I need to find a way to let those Cloud barbarians take the fall...
At Konohagakure's newly designated laboratory.
The air was thick with the smell of formalin and ink. Bright, shadowless lights illuminated every corner, striving to avoid even the slightest degree deviation due to blurred vision.
Various biological and organ specimens, soaked in nutrient solutions and fixatives, were stored behind brown glass to ensure they weren't affected by light.
The place was so quiet that the only sounds were the hum of instruments being operated and the rhythmic sounds of liquids flowing and dripping. Occasionally, a faint 'beep' could be heard coming from a monitoring device recording vital signs or chakra fluctuations.
Orochimaru sat before the main experimental bench, propping his chin up with one hand and unconsciously spinning a pen with the other.
His fingertips moved steadily and flexibly, tracing overlapping circles, but his gaze did not fall on his notes containing improved ideas and experimental data regarding the Impure World Reincarnation technique.
After obtaining permission from Hiruzen Sarutobi to use Tobirama Senju's cellular tissue to perform Impure World Reincarnation, he had not been in a hurry to act.
After all, his goal was not to summon Tobirama Senju in Konoha at all, but to deliver Tobirama's tissue samples to Hii Kōri.
To achieve this, he needed to ensure that his summoning attempt would reasonably "fail."
Although Impure World Reincarnation was essentially a summoning technique rather than a true reincarnation technique, the restriction against having multiple copies of the same individual still applied to this technique.
That is to say, if he summoned Tobirama Senju in Konoha, Hii Kōri wouldn't be able to summon him.
Delaying the performance of Impure World Reincarnation and safely sending Tobirama Senju's biological tissue samples out of Konohagakure to Kumogakure was not particularly difficult.
The reason for the former was simple. The undead summoned by Impure World Reincarnation were essentially "suicide bomber robots" designed to work with Mutual Explosive Tags and other large-scale forbidden techniques that would inevitably harm teammates.
Aside from having unlimited body repair and chakra recovery, they were very imprecise.
Physical strength, chakra capacity, technical precision, memory, and spirit... these indicators were all hard to find satisfactory.
Of course, Tobirama only wanted suicide bomber robots; those indicators didn't matter.
In fact, even the Impure World Reincarnation, which was later optimised by Orochimaru and Kabuto Yakushi in the original story, still had the drawback of combat power degradation — it was merely obscured to some extent by the advantages of unlimited repair and chakra recovery.
The accuracy of the Impure World Reincarnation technique also varied depending on the embryo used for reincarnation and the special preparation involved — for example, Madara Uchiha's body.
However, at this stage, neither approach was realistic.
The technique itself was not precise enough; using a good embryo would be a waste, and debugging would be like putting a new coat of varnish on rotten wood.
In the first few Impure World Reincarnation experiments, the accuracy of the summoned reincarnated individuals was extremely poor; their memories and minds were degraded. Using this as a reason, Orochimaru successfully convinced Hiruzen Sarutobi and the others, gaining more time and funding to research and optimize this technique.
After all, this time they were their teacher's remains to have Orochimaru perform Impure World Reincarnation precisely because they valued Tobirama's mind and experience.
If they could not be successfully inherited, they would be meaningless.
As for Orochimaru's attitude...
Haha. How shady. Is there funding for this? Do I get funding just for putting on a stage play?
As for the latter, that was even simpler.
Whether in the past or now, Orochimaru had always taken private jobs related to biotechnology, specialty materials preparation, or research on designated targets.
These were technically "private jobs," but the higher-ups were well aware of them. After all, the salaries and funding they provided were indeed insufficient for Orochimaru's research, and Orochimaru had never made any effort to deliberately conceal them.
In the end, he would still submit a copy of his research findings to the village's technical library, and occasionally even subsidize the village with his own money. No one wanted to start a conflict with the village's most capable researcher over such matters.
Moreover, he was the Third Hokage's disciple—"proper background" and all.
So, the next time the Red Hot Sand came to make purchases, he would simply slip in the slice of Tobirama's cells. Very simple.
It was hard to say this was proof of Orochimaru siding with Hii Kōri, even having come this far.
After all, Orochimaru probably had no concept of 'loyalty'. The only thing he had ever believed in was power, or rather, knowledge. Hii Kōri just so happened to be the person holding knowledge that Orochimaru had never touched.
Perhaps, if his parents hadn't died in the war, Orochimaru might have taken a different path.
If his parents hadn't died in the war, he might have grown up in a poor but warm and stable family life.
If his disciple hadn't died in the war, he might not have realised the fragility of life and gone to extremes.
If... if...
But how many "ifs" were there in this world?
Orochimaru's life was merely an ordinary sight—a pile of tragedies in this era.
But those rotten and stinking wounds had not turned this white snake into bleached bones. Each cut had not only opened his "body," but also the unground ore within him.
Until today, it emitted a bloody, dazzling light.
Moreover, since he had already received such a large sum of funding from Hii Kōri, Orochimaru felt he should have some professional ethics.
So he chose to simply dump all the blame on the long-dead Kinkaku and Ginkaku brothers.
As everyone knew, the Gold and Silver Brothers of Kumogakure were descendants of the Sage of Six Paths—even the Uchiha clan had never questioned this.
The horns on their heads were proof of their atavistic bloodline. And Kumogakure, over the past twenty or thirty years, had been collecting the legendary Six Paths tools for them.
Among the Six Paths tools, the "Red Gourd" and the "Amber Purifying Vessel" both possessed powerful sealing abilities. And Tobirama Senju happened to have died in the rebellion launched by Kinkaku and Ginkaku.
At that time, Tobirama had stayed behind alone to protect his disciples.
That is to say, now that the Gold and Silver Brothers were dead, no one knew exactly how Tobirama Senju had died.
So why not simply claim that Tobirama's soul was suspected to have been sealed by Kinkaku and Ginkaku, which was why Impure World Reincarnation couldn't summon his soul?
As for why it was only "suspected"—because those two Six Paths tools sealed the body along with the soul.
But with Tobirama's bag of tricks, who could say he didn't have some countermeasure?
The Second Hokage's skill set—no need for you to understand it so clearly.
It was perfectly reasonable.
After all, Konoha couldn't very well go to Kumogakure to demand an inspection of the Red Gourd and Amber Purifying Vessel. Even if they did, Kumogakure wouldn't admit to anything, nor would they give any response.
Those barbarians were always the ones threatening others—never the ones being threatened.
As for whether this claim would affect relations between the two villages?
Don't make your Snake Brother laugh. As if relations between Konoha and Kumogakure were ever good to begin with.
The only reason Kumogakure hadn't gotten involved in the last war was that their internal situation hadn't stabilized yet. If a war broke out next time and Kumogakure didn't attack Konoha, Orochimaru would give a thumbs down.
So, it was better to plant a landmine now. Who knows, it might even boost the village's morale when the time came.
Thinking this, Orochimaru closed his notebook and turned to look at the man on the other side of the laboratory.
He wore an ordinary white lab coat. His silver hair at the temples was gathered behind his head and tied into a small braid, with the rest of his long hair around it. He looked somewhat thin and had a gloomy temperament.
"Hō-kun? How are the data on your end?"
"Ha... so stable it's annoying."
The man called Hō looked up at the sound. The emotion in his crimson eyes was as tired as his tone. He raised his hand and shook the clipboard he was holding, answering amidst the soft rustle of paper.
Although stable data was a good thing, if "stable" didn't refer to the readings themselves, but rather to the readings consistently being crazy, that was very bad.
Clearly, the result was the latter—not what was expected.
"Subjects one through thirteen, after injection of the experimental cells, showed a cell tissue reaction rate increase of 390% within three seconds, then died on the spot. Subjects fourteen, eighteen, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-nine, and thirty-eight showed severe rejection reactions. As for the remaining subjects..."
He paused, looked back at the experimental tank, and pulled the corner of his mouth into a stiff, unamused smile. "Well, they've sprouted now. Good green effect. You could put a couple of pots on your windowsill—they're much livelier than pothos."
"No thanks. I don't want to wake up one day to find myself tied up in those plants—or maybe not even wake up at all."
Orochimaru shrugged, walked to the experimental tank, and pulled the gate to clear the contents.
In other words, this batch of Hashirama cell biological experiments had ended in failure, failure, and more failure.
"Ah... the First Hokage's power is just too exaggerated, isn't it..."
After quickly completing the report for this batch, Hō let out a long breath as he watched the burning flames. Although he knew this was the norm for research, he couldn't help feeling a touch of monotony.
"It's amazing you can withstand the pressure from the higher-ups, Orochimaru-kun."
Filing away the record, Hō teased Orochimaru like this.
"Probably because the old man truly witnessed the First Hokage's power, so he has expectations for my failure. Besides, failure itself is data. At least we now know a few more modulation directions that don't work."
Orochimaru answered in an even tone, turned, poured a cup of tea, and handed it to Hō. "Good work. Rest for a bit."
"Oh, thanks."
Hō raised an eyebrow, smiled, and took the cup.
Feeling the slight warmth in his palm, he uncomfortably rolled his shoulder.
As a contemporary and friend of the Sannin—probably a friend, at least—Hō had always felt inferior and resentment over his own qualifications being inferior to those three.
Driven by this sense of deficiency, he had once wanted to research forbidden techniques. But now, he felt that even in forbidden technique research, he probably couldn't match Orochimaru.
Your forbidden techniques vs. my forbidden techniques. [.jpg]
He had made peace with it.
On another note... though it was despicable to say this, during the period after the Second Shinobi World War, upon hearing that Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru had each in turn suffered at the hands of that "Crimson of Agony" from Sunagakure, his sense of urgency had instantly vanished.
See? The brilliant geniuses he had once envied and been jealous of weren't invincible. They, too, could fail, get hurt, and be embarrassed before greater power—
Hō nearly wanted to shout this out loud.
This thought then brought even more fierce self-loathing.
Comparing friends to himself on his own, "parting ways" on his own, mocking their pain on his own...
He was so mean it was laughable.
Perhaps this was another way in which he couldn't measure up to them.
And then, not long ago, Hō—harboring these feelings—had been approached by Orochimaru, who had returned to the village wounded.
Orochimaru had invited him to join a research-focused independent society-type organization—what was currently a technical coordination alliance consisting only of Hii Kōri and Orochimaru, and perhaps Sasori could be counted.
Funding was sufficient. Aside from a certain level of research ability, there were no other requirements. It was a society where members could freely exchange ideas.
Most importantly, it was an academy that Orochimaru had invited him to join.
His low self-esteem, jealousy, twisted ambition, self-loathing, and guilt—all the darkness in his heart seemed to have been washed away in that moment.
Taking it as Orochimaru's recognition, Hō agreed without any hesitation and then threw himself enthusiastically into the various research projects led by Orochimaru.
Orochimaru couldn't fully understand where Hō's enthusiasm came from, but it didn't matter.
All good.
From his perspective, Hō's abilities were indeed limited, but as an assistant, he was adequate.
After all, people like himself and Hii Kōri were the minority. He needed to be tolerant of those less capable than himself.
And besides, he wouldn't feel bad about selling this kind of person off when the time came.
As for Hii Kōri—Orochimaru was already scheming to hit him up for a finder's fee for recruiting new members next time they were in contact.
Of course, Hii Kōri would definitely complain that this was a serious research organization, not some shady den. But...
"Hiring missing-nin, poaching researchers from other villages, funding forbidden technique development, stockpiling kekkei genkai materials... if this counts as 'proper,' then there's probably no improper research in the ninja world."
"But... this 'impropriety' is precisely what makes it most interesting."