The group descended the spiraling staircase to the underground laboratory.
Hii Kōri led the way, pushing open a large door to reveal a spacious room like a small hospital operating theater.
The walls and ceiling were smooth alloy panels, reflecting the light of shadowless lamps. In the center of the room, two specially made metal platforms were placed side by side. A large circle of peculiar instruments surrounded the platforms, with numerous precision pipes and lines connecting them to various nearby devices.
The bodies of Mataza and Shūko, dressed in simple surgical gowns, lay smoothly on the platforms.
Chiyo stood before a monitoring device, intently watching the jumping data and curves on the screen. Hearing the door open, she turned. Seeing Hii Kōri, a smile mixed with reproach and helplessness appeared on her face.
"You brat. I was hoping you'd rest a bit longer."
"I know the efficiency and precision of all the instruments and equipment in this lab inside and out."
Hii Kōri shrugged, looking at the readingsfeedback on the monitoring instruments, and replied, "Even by the most conservative estimates, the thawing progress is almost done."
"Besides, I need time to set up the ritual venue."
"You haven't used this place in ages, yet you remember so clearly."
Watching Hii Kōri adjust the instruments, Chiyo sighed with some surprise.
"I set this place up with my own hands. How could I forget?"
After slightly adjusting the instruments' output frequency, Hii Kōri estimated the time and decided it was enough to set up the ritual venue. He then turned and called out to the accompanying personnel.
"Sasori, Karura, Tsunade—could you help me with something?"
Thus requested, Sasori and Karura had no reason to refuse. Tsunade glanced at the sleeping Hii Ren in her arms, then at Pakura beside her.
Pakura quietly gently, signaling that she could handle the child. Only then did Tsunade carefully hand him over and follow Hii Kōri.
As he had said, how could he not remember whether there was a suitable room in a place he had set up himself? Asking Chiyo to look for one had just been a way to give his adoptive mother something to do and alleviate her nervousness.
Passing through the brightly lit corridor—so well-lit it was impossible to tell it was underground—the four arrived at the entrance of the emptied room.
"So, what exactly does Kōri need our help with?"
Karura's curious voice echoed in the empty room, carrying a faint reverberation.
Hii Kōri didn't answer immediately. He walked to the center of the room and looked around. Then, turning his head at a peculiar angle, he answered the three behind him: "I'm going to construct 'Hell' here."
The blood-drenched words, combined with Hii Kōri's somewhat eerie posture—as if his head had been forcibly twisted around—sent a chill through them.
"Hell?"
Karura blinked in confusion, not quite understanding the metaphor.
Hii Kōri didn't explain further. He simply waved them aside to make some room, then released a mass of iron sand, sealing the door they had come through tightly shut.
Then, a flash of Scorch Release light passed by. The black iron sand was cast into a solid mass, inseparably fusing with the surrounding walls.
"Heh—"
With a soft exhalation, Hii Kōri began forming hand seals for a barrier technique after a long absence.
The air changed.
A blood-drenched smell spread like thick fog.
His hands, without wear or scars, rapidly formed various modified hand seals. The sound of his moving fingers was accompanied by whispers like the curse of the dead upon the living.
The bloody smell finally condensed into a sediment, dropping from the air as if from nowhere. It splashed into finer red marks midair, as if striking something invisible, transforming into blood-red lines and runes.
Ominous lines, spreading like spider silk, spun and twisted in the air. Layers of patterns, like the scale of an armillary sphere, formed a three-dimensional structure rotating through the space.
Floor and space, plane and volume... the large room was instantly filled with that blood-red spider web.
The lines composing the barrier slowly rotated like gears, gradually clicking into place.
Hii Kōri stamped his foot. Rashōmon rose from his shadow, expanding and stretching into a massive gate.
A gate that seemed to lead to real hell.
As if pouring out a mountain of corpses and sea of blood, body after body flows out from the gate.
Corpses in various forms, various states of death, various degrees of decomposition poured out like garbage.
Pierced by blades, frozen stiff, burned to charcoal, eroded by toxins... corpses in different conditions and states of death piled together, looking like an abomination sculpture.
Even Tsunade, who was accustomed to seeing corpses, was slightly shocked by this highly impactful scene. Only then did she notice that these corpses had been pre-treated and did not emit any unpleasant odor.
"I need to maintain this barrier. My Spirit Thread Nerves and Rashōmon, as extensions of myself, can't move freely either. So placing these corpses falls to you."
Only then did Hii Kōri explain.
"Ugh... Kōri, you're so mean. Making me do this the moment you come back?"
Karura puffed out her cheeks and complained in exasperation. But she didn't say anything more, dutifully pulling out gloves and handing them to Tsunade and Sasori beside her.
Although due to her personality, Karura rather resisted killing, living in a ninja village meant she had to at least get used to the dead.
As the head of the Second Medical Unit, handling corpses was also a job Karura did, though not often.
In a sense, this also meant she had seen life and death from another perspective.
"So, you need us to arrange these corpses in a specific order?"
Tsunade put on her gloves, surveyed the pile of corpses, looked at the two beside her, and nodded with understanding.
As a top medical ninja, her familiarity with the human body structure was probably among the top five in the world. And as a ninja who had inherited some of the Uzumaki clan's secret techniques, she was also quite knowledgeable about rituals and barriers.
Besides herself, Sasori and Karura were also people with a considerable understanding of the human body.
From the state of these corpses, combined with Hii Kōri's words about "constructing Hell" and "arranging," the answer was clear.
These corpses were necessary components of this barrier. Their causes of death, conditions, and even positions all carried specific symbolic meanings.
"Mm-hmm. Exactly."
Compared to Sasori, who had stepped back from ninja life, and Karura, who was purely a medical professional, Tsunade was indeed the one who understood this best.
His fingers moved slightly. A small part of the outer barrier suddenly grew brighter, and a blurry light pillar rose.
"Find a burned corpse and put it over there."
"...Easy for you to say."
Looking at the mountain of nearly a hundred corpses, Tsunade rolled her eyes. "You do know how fragile these corpses are, don't you?"
"Relax. I pre-treated them all. As long as you don't specifically damage them, general dragging and pulling is fine."
With that assurance, she walked forward, ignoring the unpleasant visual impact, and began searching through the corpses.
Soon, she pulled out a charred corpse. Its surface was covered with a vitrified black hard shell, its body curled up, as if still suffering intense pain in its final moments.
Yet in this almost eerie environment, the charred corpse seemed to carry a cruel, sculptural sense of power.
Tsunade felt her mind might be going a bit off.
She carefully carried the charred corpse to the blood-colored light pillar and placed it inside. The curled black charred corpse didn't fall to the ground but floated in the light pillar. Then its limbs stretched out, struggling as if in its death throes.
The lines of the outer barrier slowly rotated, locking into place like a latch reaching its correct position.
Next came a drowned corpse, a corpse with a pierced heart, a corpse chopped into pieces, a hanged corpse, a poisoned corpse...
Under Hii Kōri's direction, sixty-four carefully selected corpses, representing different causes of death, were placed in various locations of the outer barrier, their positions constantly shifting as the barrier rotated.
Next came the "Nine Phases Chart" placed in the inner layer.
Although the classifications of the nine phases vary across different scriptures—some referring to the nine stages from birth to death—the commonly accepted meaning refers to the nine stages of bodily decomposition after death.
Originating from Buddhist concepts, this was now used by Hii Kōri as part of the ritual, symbolizing the complete process from death to total dissolution.
Bloating, rupture, blood-smeared, pus and putrefaction, cyanotic discoloration, Devoured by animals, scattered, skeletal, burned.
From swelling to skin ulceration, from blood seeping out to burning to charcoal... specially selected corpses at corresponding stages of change were placed in the inner barrier. The blood-red lights connected, forming a cursed halo.
With the placement of these various elements, the barrier, filled with blood and death, stabilized.
Hii Kōri then took out a pyre frame built from the bones of ninjas captured from Kirigakure—their residual value already squeezed out—and placed it in the very center of the room.
"Poof"—a flame like filthy blood ignited in the air, casting a filthy light on the white bones.
Death. Death. Death. Nine phases of death, sixty-four causes of death. Thus constructed, the realm of death. The simulated composite barrier: Visions of Hell.
Thus established.
The rich death energy instantly filled the entire room. The The blood-red barrier was irreversibly blackened.
Tsunade, Karura, Sasori—everyone except Hii Kōri—instantly felt a violent cold, followed by a dullness as if their souls had left their bodies.
"Phew—go this way. Staying in this place too long isn't good for you."
Hii Kōri called to the three already being affected by the environment, half-dragging them toward the passage on the other side of the room, hurriedly walking into another empty room.
This time, he didn't make any elaborate arrangements. He simply placed the pre-prepared stone slab to block the passage they had come through, then formed hand seals again, enveloping the other three in various healing barriers.
"...That barrier of yours just now. What was it?"
Under Hii Kōri's swift treatment, Tsunade was the first to recover from the previous dullness. She asked Hii Kōri in a somewhat disjointed manner.
"Exactly what it sounds like. That was Hell—the destination of souls after death. Conceptually speaking, at least."
Hii Kōri opened the door to this room, turning to explain to Tsunade. "But precisely because it's a conceptually fictional Hell, the nature of 'death' is even purer."
Tsunade didn't reply. Her eyes flickered, as if she had already guessed the principle behind Hii Kōri's reincarnation technique.
Meanwhile, the thawing process on Chiyo's end finished, just as Hii Kōri had predicted.
He stood at the door and called out. Chiyo, the Third Kazekage, and the others pushed the platforms carrying Mataza and Shūko's bodies to this side.
"Ready?" Chiyo came forward, her voice tight.
"Mm." Hii Kōri nodded, his gaze falling on the two platforms. "Soon... soon we'll achieve our goal."
"...Alright. But don't push yourself."
"What's there to push? It's just something that must be done."
Hii Kōri answered thus, then carefully checked the condition of Mataza and Shūko's bodies once more. His Spirit Thread Nerves extended from his hair, lifting the couple and moving them carefully to the center of the empty room.
"Do you need us to leave?"
Chiyo looked at Hii Kōri's movements with some hesitation, asking cautiously.
"No... I don't think so. In fact, the more people in this room, the better."
Tsunade supported the still-fatigued Karura and answered. "Because this place is specially prepared as the 'World of the Living.'"
Although it was a guess, her tone was very certain.
"Mm-hmm. As expected of the granddaughter of Uzumaki Mito. You figured out the principle my technique is borrowing after just one look."
Hii Kōri revealed a very bright smile. He was truly delighted that someone could see through his thoughts.
"Anyway, I'll explain later. Everyone, spread out a bit."
Following Hii Kōri's instructions, the group disperses to the edges of the room, as close to the walls as possible.
Although his words helped regulate the atmosphere, the air in the room remained very heavy, as if it had stopped flowing.
Hii Kōri stood before his brother and sister-in-law's bodies, slowly closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.
"Reverse Path Technique: Yomi Gate Open!"