Scrolls covered every surface — some ancient and borrowed from Orochimaru's old research caches. Surely the snake wouldn't be needing them anymore, by the way he discarded most of it and ran when he did from Akatsuki. It actually didn't take that much effort either to have these scrolls and some research tools brought over by Black Zetsu.
They were all scattered, some incomplete in their information and others written in his own hand, dense with notation comparing two energy systems that, by every conventional understanding, shouldn't have shared anything in common at all.
Chakra. Cursed energy. Yin and Yang.
But, surprisingly enough, they did.
And Orochimaru's research, one way or another, helped Obito, or should we say Kenjaku, out in figuring out the relationship that both Curse Energy and Chakra have.
Agreed, most of it was his hypothesis, however, so far, none of his ideas had proven false.
He'd suspected the connection for months now, almost immediately after waking up in this world, and ever since the first fragments of intelligence trickled in about the strange, almost miraculous return to life of one Izumi Uchiha, he had a feeling that he was missing out on something.
"Chakra's Yang half healed. Restored. Rebuilt." He muttered, fascinated as he looked at the corpse he created just a few minutes ago, minimal curse damage done to kill the person, pouring an adequate amount of curse energy to make certain there was enough energy to connect whatever realm these souls were being pulled back from, and now he had a moving corpse.
A man who should have died, coming back to life, and he noticed it well with his stolen Mangekyo, the curse energy converging inside the corpse, the Yin converting into Negative energy and Yang into positive.
While the Yang energy of the body was completely used up to heal whatever wound was inflicted and damage was done to it, it was the Yin half which actually brought any change in it, under the right catastrophic conditions, converted into something else entirely. Something that behaved, disturbingly, like cursed energy always had.
'A door,' he thought, staring at the scrawled diagrams spread before him. 'Death by cursed energy opens a door back to where we came from.'
How, he had no idea.
How to control that. He didn't know that either.
He just knew that, given the right circumstances, this process was taking place in the dead bodies, souls of dead sorcerers were reincarnating into.
Obito, or should we say Kenjaku, found it out out of nowhere, just when he was fascinated by the strange power of this world and how it was quite so similar to curse energy and yet not completely the same.
His curiosity made him delve deep into the research of both, and that resulted in him figuring this out. He tested, of course, and he knew how this was taking place, just didn't know why.
It confirmed what he'd already begun suspecting from a distance — that perhaps he wasn't the only one from the other world here.
That maybe there were more sorcerers hiding in this world. He honestly didn't have enough time to find that out, delving too much into his research after all.
But, if his estimate wasn't wrong, then surely the woman he killed, that Uchiha girl whose eyes he had taken, she hadn't just miraculously survived. She, in fact, died back then, and now her body was being taken over by someone from his world.
'It's fascinating…'
He couldn't control the toothy smile emerging on his face. This might be the most excited he had been ever since learning that there existed something like curse energy in this new world.
And this revelation reopened an old, familiar hunger in him.
To find out what a higher life form looks like, to know what the limit of humanity as a whole is.
He'd built the Culling Game as an engine — a brutal, elegant machine designed to generate exactly the right conditions of chaos and death needed to force that evolution forward.
It was supposed to be the generator, responsible for creating enough curse energy needed for the evolution to take place.
Ultimately, the game was just a means to an end to achieve what he wanted.
Tengen. The forced merging of humanity into something greater, something beyond death, beyond stagnation.
Everything to achieve something greater. Unfortunately, he couldn't see it through to the end.
But perhaps…
His eyes went back to the corpse who was actually alive now, his mind still tied to his obsession. What he saw was not a miracle but a way to achieve his goal.
It was possible…
He just had to figure out how much chakra can resemble curse energy. He can do it. Even the energy itself wasn't a problem, no need for a thousand years of planning to create a battle royale just to generate enough curse energy for his plan here.
The most suitable and almost infinite source of energy was right in front of him, the Tailed Beasts.
The problem was the vessel. Tengen had been the mechanism — a living being built specifically to absorb and redistribute that overwhelming pressure into a controlled evolutionary cascade. Without Tengen, all that energy had nowhere coherent to go. Chaos without a channel.
Ever since Kenjaku had realised this, he had been utterly obsessed with figuring a way out.
He needed something equivalent. A catalyst capable of holding and directing that scale of power without simply detonating under the strain if he intended to fulfill his plan here.
He was still turning the problem over, scroll after scroll spread uselessly before him, when the familiar disruption in the air signaled Black Zetsu's arrival.
"There you are." The voice carried its usual mixture of relief and irritation, the pale half of Zetsu's face settling into a scowl the moment it fully formed. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since you last showed yourself to the others? Pain has been running Akatsuki entirely on his own initiative. He has already sent people, members, to capture Tailed Beasts. Both Sasori and Deidara have gone missing.
There is a possibility that maybe Kumo had found out about Akatsuki. Konoha certainly has since Pain had both Itachi and Kisame kidnap a Jinchūriki right under their noses. Do you understand how out of control Nagato has become?" He complained and then glared at Obito.
"Obito, have you forgotten what your goal is, or are you having second thoughts?" Black Zetsu asked with irritation.
"I remember," Obito said, not bothering to look up from the scrolls.
"Then perhaps you'd care to explain what exactly you've been doing down here instead."
"Research."
"Research," Zetsu repeated flatly. "While two of your subordinates went missing chasing a jinchūriki, and Kumo has apparently begun investigating our existence. Nagato extracted the One-Tail without you. Made every decision without you. Do you understand what that means? He no longer feels he needs you at all."
Obito's jaw tightened slightly, though he said nothing yet, his mind still turning over the vessel problem even as Zetsu's complaints piled up around him.
"You promised Madara's plan would move forward," Zetsu pressed, dark half creeping into the tone now, sharper, more accusing. "Instead, you're doing nothing, leaving the entire organization to drift without direction. If this continues—"
And then, mid-complaint, something clicked into place in Obito's mind with such sudden clarity that he actually looked up.
"Rinnegan."
Sage of Six Paths' legendary eyes, granting power over life, death, and the elements. His mind all but locked in as it unfolded the entire route in front of him. He needed a vessel. He was highly unlikely to find someone like Tengen in this world. However, with Rinnegan, he might not need a vessel at all.
If Tengen had been built specifically to hold and redirect overwhelming energy without breaking, the Rinnegan might do the same, structurally different but functionally similar enough that the theory was worth testing.
A catalyst already proven capable of manipulating chakra at a fundamental level — control over life and death themselves, if the old legends held any truth.
"…Obito?" Zetsu's voice cut through the realization, wary now at the shift in his expression.
"FINE…"
"Huh?"
"I'm going to see Nagato," Obito said simply, already rolling up the scrolls in front of him.
Zetsu blinked, dark and pale halves both caught equally off guard. "You're—now? After what, months of ignoring him entirely?"
"Yes."
"…Why?"
Obito didn't answer immediately, tucking the scrolls away with unhurried precision, an odd, distant satisfaction settling into his expression — something Zetsu hadn't seen from him in longer than either of them cared to admit.
"It's overdue. Might as well be done with it," was all he said.
Zetsu studied him a long moment, torn visibly between relief that Obito was finally reengaging with the organization at all, and unease at whatever private calculation was so clearly running behind that single Sharingan eye.
"Fine," Zetsu said finally, dark half still uncertain. "About time you remembered you have responsibilities."
Obito said nothing further, already moving past him toward the passage out, mind already several steps ahead — toward Nagato, toward the Rinnegan, toward a plan Black Zetsu had no idea was no longer the one they'd built together at all.
xXx
A/N : I means its so long before he has to face his role.
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