Chapter 212: Passerby; Team 7's Dispute
Before she left, Haruno Sakura went to see Shino.
That guy had taken a nap on the hospital bed and had just woken up, still in good spirits.
When she went over, Shino was holding a lunch box and eating his lunch in big mouthfuls, his appetite excellent. It was clear that he was fine.
"Just a few broken bones," Shino had said. "They've already been set. I'll be fine and discharged in a couple of days!"
Because of medical ninjutsu and chakra, ninja didn't need to follow the proverb "a hundred days to recover from an injury to muscle or bone."
Seeing him eating happily, his face flushed with health, Sakura hesitated for a moment and didn't say some of the things that were on her mind.
Anyway, he'll find out about Yūgao soon enough.
I just wonder how Shino will feel about Squad 14 being disbanded?
She wanted to save the answer to that question, not wanting to know Shino's reply right now.
And how does he feel about Yūgao temporarily retiring to the second line to go home and have a child?
A ninja's way of thinking was different from that of people who had lived in a peaceful environment in her previous life.
Even a powerful ninja like Yūgao would have times when a mission went wrong. The result this time was the best warning. To put it more seriously, being a ninja was a dangerous profession where one could die at any moment. So Yūgao's choice was not strange in the ninja circle.
You can't spend your whole life risking it, and then go back to your hometown to get married when you're old and can't fight anymore, right?
Then again, the fact that Yūgao had managed to keep her life this time was also because she had said she would get married after the fight. If she had raised this FLAG before the fight, not even the gods could have saved her...
In short, the matter of marriage was a purely personal choice. For a woman like Tsunade who still hadn't married, no one said anything.
She looked at Shino, who was sitting in the hospital room, smiling and greeting her, talking to her. Her heart felt stifled. After a brief chat, she didn't disturb his rest.
"Dr. Terumi Inin, I'll leave Shino in your care. Please make sure he's fully recovered before he's discharged."
Before leaving, she also gave the doctor a reminder.
The Dr. Terumi who was in charge of treating Shino was, coincidentally, the Haruno family's new neighbor. Due to the incident during the Chunin Exams, the previous family had unfortunately passed away. The Terumi family's house had been destroyed in the battle, so they had moved over.
This world was just that cruel.
The Haruno family had been neighbors with that family for more than ten years. They were not ninja, just ordinary common people. A few years ago, their family had given birth to a little princess. Sakura had even held her. She was a very cute little loli. Just like that, the family of three had all died at the hands of the Sound ninja.
One of the main reasons Sakura wanted to become a ninja, to stand at the top of the ninja world, was that she did not want to become an ordinary person who was powerless to control her own destiny in the chaos of war.
However, becoming a ninja actually brought one a step closer to danger, especially for the Anbu, who often carried out missions on the edge of life and death. Many people thus longed to return to a normal life.
Perhaps that's what Yūgao was thinking.
When Sakura returned to her doorstep, she happened to run into her neighbor's daughter.
She was also a ninja, not much older than her, and seemed to have just been promoted to Tokubetsu Jonin recently.
"Good day, Yūzuki-san," she said, greeting her faintly as she opened her door and saw Terumi Yūzuki walk out.
Yūzuki also nodded faintly. "Good afternoon, Sakura."
The two of them exchanged a look and then parted ways.
Because both families were ninja, they were always very busy, especially in the last six months, they had been leaving early and returning late, hard to find. So Sakura and they had not met more than a few times in total, and were just nodding acquaintances. Especially since this person, Yūzuki, was usually very low-key, always with short hair and a plain, passerby-like appearance. Sakura had no deep impression of her.
For neighbors of more than ten years to become new people with only a passing acquaintance, the melancholy in that was only understood by those who had experienced it. Sakura was not such a sentimental person, but just that too many things had happened in the past two days, and she had happened to run into her normally-unseen neighbor, which had sparked some feelings.
Who could say for sure what she was feeling melancholy about.
After she went upstairs, without even changing her clothes, she lay straight on her bed, wrapped herself in the quilt, and fell into a deep sleep.
The next day, Haruno Sakura's mood had mostly recovered.
She decisively dragged Sasuke into her laboratory and told him about the matter of the Land of Snow.
"You're going to the Land of Snow to build a base?" Sasuke said noncommittally, sitting on a table with his arms crossed. "Is it necessary to go that far?"
"Hn... it's necessary."
Haruno Sakura walked to the other side of the laboratory and leaned against the windowsill.
She had already decided to lay her plans bare. Without hesitation, after a moment of pondering, she said directly.
"I found some things at Orochimaru's base."
"Orochimaru's base?" Sasuke's eyebrows shot up, and he asked a little strangely, "What did you take from there?"
Orochimaru's base, what good things could there be?
Sasuke had no good feelings for this person at all. During the Chunin Exams, he had inexplicably placed a curse mark on him, and it had taken a great deal of effort to seal it with the help of Tsunade. Then he had set up a trap, wanting to capture him and bring him back to his base.
He had repeatedly shown a desire for his body.
And his subordinate, that guy named Kimimaro, had undergone that ugly and disgusting transformation during the battle, which had left a deep impression on Sasuke.
Or perhaps it would be better to call it a deep psychological shadow.
In short, to describe him in Sakura's words... he was just a pervert!
"In my impression... apart from being very strong, Orochimaru is just a crazy human experiment fanatic," Sasuke said with a frown, watching as Sakura opened a sealing scroll. "Sakura, you're not planning to learn from Orochimaru and conduct human experiments, are you?"
Although he said that, Sasuke didn't believe that his teammate, who was such a bright and sunny person, would learn from that gloomy and bizarre Orochimaru and conduct some evil human experiments.
He simply couldn't imagine this girl, all wet and covered in slime, mixing in with a swarm of snakes, or her eyes being sinister and dark, her smile chilling and terrifying...
The style would have completely changed!
However, Sasuke had actually hit the nail on the head.
"This is what I found at Orochimaru's base..." Haruno Sakura said, taking out the materials stored in the scroll, and said after a moment of hesitation, "...materials on stem cells and human cloning."
Sasuke was stunned.
He walked over, picked up a booklet and flipped through it. His face immediately became serious.
He shook the booklet in his hand. It was precisely that book, "The Basic Principles and Implementation Methods of Cloning Technology." Sakura had found the complete version in the main base this time.
Sasuke looked directly at the pink-haired girl, handed the book over, and asked seriously, "Do you know what this is?"
Sakura lowered her eyelids and sighed.
She took the book and casually flipped through a few pages. She could see many unbearable, bloody pictures and evil experimental content.
It was no wonder Sasuke would object so directly.
"Of course I know what this is... Are you trying to say that this is Konoha's forbidden human experimentation?" Sakura said faintly.
She raised her head and met Sasuke's sharp gaze directly.
Although the black-haired youth did not speak, she could clearly receive the question in his eyes: "Since you know, why are you still doing this?"
"I think, as a medical ninja, I probably understand what this is better than you do!"
Her gaze did not back down in the slightest.
"Don't be misled by the bloody pictures and experimental designs on it. Listen to me explain, Sasuke... if you don't mind me giving you a biology lesson."
Regarding the matter of cloning, perhaps she should start from how humans have babies?
In any case, Sakura had to win Sasuke's support. For this trip to the Land of Snow to build a base, she still needed to borrow a little of the Sharingan's power.
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