Chapter 142: News of Uchiha Hikari
Sasuke's eyes snapped open under the shade of a tree. He was gasping, cold sweat running from his temple.
After being buried under an avalanche of Sakuras with no hope of escape, he'd made the executive decision to pull out of her inner world immediately.
"Sakura!"
He looked toward her first thing.
A fierce gust of wind was sending pink hair whipping wildly. The green eyes shifted — from unhinged, untamed ferocity to pure bewilderment in an instant.
Sakura stared at Tsunade's fist stopped an inch from her face.
"Tch."
"Back, are we."
Tsunade looked at the fist pressed against her own abdomen and withdrew her hand.
"Well?" She glanced at the girl, rolling out the soreness in her palm. This kid hits hard. Right now, she was the only person in the world Tsunade could trade real blows with. "How did it go?"
Sakura came back fully from wherever she'd been — from the Gatling fire, the helicopters, the organized jumping queues — and pressed her brow together.
"Failed. The inner world is too chaotic."
She sounded genuinely deflated.
"Is that so." Tsunade stretched out her aching body, not particularly bothered by the answer. "Nothing goes smoothly on the first try. Learn from it and go again."
Hiruzen had walked over. He looked at his student with quiet reassurance.
"I know that," Sakura said, glancing at him, and then proceeded to describe everything she and Sasuke had encountered.
Chaos. Disorder. Logic that didn't apply anywhere.
That was her inner world.
"Compared to... well." Hiruzen stroked the short beard on his chin. "Sakura's inner world seems to be in direct proportion to Inner Sakura's personality." He turned and waved the dark-haired boy over with a mild expression. "Sasuke. Come tell us your impressions. You went in with her."
Sasuke, who had been hovering uncertainly, felt something settle at being included. He walked over and thought for a moment.
"After entering that world, I noticed my spiritual energy draining much faster than normal. I can usually keep the Sharingan running for two or three hours. Inside there — less than thirty minutes and I was already struggling."
The Yin Release consumption had accelerated significantly—
All three of them arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.
"Yang Release."
Three voices. One moment.
"So it always comes back to Yang Release." Tsunade pressed her lips together.
Sasuke looked between them, genuinely lost.
Yin Release. Yang Release. What are those? Aren't there only five nature transformations?
"It seems Yang Release really is the path forward," Hiruzen said with something like resignation.
He thought back to when Sakura had first brought it up — her original plan had been to work on Yang Release, then potentially combine her strength with his, Tsunade's, and Jiraiya's to develop a Yang Release Body Technique that could withstand the Ryūchi Cave sage pool's corrosive properties for long enough to train the sage mode.
At the time, he'd thought she was already strong enough and had gently redirected her toward learning administrative duties. Plenty of time for capability development.
Looking at it now — not just advisable. Urgent.
"This is going to be difficult," Tsunade admitted with a sigh.
She understood that Yang Release could help. It was the obvious next step.
The reason she hadn't proposed it from the start was that Sakura's Yang Release was already strong. Medical ninjutsu ran on Yang Release, and Sakura's medical ninjutsu was second only to Tsunade herself — she'd mastered the Strength of a Hundred. Her Yang Release foundation was solid.
And even so, the Inner Sakura entity had still formed.
Which meant Inner Sakura's Yin Release was at a level that defied normal expectation. Tsunade had stared at it and concluded it was frankly absurd. No person's Yin Release should be this strong.
Hence her original approach: counter equivalent Yin with equivalent Yin, bring a strong Sharingan user into the inner world, attempt suppression or decomposition directly.
But based on what Sasuke and Sakura had described — that inner world was Inner Sakura. Every building, every figure, every street — all of it was her.
Which explained the rapid drain on Sasuke's Yin Release. He'd been surrounded by it.
"If someone else's Yin Release can be used to help suppress Inner Sakura," Sakura said, turning something over, "could someone else's Yang Release work the same way?"
Who in Konoha right now had strong Yang Release?
Tsunade, obviously.
Then Sakura's eyes lit up.
Kushina. Naruto.
Kushina, as the most direct living representative of the Uzumaki bloodline, had inherited that clan's absurd vitality in full. Her regenerative life force was arguably the most powerful Yang Release active in the ninja world right now.
And Naruto — the Uzumaki constitution was a bit diluted by Minato's input, but the Nine-Tails inside him was the Yang half of the original tailed beast. The chakra was almost entirely Yang Release.
Sakura rubbed her chin, mind moving quickly.
There was one more name. Someone whose Yang Release was, by any honest measure, in a different class entirely.
Nagato.
A paraplegic body sustaining the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, channeling a Rinnegan that wasn't originally his, and still performing beyond any of the five Kage. In a few years he'd assault Konoha single-handedly, demolish it with Shinra Tensei, knock down sage-mode Naruto, fight Nine-Tails Naruto, and follow it all up with Chibaku Tensei — and then somehow have enough left to use Rinne Rebirth on every person who'd died in the attack.
No ordinary Yang Release kept a body that depleted functioning. Whatever Nagato had was in a category of its own.
If he could provide Yang Release for the suppression—
But that was a fantasy. Nagato wasn't going to help her, and she wasn't going to walk into whatever Nagato's current situation was to ask.
"It's worth trying." Tsunade gave a cautious nod.
She knew who Sakura was thinking of. Kushina.
The girl with the same kekkei genkai as Tsunade's grandmother. Her vitality was genuinely terrifying — Tsunade, who was not easily humbled, had to admit she couldn't match it. In a real sense, the Strength of a Hundred was somewhat wasted on Kushina. What Tsunade and Sakura had spent years developing as an S-rank secret technique, Kushina had simply been born with.
As for the Nine-Tails — Tsunade hadn't considered it, and immediately dismissed it. Tailed beast chakra carried the beast's will. Until jinchūriki and beast reached genuine mutual understanding, tailed beast chakra was the most lethal substance going. Involving the Nine-Tails at this stage would most likely kill Sakura outright.
Sasuke looked between the two of them, completely unable to follow the conversation.
Night. The Senju estate.
A red-haired girl was bent over her study materials with focused attention.
She'd been putting in this kind of effort consistently for weeks.
All of it in service of one goal: being on the same team as Sakura.
Kushina pushed her glasses up and read through the dense text filling the page in front of her. Written examinations for Konoha ninja certification. Physical and jutsu requirements she'd already passed without difficulty. This was the last piece.
She'd been born in the darkness of Grass Country, used and discarded throughout her entire childhood.
Then a ray of light had found her.
She'd held onto it ever since. She intended to keep holding on.
Thinking about the pink-haired figure, Kushina felt her mouth curve upward.
That smile was slightly uncontrolled.
"Heheheh... Sakura..."
She wiped the corner of her mouth and returned to her notes with renewed concentration.
A knock.
"Kushina? Are you in?"
Tsunade's voice, from outside.
"I'm here! Lady Tsunade!"
She got up quickly and opened the door to find Tsunade with a large stack of scrolls in her arms.
"Here, let me—"
Kushina took them immediately, carried them to her desk, and set them down.
"What are these?"
She looked at the pile with mild bewilderment.
"Sealing technique materials. Study these for the time being."
Tsunade looked at her with a calm, unhurried expression.
"All of these?" Kushina blinked. She'd been planning to certify as quickly as possible and join Sakura's team. This looked like months of work.
Tsunade seemed to read the thought. She reached out and ran a hand over the girl's smooth red hair.
"These will help Sakura."
The official name for what Tsunade had brought was something else. Its common name was the Adamantine Sealing Chains. The Uzumaki clan's exclusive technique — powerful enough to contain the Nine-Tails — and the source from which the Adamantine Chains Tsunade had deployed against Inner Sakura were derived.
Kushina Uzumaki had once used this technique to bind the Nine-Tails and construct a barrier that not even the Third Hokage could breach.
"Sakura?" Kushina's eyes lit up at the name.
"Yes. Sakura is currently..." Tsunade paused, weighing her words. "Having some difficulties."
The girl who'd been radiating barely-contained enthusiasm a moment ago went still.
Sakura was having difficulties?
What kind?
She thought back — to the moment she'd gone to get Tsunade after Sakura had asked her. When she'd arrived, the figure she saw had looked like Sakura. But the chakra had been completely different.
She remembered it clearly. Sakura's chakra normally felt like tempered steel — unyielding, unshakeable, nothing able to reach through it.
That other presence had felt like chaos. Untamed. Arrogant in a way that had no limit.
Not Sakura. Something wearing Sakura's face.
The memory had stayed with her.
"What happened to Sakura?!"
"Stay calm. We're working on a solution." Tsunade steadied her. "Sakura needs you."
Five words. Simple.
Kushina's eyes settled.
"Understood."
"Work hard, then. Master this technique as fast as you can."
Tsunade ruffled her hair once more and left.
In the corridor, she glanced back at the closed door and felt something move through her.
In a certain sense, Kushina's loyalty wasn't to Konoha.
It was to Sakura.
Sakura probably hadn't thought about that when she'd pulled the girl out of Grass Country's hands. At the time she'd needed someone to fill the Yin Seal — Kushina had been a means to that end.
But Kushina had experienced thirteen years of being used as a tool, discarded, never helped. And then Sakura had appeared and changed everything — gotten her out, set her up with a real life in Konoha.
People who hadn't lived through something like that couldn't understand what Sakura meant to Kushina.
She'd developed a condition.
Its name was Severe Sakura Dependency Syndrome.
Tsunade leaned back against the hallway wall for a moment.
Cutting a pink plant black...
She turned her thoughts back to the present. The war had been running long enough that she'd pieced together its origins.
Sakura's work, from the beginning.
Sunagakure — well, that group had always been the first to ignite a war. No surprise there.
Kumogakure, though — that one really did seem to come down to resource desperation. If Sakura hadn't loosened the restrictions on Earth Country's access in time, Ōnoki would probably have entered the war on a different side.
Everything traced back to Sakura.
Tsunade had stopped thinking of her as an ordinary twelve-year-old some time ago.
She thought of her as a peer.
Natural talent, yes — but strategic thinking wasn't something you could explain away with talent. It was something else entirely.
Sakura had just left the Hokage Tower and was heading toward the Senju estate to work on Yang Release when she nearly walked into a group of people.
"OH!"
"SAKURA-SAN!"
A certain green-clad bowl-cut launched himself at her like a missile.
Sakura looked at the approaching figure — the shine off that haircut was genuinely impressive — and her eyes went dead-fish immediately.
"Sakura-san, your strength is truly incredible! I will work even harder until I surpass you, and only then will I make my formal declaration of pursuit!"
Rock Lee arrived in front of her with both fists clenched, eyes shining with tears of determination.
The battle reports from the Frost Country front had been circulating. With Jiraiya's deliberate promotion and Hiruzen's non-interference, Sakura's performance had gradually become known throughout Konoha and the River Country front.
Lee had heard everything. Even with all five gates open, he knew he couldn't match that.
"THAT'S THE SPIRIT, LEE!"
"LOVE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES!"
"IF YOU CONVEY YOUR BURNING, PASSIONATE ARDOR TO SAKURA-SAN, SHE WILL SURELY BE MOVED TO TEARS!"
"THIS! IS! YOUTH!"
"A YOUTH WITHOUT LOVE — IS THAT EVEN YOUTH AT ALL?!"
The second bowl-cut was aggressively encouraging his student.
"YES! GUY-SENSEI!"
"THIS IS OUR UNDYING YOUTHFUL SPIRIT!"
"SAKURA-SAN! PLEASE ACCEPT MY UNDYING LOVE!"
"No."
—!
A dejected Lee retreated to a corner and began drawing circles in the dirt, the background visibly darkening behind him.
"Two idiots."
Tenten, who had endured this team for years, buried her face in her hands.
"Tenten. Long time."
"And Neji."
Sakura waved at them both.
"Mhm — Sakura, you're amazing! We all heard!" Tenten returned the greeting with a bright smile. Big customer! Big customer!
Neji gave a calm acknowledgment.
He had no complicated feelings about Sakura's excellence. Some people were better than him at things. He accepted that the same way he accepted that some people were worse. He would continue to improve at his own pace, for his own reasons.
"LEE! You cannot surrender at the FIRST rejection!"
"YOUTH NEVER GIVES UP!"
"YOUTH IS THE PASSIONATE ANTHEM OF BURNING LOVE!"
"HOW DARE YOU DISHONOR THE WORD YOUTH—"
Might Guy had spotted his despondent student and was now furious.
"YES, GUY-SENSEI!"
"I WAS WRONG!"
"I WILL NEVER ABANDON MY YOUTH!"
"OR MY LOVE!"
The two of them locked eyes, began weeping openly, and embraced, with what appeared to be crashing ocean waves appearing behind them as a spiritual backdrop.
Sakura's skin crawled.
"Tenten! I'm heading out! You and Neji take care!"
"Goodbye!"
She was gone before Tenten could respond.
Another second in that radius and the Youth Infection would have taken hold.
"Huh? Sakura..."
Tenten watched the retreating pink figure with a pang of disappointment.
She'd just gotten a new shipment in. An absolutely beautiful spiked club that would have been perfect for Sakura—
"GUY-SENSEI! LEE!"
"You two scared away my customer AGAIN!"
Tenten turned on them with fury.
Neji watched in silence.
He had strong reason to believe Tenten's anger was primarily about the lost sales opportunity.
Several days passed.
Sakura spent most of them at the Senju estate, absorbed in Yang Release research.
Tsunade worked alongside her. Hiruzen, despite his considerable responsibilities, found time to catch up on the theoretical foundations — it was his student's welfare at stake.
The most potent Yang Release in Konoha right now wasn't in any person.
It was Hashirama Senju's cells.
Nobody said this out loud. Sakura, Tsunade, and Hiruzen all arrived at the same silent understanding and moved past it.
The mortality rate for implantation was approaching ninety-nine point eight percent.
The reason it wasn't a clean hundred: Tenzō was alive. So was Tobi.
The deeper Sakura went into Yang Release theory, the more her appreciation for White Zetsu grew in a purely academic sense. The creature was an absolute miracle of Yang Release expression — produced by the Demonic Statue, somehow walking around.
She'd started idly considering whether capturing a White Zetsu for research was feasible. Not for Wood Release cells. Purely to study the Yang Release.
Though admittedly the thought of transplanting anything into herself was a bit—
Unpleasant.
She turned a page and paused.
A passage she hadn't noticed before.
In a certain year, utilizing the combined Yang Release of the Uzumaki, the Sarutobi, and allied clans, the Uchiha clan's ultimate weapon was sealed within...
—?
The Uchiha clan's ultimate weapon?
Sakura stared.
Was this referring to... Uchiha Hikari?
Yang Release could seal someone?
She looked more carefully. There were obvious redactions — sections deliberately obscured, paint over ink, the kind of thing done by someone who wanted to make sure certain information didn't travel.
The pages were yellowed and aged. Old. Conservatively two hundred years, well-preserved but unmistakably antique.
She checked the author's notation.
Hashirama Kabe-ma.
She declined to comment on the name.
She noted down the passage and filed it away for after the Inner Sakura situation was resolved. It was either a lead worth following or it wasn't. And if it wasn't — the person in question would surface naturally in about twenty years anyway.
What genuinely surprised her was that a game character like Uchiha Hikari had apparently made it into Senju historical records. That was unexpected.
She filed it away and returned to the Yang Release materials.
Her current foundation already exceeded most practitioners described in these texts. But she kept reading.
Inspiration had a habit of arriving from unexpected places.
"Sakura. Come eat some congee."
The door pushed open gently. A red-haired girl with faint shadows under her eyes walked in carrying a bowl.
"Kushina?"
"You could have slept first."
Sakura took the bowl, concern audible in her voice.
For Sakura's sake, Kushina had essentially been living in the sealing texts for the past few days. Even with genuine talent for sealing techniques, learning from scratch was hard — too much specialized terminology she'd never encountered. She'd been going back to Tsunade constantly for clarification.
"It's fine. If it helps Sakura, then it's worth it."
Kushina scratched at her hair, slightly disheveled from several nights of inadequate sleep.
Sakura looked at her for a moment.
Someone out there needs me now. That's what this is.
(Chapter End)
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