Chapter 370: Shinigami?
"Koyuki, how are the offspring recovering? Can the Jonin begin the experiments yet?" Kenichi asked as he sat in his room, looking at Koyuki.
She looked back at him timidly.
Her clothes were very loose, and she was kneeling on the floor. Through the soft folds of her clothing, her figure was just barely visible, which only made her more alluring.
It had to be said that Koyuki understood temptation very well. Any experienced man would know that outright nudity was often less enticing than this kind of half hidden, half revealed temptation.
The atmosphere in the room was already beginning to turn strange.
Kenichi had no doubt that if he gave the slightest signal, Koyuki would immediately offer herself to him. He probably would not even need words. A single gesture would be enough for her to crawl into his arms.
But as he had said before, Koyuki was still too young. The moral line he carried over from his previous life would not allow him to cross that boundary. Otherwise, he would have done so long ago.
"Master, most of the offspring who received your grace have already adapted to their new condition. The Jonin adjusted the fastest, but the younger ones will still need about two more days to finish growing," Koyuki said as she raised her head, her eyes shimmering as if tears might spill at any moment.
Kenichi did not look at her directly.
He was no saint. Staring too long would only make things troublesome.
"In that case, I may as well try something else first." Kenichi rubbed his chin.
He had originally planned to let those Jonin awaken the Mangekyo Sharingan as quickly as possible so he could raise their combat power. But he had not expected the parasites to need additional time to adjust to their hosts.
Since that was the case, he might as well shift his focus to another project for the time being.
"That forest in the valley, along with the wheat fields, assign a group of junior ninja who have already received the grace to guard them. Their job will be to record all changes and observations. Also, bring in several experienced farmers and let them take charge of the actual cultivation work. When it comes to farming, let the old farmers make the decisions," Kenichi said, tapping his fingers against the table.
The wheat fields he had cultivated through Wood Release were already under Koyuki's supervision.
He had considered leaving Shadow Clones there to handle everything before, but in the end he dismissed the idea. He had too many matters to deal with. Even with Shadow Clones, he was still only one person, not a god. It was impossible for him to solve every problem by himself.
Professional work should be left to professionals.
When it came to agriculture, those old farmers who had spent their entire lives tilling the land were obviously better suited than he was. As for the ninja, they could record reports and help him monitor the results, which would make later analysis much easier.
"Yes, Master," Koyuki replied obediently, lightly biting her lower lip.
Kenichi nodded with satisfaction.
As long as he handed the farming work over to others, he could focus on more important matters, such as researching that unique sealing jutsu, the Reaper Death Seal.
With that thought, he promptly left the room, which had already begun to smell a little too dangerous, and returned to his laboratory under Koyuki's resentful gaze.
There, he took out the mask that Shiori had brought over earlier.
"If I remember correctly, one of these masks belongs to the Shinigami. As long as I wear it, I should be able to summon the Shinigami, or something close to that," Kenichi muttered as he scratched his head. His memory was not perfectly clear on the details.
Still, he remembered one important point. To release the souls devoured by the Shinigami, one had to use the Shinigami's mask and cut open one's own stomach. The Shinigami would then mirror that action, tearing open its own belly and allowing the sealed souls inside to escape.
As far as he knew, the Reaper Death Seal had not been used on many people. The most famous victim should be the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze.
That alone made this worth pursuing.
The greatest value in breaking the Reaper Death Seal was the possibility of using Edo Tensei on Minato afterward. And Minato's strength...
"Wait a second." Kenichi suddenly paused.
Then he blinked.
"Come to think of it, a normal transmigrator would not need to go through all this trouble at all. They could just learn Edo Tensei, revive the First, Second, and Fourth Hokage, and then gang up on Obito. Wouldn't that solve the entire problem?"
Kenichi discovered what felt like a blind spot in his own thinking.
As someone with knowledge of the future, the fastest way to end the Naruto storyline would be simple. Kill Obito and Black Zetsu.
Even if Black Zetsu could not be fully eliminated, as long as Obito died, Black Zetsu's entire plan would be pushed to the edge of collapse.
After that, seize the Rinnegan or destroy it outright. Even if Madara were resurrected later, it would not matter much. A Madara without the Rinnegan was still terrifying, but with the First Hokage on their side, it would not be unmanageable.
Unless Madara somehow found another pair of Rinnegan immediately after losing them, there was no real way he could win against that lineup.
And if the Rinnegan were destroyed, Nagato would not be able to collect the Tailed Beasts at all.
It was a pity.
Obito had already started making preparations. Kenichi narrowed his eyes. He still did not know what Obito and Black Zetsu were planning, but their trip to Konoha had clearly been for the forbidden jutsu scroll.
That alone made him more cautious.
"Still, even if these masks all look similar, the one with special power should be this one." Kenichi picked up one of the masks.
Its design was indeed close to the others, but from the perspective of a ninja, this one contained a clearly abnormal energy.
Kenichi carefully put the mask on.
The instant it touched his face, the atmosphere around him shifted. The room seemed to dim, the warmth vanished, and everything took on a colder tone. A moment later, an ugly, white clothed, wild haired figure flashed in front of him before disappearing again.
"So it really is this one." Kenichi silently took the mask back off.
He was a little puzzled. Had anything like this ever appeared in the original story? Or was this simply because of his Mangekyo Sharingan?
With that thought in mind, he decided to use his analytical ability on the mask.
He wanted to see whether there was some deeper mechanism within it.
The analysis began almost immediately. The moment he looked at it, a long string of compositional data appeared in his mind. Kenichi's mouth twitched.
This ability really was a double edged sword.
It let him see what something was made of, yes, but not always in the way he wanted.
Every person was made of atoms. But if everyone appeared before him as nothing more than human shaped clusters of countless atoms, how could he possibly recognize their faces?
It was the same as a dish. Kenichi wanted to know how the dish had been cooked, not merely which elements it contained.
Yet just as that thought crossed his mind, the compositional information in front of him suddenly became far more vivid and three dimensional.
Kenichi's eyes widened slightly.
He could now clearly see how the mask had been carved. He could follow the way the patterns were cut into it, the order in which the materials were applied, even the sequence of brush strokes used to paint it.
He still could not see the hand itself.
But he could see the paint being laid down stroke by stroke.
"This..." Before he could even celebrate the apparent evolution in his Mangekyo, a strange energy appeared.
In Kenichi's eyes, as the paint was applied to the mask, a peculiar purplish black energy silently began to coil around it. As the mask was gradually completed, that energy also continued winding around it, shaping itself into something even stranger.
In the end, it formed...
"A door?" Kenichi muttered, pressing a hand to his eye.
Pain immediately started to spread through it.
The purplish black energy had turned into a door, or rather, it was in the process of forming one. Its surface was covered in countless profound patterns, and the structure itself was woven together from innumerable particles of that same strange energy.
At first, when its outline was incomplete, he could not tell what it was. But when he looked closer and the shape became clearer, he immediately understood.
It really was a door.
Like building something in Minecraft, Kenichi thought. When the frame is only half done, no one knows what you are making. But once the shape is mostly there, everyone can tell at a glance. Oh. That is a door.
That was exactly the feeling the energy before him gave off.
Kenichi gritted his teeth, yet he still forced himself to continue looking.
His intuition was screaming at him to stop. But the desire to understand was stronger.
He wanted to read it.
He wanted to understand that obscure, difficult knowledge.
Those purplish black patterns were outlining a gateway. Not just any gate, but one inscribed with layers upon layers of strange symbols, every line formed from that same eerie energy.
He could not understand how it first came into existence. It just seemed to appear from nowhere. But the more he magnified it, the more certain he became.
What had formed there was a door.
A door between realms.
"Hiss..." Kenichi finally had to clamp his eyes shut.
The profound patterns and unfinished gateway vanished from sight.
Warm liquid began to run down his face.
Kenichi raised a hand and wiped it away.
Blood.
"So the knowledge in that thing is too advanced?" Kenichi asked softly, then licked his lips in excitement. He even tasted the blood at the corner of his mouth, the metallic flavor helping clear his mind.
Now he was certain.
What he had just seen was the reason this mask possessed such a strange power.
During its creation, whether by accident or design, the mask had been wrapped in that mysterious energy. At the same time, that energy had outlined a door.
A door that connected the living world to wherever the Shinigami resided.
"Shinigami..." Kenichi murmured thoughtfully as he looked at the mask in his hand.
"At first I thought this was only a special kind of sealing formula. But after what I just saw, that Shinigami probably has a very unusual existence. It does not truly belong to the present world, and it probably does not belong to the Pure Land either."
He rubbed his chin as he thought.
The Shinigami was one of the most mysterious entities in Naruto. It had barely been explained in canon, so there was not much he knew for certain. But based on what he had just witnessed, this was not a normal sealing jutsu at all.
It was closer to a summoning technique.
It summoned an existence called the Shinigami into this world. For some reason, that existence could not act freely and had to move in accordance with the caster. If the target's soul was to be sealed, direct contact also seemed necessary.
It was just like in the original story. Hiruzen grabbed Orochimaru's arms, and because of that contact, the Shinigami took Orochimaru's arms as the price.
Troublesome. Dangerous. And after using it, the caster's own soul would also be devoured by the Shinigami, trapped forever with no release.
But those severe drawbacks came paired with terrifying power. It directly sealed the soul itself. No medical ninjutsu could fix that. No reincarnation would restore it. The only way was to reclaim the soul from the Shinigami's belly.
Orochimaru had suffered miserably because of it.
"If that energy forms the doorway that lets the Shinigami enter this world, then could those patterns be interpreted as a method of dimensional crossing?" Kenichi murmured.
He stared at the mask and felt, more than ever, that there were still countless mysteries in this world he did not understand.
The Shinigami clearly did not belong to the living world. Its existence was spiritual in nature, which made it feel somewhat similar to the Pure Land. But if it were truly connected to the Pure Land, then the Sage of Six Paths should not have been able to ignore it.
After all, anyone devoured by the Shinigami did not enter the Pure Land. They remained trapped in the Shinigami's belly, tormented for eternity, seemingly feeding it with some strange form of energy.
If not for its own benefit, why would the Shinigami consume souls at all?
Love and peace? Hardly.
Humans ate food for energy so they could survive. The Shinigami was probably doing the same. And judging from how gaunt and hollow it looked, Kenichi suspected it was the type that had been starving for a very long time.
"This world really is becoming more and more interesting..." Kenichi said, licking his lips again.
What was the relationship between the Shinigami and the Pure Land?
Did the Shinigami consume souls in order to survive?
What sort of energy could a soul body actually provide?
All of those were questions.
In fact, Kenichi even felt that if he could solve them, he might be able to create an entirely new branch of science.
Or perhaps, more accurately, an entirely new branch of ninjutsu.
A kind of dangerous technique that would catch anyone off guard.
"But I cannot use this thing on myself. Not unless I find some way to restrict the Shinigami, or perhaps..." Kenichi scratched his head.
The mask was difficult to use, but it would not be a problem to use it to release Minato's soul.
He could trade the soul of an ordinary ninja in exchange for the souls devoured by the Shinigami. As for Minato's remains...
Kenichi touched the bag at his side.
Inside were preserved tissue samples from both Minato and Kushina.
"I will just treat it as a biological gift for Naruto." Kenichi stretched lazily.
With the Fourth Hokage brought back, the next stage of his plan would proceed much more smoothly.
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]