Chapter 349: Kenichi Amamiya Suddenly Becomes an Agronomist
"What exactly are you trying to do, Orochimaru?" Hiruzen puffed on his cigarette, his expression complicated.
At that moment, he was already considering whether Naruto should be replaced as the jinchuriki.
Although Orochimaru, his former disciple, had defected from the village, Hiruzen knew his abilities better than anyone. If it were Orochimaru, then he would definitely have noticed Naruto's true identity and the fact that the Nine Tails was sealed inside him.
Which raised the real question.
If Orochimaru had already noticed the anomaly in Naruto's body, then why had he taught Naruto how to refine chakra?
What was he planning?
What exactly did he want?
Hiruzen rose to his feet. No, he could not just sit here and do nothing.
So he immediately left the Hokage Building and headed for Naruto's house. The Anbu stationed outside for surveillance and protection bowed respectfully when they saw him.
Hiruzen gave a slight nod and hurried inside.
He looked at the sleeping Naruto, then gently turned the boy over with ninjutsu and examined him carefully from head to toe. Yet he found nothing unusual.
Naruto had truly only refined some chakra. There were no other abnormalities, and the seal on his abdomen was still intact.
That only made Hiruzen more confused.
Could it be that his disciple had suddenly decided to be a good person?
"Orochimaru, what exactly are you trying to do?" Hiruzen muttered again.
He truly could not understand Orochimaru's intentions. Still, Naruto was fine for the moment. If he wanted answers, then he would have to wait until Naruto woke up and question him subtly.
But even that was uncertain.
Hiruzen was not sure Naruto would listen to him, much less honestly recount the whole process. Judging from Naruto's current behavior, the boy clearly wanted to keep this matter secret.
Hiruzen stood in the dark, looking at Naruto sleeping soundly. From time to time, the boy's stomach rumbled softly.
Moonlight streamed in through the window, falling across Hiruzen's figure and blocking the light from reaching Naruto's face.
His expression shifted uncertainly.
The Nine Tails was one of Konoha's greatest secrets. Even within the village, only part of the upper ranks knew the truth. Most people were completely unaware.
"Fourth Hokage..." Hiruzen placed a hand lightly on Naruto's stomach.
He was weighing whether it would be possible to replace the jinchuriki.
But if the jinchuriki were replaced, then a child as young as Naruto would almost certainly die.
The room fell silent.
A long moment later, Hiruzen withdrew his hand, turned, and walked out with a heavy sigh. His mind was even more troubled than before.
When he returned to the Hokage Building, he immediately raised the security level around Naruto once again.
This time, the guards assigned around Naruto were all Anbu jonin, with elite jonin leading the teams.
"...Even while asleep, a person can still sense the outside world. That is especially true for a ninja. Of course, that sort of perception is not always reliable, which is why ninjas always sleep lightly during missions."
When Kenichi found Hikari, she was in class.
The person teaching was an Anbu ninja from the Land of Snow.
Though they were not actually called Anbu, their function was essentially the same. In that regard, Konoha truly had been ahead of the entire ninja world. Everyone had imitated them, and very few had surpassed them.
The instructor noticed Kenichi the moment he arrived and looked at him with naked fanaticism. If Hikari had not been there, Kenichi felt that the man might have dropped to his knees and started bowing on the spot.
Yes, this one had already been parasitized.
Kenichi could clearly sense the joy and worship coming from the parasite inside the man's body.
Although Kenichi himself did not carry a parasite, he could still perceive the emotions of these offspring. That was probably another side effect of his analysis of the parasites.
"Brother Amamiya!" Hikari jumped up happily and handed him a notebook filled with notes.
Kenichi took it, glanced through it, and saw that it contained everything from the current lesson.
"You're amazing, Hikari." Kenichi chuckled and rubbed her head.
Her notes were extremely complete, though they focused more on practical combat than theory. That was not a bad thing. In fact, it was very useful.
For ninjas, what they learned in the academy was ultimately limited. Opponents in real combat would not hold back like classmates did.
Although Hikari was an old relic from the Warring States Period, whether the combat instincts from that era still fully applied now was another matter.
As he chatted with her, Kenichi casually glanced in the direction of the laboratory.
Originally, he had planned to speak with his teacher about how to develop Hikari's Yachihoko ability, but Orochimaru was still shut up inside the lab. Since that was the case, he could only put that matter aside for now.
Which meant he might as well go find Nagato.
Nagato was probably getting impatient by now.
"Still, I haven't detected anything unusual during this time. I'm guessing that bastard Black Zetsu didn't follow me after all." Kenichi made his way toward the valley where his airship was parked.
The airship floated quietly there, hidden among the cliffs.
Around it, a number of Kenichi's Shadow Clones lay concealed in the shadows, watching everything day and night.
That had been Kenichi's own arrangement.
After picking up Orochimaru earlier, he had suddenly gotten the idea. Instead of blowing up the airship immediately, he preserved it and left several Shadow Clones behind to monitor it without pause.
But over the last one or two days, Black Zetsu never once showed himself.
Kenichi had originally wanted to use this as bait. If Black Zetsu appeared, he could test the creature's abilities. Even if he failed to catch him, at least he would be able to gain a clearer measure of Black Zetsu's current strength.
But the bastard never surfaced.
Perhaps he had sensed something was wrong and simply stayed hidden.
So Kenichi ultimately chose a simpler solution.
He blew up the airship.
Fire scattered into the air, but there was no trace of any black shadow falling out this time.
Kenichi frowned slightly.
It seemed Black Zetsu had not followed him here.
Still, that was normal enough. Black Zetsu had plenty of things to deal with, so it was hardly strange that he could not spare the attention to follow Kenichi every moment. If Black Zetsu also had some version of the Shadow Clone Technique and was personally monitoring the entire ninja world, that would have been absurd even by ninja standards.
"What a waste. Looks like I still need to invent some sort of instrument that can detect Black Zetsu." Kenichi sighed.
But this was not the time for more experiments. Now that he had confirmed Black Zetsu was not around, it was finally time to contact Nagato.
Kenichi rubbed his hands together, dispelled the nearby Shadow Clones, endured the resulting wave of dizziness, and then pressed a finger against the ring on his hand, transmitting his thought waves and waiting for Nagato to answer.
He waited.
And waited.
A full hour passed.
Nothing.
Kenichi, who had even closed his eyes and mentally prepared to lecture Nagato properly this time, opened them in confusion.
He rubbed the ring again.
Still no response.
"What's going on?" Kenichi muttered.
He had definitely sent the signal, but Nagato was not responding, as though he had not received it at all.
That made no sense. Nagato had contacted him before while Kenichi was in the Land of Snow, so the connection had clearly worked once.
What was happening now?
Kenichi scratched his head, baffled. At that moment, he once again deeply realized how much of a pain it was living in a world without proper phones. In another setting, he could have just made a call and asked what the problem was.
Now he could only stumble around in the dark.
"Either something happened on Nagato's end... or my thought waves can't cross the ocean well enough to reach him."
Those were the two possibilities Kenichi came up with.
The first was that something had gone wrong on Nagato's side, though Kenichi felt that was unlikely. Nagato was still very strong at this stage. Even if Obito and Black Zetsu attacked him together, it would be difficult for them without a proper sneak attack.
"And there's no reason for those two to ambush Nagato right now." Kenichi shook his head.
Obito and Black Zetsu should not have overheard what he said to Nagato before, though with those two, nothing could be ruled out entirely. Kenichi could never be completely sure what either of them was thinking.
The second possibility was simpler.
Nagato might only have been able to contact him earlier because Nagato had initiated the link first. In that case, Kenichi's own output simply might not be enough for the signal to reach across the sea.
Since Nagato could not be reached for now, Kenichi decided there was no point wasting time here.
He had far too many other things to deal with.
If it was the first possibility, Nagato would reach out to him later.
If it was the second, Nagato would probably contact him after enough time passed without hearing from Kenichi.
Either way, there was no point standing around.
Having settled that in his mind, Kenichi turned and headed back to the laboratory.
There, he retrieved some seeds from Koyuki. They were native grain seeds from the Land of Snow, along with a variety of other seeds he had collected from different parts of the ninja world.
"The Land of Snow mainly grows wheat... but this wheat is clearly somewhat different from the wheat in the rest of the ninja world." Kenichi held two seeds in his palm and examined them.
Both were wheat.
But the difference between them was obvious even at a glance.
The Land of Snow wheat had a noticeably thicker outer shell, and after peeling it back, the actual kernel inside was smaller.
The wheat from elsewhere had a thinner shell, and the grain inside was larger.
"That should be because of the climate here. This damned place is too cold. If a plant isn't cold resistant, it simply won't survive." Kenichi placed both sets of seeds into a genetic sequencing device.
He needed to determine the precise genetic differences between them.
One of them had to contain the genes responsible for cold resistance. If he could identify and extract those, then insert them into the high yield wheat variety he had already been working on, he might be able to create a cold resistant, high yield strain.
Kenichi no longer had any resistance to the idea that he had effectively changed careers and become an agricultural scientist.
In this damned ninja world, he had to do everything himself anyway.
There were still some areas where he could rely on Orochimaru, like Hikari's Yachihoko and perhaps the future internet project. But agriculture? Not a chance. Orochimaru had no interest in that field at all.
And agriculture, as essential as it was, seemed strangely insignificant in this world.
Perhaps the prevailing mindset was something like: "My neighbors hoard grain, so I hoard ninja. Then my neighbors become my granary."
And the truly ridiculous part was that this was not even far from the truth.
Some small countries specialized in growing food and selling it to large countries. In return, the large countries sent ninja to protect them. Naturally, that protection came at a price.
Which raised the obvious question: what exactly were the big countries contributing?
A few ninja.
And the payment for those ninja came from the money the small countries earned by selling grain in the first place.
Which meant the large countries were basically getting the grain for free.
The small countries, meanwhile, received only meager compensation. They slowly accumulated that money, only to spend it again growing more crops, selling them, and hiring the same outside ninja for protection.
And if there was a bad harvest one year, then everything they had saved would be wiped out. They might even have to borrow money from those same great nations.
In a world built on that logic, who would bother researching how to increase food yields?
And even if some small country wanted to, it would not have the resources.
Even worse, if they did somehow succeed, one of the large countries would just send over a few ninja, take the improved seeds, and claim the benefits for themselves.
So Kenichi understood all too well that this was something only he could really push forward.
No one else would.
"Before soldiers and horses move, provisions must come first. You think you can wage war without enough food? Even ninja need to eat." Kenichi rubbed his brow, bracing himself.
By then, the genetic analysis had finished. He took the results and began comparing them line by line, isolating the differing gene clusters.
But when he looked at the sheer amount of genetic data in front of him, his scalp tingled.
Wheat, even the Land of Snow variety, was still wheat. Most of its genes were naturally similar.
But the sheer quantity was the real nightmare.
Humans had many genes.
Wheat had five times more.
Yes.
Five times more.
Even if Kenichi could quickly filter out the similarities and focus only on the mismatches, the work was still unbelievably tedious.
"I should have brought that analysis instrument from the Rice Fields lab... I wonder if Shiori can retrieve it." Kenichi hurried out at once.
There was simply too much data here. If he compared everything manually, it would be like checking two full encyclopedias for typos.
Pure torture.
The Land of Snow was some distance away from the Land of Rice Fields, but fortunately, Shiori's awakened ability allowed her to retrieve objects from afar. If that worked here, then he could have the computer brought over and make the analysis far easier.
"Amamiya-sama, do you mean Gene Programming Analysis Unit Three?" Shiori asked calmly after hearing his request.
Kenichi nodded.
Without another word, she reached into her warped spatial distortion.
The next second, she dragged out a huge machine.
.....
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