Chapter 213: An Extremely Special Clone Jutsu
"I assume you understand the most basic concept of what a gene is, right?"
Before starting the lesson, Sakura asked first. The Ninja Academy taught a lot of basic common sense, but for more in-depth content, one had to study on their own.
However, Sasuke, who had once been a top student with full marks in every subject alongside Sakura, was not stumped by this bit of advanced knowledge.
"Of course I know that. Just get to the point. No need to beat around the bush," Sasuke said, a little impatiently.
He was very disgusted with these things related to Orochimaru. If the person in front of him wasn't Haruno Sakura, he would have stormed off long ago and would not have had the patience to listen to someone's explanation.
Sakura didn't say much more and cut straight to the chase. "Then you're also clear on the process of sperm and egg each carrying half of the parent's genes and then combining to form a zygote, right?"
"Uh!" Sasuke was choked by the girl's academic vocabulary, and the words he was about to say were instantly stuck in his throat.
His level is still too low.
Compared to an old hand like her, who had been steeped in the filth of the internet for many years in her previous life, he was still too green. A purely academic question had also stumped him.
Sakura pouted and continued, "Normal humans reproduce through sexual reproduction. And cloning technology, to put it bluntly, is the technology of asexual reproduction, that is, to have the newborn's father and mother be the same person. There's actually nothing bloody or inhumane about it..."
If this were said in her previous life, it would still be debatable, but in the world of Naruto... with the moral standards of this world, the ethical issues of cloning really weren't a problem. People here lived precarious lives and had no time to think about such pointless things!
So, the truly bloody part was after the clone was successfully created, when it was used for human experiments...
Sasuke also quickly thought of this point. He jumped down from the table and said with a sneer, "You're avoiding the important and focusing on the trivial!"
"I admit, there's no problem with the cloning technology itself, but when you create a clone," he said, pointing to the scrolls and books on the floor that were still stained with blood, "are you going to raise it as if you had given birth to a daughter?"
A question that hit the nail on the head.
This was the biggest problem with Sakura's planned human experiments.
When she created the clones, it was of course to use them to replace herself in some dangerous experiments.
For example, Phase Three of Sakura Rush, which could burn out her nerves at any time, or the Fist of the North Star, which could open a death gate at any time.
Or to use them as human batteries for the Yin Seal; a backup body, a spare organ bank for when she was critically injured...
And her way of treating the clones would inevitably be bloody...
For Sasuke to be able to raise such a question showed that he had already touched upon the core of the problem.
To experiment on a pig or a cow would obviously not be considered bloody or cruel in any way. After all, this world did not have an animal rights cult.
So the key to the problem was, did a clone count as a person?
"Sasuke, what's your definition of a 'person'?" Haruno Sakura moved her butt onto the table, half-leaning and half-sitting, and said calmly. "If something has the body of a person, but does not have the soul and thoughts of a person, then does it count as a person?"
For Sasuke's question, the girl had naturally been prepared long ago...
Or rather, for such a question, if she couldn't first convince herself, then how could she continue?
To do things against her conscience? Then she would not be the real her...
Without waiting for Sasuke to answer, she began to cast a ninjutsu on her own. "Ice Style: Ice Clone!"
What Haruno Sakura created was a Medical-type Ice Clone that completely replicated the original body.
However, she did not complete all the hand seals. The Ice Style only completed the shape transformation, replicating the girl's physical body, but the spirit was not copied onto the clone, just like the ninjutsu she had cast on Yūgao the other day.
This one clone was lying on the low table that she and Hinata had used for the Sakura Rush experiment before. Sasuke knew this jutsu. He glanced at the clone on the low table and shook his head. "A clone, of course, does not count as a person."
"Is that so?"
Haruno Sakura gave a mysterious smile, walked over, lifted the clone's clothes to expose its abdomen, and condensed a sharp ice blade in her hand.
"Then what about this?"
She gently cut open the clone's flat abdomen. The ice blade cut through the skin, separated the muscles, and dark red blood gradually flowed out. With a little force, Sakura pulled the wound open, revealing the completely replicated internal organs and intestines in the clone's abdominal cavity.
Sasuke's face became ugly.
"Alright, stop it," he said, his face deathly pale.
It wasn't that he couldn't stand the sight of blood, but killing an opponent and torturing an opponent were, after all, two different concepts. In battle, he could be merciless against an enemy. But to cut open a living person's belly, it challenged his moral compass a little—even though it was just a clone. The clone was replicated too realistically. The bloody scene of its organs being dug out alive always gave him a sense of guilt, as if he were torturing a living creature.
"Did you see?" Sakura stopped her movements as he had said, threw the ice blade to the side, and clapped her hands. "From beginning to end, apart from instinctive movements, she did not have any reaction that a human should have. She didn't cry out in pain, didn't cry, didn't beg, and didn't speak."
"Because apart from looking like a person on the outside, this clone has no thoughts or emotions, so it won't have any 'human' reaction. In this situation, do you still think she is a person?"
Sasuke shook his head vigorously, dispelling the strange feeling of nausea in his mind. Only after he had calmed down did he say:
"It's just a clone."
"No. The difference between a clone and this clone is just that after death, a clone won't turn into ice like a clone does," Sakura said, shaking her head and waving her hand to disperse the ice clone on the low table.
Seeing this, Sasuke let out a huge sigh of relief.
"A clone has flesh and blood... when you hurt them, won't they scream and cry?" Sasuke asked. "They are real humans with brains who can think!"
"Can you think just because you have a brain?" Sakura waved her hand and denied Sasuke's statement.
She was not mocking those idiots who had a brain but couldn't use it. Sakura was speaking seriously.
She explained to Sasuke.
If the brain is the hardware of a computer, then a person's thoughts and emotions are the software. And the latter, the "human" software, is not something one is born with—Haruno Sakura as a transmigrator being an exception—but is written into the brain after more than ten years of constantly receiving external information and interacting with the outside world, forming one's own way of thinking.
Therefore, the clones that Sakura created, although they had a brain from birth, in terms of thoughts and emotions, they were a complete blank slate, even blanker than a newborn baby, only equivalent to a fetus still in the womb—after all, a newborn baby has at least heard its mother's voice for a few months.
And even in that peaceful country of her previous life, an unborn fetus did not enjoy the protection of human rights...
In short, in the world of Naruto, whether a clone counts as a person and enjoys human rights is a matter of opinion.
Haruno Sakura believed that what determined whether a person was a "person" was more importantly whether it had human thoughts, spirit, and soul. This was not an excuse she had found for herself to do this kind of experiment, a reason to deceive herself, but as a transmigrator, her personal experience had indeed given her reason to believe that compared to the body, the soul was the more essential thing that represented a person's existence...
In short, Sakura would absolutely not let the clones she created develop a self-awareness, but would let them remain in the state of an empty shell of a body.
The base she was planning would not be too large—after all, she hadn't taken much equipment and materials from Orochimaru's base. After she had made a breakthrough in cloning technology, she would cultivate a small number of clones based on herself. After being催生 by ninjutsu, they would become living bodies with only biological instincts and no consciousness, for her to experiment on.
Such a clone was actually not essentially different from the ice clone she had just created. Apart from the latter being a chakra body that would dissipate once the chakra supply was stopped, and the former being a physical body that would rot and decay once the nutrient supply was stopped, there was actually no fundamental difference...
And what she would do subsequently was also the same: to project her own spirit onto the clone's body and manipulate this body to develop those dangerous ninjutsu.
This was a clever application of the Clone Jutsu.
All clone jutsu can be divided into two steps: the first step is to construct a physical form by replicating one's own image. The second step is to copy a part of one's own spirit and project it onto the physical form.
The only difference is, first, in what way the physical form is constructed—is it a chakra illusion or a chakra entity? Or is it formed with a medium like water, ice, or wood? This determines whether they become a regular clone, a shadow clone, or a water clone, ice clone, wood clone, and so on...
Secondly, after the spirit is projected, is it linked to the original's spirit, or is it in an "offline" state? This is the difference between a medical ice clone and a combat ice clone...
The ice clone that Sakura had just completed had only gone through the first step. And her plan was to treat the clone's body as a special clone that had already completed the first step, and then she would need to perform the second step of the ninjutsu on this special clone.
In short, looking at cloning from this perspective, it was nothing more than a special kind of clone jutsu, similar to the ice clone and other ninjutsu. Perhaps it could be called a clone-clone or something.
So Sakura didn't think there was anything inhumane about her doing this. Was there any difference between abusing a regular clone and abusing a cloned-body clone?
After the topic had been discussed to this point, the problem had already risen to the level of philosophy.
And Sasuke found that no matter how he thought about this problem, in the end, he had to return to that philosophical question.
A clone with only a body but no spirit, does it count as a "person"?
For a moment, he didn't know how to answer.
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