Rasa immediately issued orders to ANBU through a secure communication channel, then said in a deep voice,
"Good. Elder Chiyo—the sample is in your hands!"
The two split up at once. With a flash, they raced off in opposite directions.
Above Sunagakure, shrill alarm sirens wailed. The village—barely returned to calm—was once again shrouded in tension and unease.
Was that explosion an accident?
Or had a new crisis already arrived in silence?
Before the shockwaves from the Rogue Island incident had even settled—while the great villages were still secretly reinforcing forces and racing to analyze the serpent-monster blood—an even more explosive piece of news spread like a plague through underground intelligence networks and the upper echelons of power:
Sunagakure attacked!
Fourth Kazekage Rasa severely injured!
Precious serpent-monster blood samples stolen by an unidentified group of ninja!
Based on eyewitness accounts and residual chakra traces, the attackers were very likely to include a missing-nin—Orochimaru!
His distinctive snake-based techniques were far too recognizable to mistake.
Wherever the news reached, it caused an uproar.
"Orochimaru?! He got involved too?!"
"As expected! Even that mad scientist couldn't resist such bizarre blood!"
"Sunagakure really has terrible luck— even the Kazekage was badly injured? Just how strong were the attackers?"
"If Orochimaru has that blood… who knows what kind of monstrosities he'll create!"
Every Kage and high-ranking official who heard the news felt their mood sink into heavy complexity.
On one hand, they weren't unhappy to see Sunagakure's research interrupted—one fewer competitor was always welcome.
But on the other hand, having the samples fall into the hands of Orochimaru, infamous for having no moral bottom line, was far more dangerous than letting them remain in Sunagakure.
Given Orochimaru's obsession with forbidden techniques and unknown powers, it was entirely possible that he would achieve breakthroughs quickly—or even create horrors more terrifying than the serpent monsters themselves.
Hokage Office
The atmosphere was heavy.
Jiraiya looked at Tsunade, who had been living in the laboratory for days. She now frowned deeply over a stack of reports.
Unable to hold back, he asked,
"So, Tsunade—how's the research? Any discoveries?"
Tsunade's brows knit even tighter. She slowly lifted her head, looked at Jiraiya… and simply shook it.
Seeing this, Jiraiya assumed there had been no results at all. To lighten the mood, he laughed loudly and forced a carefree tone.
"Hahaha! If you couldn't figure it out, that's fine! Totally normal, really! Those serpent monsters were way too weird—absurd defense, ninjutsu completely useless. It'd make sense if their blood was special or impossible to analyze—"
Tsunade shot him a look as if he were an idiot and cut him off, irritation evident in her voice.
"Who said I couldn't figure it out?"
Jiraiya's laughter stopped abruptly. His eyes lit up as he leaned forward eagerly.
"You did?! What did you find? Did you uncover the secret of their defense? Or the principle behind negating ninjutsu?"
But the lack of joy—indeed, the even heavier expression—on Tsunade's face made his heart tighten.
"…Is there a problem?" he asked cautiously.
"Is the blood highly toxic? Or is there some hidden danger?"
Tsunade shook her head again, then slapped the report onto the desk. Her voice was filled with frustration and disbelief.
"No. There's no problem at all."
"Huh?" Jiraiya froze.
"No… problem? What do you mean?"
"I mean this—" Tsunade took a deep breath, as if even stating the conclusion felt absurd.
"I used every method available to us. Repeated tests, analyses, cross-comparisons…"
"And the final conclusion is that this so-called 'serpent-monster blood'—its cellular structure, genetic sequence, chemical composition…"
"All of it is identical, with no fundamental difference, to the blood of a low-grade sea snake you can find anywhere in the ocean."
She jabbed a finger at the data, her irritation growing.
"It's the most ordinary, most mundane sea snake blood imaginable. No unknown substances. No exotic energy signatures. No special cell walls. Nothing."
"It's just… ordinary blood."
"T-That's impossible!"
Jiraiya gaped as he picked up the report, flipping through it. He couldn't understand most of the data, but Tsunade's absolute certainty made the conclusion feel surreal.
"Those monsters tanked ninjutsu head-on and shrugged off taijutsu! How could their blood be normal?!"
"I wish I'd gotten it wrong!"
Tsunade shot to her feet and paced irritably across the office.
"But the facts are the facts. Either our technology and understanding can't even touch the core of their power—that the ability to nullify ninjutsu is a higher-order rule, not something based in material biology…"
"Or—"
She stopped and looked sharply at Jiraiya.
"—or those serpent monsters themselves were nothing more than a surface phenomenon. Creations."
"Their true key was never present in what we tested… or it already dissipated."
Either possibility pointed to a deeply unsettling conclusion:
The enemy they faced might exist on a level of technology or power far beyond what the shinobi world's current science and ninjutsu could comprehend or analyze.
Jiraiya set the report down, his expression equally grave.
If even Tsunade couldn't uncover anything, the other villages would almost certainly reach the same result.
This "ordinary" blood report was more terrifying than any extraordinary discovery.
The office sank into deeper silence.
The unknown was the greatest fear of all.
Konoha's dilemma was not unique.
Almost simultaneously, every village that had painstakingly retrieved serpent-monster blood samples reached the same shocking—and utterly unacceptable—conclusion:
The blood was absurdly ordinary.
"This can't be right! Absolutely impossible!"
In Kumogakure's laboratory, a veteran researcher stared at the flat data, nearly losing his mind.
"A creature that can shrug off B-rank ninjutsu and resist taijutsu—how could its blood be the same as a sea snake you can crush with your hand?! Are our instruments malfunctioning?!"
"The data isn't lying…" another researcher replied, face ashen.
"At least, under our current frameworks and detection methods, it's just ordinary biological tissue."
"No abnormal energy response. No unknown elements. Nothing unusual in the cellular structure…"
The implications were chilling.
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