Chapter 49: Conversation With Snake Aunt
A bout of dizziness hit, and the ninja captain used the power of the Sharingan to ‘invade’ Menma’s spirit space.
“Hmph! This is Lord Orochimaru’s gift Sharingan! Let you get a good taste of it!”
The ninja captain grinned ferociously, already picturing in his mind the scene of torturing and killing this arrogant boy.
Suddenly!
A thick blood scent mixed with acrid gunpowder smoke assaulted him, rushing straight to his head and making him stagger back choking.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself in the center of a horrific battlefield!
This was a massive deep pit dozens of kilometers in diameter, littered with various severed limbs and ninja corpses, headbands from various villages glinting coldly in pools of blood.
The number of corpses was immense, over ten thousand!
This corpse mountain and sea of blood scene shocked the ninja captain so much that his hair stood on end and his body trembled!
He jerked his head up and saw at the center of the deep pit, under a scarlet blood moon, a dark red fox coiled atop a corpse mountain piled from countless ninja bodies.
Nine tails swayed in the moonlight.
The coiled fox was like a throne, the piled corpses like steps.
Atop the throne, a spiky-haired boy slowly raised his eyes, the three-tomoe Sharingan swirling with cold indifference overlooking all beings.
“Scram.” A single light word, yet it exploded like thunder in the ninja captain’s mind.
Pfft—
In the real world, the ninja captain was blasted by this rebuke until blood poured from all seven orifices, his chest convulsing violently as if his lungs were about to burst.
He struggled to look up, only to find his two subordinates already dead, while the masked mysterious person stood before him looking down.
“Lord Orochimaru’s this gift, I’ll take it.” Before the words finished, two fingers embedded into the ninja captain’s right eye, digging out this two-tomoe Sharingan eyeball alive.
“Aaah—” The scream didn’t last long.
Menma examined the bloody eyeball in his hand, and a red-haired little girl wearing a black hat tremblingly walked out from the shadows.
“L-Lord… Lord Orochimaru requests your presence.” The little girl looked only four or five years old, holding a glass container with pale green liquid slightly swaying inside.
“Lord Orochimaru considers things quite thoughtfully.” Menma took the glass container and placed the Sharingan inside.
“Let’s go, lead the way ahead.” Then, Menma looked at the little girl before him.
Judging by her hair color and age, if he wasn’t wrong, she should be Tayuya, one of the future Sound Ninja Four.
But right now, she was just a little girl who hadn’t even refined any chakra yet.
“Yes, Lord.” Tayuya respectfully saluted, then walked ahead to lead the way for Menma.
Lord Orochimaru’s base entrance was in a stone house right at the village center, which looked like it would become Otogakure in the future.
But for now, it was just one of Lord Orochimaru’s outposts; the time Lord Orochimaru formally established Otogakure should be after he defected from Akatsuki.
The two walked one after the other down the corridor inside the stone house, soon arriving at the second-floor corridor of a massive underground space plaza.
At the plaza center, several experimental subjects were fighting in an arena, and surrounding rooms like cells held all sorts of experimental subjects, some with limbs already showing severe deformities, even some who had lost their minds and kept slamming against the cell bars.
On the second-floor corridor, a long-haired woman was staring intently at the experimental subjects slaughtering each other in the arena.
Hearing movement behind her, she slowly turned her head, her pale face appearing especially eerie under the dim indoor lighting.
“Lord Orochimaru, when did you become an orphanage director?” Menma’s frivolous voice came from under the mask.
“As expected, can’t hide it from you.” The woman smiled slightly, brushing her hair behind her ear.
“You go down first.” Lord Orochimaru said to Tayuya.
“Yes.”
After Tayuya left, Menma walked to Lord Orochimaru’s side, and together with him, or rather her, they watched the two ‘experimental subjects’ fighting in the middle of the plaza below.
“I searched a long time before finding a ninja who could adapt to the Sharingan, but unfortunately, his strength was too weak, and his talent poor.” Lord Orochimaru’s voice also became somewhat soft and delicate.
“It’s normal for ordinary people to struggle with this bloodline limit.” Menma knew that when Lord Orochimaru was in Konoha, he used ninjas for live experiments and had likely realized the importance of bloodline.
“This batch of test subjects is also quite flawed.” Lord Orochimaru’s snake eyes looked at the experimental subjects below fighting to the death to please him, his gaze ice-cold like looking at trash.
Then, Lord Orochimaru said flatly, “I heard there’s a village in the Land of Water where the villagers got infected by something, gaining power far beyond normal humans, but they also easily rampage out of control. I’m planning to go take a look.”
“You’re actually wanting to check out Kirigakure.” Menma directly exposed Lord Orochimaru’s lie.
Though Menma had already guessed that village should be the Jugo clan, where the nature energy was too dense, causing mutations in the villagers and granting them superhuman abilities, but they would frequently lose control and rampage.
Among them, Jugo, who could innately absorb nature energy, rampaged and killed even more often.
An uncertain village wouldn’t warrant Lord Orochimaru, who had just performed Impure World Reincarnation, to go personally.
So Lord Orochimaru’s real goal was probably to visit Kirigakure, which had become the ‘Blood Mist Village,’ and see if he could lure away a few bloodline limit kids.
“As expected, can’t hide it from you.” Lord Orochimaru stuck out his tongue to lick his lips, not having expected to fool this ‘Shura from the future’ anyway.
“Bloodline power is certainly important, but I suggest you put some effort into cloning technology.” Menma shook the glass container, the Sharingan in the liquid floating slightly with the motion.
“Cloning technology?” Lord Orochimaru looked at that Sharingan, pondering.
Lord Orochimaru valued every word in conversations with the ‘Shura from the future,’ as they might hide ‘future information.’
Like the cloning technology Shura mentioned now.
“I also tried cloning Sharingan before, but those clones… couldn’t awaken Sharingan.” Lord Orochimaru couldn’t help recalling past experiments.
This precious two-tomoe Sharingan had been obtained from Danzō’s hands.
Since establishing Root, Danzō had been collecting Uchiha clan corpses, and during the Third Ninja War, it had yielded him quite a few Sharingan.
But the biggest haul was the Night of the Uchiha Clan Downfall, when Danzō sent Root ninjas to collect at least two-thirds of the Sharingan, including many three-tomoe Sharingan, enough for Danzō to extravagantly use Izanagi.
“The Sharingan is the ultimate external manifestation of Yin Release and spirit energy; whether it awakens or not is related to Yin Release.” In consideration of this Sharingan, Menma revealed some secrets.
“You mean… it’s possible to clone three-tomoe Sharingan?” Lord Orochimaru took interest; if even three-tomoe Sharingan could be cloned, that meant he could mass-produce special jonin level ninjas!
Moreover, he himself was very interested in the Sharingan, hailed as the ninja world’s top bloodline limit, but ordinary Sharingan no longer satisfied him.
At least three-tomoe Sharingan would spark his research desire.
Menma didn’t tell Lord Orochimaru about evolutions beyond three-tomoe Sharingan; his gaze under the mask swept over these experimental subjects in the hall.
The chakra in their bodies was at most genin level, many with bodies already failing, not long to live.
“So, tell me, what trade do you want this time?” Perhaps because he was using a woman’s body, Lord Orochimaru’s tone became coquettish.
Making Menma feel a bit physiologically repulsed.
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