There were actually quite a few surveillance devices installed around the grove.
The instant Madara stepped out of the house, Senju Tobirama noticed him on the monitors.
Watching the direction Madara was heading, Tobirama quickly understood what he was trying to do.
'Well now.'
'That took some massive balls.'
Naruto was still immobilized under Sasuke's genjutsu, unable to move, like a guy lying helplessly asleep just waiting to be picked clean.
And of all times, Sasuke just happened to go out on a grocery run to Amegakure to buy daily necessities.
Madara cautiously stepped into the territory of Naruto and Sasuke's little love nest.
He was very confident.
Because he had an Edo Tensei body, and because his chakra level was pathetically faint, he could easily dodge most forms of detection.
As long as he made no noise, he wouldn't be discovered.
'That bastard Tobirama thought he could trap me with this kind of cheap method? Wishful thinking.'
Before long, Madara laboriously hoisted himself in through the window.
The very first thing he saw was the rows of milk bottles sitting on the table.
The milk in those glass bottles looked pure white and silky under the sunlight.
Madara thought back to the intel he tricked out of Hashirama: this generation's reincarnations of Indra and Asura were trying to awaken the Rinnegan right here!
And they were doing it through such a disgraceful, dirty method.
Still, he had to admit, this kind of "clever shortcut" was way more convenient, reasonable, and reliable than the way he and Hashirama fought for days at the Valley of the End, exhausting themselves to the absolute limit and forcing him to burn a Sharingan with Izanagi just to bite off one measly chunk of flesh.
Back then, he overlooked one major thing.
He only assumed Tobirama would certainly keep his corpse for research, which was why his delayed Izanagi trick triggered at all.
But after everything that happened since being reanimated, Madara understood Tobirama was even more evil than he imagined.
He really should be grateful that, back then, Tobirama didn't have any weird thoughts about checking inside his mouth.
Otherwise, the instant Tobirama pried it open and found that piece of Hashirama's flesh hidden there, he definitely would have snatched it away.
If that happened, then everything Madara painstakingly prepared would go to waste.
At that point, he might as well have used the Transformation Jutsu to disguise himself as Mito and stolen some of Hashirama's renewable cells instead!
"..." Madara let out a heavy sigh.
'To think that I, once the Asura of the shinobi world, master of Complete Body Susanoo, and the guy who treated the Nine-Tails like a mere house pet, have now been reduced by Tobirama to sneaking around stealing milk.'
But if he wanted to restore his chakra, he had no choice.
Only by recovering his chakra would he have a chance to reopen the Rinnegan.
Only by reopening the Rinnegan could he suck up more chakra. And only then would he have any hope of escaping this hellhole.
Madara picked up the glass bottles of milk from the table one by one and set them on the windowsill, then painstakingly climbed back out and gathered the bottles into his arms, hauling them off in secret.
He didn't try to go after the reincarnation of Asura's chakra in person.
That was because Madara had no idea Naruto was currently trapped under genjutsu, nor could he sense Naruto's wildly disordered chakra state because of it.
So to play it safe, he settled for the next best thing and jacked the milk from the table.
...
Back in the little house's bathroom, Madara took out one bottle and stashed the others inside the toilet tank.
Then he began pouring the milk straight into his Edo Tensei body.
He waited expectantly for these "Asura reincarnation cells" to have the same effect as Hashirama cells, skyrocketing both his chakra and the upper limit of his reanimated body.
...
Sasuke came back from shopping.
The very first thing he noticed was that the milk on the table was gone.
He immediately rushed to the bedroom and saw that Naruto was still there, completely unchanged, making him let out a small sigh of relief.
Then Sasuke placed one hand where the milk used to be, covered one eye with his other hand, and activated his Mangekyō dōjutsu.
Detective Sasuke instantly found the thief!
It was none other than the reanimated Uchiha Madara.
Sasuke watched with his own eyes as Uchiha Madara took a bottle of milk and jabbed it into his own body like a damn syringe!
'What the hell is he doing?'
Wait.
Sasuke suddenly realized something.
Whenever he drank Naruto-brand milk, he always got it fresh on tap.
But the milk on the table was REAL milk—ordinary, store-bought high-calcium milk meant to supplement Naruto's nutrition and help him recover!
'Could it be that Uchiha Madara thought this milk was actually Naruto's?! Was he trying to use Naruto's cells to achieve some crazy goal?!'
Sasuke instantly pieced together most of the truth.
"An Edo Tensei body has no sense of smell or taste, so he can only judge by sight. Sure enough, the idiot couldn't tell the difference. And besides, Madara's been single his entire life, so he's never actually seen the real thing up close! On top of that, he can't activate the Sharingan right now, and his natural eyesight is already garbage because of the Second Hokage's custom modifications."
Sasuke even worked out the exact reason Madara failed to notice the difference.
He never expected Uchiha Madara to sneak into his territory and attempt to steal Naruto's cells.
Even though this time Madara stole the wrong thing and ended up chugging ordinary cow's milk, what about next time?!
Who knew how far Madara might be willing to go to recover his strength?
Sasuke made up his mind.
Even when leaving the house from now on, he would keep one eye open with the Mangekyō active at ALL TIMES, watching Naruto to make sure nothing happened.
As for Senju Tobirama, after seeing clearly on the monitors what Madara just did, he couldn't help laughing his ass off.
Leaving aside the fact that Madara stole the wrong thing and took actual cow's milk—even if he stole the right thing, it still would be completely useless!
Naruto's cells had no special effect.
Their only function was to combine with Indra's chakra and draw out the Sage of Six Paths' power, awakening the Rinnegan.
And Uchiha Madara already awakened the Rinnegan once before, so Asura's chakra no longer had any effect on him.
"My brother's cells are one of a kind in the shinobi world." Tobirama shook his head with a smug smile.
The only thing that could increase chakra and raise the upper limit of an Edo Tensei body was Hashirama cells and Hashirama cells alone!
Not just "cells from Asura's reincarnation."
—
"Madara, I'm back! Look what I brought you. These are all the newest books to come out in the shinobi world. You can read them when you're bored and learn more about today's peaceful and beautiful world!" Hashirama dropped a massive pile of books onto the sofa.
"Mm." Madara came out of the bathroom expressionless.
—Though honestly, nobody knew why a room meant for two dead guys even needed a bathroom in the first place.
Madara walked over to the pile of books and casually picked one up.
When it came to books, he never refused them.
He really did need to properly understand what the current shinobi world was like if he wanted to make future world-domination plans.
"Madara, y-you, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?!" Hashirama suddenly pointed at him with a face full of shock, disbelief, and utter sorrow.
From beneath Madara's armor, thin streams of white milk were slowly seeping out.
It looked exactly as though Madara had just been thoroughly worked over by some bizarre Senju technique!
'What in the world happened?!' Hashirama didn't even dare imagine it!
But one thing he could say for sure was this: with how frail Madara's body now was, even a random genin might actually have been able to pin him down and do the deed!
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