After arranging everything, he spent two days at the research facility with Saori and the others, helping them work through several research difficulties. Then he rushed back to the Land of Rain and resumed his comfortable routine of accumulating experience points.
His time within Akatsuki had come to feel natural rather than forced. He no longer resembled an outsider in any meaningful sense.
As the months passed, the internal battlefield situation in the Land of Rain gradually shifted. What had begun as an arduous struggle against the Hidden Rain Village's forces had slowly transformed into a series of continuous defeats being inflicted on the Hidden Rain soldiers. The balance between the two sides was quietly but unmistakably changing.
Two reasons accounted for this.
The first was that Akatsuki's reputation throughout the Land of Rain had grown increasingly strong, drawing a large number of like-minded fighters to join the organization and allowing it to expand considerably.
The second reason lay within the Hidden Rain Village itself. After the Second Great Ninja War had ended, Salamander Hanzo had settled firmly onto his throne and had begun to simply enjoy his position.
The training and management of the Hidden Rain soldiers had gradually grown lax. Over the years, the Hidden Rain forces had never been tested in any genuinely high-intensity warfare.
Although domestic rebels and local armed groups provided occasional opposition, such opponents were insufficient to maintain the kind of combat sharpness that real warfare demanded. The overall level of the Hidden Rain soldiers had naturally declined as a result.
Meanwhile, the development within the Land of Rain had reached a point that felt unstoppable. With each region that Akatsuki liberated, the organization's morale surged higher, and everyone within it could see hope on the horizon.
Unity, awareness, and collective purpose had all risen to a new level. By contrast, the Hidden Rain Village found itself in the position of an aging master being relentlessly pounded by a young and fearless challenger who had not yet learned to be cautious. The momentum was difficult to reverse.
At least from appearances, the situation looked promising.
Host: Yuji
Identity: Fourth Kazekage of the Hidden Sand Village (Medical Ninja)
Age: 18 years old
Currently accumulated experience points (Saving people): 126
Currently accumulated auxiliary experience points (Killing people): 3137
Exchanged items and abilities: Black Notebook and Inheritance, Sword Intent Manipulation (Assimilated), Mystical Palm Technique, Chakra Surgical Knife, Sound Healing Annihilation, Fragment Extraction Technique, Chaotic Body Charge.
Bloodline Limit: Blood Release (Assimilated)
Bloodline Limit: Universal Eye (Assimilated), Space-Time Ninjutsu: Ope Ope no Mi (Assimilated), Healing Ninjutsu: Reverse Cursed Technique (Assimilated), Yin-Yang Seal.
One day, inside a mountain cave within the Land of Rain.
After treating a wounded soldier, he walked to the cave entrance, sat cross-legged on the ground, and rested for a moment. He pulled up the system interface and looked it over.
The system could only display content directly relevant to itself. It did not represent the full scope of his capabilities. His taijutsu, Water Release, Earth Release, and his now reasonably proficient Sealing Jutsu were not listed there.
His current low experience point count was the result of his most recent acquisition from the system: the S-rank healing technique, the Yin-Yang Seal. This technique was derived from Tsunade's abilities.
Under ordinary circumstances, given that he already possessed the Reverse Cursed Technique, there would have been no particular need to acquire anything from Tsunade's repertoire. But the Yin-Yang Seal was a special case.
Its uniqueness lay in its ability to store chakra over an extended period, creating a mark on the forehead that functioned essentially as a reserve energy reservoir.
Once released, it caused the user's strength and chakra output to surge dramatically for a concentrated period. Given that his chakra reserves were his most significant limiting factor, particularly when using the Ope Ope no Mi whose consumption was extraordinary, possessing the Yin-Yang Seal meant that as long as he could accumulate chakra storage over time, he would be able to sustain the Ope Ope no Mi's abilities for a considerably longer duration than before.
The effectiveness in a decisive engagement would be dramatically greater as a result.
It suited his particular fighting style extremely well. The experience points spent on it had been enormous, draining his reserves to nearly nothing. If Akatsuki had not been providing a constant stream of wounded soldiers for him to treat, he would likely not have been able to accumulate enough to make the purchase while still remaining in the Sand Village.
As for the experience points he was currently building up, he had no intention of spending them in the near term. He planned to let them accumulate until he could invest them into expanding the Ope Ope no Mi's developed abilities further.
"Even the Impure World Reincarnation technique that I studied from the scroll," he thought to himself. "Although I understand the underlying logic of the technique, I have not yet found a way to apply it with genuine skill. This technique involves spirit communication, sealing, and incantation components working in concert."
"To integrate and control all of its abilities and effects simultaneously is extremely difficult. It truly deserves to be called a forbidden technique. It is not easy to learn at all."
He paused in his thoughts before continuing.
"However, I have been practicing under the ninja temple's branch master for some time and have become fairly proficient in Sealing Techniques. That has produced some gains.
The Ope Ope no Mi also indirectly enhanced my innate talent for space-time ninjutsu, which made the summoning components less troublesome to grasp. My future training will still need to focus on applying mental control and binding techniques to targets, which ultimately comes down to talisman work."
He shut down the system interface and gazed out at the rain-soaked mountains stretching beyond the cave entrance, turning the problem over in his mind.
Senju Tobirama had originally created the Impure World Reincarnation technique to complement other jutsu, particularly Explosive Release techniques, because the combined destructive power of those techniques was too great and risked injuring the user.
He had conceived of summoning expendable combatants as a solution to that problem. Although the Impure World Reincarnation had been developed by the Second Hokage, its true effectiveness and terrifying potential had only been fully demonstrated in Orochimaru's hands.
Orochimaru's mastery of the technique far surpassed what Yuji currently possessed, in the same way that Minato's Flying Thunder God had transcended what any ordinary user of space-time ninjutsu could achieve.
He had secretly experimented with the technique on several occasions. The results had been underwhelming. The reanimated figures he had managed to summon were stiff and their abilities severely limited. The gap between their physical reconstruction and their original living form was simply too great. He could only summon one target at a time, and even then the result was nowhere near the level of a viable combat tool.
Furthermore, the difficulty of successfully summoning a target was directly proportional to that person's strength in life. The more powerful they had been, the harder it was to pull them back from the Pure Land into the living world.
He had once attempted to summon the Third Raikage, whose flesh and blood cells he possessed. The attempt had failed after reconstructing nearly half of the body, collapsing at that point and consuming the living sacrifice without producing a usable result.
He would need to continue researching and experimenting. The technique was not particularly convenient to practice within the Sand Village, but on the battlefields of the Land of Rain there were essentially unlimited materials and no environmental constraints to worry about.
"Orochimaru's improvements to this forbidden technique are genuinely impressive. Even if I were to master and apply it at my current level, the result would not compare to what he achieves with it."
"If an opportunity presents itself at some point, perhaps I can exchange something with him."
He narrowed his eyes slightly at the thought.
Taking something readily available was still considerably better than trying to build it from scratch on one's own.
At that moment, a member of the outer circle returned to the base. He entered the cave and nodded respectfully toward Yuji, then turned to address the other members of the organization's leadership.
"Something has happened on the other side of the Land of Grass."
Yuji straightened immediately upon hearing those words. His eyes lit up with sharp focus.
"The Battle of Kannabi Bridge."