Lee remained quiet on the hospital bed for a long time.
Guy stood at the foot of the bed, his fists clenched tightly. He desperately wanted to kneel on the ground right now and beg Tsunade to perform the surgery immediately, but he did not have the right to make this decision for Lee.
"Guy-sensei..."
Lee's voice rang out. "I choose to have the surgery. If I cannot be a ninja for the rest of my life, then I would rather die on the operating table. My youth will not allow me to lie in bed for the rest of my life."
"Please help me tell Tsunade-sama that I am very grateful she is willing to give me this choice."
"Lee..." Guy's eyes reddened.
—
Tsunade arrived at the Hokage Office and did not participate in any of the discussions that evening regarding the arrangements for her inauguration ceremony.
She spread the entire stack of CT scans and medical records she had brought back from the hospital across the desk, and had the Anbu retrieve all failed cases of spinal neurosurgery from Konoha Hospital over the past thirty years from the archives.
As dawn approached, Shizune pushed open the office door carrying a third cup of black coffee. She saw Tsunade buried in a dusty forbidden jutsu scroll, scribbling notes rapidly.
The materials and jutsu drafts spread out on the desk had piled up into a small mountain.
...
There were still a few days left before Tsunade officially assumed the position of Fifth Hokage.
Kakashi and Sasuke were still lying in the hospital recovering, while the reconstruction work in Konoha was proceeding in an orderly manner. The streets and alleys were filled with busy craftsmen and ninjas transporting materials.
Team 7 had no mission assignments for the time being, so Naruto was quite free.
In his apartment, he created a Shadow Clone, leaving it at home to keep Karin company and help her familiarize herself with the environment of Konoha, while he activated the Flying Thunder God Technique.
With a flash of golden light, he appeared in the huge cave behind the waterfall the next moment.
Naruto used Negative Emotions Sensing to scan the surroundings, confirming there were no abnormal Chakra signals.
Then he walked to the center of the cave and took out two items from his ninja tool pouch.
One was a sealing scroll, which contained Shisui's Mangekyo Sharingan.
The other was a small glass bottle containing a drop of red blood.
Looking at the blood in the glass bottle, Naruto couldn't help but recall the scene from last night after dinner when he asked Karin for this drop of blood.
At that time, Karin was drinking tea on a chair. When she heard him ask if she could give him a drop of blood for research, she was stunned for a moment, tilting her head with a puzzled expression.
Naruto explained that he wanted to study the bloodline characteristics of the Uzumaki clan, thinking he might find a way to improve the Uzumaki Physique.
After hearing this, Karin didn't think much of it and unhesitatingly extended her index finger for Naruto to take the blood.
Naruto withdrew his gaze from the glass bottle, his eyes narrowing. 'Absolute Control, I hope you won't let me down.'
After confirming that his Absolute Control was at a conceptual level, Naruto felt that his past self was simply wasting this ability.
Controlling his own body and cells was the most basic method. If he dug deeper, could he control the substances inside the body's cells?
The most intuitive example was cancer cells, which terrified ordinary people. It was well known that the number of times a normal human cell could divide was limited. Every time it divided, the telomeres shortened. Once they reached the limit, the cells stopped dividing and underwent apoptosis, which was aging in the biological sense.
But cancer cells were different. The telomerase in cancer cells was abnormally activated, so the telomeres did not shorten with division, allowing cancer cells to divide infinitely.
If he could use Absolute Control to precisely control the telomere length and telomerase activity of every cell in his body, and under the premise of not losing control, allow normal cells to acquire the infinite division ability similar to cancer cells, then theoretically, could he achieve immortality?
However, these were all scientific frameworks from his past life.
In the Ninja World, immortality was nothing new.
Orochimaru relied on the Living Corpse Reincarnation Technique to change bodies and extend his life.
The Sage of Six Paths relied on Yin and Yang to extend his existence at the Chakra level for thousands of years.
However, what Naruto wanted was not immortality achieved through techniques, but natural immortality that was not eroded by time, under the premise of possessing absolute strength.
Today was the first step in verifying this series of conjectures.
He first picked up the small bottle containing Karin's blood and activated Absolute Control, sinking his consciousness into his own body.
In the state of Absolute Control, he could clearly "see" every minute structure inside his body.
Every opening and closing of the heart valves, the trajectory of blood flowing through arteries and veins, and the bio-electrical signals jumping on the nerve endings.
He continued to sink his consciousness deeper, constantly raising the precision of his perception.
Red blood cells floated in the plasma like round pizzas, while white blood cells were larger with irregular protrusions on their surfaces.
Although he often controlled the cells in his body, this was the first time he had "seen" his own cells.
He passed his consciousness through the cell membrane and cytoplasm of a white blood cell, delving all the way into the nucleus.
Here, Naruto saw his own genetic sequence. The double helix structure coiled around the chromosomes, with base pairs arranged into a long chain.
He memorized his complete genetic sequence and then exited this deep state of microscopic perception.
This level of Absolute Control consumed significantly more mental energy than conventional use, but it was still within a controllable range.
The level of consumption was roughly equivalent to sorting through memories after using two hundred Shadow Clones for training. It was far from reaching the point of damaging his foundation.
This also verified that using Absolute Control had a cost. It wasn't Chakra, but his mental energy.
It was just that the frequency of using Absolute Control was usually limited, and the recovery speed of mental energy was far faster than the consumption speed, so he had never felt any significant exhaustion of mental energy.