What had happened was a very big matter for Konoha. Orochimaru was one of the sannin. Regardless of prestige or strength, he was second to none. Sarutobi Hiruzen had a pile of aftermath to deal with. Therefore, he hurried back to the Hokage Office to work overtime.
As for Uchiha Tonan, he returned to the Welfare Institution to look after the baby. In the warm room, little Kotoura had just finished drinking the milk and was sleeping soundly in the cradle. His face was chubby, and his mouth was pink and tender. He would suck his lips from time to time as if he was dreaming of something delicious.
He would also kick the soft blanket off his body ever so often. Seeing this, the shadow clone was not impatient. He gently pulled up the soft blanket to cover him up and rocked the cradle.
Tonan made a pot of tea for himself and sat cross-legged beside a tea table. On the table, there were ninjutsu scrolls he seized from Orochimaru’s place. Among these, several were taken from the bookshelves in Orochimaru’s laboratory, and several were taken from the innermost secret room.
With his Byakugan, Tonan could easily see through the mechanism inside. This was why he was able to enter Orochimaru’s lab like returning to his own home. Orochimaru’s secret arts were simply an eye-opener for him.
Secret Art – Soft Physique Modification. This ninjutsu would make the user’s body go through a special transformation, greatly enhancing softness and flexibility. And the user would be able to freely stretch or twist his body to any angle.
Secret Art – Molting. This technique shed off the injured body and spit out a new intact body from the mouth, but the new body would be weaker for a short time. Generally speaking, ordinary ninjas could only use it at most once or twice in a battle. If used too much, the opponent wouldn’t need to do anything and the user would fall to the ground.
One had to say that the value of this ninjutsu was simply beyond the forbidden techniques in some aspects but the prerequisite for it was that one must have learned the Soft Physique Modification first.
Tonan considered himself relatively open-minded. He didn’t reject body modification. He had no objection to these things. He memorized the content of the two scrolls and then began to look at the others.
Many secret arts were related to summoning snakes. The value of these from the laboratory’s bookshelves was not high. Tonan looked at them just to enrich his knowledge. There was no need to learn it. Soon, he had almost finished reading it all.
In the end, he opened a slightly old scroll. The handwriting on this scroll seemed illegible and was something like a draft. Suddenly, Tonan’s eyes opened wide and he sat straight up. This scroll recorded a failed secret art that was not even named.
From the description, this secret art was a cursed seal researched and developed by Orochimaru. The principle of this seal was to cut off one’s insignificant amount of life origin via chakra. Then, turn the life origin into a cursed seal and plant it in the recipient’s body.
A part of this cursed seal’s effect was similar to the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal. It could control the life and death of the recipient. But this cursed seal had one more effect, which was it could subtly transform the physique of the recipient, making the recipient’s physique draw closer to the user’s physique.
At the end of this secret art, Orochimaru had written explanatory notes and improvement directions.
Sixteen pregnant women were observed and dissected. I finally found the key conjecture to reincarnate. But I must assimilate with the body first for this. This cursed seal’s assimilation effect is inadequate, not to mention achieving perfect assimilation. The next optimization should be focused on reducing the control effect and strengthening the assimilation. If that doesn’t work, perhaps, I can try adding some kind of special medium for the transition…
Tonan looked at the notes and fell into deep thoughts. After a long time, he closed his eyes and opened them abruptly. In his eyes, the three-tomoe was spinning rapidly. He moved the scroll close to his eyes and carefully looked at the handwriting to judge how old it was.
Gradually, his face became gloomy, “At least a year and a half… Orochimaru might not have met Jugo yet…”
After all, in the original works, Uchiha Sasuke once resurrected Orochimaru from Anko’s Cursed Seal of Heaven. If Orochimaru truly developed the cursed seal, then he might be able to resurrect in any corner of the Ninja World.
Sasuke’s help was needed in the original works because Orochimaru was sealed in the illusory world by Itachi’s Totsuka Blade, and he couldn’t remember his death.
“Forget it, even if he didn’t die, his vitality is seriously damaged. When we meet next time, he won’t be my opponent. Wait until I have a bit more means, I’ll definitely be able to kill him.” Thinking of this, Tonan shook his head slightly and deactivated his Sharingan. He began to memorize the content of this secret art.
This crude cursed seal was Orochimaru’s failure. Although the assimilation effect was there, it was practically zero. Tonan knew that the medium in Orochimaru’s conjecture was the senjutsu energy. And he just happened to have it.
If he could develop this seal, then it would be a great boost to his strength improvement. He could just give a chance to confused people to work hard. First, gain their acknowledgment, then regardless of their aptitude, as long as he planted a cursed seal, they would become genius sooner or later.
If this were to happen, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Therefore, he named the cursed seal: Cultivate Path.
Meanwhile, there was an underground secret base somewhere in the Land of Rice Fields. Several ninjas came to the depths of the base with scrolls and put them into a secret room. The ninja who was in the lead counted the number of scrolls and nodded in satisfaction, “This batch of materials is almost ready. It can be delivered to Orochimaru-sama next month.”
A ninja beside him said with a worried look, “What I’m worried about the most now is how to make up the offerings prepared for Orochimaru-sama.”
The leader ninja frowned, and with a worried look, he asked, “How many are we short of?”
The ninja next to him calculated and worriedly replied, “We need thirty-five more. Several kids became ill some time ago and the medical equipment at the base was insufficient to cure them.”
The leader ninja narrowed his eyes slightly and took a deep breath, “We’ll set out together later, find a small village with a suitable number of people, and complete the mission in one fell swoop.”
Just after he finished speaking, the leader ninja suddenly felt unbearable pain all over his body, and he fell to his knees.
“Huh…” The ninjas around were worried and asked with concern, “Sakata, what’s wrong?”
The skin of the ninja named Sakata turned red and the cursed seal on his neck emitted radiance. He screamed in excruciating pain and collapsed to the ground. Then, there was no movement. A big snake came out from the cursed seal on Sakata’s neck and opened its mouth. An extremely weak Orochimaru crawled out from it.
As if he was completely exhausted, Orochimaru fell to his knees and panted heavily.
“Orochimaru-sama!” Seeing him, everyone exclaimed in surprise and fell to their knees. Taking support from the ground, Orochimaru stood up with great difficulty and looked at them with a gloomy face, “All of you leave and take him with you.”
Everyone got up to leave and carried Sakata, whose life or death was unknown. In the dark secret room, Orochimaru staggered and used his hands to take support from the wall. He then took a deep breath and coughed heavily. His snake eyes were emitting great hatred. He gritted his teeth, “Damn it… Uchiha Tonan…”
