After finally obtaining such exceptional research material, he naturally had to begin studying it as soon as possible.
Soon, the research formally began.
The first results came from the Kinkaku Brothers' cells.
The findings showed that, compared to ordinary human cells, the vitality of the two brothers' cells was astonishingly strong.
Among them, Ginkaku's corpse, despite having been dead for many days already, still displayed active cellular characteristics.
Although that activity was not as exaggerated as Hashirama's cells, it was still shocking enough.
"What a pity..."
After researching for a while, Kei could not help feeling a bit regretful.
"If only I had their original cells."
The Kinkaku Brothers' bodies had already been transformed by Nine Tails chakra, and even their cells had fused with that power and changed.
Kei suspected that the Nine Tails chakra must have activated something hidden within their cells, which was why they gained the ability to generate Nine Tails chakra and transform into something like miniature Nine Tails themselves.
Unfortunately, he had no samples of their cells from before they acquired the Nine Tails chakra, so he had no basis for comparison and could not determine exactly what had changed.
After that, he also studied Hashirama's cells for some time.
And with only a simple test, he discovered something strangely familiar within them.
"As expected... it is this."
Standing in place and feeling the power hidden in the Hashirama cells, Kei's expression gradually turned solemn.
"The power of the Divine Tree..."
Ordinary people might not have been able to sense this sort of thing.
But Kei, who in another life had once been the Daimyo of the ancestral land and had spent many years in contact with the Divine Tree, could still recognize it even though it was exceedingly faint.
Within Hashirama's cells, there truly existed a trace of the Divine Tree's power.
It was precisely that tiny strand of Divine Tree chakra that gave Hashirama's cells their extraordinary vitality, allowing them to far surpass ordinary human cells.
Seen from that perspective, the true reason for Hashirama's overwhelming power was finally made clear.
As Ashura's reincarnation, he had evidently used that status as a catalyst to grasp a portion of the Divine Tree's power.
At its core, the Divine Tree was a Kekkei Mora.
Whether one spoke of the Ten Tails or even the Rinnegan, all of it was ultimately just a manifestation of the Divine Tree's power.
If Hashirama had managed to wield a portion of that power, then his terrifying strength suddenly made perfect sense.
It also resolved a doubt Kei had long carried.
That doubt was the true origin of Wood Release.
In theory, Wood Release was merely a bloodline limit formed by the fusion of Earth and Water.
But in reality, who had ever truly managed to create such a thing that way?
And yet saying it came directly from Ashura's chakra did not make much sense either.
After all, it was difficult to say whether Ashura himself had ever even possessed Wood Release.
As the younger son of the Sage of Six Paths, what Ashura inherited should have been the pure Sage Body, not some additional mutated attribute.
Compared to that, Hashirama had simply become far too strong.
To put it bluntly, let alone Madara, even if Ashura himself had stood in front of Hashirama, it would have been hard to say who would actually come out on top.
If not for the Sage of Six Paths personally granting power to his later reincarnation, Naruto, and awakening his true Sage Body and Six Paths Sage Mode, then even with Kurama's power in hand, Naruto would probably only have been fit to carry Hashirama's shoes.
And the source of that overwhelming gap, in the final analysis, was Wood Release.
"But if that's the case, then..."
A thought stirred in Kei's mind, and he immediately moved to test it.
He guided a portion of Nine Tails chakra out from Ginkaku's body, then combined it with a sample of Hashirama cells.
Sure enough, a miraculous change appeared at once.
The originally violent Nine Tails chakra became docile the moment it came into contact with Hashirama's cells, shifting from berserk to extraordinarily stable.
At the same time, the Hashirama cells became unusually active.
Under Kei's careful observation, the Nine Tails chakra was directly devoured by the Hashirama cells and vanished completely.
"It was eaten directly..."
Kei observed everything closely.
After devouring the Nine Tails chakra, the Hashirama cells underwent an obvious transformation.
The power inside them became stronger, their activity intensified, and their overall state began to resemble the cells of the Kinkaku Brothers.
"It actually works."
The facts proved that Kei's hypothesis was correct.
Hashirama's cells, which carried the Divine Tree's power, really did possess the ability to devour tailed beast chakra and enter a state similar to the cells within the Kinkaku Brothers.
No, to a certain extent, the change was even more thorough.
After all, what Hashirama's cells contained was the power of the Divine Tree itself.
And the tailed beasts' chakra had originally been split from the Ten Tails, which in essence was simply another part of the Divine Tree.
That was likely also the reason why Wood Release could suppress tailed beasts and absorb their chakra.
However, compared to the Kinkaku Brothers, the changes in Hashirama's cells were only temporary.
In just a brief moment, after the Nine Tails chakra had been consumed, the cells reverted to their previous state, as if nothing had happened.
Kei guessed that this was because the tailed beast's flesh and blood had not truly fused with the Hashirama cells.
Simply absorbing chakra was not enough to permanently alter the structure of the cells.
Just like the Kinkaku Brothers themselves, if they had only absorbed Nine Tails chakra instead of actually swallowing its flesh and blood, then it would have been impossible for the Nine Tails' power to merge with them so deeply and turn them into artificial tailed beasts.
A fusion of chakra was only temporary.
A fusion of flesh and blood was far more stable.
Which then raised a new problem.
Where exactly was he supposed to get tailed beast flesh and blood?
Kei's gaze slowly fixed once more on the Nine Tails.
In the current Konoha, the only tailed beast available was the Nine Tails sealed inside Mito.
Without hesitating in the slightest, he turned and walked straight out of the laboratory.
.....
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