Chapter 245: Orochimaru, Seen Through to His Core x Danzo Shimura's Shock
Life is meaningless.
Things that do not move are even more meaningless.
As an elite Jonin of Konoha and one of the "Sannin" renowned across several major nations, Orochimaru had already proven himself during the Second Shinobi World War in the battle against Hanzo of the Salamander, the leader of Amegakure. Although in that battle, he, along with Jiraiya and Tsunade, couldn't gain much of an advantage. But to be able to fight a "Kage-level" powerhouse and hold their own for a short time, the world felt that Orochimaru truly lived up to the title of an elite Jonin, and might even become a Kage-level powerhouse in the future. However... the world is mostly foolish... there are simply too many boring people in this world.
Having experienced countless battles and grown accustomed to life and death, Orochimaru felt himself gradually becoming numb, gradually growing weary, and gradually falling into a state where he couldn't muster interest in anything... into nothingness...
"My heart is empty." One night, the man, wearing deep purple eyeshadow, with the corpses of ninjas from other villages lying at his feet, looked up at the moon. That snake-like face, illuminated by the moonlight, gradually filled with deep bewilderment.
He knew he had to make a change, otherwise he would be numbed and destroyed by the "unchanging" life and war. Fortunately, the Second War ended... For the inheritance of the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, the village desperately needed an insurance... an insurance that could suppress the Nine-Tails at any time to prevent it from causing chaos—[Wood Style]!
Thus, Orochimaru remembered very clearly, not long after Kushina "inherited" the Nine-Tails from Mito Uzumaki, his teacher Hiruzen Sarutobi came to him and gave him an arduous task—researching the First Hokage's cells to find someone who could withstand the "First Hokage's power" and successfully inherit [Wood Style].
[Wood Style]... [First Hokage]... When these two words were placed in front of Orochimaru at the same time, he remembered very clearly, he was so excited he trembled. Consequently...
The [Nothingness] hidden deep in his soul receded, as if ushering in a wave of rebirth...
"Leave it to me." Orochimaru finally found himself again, and that very day he confidently assured his teacher.
However, perhaps he was too arrogant, or perhaps the "God of Shinobi" was too powerful. Even though Hashirama Senju had passed away for many years, the immense "vitality" hidden in his cells still turned the ninjas Hiruzen Sarutobi sent to assist him in his experiments into monsters swallowed by [Wood Style], into vegetative states stripped of their reason and drained of their brains.
Naturally,
After this tragedy, the project was halted... Even though he stubbornly told his teacher it wasn't his fault, just that the "experimental samples" weren't enough, it ultimately couldn't change Hiruzen Sarutobi's decision. Because of this,
He was angry, hesitant, disappointed for a time, followed by a deep fear... fear of returning to that past, of being swallowed again by that immense "sense of nothingness" until not even bone dust remained!
Fortunately, just as Orochimaru hated "unchanging" things,
Danzo Shimura also hated the "unchanging" Konoha, or rather... the "unchanging" Konoha under "Hiruzen's" rule. So, the two frustrated men naturally came together. One for Konoha, his Danzo's Konoha; the other to escape nothingness, trying to find the meaning of existence by continuing to research "Wood Style". They hit it off immediately, and so...
The "human experiments" were able to continue...
And today was the day of the month for Orochimaru to scout for Sharingan for Danzo. This time, he expanded his selection range... and noticed a boy named "Jin Uchiha"!
It was said he had once gone to the battlefield with Fugaku and killed dozens of ninjas single-handedly, making quite a name for himself.
It was said he blew up the academy, unleashing a D-rank Ninjutsu that surprisingly displayed power not inferior to a B-rank Ninjutsu.
It was said Danzo was also paying attention to him, yet quietly hid all information about him from him... Orochimaru, dwelling inside a white snake, flicked his tongue and immediately realized that perhaps, this child named Jin had a side different from other Uchihas. Therefore,
He saw it today,
That child casually casting Signless Ninjutsu... His unparalleled Space-Time talent... Making Minato Namikaze, the one Danzo told him could be his competitor, show a rare fighting spirit and try to spar with him... Unfortunately, his teacher, who had once almost dragged him back into nothingness, intervened halfway! "You always spoil the fun at the most crucial moments," Orochimaru hid in the dark, watching sinisterly. He thought today's observation would end here, the "harvest" already abundant enough. Who knew—
The young boy, this child named Jin Uchiha, not only gave him a piece of his mind, saying the words he had always wanted to say but couldn't, but also pulled a massive surprise on him—
He actually mastered [Wood Style] autonomously without relying on the First Hokage's cells!
"Boom!" A clap of thunder from a clear sky!
Instantly, Orochimaru felt as if a lightning bolt from heaven struck him from his forehead to his tail, completely... splitting him open along his central axis. "So, what exactly have I been researching for so long?" Orochimaru was dumbfounded. He only felt his brain turn to mush. In an instant, life seemed to lose its meaning, and he was once again swallowed by that "immense nothingness" he was both familiar with and utterly loathed and feared!
Rustle... rustle... The snake's body crawled windingly through the dark corners of Konoha's streets, through the lush green bushes, and past thick, sturdy trees... Orochimaru just followed blankly and silently, not even knowing what he was doing. At a certain moment, he suddenly saw... the boy re-enter the Southern Border Forest, abruptly stop, and say without looking back, "Having followed for so long, you should let a person catch their breath." "Don't you agree, Lord Orochimaru?"
Whoosh~ A sharp gaze shot over.
Orochimaru, in the form of a white snake, supported himself on the tree trunk with his tail, standing up like a "human", and laughed sinisterly...
"You clearly discovered me early on, why didn't you expose me directly?"
The tailing didn't just start now. It began the moment Roy appeared at the training ground carrying the log... Orochimaru believed that since the boy could discover him now, he should have discovered him long ago.
"Two reasons," Roy stopped, turned around, looked up faintly at Orochimaru, and said, "First, you hold no malice. Second, I also wanted to see what the legendary Lord Sannin is up to."
"Hehehe..." The white snake flicking its tongue gave off a dark, hoarse feeling. Orochimaru's slit pupils gleamed as he stared intently at the boy under the tree and said, "So, did you see?"
"I saw," Roy was somewhat disappointed, "just a pitiful peeping tom with no heart, completely unaware of what he's doing." The guy who almost ended his own little brother's life over the phrase "life itself has no meaning", yet eventually lived to become what he hated most, "Jiraiya"... Looking at this white snake Orochimaru had turned into, Roy seemed to see through time and space how, after the Fourth Shinobi World War, he ran amok all over Konoha Village, sometimes working part-time in restaurants, sometimes walking pigeon-toed, eating his fingers at the door of ramen shops, sometimes sticking his butt in the air and yelling "Baka yarou" at the Hokage Building... fully liberating his true nature...
He couldn't help but sigh...
"Pitiful?" Orochimaru looked down from his high vantage point. Meeting Roy's gaze, which faintly rippled, he slightly raised his eyebrows, narrowed his eyes, and said, "You seem to understand me very well..."
Strange, the boy's look gave him a sense of déjà vu... Yet Orochimaru was very sure this was his first encounter with the boy...
Roy kept his hands in his pockets and slowly shook his head: "I wouldn't say I understand. If you don't tell me, I don't know either."
"I tell you?" Orochimaru's eyes shifted.
Roy pointed meaningfully at the white snake's vital spot and said, "Yes, 'it' has already told me."
Orochimaru subconsciously looked down. That was where his heart was beating...
Thump... thump... Heartbeat, hot blood. Getting closer, Orochimaru could almost see his own expanding and contracting heart. Just as he looked up, he was suddenly stunned!
He only heard a "Caw", a crow squawking with a rough, hoarse voice... His vision blurred, plunging into profound darkness...
In this pitch-black darkness where he couldn't see his hand in front of his face, completely losing all sense of direction, he could only hear a "rustle...", seemingly the sound of some gastropod worm crawling. When Orochimaru regained his senses and looked over... not far away, a Heart Worm extended its long mouthparts. Along the karmic thread, crossing the distance of time and space, it arrived in front of him in the blink of an eye. Before he could react, the mouthparts plunged down, followed by...
A boy with black hair, three parts like Fugaku and seven parts like Mikoto, stepped with his hands behind his back, planting a foot into his heart... Rustle... Memories opened. Orochimaru's past life unfolded like a film reel, slowly playing out on the ridges of the field in Roy's view... There was his past of learning Ninjutsu from Hiruzen Sarutobi alongside Jiraiya and Tsunade since childhood... There was his embarrassment of secretly vomiting against a wall after killing his first enemy when he was promoted to Chunin and went to the battlefield with his teacher... There was his joy of growing strong, gradually revealing his brilliance, establishing himself in the ninja world, and being promoted to Jonin... There was the glory of joining forces with Jiraiya and Tsunade to fight Hanzo of the Salamander and being bestowed the title of "Sannin" by him. Of course,
There was also the numbness from killing too much... the bewilderment and helplessness of being surrounded by an immense sense of emptiness... the coldness and cruelty of treating humans not as humans but as expendable materials... the anger and despair of having his experiments forcibly shut down by Hiruzen Sarutobi for violating human ethics... and... the secret delight of illicitly restarting the project with Danzo... the depravity of maintaining a glamorous facade while actually sinking into darkness in secret...
All these constructed a "colorful" picture scroll of life, completely taken in by Roy, leaving no privacy whatsoever... Orochimaru accompanied the boy, standing on the ridge of his heart, tilted his head, looked at him, and said, "What Ninjutsu is this?"
No pulsation of Chakra, unlike Genjutsu... No feeling of the mind being swallowed, unlike the Yamanaka Clan's "Mind Transfer Jutsu"... Yet he couldn't resist; he could only open his heart, letting the boy stroll in leisurely, taking and looking as he pleased.
This feeling of having his bottom line seen for the first time in his life was like streaking... making Orochimaru experience a great terror no less than being wrapped in "nothingness" for the first time!
"Do you think I'll tell you?" Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself.
Roy casually flipped through Orochimaru's life, not even sparing him a glance, and said, "If you can peek at me, I can naturally peek at you." "Lord Orochimaru, this is my answer to you."
"Hehehe..." A violent Chakra tremor violently shook, and the heart... instantly, the sky fell and the earth sank... Roy finally seemed to react. He glanced at Orochimaru sideways and said, "I didn't expect you to be so ruthless."
"As you have seen, to me, humans can die, and naturally, summoning beasts can die too..."
Crash~ The heart shattered, consciousness returned... The Heart Worm flew out, whimpering, and was caught in Roy's hand with a single scoop. The boy detached from Orochimaru's heart and looked up... The white snake's head drooped like a hemp rope slipping from the tree trunk. With a Smack, it fell to the ground, dead as a doornail.
Roy watched silently. He truly didn't expect Orochimaru to use "suicide" to escape his [En]... Indeed, worthy of the man bestowed the title "Sannin" by Hanzo of the Salamander; none of them are easy to deal with.
Tap... tap... After a moment of silence on the spot, Roy exhaled lightly, lifted his foot again, and walked towards the training ground near the Uchiha clan compound...
Shisui and Itachi were still waiting for his inspection. As an older brother, he naturally couldn't let his younger brothers feel sad.
Roy simply shook off the superfluous thoughts in his mind, embodied sunlight, and with a flash, then another, he used Light Style to leave...
"Huff... huff... What a bizarre boy..."
In a remote and hidden laboratory underground in Konoha,
A faint, winding large snake crawled in the darkness.
Rustle...
The snake skin rubbed against the dark ground, making a creepy sound. At a certain moment, looking under the dim light...
The large snake raised its head, opened its mouth, and spat out a slender man.
He had straight, long black hair, golden slit pupils, purple eyeshadow extending to his nose, pale skin devoid of color, and wore blue-green magatama-shaped earrings... Wet, he stood up and immediately started packing up his experimental materials and data. At the same time, he divided his attention to use the Summoning Jutsu, summoning a messenger snake and directing it to slither away in a certain direction...
In less than half an hour...
Clack... clack... From the dark, deep tunnel leading outside the laboratory door, the dull sound of a walking stick tapping the ground could be faintly heard. The sound grew louder and louder, then with a Creak~, the door was pushed open.
Two men walked in, not very tall but quite sinister-looking... The one trailing half a step behind carried a long sword on his back and wore an eye mask covering his face; it was none other than Torune Aburame... As for the one in front...
Bandages wrapped from his arm to his right eye. The remaining left eye narrowed, always revealing a gloomy aura. Especially upon noticing that Orochimaru had nearly emptied the entire laboratory, he looked at him dangerously and said, "What do you mean telling this old man you're leaving Konoha?"
The messenger snake had already brought the message to him.
Danzo had a prior agreement with Orochimaru: unless absolutely necessary, do not contact him actively.
Orochimaru, of course, knew this perfectly well.
The man performed the Summoning Jutsu again, Poof, summoning an even larger snake, and had it swallow all the experimental materials and data in one gulp. Only then did he turn to look at Danzo and say, "I've been exposed!"
"Who? This old man will kill him!"
Orochimaru's eyes were gloomy as he spat out four words: "Jin Uchiha!"
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