Chapter 376: Motherly Love Like a Mountain Collapse
"What has the Fourth Hokage been doing lately?" Amamiya Kenichi rubbed his eyes, stretched, then took a sip from his teacup as he looked at Uchiha Shiori beside him.
"Reporting, Lord Amamiya. Lord Minato has recently been teaching Naruto together with Lady Kushina," Shiori answered respectfully.
Kenichi raised an eyebrow, though he was not particularly surprised.
Strictly speaking, he was Naruto's teacher. However, Kenichi's way of raising a student was more about teaching according to aptitude. Once Naruto completed the lessons he arranged, he usually let the boy run off and play.
Clearly, though, Minato and Kushina had their own ideas.
"That unlucky little guy Naruto has secretly complained to me a few times. He said his parents came back, but somehow, his life got even harder." Kenichi could not help laughing when he remembered it.
After father and son reunited, Kenichi fulfilled his promise and used Edo Tensei on Kushina, the previous Nine-Tails jinchūriki. Her soul was successfully reincarnated.
Nothing strange happened during the process, which made Kenichi feel that the Sage of Six Paths might not care much about what happened in the living world. The last time he had appeared was likely because Amado Sanzu's research had touched upon certain secrets of the Pure Land.
Without that reason, Kenichi felt the Sage of Six Paths probably would not have appeared at all. Perhaps only matters involving his mother could truly make him anxious.
Although Kenichi still did not know the exact reason, this was good news. He really did not want to face the Sage of Six Paths right now.
He did not know what the Sage was doing in the Pure Land, but the fact that he had almost no role in the future Boruto era showed that whatever he was doing had little influence on the living world.
After Kushina was revived through Edo Tensei, what followed was the moving reunion between mother and son. It was warm, famous, and almost enough to make one forget that Kushina had once been called Konoha's Red Hot-Blooded Habanero.
Almost.
Her temper was indeed fierce.
After learning about her son's miserable childhood, Kushina crushed the iron spoon in her hand into a ball.
If Naruto had not tearfully stopped her, and if Minato had not been standing nearby, Kenichi felt this woman might have stormed straight back to Konoha, grabbed Hiruzen by the beard, and asked whether his old bones were sturdy enough.
"Most of the time, Lady Kushina is the one teaching Naruto," Shiori added.
Kenichi nodded.
Minato's thoughts were rather similar to his own. Or rather, Minato seemed more willing to entrust Naruto to him.
Kushina, on the other hand, clearly wanted her son to become stronger. At the very least, she did not want him to remain like before, when he had to fish just to fill his stomach, relying entirely on luck and sometimes returning empty-handed.
If Naruto mastered Lightning Release, he could at least electrocute fish for food and solve the basic problem of survival.
Kushina did not doubt Kenichi's intentions. But as a mother who had missed so many years of birthdays and companionship, the motherly love that erupted from Kushina at this moment could only be described as overwhelming.
Like a mountain collapse.
Unfortunately, for the current Naruto, Kushina's teaching was a little too advanced. It was like handing calculus to a primary school student and telling him to solve it before dinner. Suffocating was the polite word for it.
Still, Naruto, who had never experienced a father's love or a mother's love before, was clearly enjoying his current life.
He was the very definition of suffering happily.
"But with Kushina around, Naruto's burden has also been reduced quite a bit," Kenichi said with a smile.
Shiori did not quite understand, and Kenichi did not explain.
For Naruto, Kurama inside him was a very troublesome problem.
Although Kurama would later become Naruto's partner, the current Kurama and Naruto had no such relationship. In fact, because of Kurama, Naruto's chakra control was extremely difficult.
But with Kushina here, Kurama would not have an easy time.
Adamantine Sealing Chains. Ever heard of them?
As for whether this would affect Naruto and Kurama's future relationship, Kenichi felt it probably would not. Naruto's personality was genuinely good, and communicating with someone like him was very easy.
As long as Naruto and Kurama talked more, Kenichi believed Kurama would still acknowledge him eventually. Unless Kurama truly lost his mind and swore to cut ties with Naruto forever, but that probability was even lower than the Sage of Six Paths being resurrected.
"Is this batch the last one?" Kenichi glanced at the unconscious test subjects in front of him, casually wrote a few lines in his experiment log, then twisted his neck.
He had not been idle during this period.
Once the jonin of the Land of Snow had recovered enough, he began the Mangekyō Sharingan awakening experiments. So far, the experiments had all been very successful. There had only been one failure, where the subject's brain had essentially been cooked.
Kenichi summarized the case afterward and found that the subject had a heart condition. The intense emotional stimulation during the experiment triggered that heart condition, causing the experiment to fail.
"Yes, Lord Amamiya," Shiori said respectfully.
Parasites had already been implanted into the brains of these jonin. After they awakened, they needed to be observed for a period of time to confirm that there were no problems before Kenichi could continue his experiments.
As for the chūnin and genin, Kenichi currently had no plan to awaken their eyes.
There were not many jonin in the Land of Snow to begin with. Only thirty-three in total. So far, only twenty-five had received the "blessing," and one had died. The remaining few jonin were scattered throughout other parts of the Land of Snow.
He would deal with them later.
Killing them would be too wasteful. As for making an example out of someone, enough chickens had already been slaughtered.
If those jonin were unwilling to cooperate, they could simply be captured. That would also give Kenichi a chance to experiment with what happened when parasites were implanted while the subject was strongly resisting.
If they could still be brainwashed into fanatics loyal to him, then the parasites' potential uses might be even more outrageous than Kenichi had imagined.
"The Land of Snow really is weak. There are so few jonin." Kenichi clicked his tongue.
The Land of Snow was an entire country, yet it only had this many jonin. Konoha had far more, and some of the Land of Snow's jonin were even only special jonin.
But that was the reality for small countries.
The Land of Snow had already developed quite well by reaching its current state.
Shiori did not speak. She simply stood quietly at the side, waiting to serve and receive Kenichi's orders.
Kenichi stood and rolled his neck. The Akatsuki had been very quiet during this period, and Obito had not caused any more trouble. Kenichi did not know what that man was planning, but after staying silent for so long, he was clearly preparing something big.
"How are the materials I asked you to prepare last time?" Kenichi asked as he twisted his neck again, then frowned and rubbed it. His neck felt a little sore, probably because he had been doing too much research lately.
"Reporting, sir. Most of the materials have already been transported to the capital's warehouse for storage. Three more are still on the way," Shiori answered respectfully.
Kenichi nodded.
Then it should be soon.
However, purchasing those materials had cost a great deal of money. Fortunately, when Koyuki Kazahana granted "blessings" to the ninja earlier, several nobles of the Land of Snow who refused to cooperate were wiped out, and a fortune had been seized from them.
Otherwise, the Land of Snow's treasury would have been so empty that even rats would cry while moving out.
As for those materials, Kenichi could only wait until everything arrived before assembling them.
He planned to assemble devices for uranium detection and purification, then officially put nuclear weapons research on the agenda.
With nuclear weapons, he would possess truly terrifying power.
A weapon whose destructive force and aftermath far exceeded conventional ninjutsu, and one that even had its own advantages compared to Madara's Tengai Shinsei.
Tengai Shinsei was powerful, but its coverage and long-term damage to the local ecosystem were not especially significant.
Nuclear radiation was different.
In his previous life, this thing had been considered disaster-level, and its power was astonishing.
An atomic bomb's power was already terrifying, but still within a comprehensible range.
But what if Kenichi pulled out a Tsar hydrogen bomb?
How would the shinobi world deal with that?
One had to know that it was a monster whose mushroom cloud rose seven Mount Everests high, with a blast radius of a thousand kilometers, and it even caused the Eurasian continent to shift by nine millimeters.
If something like that were dropped in the shinobi world, a single Tsar hydrogen bomb could be called a world-ending strategic threat.
"At that time, it will be me, Amamiya Kenichi, who acknowledges you, Uchiha Madara."
Kenichi's lips curled into a pleased smile.
Just imagining himself pulling out a Tsar hydrogen bomb and making Uchiha Madara dance inside a nuclear explosion filled him with satisfaction.
Kenichi stood and walked out, while Shiori skillfully began cleaning up the unconscious test subjects.
Although all of them had awakened their eyes, the intense emotional shock still left them in comas.
Depending on their constitution, the time before they woke up would vary. But once they awakened, they would still have to face Kenichi's trials.
And after that, they would become Kenichi's sharpest spears, aimed at the Land of Water.
Kenichi stretched, yawned, and left the laboratory.
Not long after stepping outside, he sensed an ominous aura from the distance. But in the next instant, that aura disappeared again.
The corner of Kenichi's mouth twitched.
"Kushina... that teaching method really is..."
Kenichi felt a little helpless, but he still hurried over.
As soon as he reached Naruto's house, he saw Naruto lying weakly on the ground, his face streaked with tears.
Beside him stood an extremely enthusiastic Kushina, while Minato looked at his wife and child with a helpless expression.
"Cough, cough... Kushina, pour Amamiya some tea," Minato said after noticing Kenichi.
Kushina immediately turned and saw him. When outsiders were present, Kushina was still very considerate of her husband.
"Oh, isn't this little Amamiya? Come in, come in!"
Kushina was very enthusiastic.
Naruto, meanwhile, immediately showed an expression that said, "I'm saved!" Kenichi almost laughed.
Still, he walked inside calmly, pretending he had not seen anything just now.
"Naruto, have you communicated with Kurama today?" Kenichi smiled and rubbed Naruto's head.
Naruto, looking as if he had just escaped death, quickly scurried over to Kenichi and tugged at his sleeve.
"Phew, Teacher, you're finally here. Today's communication was all right..." Little Naruto's relieved expression instantly turned serious.
Kenichi did not even need to look to know why.
A moment later, Kushina handed him a cup of hot tea.
Kenichi smiled and accepted it, then listened as Kushina explained to Naruto how to communicate with a Tailed Beast.
And as he listened to Kushina's philosophy of "If it doesn't listen, beat it up; after one beating, it'll listen obediently," Kenichi silently sipped his tea.
Well, leaving aside whether Naruto had the strength to do that, if he really followed Kushina's teaching method, who knew how long it would take Kurama to acknowledge him?
But seeing Naruto's slightly empty expression, Kenichi felt much more reassured.
Judging from Naruto's face, Kushina's teaching method probably would not have much effect.
"Big Brother Minato, it hasn't been easy for you either," Kenichi said, smacking his lips.
Minato showed a gentle smile and shook his head.
Although Kushina indeed had some quirks, she was truly a good wife to him.
"Naruto! I told you, pay attention when I'm talking!"
Kushina's irritated voice rang out.
Then Kenichi saw Kushina grab Naruto by the ear and roar angrily at him.
Minato, standing to the side, showed a polite yet awkward smile.
Well, Kushina's temper really was not good.
It made Kenichi feel a little sympathy for Naruto's current situation, but that did not affect Minato's deep love for his wife.
"Big Brother Minato, how about we go out for a meal?" Kenichi glanced at Minato and asked.
Minato raised an eyebrow when he heard that, then silently followed Kenichi outside.
Kushina seemed unconcerned, but she watched her husband and Kenichi leave with a trace of worry in her eyes.
She was not foolish. Naturally, she knew Kenichi intended to discuss something important.
Fortunately, she and her husband were currently in an Edo Tensei state. Even if they died, it would not truly be death.
So Kushina once again focused on teaching Naruto, becoming even more serious than before.
She wanted her son to have more ways to protect himself.
Even if she did not know that many methods herself, she still wished she could pull out everything she had and hand it to him.
.....
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