"Uchiha?"
When Yuji returned to headquarters with the Sand Village's captured prisoners, Shimizu was startled upon seeing several of them. He almost thought he was experiencing a hallucination.
Capturing Uchiha alive on the battlefield was incredibly difficult, bordering on impossible. Setting aside the Sharingan itself, when this clan appeared on the battlefield they always fought in coordinated groups, supporting each other constantly.
They would absolutely not allow the bodies of their own kind to be easily taken. Konoha would also have made specific preparations for precisely this scenario.
And yet Yuji had actually captured several of them alive.
"What happened?" Shimizu asked after regaining his composure.
Yuji briefly explained the situation.
After hearing it, Shimizu's eyes widened in disbelief.
"You want to...?"
The implication surfaced in Shimizu's mind and he asked the question tentatively.
The Uchiha had been captured. Setting aside the certainty that Konoha would launch a fierce counterattack to force the Sand Village to hand them back, even just news of this reaching the village would likely provoke even more Uchiha clan members to enter the battlefield, inevitably resulting in deaths on both sides.
Bringing them back was one thing.
Keeping them alive was absolutely essential.
Shimizu understood clearly that beyond simply holding them as leverage, Yuji could definitely obtain the Sharingan. Of course, using the prisoners' lives to threaten Konoha and achieve certain strategic objectives was also a viable approach. It all depended on the choice being made.
"The eyes," Yuji said simply, confirming it in two words.
He then ordered his subordinates to bring the Uchiha clan members to the medical squad's camp and into his tent.
Sharingan.
Shimizu's heart trembled.
The Uchiha clan's Sharingan was famous throughout the ninja world, yet no other village had ever successfully obtained this power. The obstacles were layered and severe.
Obtaining them on the battlefield in the first place was extraordinarily difficult. Attempting to do so would trigger the ferocious response of the Uchiha clan, who would pursue the matter relentlessly.
Transplanting these eyes into another individual was itself a procedure of extreme complexity, with stringent requirements for the recipient that could not simply be dismissed.
And finally, doing any of this was equivalent to making a permanent mortal enemy of Konoha. This kind of hatred was not the sort that could be resolved through ceasefire negotiations the way previous
Great Ninja Wars had eventually been concluded. The Uchiha clan specifically would never accept it.
"Time is limited, so we will set the details aside for now. I intend to conduct some experiments on them later." Yuji's tone became more serious. "Furthermore, Konoha will certainly be preparing a full-scale attack to reclaim these Uchiha. Start making military and battle arrangements immediately."
"Understood."
Shimizu heard this and snapped back to full alertness. He immediately recognized where his attention needed to be directed. What mattered right now was not what Yuji intended to do with the Uchiha prisoners, but the very real possibility that Konoha would shift from passive defense to active offense.
This would represent the second large-scale conflict of this war, coming several months after the first. This time, although the enemy no longer had Hiruzen present on the front lines, the Sand Village would also lack the series of strategic and tactical advantages it had held in the opening engagement.
The supply of medicinal resources was still insufficient. Therefore the situation for the Hidden Sand Village remained genuinely dangerous.
"Konoha launching a full-scale offensive will inevitably draw our army out from the base," Yuji said after a moment of contemplation. "If my prediction is correct, they may be using this as a diversionary tactic, causing our main force to move out and leave the base lightly defended and relatively unprepared, thereby creating an opportunity for Minato to come and rescue the Uchiha."
He continued.
"Therefore, I cannot go to the main battlefield. Inform Sasori that the matters of the large engagement will be entrusted to you both."
On his way back, he had already sent a message to Sasori through intelligence ninja, instructing their unit to withdraw from the Konoha war zone as quickly as possible and temporarily halt the offensive.
"Understood," Shimizu nodded.
After months of fighting, both the Hidden Sand Village and the Leaf Village army had accumulated considerable battlefield intelligence on each other and were relatively familiar with each other's patterns and tendencies. Their mutual familiarity with each other's tactics had grown substantially.
An effective strategy could no longer open with the kind of grand sweeping moves that had defined the first battle. The large-scale engagement that was coming would rely on a direct head-on confrontation, fundamentally different from the initial ambush of the Land of Fire.
With Shimizu and Sasori's combined abilities, they could manage it.
After giving his instructions, Yuji returned immediately to his tent and began preparing for the surgery. He laid out the necessary instruments and posted guards outside.
"From what I know, the biggest obstacle to Sharingan transplantation has always been the rejection reaction," he said quietly to himself as he prepared.
He looked at the instruments around him.
"That is not a problem. Not given the village's current level of pharmacological development."
"Based on existing medicinal materials, we can formulate an immune suppression potion and use it to best maintain the normal function of the Sharingan, extending the viable window as much as possible."
"But there is one more consideration. The chakra consumption of the Sharingan is extremely high. Ordinary people probably cannot sustain it."
"Furthermore, to control the Sharingan effectively, the recipient should ideally possess Yin-attribute chakra, and the stronger their mental fortitude the better. Otherwise, even if the transplant is technically successful, the practical effectiveness of the Sharingan will be severely diminished."
"Finally, we need to ensure the continuity of the Sharingan's power during transfer."
Without a cooperative subject, if the Uchiha clan members attempted to seal the Sharingan's power before losing consciousness, that would be a significant problem. Whether they could actually succeed in doing so was unclear, but caution was better than assumption.
"I need to keep their eyes active before they die and also stimulate their emotional state."
He considered the approach for a moment.
Then he immediately began harvesting the eyes of the two Uchiha clan members whose heads he had brought back. One pair of single tomoe, one pair of double tomoe. Because these two had died instantly on the battlefield, they had not had time to react or make any deliberate choice about their eyes. Therefore, until the moment before death, their Sharingan had remained open and active.
Dissecting a skull and completely removing both eyes cleanly was essentially straightforward work for someone with his level of medical expertise. Afterward, he stored the four Sharingan along with blood and flesh samples in containers filled with preservation solution.
Next, he began performing minor procedures on the living Uchiha clan members, ensuring they remained completely unaware of what was happening around them before being carefully brought back to consciousness.
Then he stimulated one of them slightly.
One of them, possessing the dual-tomoe Sharingan, regained consciousness and opened his eyes. At that initial moment, his eyes had returned to their normal appearance. However, the moment he opened them and registered what was in front of him, the dual tomoe reappeared immediately.
Because the first thing he saw upon waking was the severed head in Yuji's hand, and the gouged-out eyes of his clansman.
"I will kill you!"
"I am going to kill you!"
The Uchiha clansman went from stunned silence into an immediate state of rage and fury, shouting directly at Yuji. But restrained by Yuji's ocular technique, he was completely unable to move.
Yuji opened his own eyes in response. He did not look at the Uchiha's expression or pay particular attention to the words being shouted at him. Instead he stared intently at the man's skull. Through his clairvoyant observation, he could clearly detect the intense chakra fluctuations emanating from the brain tissue of this Uchiha clan member.
"Oh? Interesting."
He stared even more intently, narrowing his eyes.
"A portion of the brain's chakra function has clearly become more intense. It has been enhanced under the emotional stimulus."
He considered what he was observing.
"Under intense emotional stimulation, it is possible. Transform into a three-tomoe Sharingan? Or does this kind of chakra fluctuation simply need to be amplified to a certain threshold level?"
He could not help asking the question aloud, more to himself than to anyone else.
He found himself wondering whether he could cultivate Uchiha clan brain cells under controlled conditions and study the activation mechanism directly.
He would also need to collect blood samples.
After all, this subject only had a dual-tomoe Sharingan. He could use this case first to conduct some preliminary brain activity experiments and verify his hypothesis before moving on to more significant procedures.