Chapter 496: Two Karma Seals
"Not a chance."
Yasushi smiled coldly and brought the Complete Susanoo back up.
"One Karma Seal on my body is already enough. I have no interest in a second."
"That is not your decision."
Isshiki vanished and drove another kick into the Complete Susanoo's chest. In full released transformation, the force was extraordinary. The chest caved in with a single blow.
But Yasushi was already in his own second transformation state. His palm came up immediately.
"Shinra Tensei."
The enormous repulsive force flooded the gap that Isshiki's kick had just opened and met the attack head-on.
The detonation came instantly. Blinding white light flooded the space. The invisible pressure wave spiraled inside the Complete Susanoo's chest cavity, contained and unable to escape, bouncing and rebounding off the interior surfaces with the force multiplied a hundredfold.
In that single moment, both fighters were stripped with razor-edged wind fragments. Blood opened across both of them in dozens of places simultaneously.
Neither one slowed down.
Both sets of wounds sealed over within a breath, deep to the bone and then simply gone.
They looked at each other. Both frowned.
Isshiki pulled his leg back and drove another kick.
"Let's see how many of those you can take."
Yasushi brought both palms together and had the Complete Susanoo take the gourd from its waist, pointing it directly at Isshiki.
A suction force comparable to Universal Pull erupted from it, locking Isshiki in place and pulling him steadily backward. At the same moment, a dozen golden chains shot out behind Yasushi, looped around Isshiki's thighs, and began climbing upward like vines.
Shukaku's voice rang out with obvious excitement.
"Desert Burial seal coming."
A flood of yellow sand surged forward and covered Isshiki, beginning to compress inward.
The next moment, everything that had touched Isshiki, the golden chains and the sand seal both, shrank rapidly, spiraled in the air, and disappeared entirely.
The suction from the sealing gourd continued to hold, unaffected.
But the gourd was only a secondary weapon of the Complete Susanoo, not a true Sage of Six Paths tool. It could interfere with Isshiki's movement but could not pull him in completely.
Isshiki glanced back at the gourd and raised one hand. Black cubes materialized in the space directly above it and dropped with full force.
The series of heavy impacts punched a large hole straight through the energy construct, destroying the gourd's effect entirely.
"Nothing works against me. No technique can touch me."
He kept examining Yasushi's body with something close to appreciation. A pity someone else had gotten there first.
Yasushi pushed chakra back into the Complete Susanoo and repaired the damaged gourd, then looked at Isshiki with an easy confidence.
"I do not have Sage Mode. My ocular techniques do not counter yours. Killing you is genuinely difficult."
"But you cannot defeat me either. Not even close."
"I do not need to kill you. I only need to last three days, and you will be dead on your own."
Isshiki's pupils contracted. His composure broke visibly.
"You know that as well."
"So in the future we were enemies."
He steadied himself.
"Though you cannot have pushed me to this state in that future, or you would not be standing here so confidently."
His form vanished.
Yasushi tensed immediately and pushed the Rinnegan to its absolute limit.
Even with the Rinnegan, he could only catch the faintest trace of Isshiki's movement.
"Found you."
Yasushi spun and thrust his open palm toward the space behind him.
"Shinra Tensei."
Isshiki materialized directly in front of Yasushi's palm.
But this time he did not attack. He swept one hand sideways and opened a spatial portal beside him, pitch black and bottomless.
The full force of the Shinra Tensei drove directly into the portal's opening and vanished without a sound.
"Come in."
Isshiki's voice was flat. He pushed his hand forward. The portal expanded rapidly.
Yasushi lurched backward immediately, pulling the Complete Susanoo around and aiming the sealing gourd at Isshiki again at full suction.
Isshiki turned his back to it without looking and threw a handful of black cubes over his shoulder. The gourd's pull caught them and drew them in. He was entirely focused on Yasushi, driving the expanding portal forward, intent on swallowing him entirely.
Yasushi had originally positioned himself inside the Complete Susanoo's body to be protected. When Isshiki broke through the defense and entered the cavity, Yasushi had sealed the space around both of them to limit Isshiki's room to maneuver. Now that choice felt like building his own trap.
The portal was moving. That was wrong. It was supposed to require grabbing someone and pushing them in, not advancing on its own.
He had no time to think about it further. He dissolved the Complete Susanoo, dropped in freefall, and hurled a black sphere at Isshiki as he fell.
"Try this. Planetary Devastation."
The gravitational field erupted outward, pulling everything nearby toward the sphere.
Isshiki turned his Black Eye on the newly forming sphere. The sphere shrank instantly, pulled into the expanding portal and swallowed.
Yasushi had one moment to voice his reaction.
"That technique is completely broken."
Then the portal caught him and took him in.
Somewhere in the transition, Isshiki's voice reached him faintly.
"As long as I mark you with the Karma Seal, whatever clan member reincarnates through you later will strip it free and restore me. Becoming a vessel for the Otsutsuki is your fate. Stop trying to run from it."
He came back to awareness what felt like an instant later.
He was lying on the ground. Open sky above him. The terrain around him was calm and undisturbed.
Yasushi pushed himself upright and looked around. The Complete Susanoo was gone. The battle's marks were still visible on the land, but Isshiki had completely vanished.
He looked down at his arm.
A clear dark marking had appeared on the skin. Square-patterned striping, unmistakable.
One careful probe confirmed it. Something enormous was waiting underneath that surface, coiled and still.
"Damn it."
"He actually managed it."
Yasushi stared at the mark with irritation for a moment.
But Isshiki had already dissolved himself after placing the seal, and there was nothing to find now even if Yasushi wanted to settle the score.
He looked at the mark on his arm and started thinking through the problem.
How to get this thing off.
This one was completely different from the mark on the back of his neck. That one had almost certainly come from his future self and was not dangerous. This one was a genuine detonation waiting to happen, unpredictable in its timing.
His future self had clearly mastered the Karma Seal system to a level that allowed him to create an advanced version. Stripping or eliminating a standard Karma Seal would presumably not be difficult for someone at that level. But present Yasushi did not have that knowledge.
How had his future self learned it in the first place?
He worked through the question and reached the obvious answer quickly.
It had to be Orochimaru.
Who else would you turn to for this kind of research in Naruto's world? The Karma Seal had significant structural similarities to the curse mark system Orochimaru was already developing. He was almost certainly involved.
The complication was that Orochimaru had not defected from Konoha yet. Reaching him on something like this would require careful handling.
Yasushi turned the problem over for a while, watching the sun move toward the horizon, and eventually decided to stop thinking about it for now. He would probe Orochimaru when the opportunity arose. Orochimaru had always been interested in immortality. One nudge in the right direction and he might come willingly.
He got up to leave, took two steps, and stopped.
Something was nagging at him.
He stood still, turned it over, then hit himself on the thigh.
"Right."
"I came here for the miniature Ten-Tails and that idiot Isshiki never told me where it was."
That was actually expected behavior. After an Otsutsuki reincarnated, they inherited their bloodline limits and chakra but not the tailed beast they had been holding. If Isshiki had told Yasushi the location, he would essentially be handing it to whatever clan member eventually reincarnated through Yasushi's body. He was not the selfless type.
But without a lead, where did that leave things?
Go back empty-handed? Ask Black Zetsu for help again?
Yasushi thought for a moment, then raised his arm and deliberately activated the Karma Seal Isshiki had just placed.
Using it would push his body slightly closer to the original form with each activation, but for reasons he could not fully articulate, he did not feel particularly concerned about that. His body had already been remade multiple times by the Karma Curse Mark on his neck, thoroughly assimilated. This new Karma Seal had just been applied. Even activated now, its influence on him would be limited.
And he could offset it afterward by activating the Karma Curse Mark on his neck and letting Six Paths Yasushi's chakra wash the new seal's changes back out. One applied on top of the other should net close to even.
What he had not understood, and what became immediately apparent, was why Isshiki had called this body perfect.
He had expected something gradual, the same measured progression as the Karma Curse Mark's early activations, a slow reshaping over time. There was nothing gradual about it.
Massive energy tore out of the Karma Seal and moved through him like a storm with no interest in taking its time, restructuring him from the cellular level down to something more fundamental in a single continuous surge. The volume was comparable to what had been released when the Mangekyo first awakened.
In nearly the same instant, both his eyes changed completely. One black, one white. Isshiki's configuration exactly.
Yasushi looked down at his hands. Still normal skin tone, not the stark white of a true Otsutsuki.
He pulled out a short blade and used the flat as a mirror.
One horn had grown from the back of his head. A single spiral horn, curling to one side and lying against his shoulder. Not the complete dual-horn form Isshiki used. Looking more carefully, the resemblance was closer to Jigen than to Isshiki's full appearance.
He tested the new eyes.
The Byakugan was comparatively straightforward. Exceptional visual range and clarity, nothing unique beyond that.
The Black Eye was a different category.
He moved one hand and a spatial portal opened beside him. He leaned in and looked.
Black cubes and black receivers filled the space inside, stacked in quantities that made clear Isshiki had been manufacturing them for most of a thousand years.
No miniature Ten-Tails anywhere visible.
He closed the Daikokuten, then tested Sukunahikona, shrinking and expanding himself for a while. Genuinely enjoyable.
Once he had a feel for the new techniques, he started thinking about how to integrate the Black Eye with his Sharingan and Rinnegan.
He tried it.
His existing bloodline abilities were gone.
No Sharingan. No Rinnegan. Both simply absent.
That was alarming.
The Black Eye was powerful, but he was an Uchiha. He wanted his Mangekyo Sharingan back.
He cancelled the Karma Seal activation and returned to his base state.
Still only the Black Eye and Byakugan. No Sharingan, no Rinnegan.
On instinct, he activated the Karma Curse Mark on his neck.
Six Paths Yasushi's chakra surged through him and dissolved the residual Isshiki chakra throughout his system. His cells and fundamental structure were adjusted back. The previous state restored.
The Rinnegan quality was too high to lose its form in the shift, so his eyes remained Rinnegan for the moment. But when he tested again, the Sharingan was back. The Susanoo responded. The Mangekyo techniques were intact.
"That is a relief."
He exhaled and let the tension out of his shoulders.
Testing the Black Eye again, he confirmed it was unavailable in Karma Curse Mark mode. The two systems would not run simultaneously.
"No compatibility at all."
He scratched his head, genuinely disappointed.
Being able to switch freely between them would have been extremely useful.
But since he could switch back and forth by toggling between activation modes, it was not a crisis.
He cancelled the Karma Curse Mark, reactivated the Karma Seal on his arm.
The seal responded with even more energy this time, as though the earlier disruption had provoked it. The transformation went deeper. His complexion paled further. The single horn became two.
Looking at himself now, the resemblance to an Otsutsuki was pronounced.
But he knew he could reverse it, so he did not worry about the appearance. Instead he raised his eyes and began examining the terrain around him carefully.
With the Black Eye and Byakugan working together, the traces of Isshiki's passage through the area were perfectly legible. Every place he had walked, every direction he had moved, visible and distinct.
Following those traces backward would lead directly to the Kara Organization's base and whatever storage space held the miniature Ten-Tails.
Yasushi clapped his hands together, turned in the right direction, and set off with genuine good cheer to find it.
Chapter 497: Lord Yasushi Is Here, Which Means We Have Test Material
After several days of following Isshiki's spatial traces, Yasushi located the Kara Organization's inner sanctum base hidden inside a pocket dimension. He reached out, cut through the dimensional wall, and walked in.
He had prepared himself for an interception or an ambush. The entry was completely uneventful.
No guards at all.
Which made sense, on reflection. A base positioned inside a pocket dimension did not need conventional security. Without space-time ninjutsu, no one could find it in the first place. If he had not inherited Isshiki's ocular techniques through the Karma Seal, he would have needed an entirely different approach even after locating the general area.
Isshiki had put considerable effort into this facility. The interior was spacious, the construction elaborate, and the aesthetic was notably unlike anything in the shinobi world outside. It carried a technological quality that suggested something closer to the style of a more advanced era, the kind of look that felt like it belonged to Boruto's time rather than the current one. Visually, it was completely beyond contemporary shinobi standards.
Clearly extraterrestrial engineering.
Yasushi glanced over the exterior briefly, then walked directly toward the large central building in the facility's core.
It was only after he entered the building proper that anyone detected him.
A sharp alarm wailed through the corridors. Red lights began cycling throughout the interior.
A loudspeaker crackled from somewhere in the walls.
"Intruder detected in Section C. Security units report for elimination immediately."
Yasushi stopped and looked around. With the Byakugan's penetrating vision, he could see every camera lens and speaker unit tucked into corners and crevices throughout the space.
He did not move to destroy any of them.
This facility was going to be his. He was not going to break his own property.
A group of shinobi converged from multiple directions in short order and surrounded him.
But when they actually looked at him, they hesitated. There was real uncertainty about whether to act.
Most of the personnel here had seen Jigen's second transformation form up close. What Yasushi looked like right now matched that form closely: pale skin, the curse markings, the horn growing from the back of his head. And the eyes, one black and one white, were identical to what they knew.
Claiming this had nothing to do with their leader Jigen was not going to be convincing to anyone.
Yasushi scanned the faces around him. The resemblance between individuals was too pronounced to be coincidence, and the chakra signatures were nearly uniform. The only distinguishing marks were numbers on foreheads or elsewhere on the body.
"Clones."
"Isshiki was running clone research already at this point."
He looked past them.
"Whoever is in charge here, bring them out."
The group parted after a moment of exchanged looks, and a figure came through from the back.
The man wore a white coat and glasses, scholarly in bearing, the look of someone whose primary occupation was thinking rather than fighting.
He studied Yasushi for a moment before speaking with measured caution.
"I am Amado. I run this facility. Who are you, and why are you here?"
"Amado." Yasushi had been planning to recruit Orochimaru for the Karma Seal research. With Amado in front of him, his confidence in solving that problem had just increased considerably.
A researcher of this caliber wasting himself on clone work was a genuine loss.
Clone technology was a detour. Researching the Karma Seal and opening a path to shinobi immortality was the work that would actually elevate the shinobi world's capabilities.
Yasushi looked the man over, a talent who by some assessments exceeded even Orochimaru in research aptitude, and nodded pleasantly.
"I have heard of you."
"My name is Uchiha Yasushi. I am also Isshiki Otsutsuki's, or rather Jigen's, successor."
"Jigen is dead. The Kara Organization falls under my management from this point forward."
"Any objections?"
Amado's gaze moved carefully over Yasushi's eyes and his physical form. He had his own private theory about what he was looking at, but he kept it to himself, and inclined his head slightly to indicate his position.
"I came here only to do research. As long as you support my work the way Jigen did, I have no objection."
"Then we will get along perfectly." Yasushi walked over, clapped him on the shoulder, and offered a guarantee. "You will have my full support. I will also be bringing in additional research talent to help expand your capabilities."
"I am grateful." Amado gestured to the surrounding clones. They dispersed. Whoever was monitoring from the central control station saw this and cancelled the alarm, restoring normal conditions throughout the facility.
Amado turned and led Yasushi forward.
"Who are you planning to bring in?"
"Research talent is not especially common in the shinobi world."
"Three people. Orochimaru from Konoha, a Konoha rogue named Hiruko, and someone out of the Land of the Sky called Shennong."
Amado frowned slightly.
"Orochimaru's reputation I know. Exceptional capability. But I am not aware of any notable research output from him. The other two names mean nothing to me."
Yasushi waved it off.
"Once they arrive, you can evaluate them yourself. I would not bring people here to waste your resources."
He extended his arm and showed Amado the mark.
"You recognize this."
"I would like you and your future colleagues to study it thoroughly and determine how to remove it from my body."
Amado had noticed it already. When Yasushi named the goal directly, something shifted in his expression.
He looked at Yasushi's face carefully before asking:
"This is something that can make a person dramatically stronger almost immediately. Are you certain you want to remove it?"
Yasushi gave him a sideways look and dropped any pretense of patience.
"Stop probing. Let me be direct."
"This Karma Seal is the Otsutsuki clan's reincarnation mechanism. It progressively remakes the host's body toward the Otsutsuki template. Once the process is complete, Isshiki Otsutsuki reincarnates into my body."
"Do you still think it sounds like a good thing to have?"
"I do not know what kind of arrangement you had with Jigen, but I doubt you were ever fully loyal to a creature that has been alive for a thousand years."
"Whatever he promised you, I will match it."
"I also do not care about your various private interests and plans. Keep them."
"There is only one thing I care about, which is getting this Karma Seal off my body."
"Am I being clear?"
"Completely clear." Amado straightened immediately. "Please set your mind at ease, Lord Yasushi. The technology involved, compressing consciousness into chakra data, is of great personal interest to me. I will apply myself to it seriously."
"Good." Yasushi gave him one more pat on the shoulder and gestured ahead. "Now take me to see the miniature Ten-Tails."
Amado led him to the facility's central core, and there it was. Confined inside a heavy sealing array, roaring without stop.
"What a lively little creature."
Yasushi stood outside the barrier and stared at the miniature Ten-Tails with open covetousness, eyes lit up, practically drooling.
The miniature Ten-Tails seemed to sense his intentions immediately and erupted into furious howling, throwing itself against the seal in every direction. The seal held it completely in place.
"So much energy."
Yasushi smiled, nodded, and started moving to absorb it.
Then he caught himself on a problem he had not worked through yet.
He was the One-Tail's Perfect Jinchuriki. If he absorbed the Ten-Tails, what happened to Shukaku?
Simply absorb them together and let the Ten-Tails consume the One-Tail from the inside? Setting aside whether that was even possible, two entities fighting for dominance in his body was not an appealing image.
There was also the more immediate issue. Shukaku had been cooperative and genuinely helpful since they reached an understanding. He was not the type to repay that with a disposal.
Put Shukaku aside first, then absorb the Ten-Tails? But extracting a tailed beast from its jinchuriki normally meant immediate death.
Yasushi thought through the exceptions.
Kaguya Otsutsuki and Hagoromo both had survival baselines too far outside the norm to be useful reference points.
Gaara's case did not apply either. When Shukaku was extracted, he had been kept alive only because Chiyo exchanged her life for his.
The applicable examples were Killer B and Naruto. Killer B had kept a tentacle in reserve. Naruto had received supplemental yin Nine-Tails chakra. Both had survived because the chakra loss was not instantaneous and a replacement supply arrived in time.
The principle was clear. Survive the extraction moment, get chakra into the system fast enough, and the jinchuriki lives.
He had already worked out a version of this before. He had separated a portion of Shukaku's tail and sealed it into Jun and Yugao, making them pseudo-jinchuriki. The same technique could be applied to himself.
Shukaku would almost certainly agree. The separation would leave Yasushi significantly weakened, but that was the least important consideration. As long as he did not die in the moment of extraction, the Mangekyo's Yang Release healing technique would repair the damage. Rest afterward, then absorb the Ten-Tails.
One remaining problem: this was not the right location for the procedure.
Amado had made a favorable impression, but trusting him at this stage was premature.
The only people Yasushi trusted completely right now were Jun or his own family back home. His family was not an option to involve in this. He had already heard about the awkward position the Uchiha Divine Nation intelligence had put the clan in at Konoha. The last thing he needed was to hand someone a reason to target them further. The Uchiha had a tendency to go in unexpected directions under enough pressure, and he was not confident enough in the butterfly effects to risk it.
Jun it would be.
Having settled on that, Yasushi dismissed the idea of absorbing the miniature Ten-Tails here and now.
He turned to Amado.
"Run a full physical assessment on me first."
"I have two Karma Seals. Record both separately and compare them. Look for differences."
"Two?" Amado blinked, his expression shifting into something unsettled.
Yasushi did not explain. He told Amado to begin.
Amado brought Yasushi to the laboratory, set up every instrument available, and started the process. Yasushi entered the second transformation state first, allowed full data collection, then cancelled and held still for a baseline reading. Blood samples, cellular tissue, chakra information, all recorded for each state. Then he activated the Karma Curse Mark on his neck and let Amado run the same collection again.
Watching Yasushi shift between forms with this much control, Amado's eyes gradually lit up with something he could not contain.
He had been watching Jigen carry the Karma Seal for years. He had wanted to study it directly from the beginning and had never been able to say so, restricted to peripheral research and clone work as supporting technology while the actual subject sat three meters away.
The frustration of that, seeing something extraordinary right in front of him and being unable to touch it, had been with him for a long time.
And now Yasushi had arrived, bringing with him not one but two seals, a Byakugan, a Black Eye, a Mangekyo Sharingan, and a Rinnegan, all in one body and all available for examination.
Amado stared at the collected biological data, cross-referencing the gene expression patterns between transformation states, and his composure broke down into pure scientific excitement.
"This is impossible."
"One body. Same individual. The genetic expression is completely different between states."
"This chakra-based genetic editing has this much reach?"
He produced a long list of additional tests and asked Yasushi to keep going. Yasushi understood none of the underlying science, but he had considerable respect for research talent applied seriously to a problem, and he agreed to everything Amado asked without resistance.
Following Amado's instructions, he cycled between the Karma Curse Mark and the Karma Seal activation several more times, running a variety of different tests in each state.
When the final round of results came in, Amado went quiet.
Chapter 498: Return to Konoha
Yasushi noticed Amado's expression was off and asked directly.
"What is it?"
Amado turned, passed the report over, and pointed to a specific section.
"Across all these measurement cycles, your genetic profile has been slightly different each time."
Yasushi glanced down at the page. Dense tables, columns of figures, technical terminology. He handed it back without reading further.
"Different seals produce different physical changes in the host. That seems straightforward. Is there actually a problem?"
"No, that is not what I am referring to." Amado shook his head. "I am not comparing the two different Karma Seals against each other. I am comparing the same seal against itself across multiple readings."
"Even within the same Karma Seal state, your genetic profile is different each time we measure it."
"What does that mean?"
Amado drew a slow breath.
"We have been operating in complete ignorance."
"Your assumption that using one Karma Seal would overwrite and cancel out the effects of the other is incorrect."
"In reality, every activation of either seal produces some degree of permanent change in you."
"The change from any single activation may be quite small. But it cannot be overwritten or cancelled by the other seal."
"In other words, the more times you activate both seals, the more permanent genetic modification accumulates. And none of it reverses."
Yasushi scratched his head.
"Is that good or bad?"
"Roughly half of each."
Amado explained.
"On the positive side, as more permanent hybrid gene expression accumulates, you may eventually reach a point where you do not need either seal active to access both sets of abilities. You might be able to switch freely between the different ocular techniques without any activation at all."
Yasushi's mood lifted immediately.
But Amado continued.
"On the negative side, as more permanent hybrid gene expression accumulates, the integration of both seals into your underlying biology deepens."
"Even if we eventually develop a method to remove the Karma Seal from your arm, it may not matter at that point."
"Because even after the seal itself is extracted, the genetic information it has written into your body will already be fully fused. Removing the seal does not remove what it has already done."
The color left Yasushi's face.
"That is not acceptable."
"Do you have any answer for it?"
Amado shook his head with a regretful expression.
"I do not have a complete solution yet. But as long as you stop cycling repeatedly between the two seals, the accumulation will not worsen."
Yasushi absorbed this, unhappy about it but without an alternative.
"Fine. I will be more careful going forward."
He paused.
"I just got comfortable with the Black Eye techniques, and now I have to leave them alone."
He pushed past the disappointment.
"Make copies of some introductory research materials for me to take. I need something compelling enough to bring Orochimaru and the others here. Having material like this should make the recruitment considerably easier."
Amado was in the best position to know exactly which data would be most tempting to fellow researchers. He selected carefully, chose the most irresistible pieces, sealed them into scrolls, and handed them over.
Yasushi pocketed the scrolls and stood to leave.
On his way out, passing the clones moving through the corridors, something occurred to him.
"Amado. Can these clones be made from any donor? Including daimyo?"
Amado paused.
"The genuinely difficult part of clone research is replicating chakra properties and bloodline limits. Cloning ordinary people without unusual traits is not technically challenging."
"Though I would question what use it serves."
"What use?" Yasushi stopped and stared at him with something close to exasperation.
"You people have been so dazzled by raw power that you have completely missed how the world actually works."
"Shinobi with all their strength still have to bow their heads before people with authority. If we control the people who hold authority, we indirectly control the entire shinobi world."
"With the right people in place, we can direct powerful shinobi like working tools. Ask for any research data we want and get it. Consolidate researchers from every village into a single institute and actually produce results at meaningful scale."
"Look at the small picture: effective allocation of resources across the shinobi world."
"Look at the large picture: shinobi world peace."
"Funding going into research instead of war budgets. How is that not better?"
Amado's expression was shifting visibly.
His personal interest in peace as an abstract ideal was limited, but research consumed enormous amounts of funding and test subjects. If what Yasushi described were actually achievable, a centralized research institute with unlimited access to materials and compulsory participants, that was genuinely appealing.
"Let's settle it now." Yasushi clapped his hands once. "I will have White Zetsu collect genetic material from daimyo and major nobles across every country. You develop the clones. Then I work with Black Zetsu from the inside to replace the originals."
He assigned the task, waved cheerfully, and walked out.
He had not expected this visit to produce that particular development. Transformation Jutsu was useful but fragile under serious scrutiny. Biological clones were a different category entirely. No examination would catch them.
Amado was pleased as well.
The management had changed. The old man who had looked at everyone like insects underfoot and trusted no one had been replaced by a child who clearly knew how to use people well and seemed easy to work with.
No more spending every day in quiet dread. Full support for the research. And the possibility of a title he had never imagined reaching: ruler of the shinobi world from the shadows.
This arrangement suited both of them very well.
The space-time technique was genuinely extraordinary.
Under normal conditions, the journey from the inner sanctum base to Konoha would have taken days. Now Yasushi simply moved one hand, opened a black-red spatial portal in the air in front of him, stepped through, and looked up at familiar surroundings.
One step. Home.
He pushed the door open quietly. The sounds of cooking from the kitchen, utensils clattering in a familiar rhythm. He walked over and found exactly what he expected: his mother's back, busy at the stove.
"Mom. I'm back."
She went rigid. She turned.
When she saw him, her face broke open entirely. She crossed the room and wrapped both arms around him, and the tears came without stopping.
Yasushi was not equipped for this. He spent considerable effort on reassurances before she finally steadied.
She sat him down, looked at the state of him with an expression that moved through several complicated emotions at once, and asked:
"Yasushi. Did you really go over to the aliens?"
"The what?"
He genuinely did not follow. "What aliens?"
She explained what the village had been saying. By the time she finished, Yasushi's teeth were grinding.
Black Zetsu. The man had absolutely no limits on what he would say to get what he wanted.
He could not go kill him during an active cooperation period, unfortunately. He filed the grudge away for later.
"That scheming snake will say anything. Don't worry about it."
He moved quickly to reassure her.
"Mom, this is not because I joined the Otsutsuki. I killed Isshiki Otsutsuki and absorbed his bloodline. That is why I look like this."
He had intended to keep the shinobi world's complications away from his family, not wanting them to worry. But the current situation made not explaining worse than explaining. He talked through it at length.
His mother's eyes held wariness even after he finished.
He had no better option. He activated the Karma Curse Mark, felt the Six Paths Yasushi chakra push through and replace the Otsutsuki surface features, and let the Sharingan appear in his eyes again.
Whatever accumulated genetic modification the activation added was a problem for later. Family came first right now.
At the sight of the familiar Sharingan, she relaxed and grabbed his hand.
"Yasushi. Come home."
"Your father told me. The Lord Hokage has been asking after you. He has sent people out to look for you several times."
"Don't worry about that."
"Lord Fugaku promised your father in private that he will protect you completely. The thing with Elder Danzo, you can redeem yourself through merit. The Lord Hokage is a forgiving man. He will allow it."
Yasushi nodded carefully, making agreeable sounds. He was not going to tell her he had already built his own operation outside and had no current plans to go back to playing by Konoha's rules.
"Right, right. Mom, please don't worry. I still have a few things to finish outside. Once everything is resolved, I'll come back to Konoha."
She brightened immediately and pulled him into further conversation.
"And Yugao, that poor girl. Ever since you left, she has blamed herself every day. She keeps saying she went for reinforcements too slowly and that is why you and Jun ended up as missing-nin."
"She has been so quiet these last few years. She trains constantly. She joined search parties looking for you a few times but never found you."
Yasushi made agreeable noises throughout, and privately his thinking was shifting.
Before, he had been following the outline of the "future intelligence" toward building the Uchiha Divine Nation. But after taking on Isshiki's legacy, he found himself wondering why unified conquest was necessary at all.
The drive toward unification had always come from a previous life's fixed ideas about how the world should be organized. And with the Uchiha Divine Nation as a future template already confirmed, it had seemed like the obvious path.
But he had only thought about himself. He had not thought once about what his parents and his clan would go through to get there.
If he actually launched a war of unification, even if he succeeded in the end, how many clan members would die in the process? How much pain would it cause the people sitting across from him right now?
He had never considered it. He had been consumed by a transmigrator's ambitions and had treated the people around him as scenery.
It had taken his mother talking at him in the kitchen to make him actually see it.
If that was the problem, then the method was adjustable. Nobody said unification required war.
Peaceful transformation was also a path forward. Pressure the right people at the right points, and the shinobi world could come together without the destruction.
The more Yasushi turned the idea over, the more sense it made. He nodded to himself quietly.
Good. Once the Fire Country daimyo was replaced, he would have that person issue the orders to push Hiruzen out and put Minato in position. Then Minato would extend a pardon, and Yasushi could walk back into Konoha openly.
After that, the shinobi world would officially belong to its various nations, and quietly belong to Uchiha Yasushi.
Perfect.
Having settled on this, he turned back to his mother and kept the conversation warm, drawing her away from everything that had been weighing on her until her mood had completely lifted.
That evening, Takeshi came home.
Seeing his son back without warning, Takeshi's joy was immediate and genuine. The family ate together properly for the first time in years, and eventually the conversation came back to returning to the village.
But Takeshi had a shinobi's awareness of how the wind was blowing inside the village, which made him less eager to push for a quick return than his wife.
"Lord Fugaku's eyes are nearly gone."
"The village has sent him to the front multiple times. He has distinguished himself in the field, but the toll on his ocular power has been enormous. The engagement against the Otsutsuki, the only one who died was Hanzo, that man who could not read his own position clearly enough, the so-called Amekage. Outside of that, the only serious casualty was Lord Fugaku himself."
"He was brought back alive, but the injuries are severe. He will not be able to fight for some time."
"Many people in the clan are furious about it. They believe the Hokage deliberately allowed Lord Fugaku to be badly wounded and is using the front lines to suppress us."
"The radical faction's enthusiasm for the idea of a so-called divine nation is not entirely about the clan's pride. It is also connected to every indignity the clan has absorbed over these years."
"I am worried that if you return now, you will end up in the same position as Lord Fugaku."
Yasushi listened without speaking.
He had been at that battle. He had watched the whole thing. He knew Hiruzen had not engineered Fugaku's injuries. Isshiki had specifically needed to eliminate the Susanoo defense because it was too strong to work around. That was the real reason.
But a prejudice fixed in someone's heart was a mountain. Even if he said it, the clan would not necessarily believe him.
And he was not inclined to defend the village anyway.
This particular incident may have been an accident. But the repeated front-line deployments before it had absolutely been intended to exhaust Fugaku's ocular power. Hiruzen had earned the suspicion, even if not the blame for this specific moment.
"I understand, Father."
"Please do not worry."
"I am working through the daimyo's connections right now. Once I have that path open, I will arrange for Hiruzen to step down and have Minato-sensei take the position."
"When that happens, that will be the right moment for me to come back."
Takeshi thought about Minato's approach to things and felt his concern ease considerably.
"That would be ideal."
"Using the daimyo's channels is a sound method. I would not have thought of it."
"Knowing you are safe out there is all your mother and I needed to hear. We are both waiting for the day you come back to us."
Father and son raised their fists and bumped them together. They looked at each other and smiled. Agreement reached.
Chapter 499: For the Peace and Safety of the Shinobi World, We Need a New Six Paths Sage
Akatsuki base.
The newly built meeting hall was spacious and well-lit, but the air inside it was oppressive enough to make the space feel small.
All five Kage sat around the conference table with expressions that could have been carved from stone. The elite shinobi from each village stood well back against the walls, keeping their distance.
The battle against Isshiki Otsutsuki had cost them the newly appointed Amekage Hanzo and had produced no results whatsoever. The entire alliance had come away with its dignity damaged.
But the encounter had also done something else. The shinobi world's leadership had now seen with their own eyes exactly how powerful a genuine Otsutsuki opponent was. There had been no shortage of skeptics about the future intelligence before that battle. There were none afterward.
When the delegations returned from the field, every nation's investment in the Shinobi Alliance increased substantially. The half-hearted compliance and quiet stalling that had characterized early cooperation disappeared and was replaced by genuine support.
With six nations actually contributing, the Defense Coordination Center's output improved considerably.
And apparently that progress had encouraged the Akatsuki to push further.
Black Zetsu was now proposing that the tailed beasts be gathered together, the Ten-Tails revived, and Nagato made its jinchuriki, entering Six Paths Mode to achieve a level of power that could meet the coming invasion on equal terms.
This produced immediate and furious opposition from every direction.
"Absolutely not."
The Raikage brought his palm down on the table hard enough to split a new crack across the hardwood surface he had already damaged once before.
"Tailed beasts are each village's strategic asset. They are not negotiable. There is no version of this conversation where we hand them over."
The other Kage agreed without reservation.
"Other resources are open for discussion. Tailed beasts are not."
"Do not cite the history of the Ten-Tails being divided. We know what they were. What matters is that they belong to our villages now, and that will not change."
"When the Shinobi Alliance was formed, the explicit agreement was that the Akatsuki would coordinate resources for the shared defense against the alien invasion and would not interfere in village affairs. The moment you ask for tailed beasts, you have broken that agreement completely."
Every voice in the room directed itself at Nagato, who sat at the head of the table and listened without responding. This was not an area where he had any experience or instinct for navigation. He had placed everything in Jiraiya's hands.
Jiraiya rose to it immediately, arguing back at the five Kage with enough heat to have qualified as a separate battle.
"You were all there. You saw what happened."
"We sent everything we had and he still escaped."
"Lord Hanzo, the new Amekage, died in that engagement."
"The jinchuriki in that battle were as effective as children against him, and this was a single wounded scout who had been hiding in the shinobi world in a damaged body."
"When the Otsutsuki arrive in force, what do we use to stop them?"
"What we need is not ordinary shinobi. We need the absolute peak of power."
"We need a Ten-Tails jinchuriki."
"The only way to have any realistic chance against what is coming is to let Lord Nagato reach his full potential before they arrive. We need him in Six Paths Mode. We need a new Six Paths Sage."
The five Kage's expressions darkened further.
They could not entirely dismiss the argument. The battle had left impressions that were not fading. The enemy's Black Eye had made every form of ninjutsu, forbidden technique, and sealing jutsu they knew feel pointless. When he had decided to leave, none of them had been able to track him. The casualty count during the engagement had left each of them privately uncertain whether they personally could have survived a direct exchange.
Hanzo had died instantly from a single kick. There was no reason to believe any of them were in a substantially different position.
But fear of the enemy did not translate into willingness to surrender strategic assets. This was not one person's decision to make. It involved every aspect of village governance, every obligation to the shinobi under their command.
The Raikage stated the refusal again in plain terms.
"Extracting a tailed beast kills the jinchuriki. Cloud Village will not allow our people to suffer that fate."
"Even facing a threat this powerful, other methods exist. We can explore them. A Ten-Tails jinchuriki is not the only possible solution."
"Cloud has retained several of the Sage of Six Paths Tools. When we next engage Isshiki Otsutsuki, we will bring those tools and commit them to the fight."
Hiruzen took a different approach, leaning on his years and on the specific weight his relationship with Jiraiya carried.
"Jiraiya."
"I know you carry the shinobi world's future on your shoulders. I know how seriously you take this."
"But most problems have more than one solution."
"A Ten-Tails jinchuriki may be the most efficient path. It is almost certainly not the only one."
"You know Kushina's situation. You know what she and Minato have together. Can you truly tell me you are willing to watch those two be separated?"
He drew a slow breath and let the smoke out.
"Where Konoha's leaves scatter, fire keeps burning."
"I am old. The future belongs to the young."
"If we face Isshiki Otsutsuki again, I will find the right moment to use the Dead Demon Consuming Seal."
"I will leave my life there if I have to, but I will seal that enemy permanently."
Jiraiya could argue with five Kage who were being obstinate. He had limited ability to argue with the man who had raised him, who understood him well enough to skip the reasoning entirely and go straight for the one line that would shut the argument down.
He was not going to force his teacher toward a death technique.
He would rather face ten furious Raikage than one smiling Hiruzen.
With Jiraiya effectively neutralized against Hiruzen, Black Zetsu stepped in to continue pushing the proposal.
"If the concern is that extracting the tailed beast kills the jinchuriki, I can address that. I can guarantee that none of the jinchuriki who contribute their tailed beasts will die."
"And if the concern is losing the tailed beasts entirely, that is equally unfounded. The Ten-Tails was originally separated into nine beasts by the Six Paths Sage. Once the invading Otsutsuki are defeated, Lord Nagato can repeat the same process. Every village gets its beast back. Whoever it belonged to before simply comes to collect it."
No one spoke. The five Kage's expressions told the story.
Black Zetsu smiled and continued.
"I understand this is not a decision any of you can make unilaterally. Your villages need to be consulted. Your daimyo need to be informed."
"So naturally there will be compensation for the temporary loss."
"The Wood Release users I awakened in each of your villages. They have had time to adapt to their abilities by now. Are you satisfied with their progress?"
"For the sake of the shinobi world's future, for Lord Nagato to successfully become the new Six Paths Sage, I am prepared to provide additional high-quality White Zetsu. One for each jinchuriki who contributes. Their Wood Release awakening would serve as a functional replacement for the tailed beast's power during the loan period."
"And when you reclaim your tailed beasts, the Wood Release does not disappear. Consider it the rental fee."
The five Kage sat up slightly.
When the Shinobi Alliance had been established, Black Zetsu had provided one Wood Release awakening per village as agreed. Those individuals had not been deployed in the recent battle, held back to continue their accelerated training without the risk of dying before their abilities were fully developed. But their progress reports had reached every Kage, and the numbers described were genuinely alarming.
Without Sage Mode, the techniques these individuals were producing were already sufficient to pin down entire groups of jonin with Nativity of a World of Trees. The growth trajectory was steep.
Another Wood Release user per village, in exchange for a temporary loan of the tailed beast. It was not an obviously bad arrangement on its face.
The thought crossed every mind simultaneously and was dismissed just as quickly.
Wood Release was a significant advantage. But allowing a living Six Paths Sage to exist was not something any of them could permit.
If Nagato achieved that level and kept it, the Kage stopped being village leaders and became the Akatsuki's subordinates. Permanently.
The experienced Kage exchanged glances without speaking, an understanding reached in silence.
Only the Kazekage, Sunagakure's new appointment, either lacked the political instinct to read the room, saw an opportunity worth grabbing regardless of what the others thought, or had simply grown too accustomed to agreeing to things when pressed. He broke first.
"Sunagakure does not object in principle."
"Though our tailed beast was taken from us by Uchiha Yasushi. If the Akatsuki wants the One-Tail for the Ten-Tails revival, Shukaku will have to be taken back from Yasushi first."
"In our situation, can we still be counted for the Wood Release exchange?"
Black Zetsu could not have been happier to install another White Zetsu parasite in a powerful shinobi.
"Of course. Absolutely."
"Lord Kazekage, please rest easy. The Akatsuki does not recognize seizure by force. Whatever Uchiha Yasushi took, Shukaku still belongs to Sunagakure. We will not accept any other position on that."
"As long as Sunagakure agrees to contribute the One-Tail to the Ten-Tails revival, the Wood Release slot is yours."
"Say the word today. Tomorrow I can begin the activation for your village's candidate."
"Recovering Shukaku from Uchiha Yasushi is something you can leave entirely to us. Not a single Sunagakure shinobi needs to be involved."
"Wonderful. Then we agree."
The Kazekage accepted with a laugh, completely unbothered by the looks from the four Kage beside him that suggested he had just made himself everyone's enemy.
The first crack in the alliance between the five major nations had opened.
Having secured Sunagakure, Black Zetsu turned his pleasant expression toward the remaining four Kage and spent a generous amount of time praising the Kazekage's vision and selfless commitment to the greater good.
He never said anything directly. He did not need to. The implication was clear. Look at how the Kazekage has stepped up. Same rank, same responsibility. How does that gap get so wide?
The four Kage's expressions became progressively more unpleasant. The Kazekage was sitting with his head down over his tea, and every one of them would have liked to reach across the table and do something about that.
His beast had been stolen, he had no leverage to argue from, and rather than dealing with his own problem quietly he was dragging everyone else down with him. Zero backbone, zero reliability, completely unfit for the position.
Whatever was left of Sunagakure's credibility had just been spent.
After exchanging a look, Hiruzen was the one who spoke for the remaining four, wearing his usual mild smile.
"This is a matter of considerable weight. We will need to consult with our village elders before any decision can be made."
"Agreed. The elders and the daimyo both. This is not something that can be resolved quickly."
"Good things are worth waiting for. There is no need to rush something this important. Why not focus on recovering the One-Tail first, and by the time that is done, perhaps we will have finished our internal discussions."
Four different voices, one consistent message: delay.
Veteran politicians running out the clock collectively was a wall that no counterargument could breach.
The meeting ended without resolution.
Watching the delegations file out, Black Zetsu found himself thinking that Yasushi's clone daimyo project was looking more necessary by the moment.
Working alongside these people, nothing was ever going to get done.
Better to simply take the shinobi world's authority directly and use the daimyo to compel the Kage, turning this collection of self-important old hands into something more manageable.
Having settled on this, Black Zetsu slipped quietly out of the hall, located White Zetsu, and instructed them to begin infiltrating the residences of daimyo and nobles across every nation, collecting cellular material alongside their intelligence work and passing it to Yasushi for clone production.
Then he went directly to the intelligence center and began searching for any trace of Hiruko and Shennong.
Chapter 500: The Sixth Great Nation Expands Again
To avoid being pressed further about contributing tailed beasts, all four Kage retreated to their respective villages as quickly as they could manage.
Hiruzen arrived home to an immediately delivered piece of bad news.
"Lord Hokage. Orochimaru has left the village."
"What?"
The pipe nearly fell from his mouth.
"What reason did he give?"
"He said human life is too fragile, that shinobi who exist only as killing tools have no real meaning, and that he intends to pursue something greater."
The ANBU agent kept his head down and extended a letter.
Hiruzen took it and read through it quickly, then let out a long breath and sank into his chair. He looked as though he had aged a decade in the space of a minute.
Minato's gaze moved briefly over the letter without reaching for it. He spoke carefully.
"Please do not take it too hard, Lord Hokage."
"The recent battle was extremely brutal. Perhaps it left Orochimaru with a great deal to think through. He may need time away. I believe he will return."
"After all, the village is his home."
Hiruzen made a tired sound and waved the words off.
"Tsunade left. Jiraiya left. And now Orochimaru as well."
"It reflects poorly on me as Hokage. I have let them down."
A pause.
"Let him go."
"He left properly, at least. He is not a missing-nin. That gives us something to hold onto."
"Officially, Orochimaru departed on a mission. We do not process this as a defection."
A matter of that weight was buried without creating any visible disturbance in the village.
In the meantime, Orochimaru, under Yasushi's escort, made his way into the Kara Organization and was installed directly as an inner sanctum member.
When Amado and Orochimaru sat down together for the first time, they found in each other a counterpart they had not expected and could not have anticipated meeting. Both were deeply satisfied.
Shortly afterward, White Zetsu sent through the locations of Hiruko and Shennong. Yasushi set out to recruit them.
Hiruko was straightforward.
The process was not pleasant, but the outcome was acceptable. At this point in time, his Chimera Technique was still in its earliest form, underdeveloped and of limited practical use, and his combat power was well below what it would eventually become. A thorough beating followed by a formal offer produced agreement without further argument. He was sensible about power dynamics.
Shennong was a different situation.
Shennong had still not located the Zero-Tails and was currently drifting through the shinobi world with the grievance of a destroyed nation pressing on him constantly, looking for any path toward revenge against Konoha and restoration of the Land of the Sky.
When Yasushi appeared and named his background as a surviving Sky Village remnant, Shennong's response was immediate and not measured.
"Damn you!"
"You lackeys of the great nations found me even through this many layers of concealment!"
"But I will not go down without a fight!"
"Try this. It is a physical technique I developed by fusing medical ninjutsu into close-range combat."
Shennong shouted, used two fingers like a blade, and drove them into specific points on his own body. His chakra spiked abruptly and his musculature expanded visibly across his whole frame.
But with no Zero-Tails providing sustained power, this technique clearly could not hold for long. It resembled the Eight Gates Formation in the sense that it burned through reserves faster than they could be replenished.
The ceiling was probably lower too.
Yasushi exchanged a few passes with him to get a sense of the force behind it, lost interest in the half-finished technique, jumped upward, and flicked a handful of black receivers downward. They drove through Shennong's swelling muscles and pinned him to the ground from multiple angles.
Shennong screamed, blood spraying freely across his body, and lay struggling helplessly in the earth as the technique's chakra drain was suppressed by the receivers.
Watching the combat power he had exhausted himself to generate produce no effect, the emotional damage hit harder than the physical pain.
"Impossible."
"How can my technique fail this completely?"
"I have poured years into this."
Watching the tears come and seeing the look of utter devastation, Yasushi got down quickly from the air, landed, and reassured him before the despair could collapse into something irreversible.
"Do not be so hard on yourself."
"The medical ninjutsu integration shows genuine originality. Your problem is that your chakra quality and volume cannot sustain the consumption rate."
"Also, the person you ran into is me. Someone at the absolute peak of this world. You cannot call this a failure of your technique."
He talked Shennong back from the edge by a significant margin, after which the immediate problem became that the overdraft on life force had put him in genuine danger.
Yasushi had no clean option and used Yang Release to replenish what had been lost.
After all of that, Shennong stabilized. The expression he turned on Yasushi remained unfriendly.
"Who are you and why are you here?"
Yasushi explained his identity and outlined the plan.
"Why didn't you lead with that?"
Shennong hit his own thigh, expression caught somewhere between irritation and complicated relief.
"Why would I turn something like this down?"
"Because you did not give me the chance." Yasushi looked at him without charity. "The moment I mentioned where you came from, you charged at me like someone had lit a fire under you. Now you want to blame me for that?"
"Fair. That was on me." Shennong accepted the point without argument and apologized with visible sincerity.
"Then let's go." Yasushi stood up to leave.
"Wait." Shennong spoke before Yasushi could move. "I am willing to join. But I have one condition."
"Name it."
"The Kara Organization must eventually help me rebuild my country and my village on the original site of the Land of the Sky."
"And I have a deep score to settle with Konoha. The organization needs to support that when the time comes."
"No." Yasushi refused without a pause.
"My goal is to merge all nations into one. Even the five great villages will eventually be dissolved. There is no scenario where a small independent Land of the Sky survives that."
Shennong made a cold sound and looked skeptical.
"Your plan sounds good. Good plans do not always get implemented."
"I have seen the five major nations up close. I know how difficult toppling their control actually is."
"There is a real chance your organization gets discovered midway and gets crushed by a coalition of great nations before it finishes."
"If you help me restore the Land of the Sky first, you will have a place to hide if the Kara Organization is destroyed. A fallback. Some of the work survives even in the worst outcome."
Yasushi laughed out loud.
"So that is your reasoning."
"You looked straightforward enough. There is more going on inside than I gave you credit for."
"I have always been willing to make room for talented people."
"Since you do not trust us to succeed, let us both give a little ground and make a specific agreement."
"We help you restore the Land of the Sky first, so you can close out that particular obsession. Once we have merged the five major nations, the Land of the Sky merges in as well."
"But if we fail to merge the five major nations, the Land of the Sky remains independent."
"Does that work?"
"It does."
The terms far exceeded what Shennong had considered possible. He accepted the slope being offered and followed Yasushi to join the Kara Organization.
With Orochimaru, Hiruko, and Shennong added to the roster, the research output accelerated noticeably. Amado had spent years working through problems entirely alone, with no one to discuss his conclusions with. Having capable partners meant he wanted to be in the laboratory every hour of the day and found reasons to be.
Yasushi had no interest in the research itself and left them to it, going to check on his captive.
The miniature Ten-Tails had not lost any of its energy in the time since his last visit. It saw him and immediately lunged toward the barrier with great enthusiasm, howling loud enough to shake the room.
He looked at it and found himself hesitating.
The original plan had been to separate Shukaku and absorb the Ten-Tails once the research team was assembled. But after everything that had happened, the Black Eye's capabilities were looking increasingly indispensable. He was reluctant to switch away from them.
The clone daimyo replacement operation was about to begin scaling up. Without space-time technique, even with White Zetsu cooperation from the inside, the replacement rate would be extremely slow. He needed the Daikokuten and Sukunahikona for this phase of the work.
There was also the secondary consideration that his current eyes were already at the Rinnegan level. The urgency of achieving Six Paths Mode had diminished considerably. The shinobi world was not presenting him with a battle he needed to fight immediately. The Ten-Tails was secured and not going anywhere.
He let the urgency go and set the absorption question aside.
A clone worker arrived to present a question from Amado.
"Lord Yasushi. The noble class across the shinobi world is very large. We cannot clone everyone simultaneously. Where should we begin?"
Yasushi thought for a moment.
"Start with the Land of Grass. The sixth great nation's territory already borders it, and it makes no sense to leave them sitting outside the alliance any longer."
"Begin with the lowest-level minor nobility and work upward. Replace each level before moving to the next, and leave the daimyo for last."
"Understood."
The clone turned and departed at speed.
Chakra proved its worth as a universal catalyst. With sufficient chakra provided, the clone embryos developed at a rate that compared to inflation. Within a reasonably short time, a row of completed clones was standing in front of Yasushi for inspection.
He looked them over and checked against the intelligence files. The match was exact. Correct body types, correct ages, heights, weights, and even the correct scars reproduced where they existed. None of it would have been possible without White Zetsu's preliminary data collection.
He had no technical understanding of how the process worked, but results-based assessment left him with a few concerns.
"The memory implants are all correct?"
"Their functional lifespan is only a few months, isn't it?"
"Will any of them do something childish or obviously wrong?"
Shennong answered with a slightly unsettling smile, looking over his completed products with undisguised hostility toward the class they were designed to replace.
"Thanks to the research materials Lord Yasushi provided, direct knowledge compression and transfer is not fully solved yet, but we have made enough progress for basic competency implants."
"Any gaps in the implants will not matter in context. When every noble and family member around them has also been replaced, no small inconsistency will create a problem."
"And even if an ordinary person notices something, their social standing ensures no one in a position of power will take them seriously."
Of the four researchers, Shennong had invested himself in this project more than anyone else. He had volunteered for the daimyo replacement logistics gladly, leaving the other three free to pursue their individual research threads without the administrative overhead.
Yasushi ran through a few more verification questions, found nothing missing, and opened a spatial portal.
On the other side, a minor noble's estate in the Land of Grass. White Zetsu had already positioned there for precise targeting. The portal opened directly into a bedroom.
The household was deep in sleep.
Yasushi gestured. Shennong passed through the portal, collected the noble and his attendants from the bed, and returned. The occupants died without waking, painlessly.
The prepared clone entered, stripped and put on the appropriate clothing, lay down in the bed, and went to sleep.
Yasushi swept the room with his eyes, confirmed no trace was left behind, and closed the portal.
From start to finish, it had taken a few minutes.
The estate's guards were at best chunin level. They did not register the space-time technique's displacement at all.
Yasushi followed White Zetsu's positioning data and opened the next portal.
Through the night, he opened and closed the portal dozens of times, and by morning had successfully replaced a substantial portion of the Land of Grass's minor noble class.
During the day he took additional precautions, shrinking himself and touring the replaced nobles' estates personally.
His precautions turned out to be unnecessary.
Not only were the replacements performing exactly as expected, but even if they had been behaving erratically, it would have drawn no unusual attention. The minor nobility behaved outrageously as a matter of routine. What was normal conduct for this class would have been called outrageous anywhere else.
Nobody policed it. Nobody was in a position to.
Watching this, Yasushi's confidence in replacing the entire class only deepened.
Over the following period, each time a fresh batch of clones was ready, Yasushi opened the portals and delivered them. The Land of Grass's noble class was replaced entirely in succession, working upward from the smallest landholders, with the daimyo replaced last at a nobles' banquet where all the relevant parties were gathered in one place.
A few days afterward, the Land of Grass daimyo convened a noble assembly.
Every noble in attendance, at every level, voted unanimously to merge the Land of Grass into the sixth great nation, the Land of Rain.
The announcement hit the shinobi world like a second shockwave.