Chapter 234: Creating a Base
Kazahana Koyuki took the bankbook that Sakura handed her, opened it, and her eyes went straight when she saw the long row of zeros on it.
"How can I accept this?" she said, but at the same time, with a speed that was almost too fast for the eye to follow, she stuffed the bankbook into her clothes.
As expected of a world-class actress, her acting skills were indeed superb.
"Tell me, what do you want to do in the Land of Snow!" Kazahana Koyuki said with a serious expression, and then a fawning smile appeared on her face. "No matter what you want to do, I won't object. With money, you can do whatever you want!"
Several one-second face changes in a row, each expression perfectly portrayed, truly left Haruno Sakura in awe.
"Ahem." She coughed dryly, sat up straight, and signaled for her to be a little more serious. It was time to talk business, not to joke around.
"It's about the matter I told you before, about opening a base. You still have the Snow Ninja base castle, right? Just leave that place for me to use in the future," Haruno Sakura said with a serious expression.
Kazahana Koyuki put away her funny face and nodded seriously. "No problem! That place is remote, and no one goes there anyway. It's been abandoned for a long time now. Anything else?"
"Hn, we will establish a hidden laboratory in a more remote part of the Land of Snow. In the future, I will put things that must be strictly kept secret over there..." Sakura said, holding up an index finger. "The Snow Ninja castle will only exist as a cover base. Some experiments that are not of high secrecy, including the purpose of my trip to the Land of Snow this time, can be done there."
She stared into Kazahana Koyuki's eyes. "Regarding the intelligence of where the other laboratory is built, Sasuke will cast a genjutsu to make you forget about it in your daily life..."
Kazahana Koyuki nodded solemnly. "I understand."
"Then we'll go out and check the environment first," Haruno Sakura said, standing up to leave. "See you in a bit!"
The Snow Ninja Castle.
Just as Kazahana Koyuki had said, this place was located in a remote area. Usually, few people came and went, so it had long since become desolate and dilapidated.
In addition, after the Land of Snow's geothermal heating system had started to generate heat, the towns and villages had become much warmer than the suburbs. The people of the Land of Snow were even less willing to go outside to suffer the cold.
"No one has been here for at least three or four months," Sakura said, standing outside the castle and looking at the flat, flawless snow at her feet, then turning her head to Sasuke.
"Being off the beaten path is a good thing. It's less likely to be disturbed," Sasuke said, sizing up the broken gate of the castle. The marks of being kicked in on the gate were probably left by the Snow Ninja when they had fled. Only the bolt part was still intact. "Does the gate need a genjutsu?"
"Both the gate and the outer wall..." Haruno Sakura said while forming hand seals. "But I'll repair this place first."
As she spoke, she walked over and placed her hand on the gate.
Ice Style chakra quickly spread from her palm, extending to the gate. It turned into a hard and flat layer of ice that enveloped the old gate, and soon a new ice gate had grown out.
The girl continued to urge the chakra in her body.
Without any visible effort from her, the castle quietly began to change. Ice Style flowed along the outer wall of the castle like a calm stream, extending. Wherever it flowed, a thick ice wall grew out, wrapping the old stone wall of the castle in ice. The broken parts on the outer wall were also filled with ice one by one.
Before long, the entire Snow Ninja castle had become a world of ice.
It was crystal clear in the sunlight, shining with a silver light, beautiful and magnificent.
"This will be my base from now on... What do you think? It's beautiful, right?" Sakura said proudly, patting her hands and taking a few steps back to look at her masterpiece—the ice castle before her.
The average temperature here was below zero, especially in winter, when it would drop to minus twenty or thirty degrees without a second thought. So the ice wall she had created, even without using chakra to maintain it, could be preserved for a very long time.
"Hn... the design is a bit monotonous," Sakura said to herself, before Sasuke could answer.
When ninjutsu reached her level, it could already be used freely.
So she just simply used shape transformation, and the ice castle continuously changed its shape under Sakura's control, from the Tower of London, to the Sydney Opera House, to the Forbidden City, to the "Big Underpants"... Watching the castle change at her will under her hands, Haruno Sakura felt an inexplicable excitement of creating a world.
"Stop playing. Just this one!" Sasuke said quickly when he saw the ice castle under Sakura's hand change to a Gothic style.
This gorgeous appearance, paired with the transparent and shiny ice spikes, looked indeed extremely beautiful.
At least it was much better than the first few completely mismatched modern styles, especially that "Big Underpants." From his angle, he had the feeling of standing under someone's crotch and looking up... He really didn't know how Sakura had come up with this design.
Two of the people in Team 7 have no aesthetic sense whatsoever. Sasuke mourned for a moment, then walked forward, opened his Sharingan, and began to cast a genjutsu.
"The effect of the genjutsu I've cast on the outer wall is similar to a suggestion technique," Sasuke explained to Sakura, who was following closely behind him, as he cast the genjutsu around the outer wall. "It can suggest to anyone who sees the castle that everything here is normal, there's nothing special, and there's no need to get close."
"The genjutsu used on the main gate is the 'This Place is Not Here' jutsu. A person affected by the genjutsu will see a wall instead of a gate. This way, we can keep out any overly curious outsiders."
After walking a circle around the outer wall and finishing the genjutsu, Sasuke rubbed his eyes and said, "That should be all for the outside, right? The genjutsu I cast is very weak and can only confuse ordinary people, but there aren't many ninja in the Land of Snow anyway. I used a lot of chakra in these genjutsu. If they're only triggered occasionally, the effect should last for about a year."
"Then that's it! You've worked hard, Sasuke."
"You're welcome... just treat it as special training in genjutsu here. As a member of the Uchiha clan, if I'm not proficient in genjutsu, then I'd be letting down the three black tomoe in my eyes!" Sasuke said, giving a thumbs-up and pointing to his eyes.
That's right. For Sasuke, who had awakened his Sharingan to the three-tomoe level, if he used genjutsu as clumsily as Kakashi, that would be too ugly... He couldn't tarnish the reputation of the Uchiha as a strong genjutsu clan!
So before coming to the Land of Snow, Sasuke had even specially looked through the genjutsu scrolls passed down in his family and had crammed a bunch of genjutsu knowledge, just waiting to come to the Land of Snow to properly train his genjutsu.
"You're full of energy!" Haruno Sakura smiled faintly, pushed open the castle's ice gate, and at the same time, felt the power of the genjutsu Sasuke had cast... It had no effect on her at all.
She walked in and said without looking back, "Then let's continue to cast a genjutsu on the inside of the castle!"
The corner of Sasuke's mouth twitched. Although he had voluntarily come to help, why did he feel a little annoyed at her tone... as if he were being ordered around by her!
He followed her steps and walked in, passing through the gate. What lay before him was a wide-open hall.
Inside the castle, when Sakura had cast her ninjutsu just now, she had also taken the opportunity to create many ice clones. At this moment, they were shuttling through the various parts of the castle, cleaning up the rooms one by one, and clearing out the unwanted junk and garbage. In the hall, the cleared-out garbage had already piled up into a small mountain.
"Oh right, remember to use your Fire Style to help me burn all this useless garbage later!"
Sasuke's face darkened. He increasingly felt like he was a cheap laborer...
The genjutsu inside the castle was the Sly Mind Affecting Technique.
This was a genjutsu that made people feel as if they had walked into a maze. Sasuke had modified it slightly so that the maze constructed by the genjutsu would always make people unconsciously walk to the main gate, which was the only exit from the castle.
There were no ninja in the Land of Snow now outside of Koyuki's control. For a short period of time, these arrangements were enough to deal with ordinary people.
After these details were taken care of, the prototype of Haruno Sakura's Land of Snow base was formed.
She had converted Kazahana Dotō's oversized bedroom into a laboratory, then took out the instruments and materials she had taken from Orochimaru's base, arranged them neatly, sat on a swivel chair and spun a circle, and contentedly took in the brand-new laboratory.
"This is my laboratory! Hn... how about calling it 'Umbrella'?"
Hn... that name was still too big. The laboratory that Haruno Sakura had set up for the time being was only a hundred or so square meters in size. It was more than enough for researching Yūgao's heart problem, but for cloning, it was still a far cry.
"An-something, we'll talk about the name later," Sasuke said with his arms crossed, looking at Sakura seriously. "Where are your clones? When does the experiment start?"
"Clones?" Haruno Sakura was stunned for a moment, spinning in her chair until she was in front of Sasuke. "That, at least, will have to wait until next year..."
"Uh... did I forget to tell you that I only came to the Land of Snow this time to create a new heart for Yūgao?"
Sakura blinked her eyes, looking at Sasuke with an innocent expression.
Sasuke, feeling as if he had been tricked into doing labor, suddenly had the urge to smear a Raikiri Raging Stream on her bear face.
❃❃❃
⤑ Show your support with Power Stones!
⤑ Unlock a Bonus Chapter every time we hit 400 Power Stones!
❃❃❃
♕ Get early access to 30+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
🔗 https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to open the link!)
💬 Enjoying the story? Drop a review!
Your support really helps the series grow—thank you!