Chapter 115: The Crisis of Replacing the Ninja
"This is a test."
Facing Tobirama, who stood with his arms folded, Aizen smiled as he spoke.
"Since chakra is both a signal carrier and an energy controlled by others, it is inevitable that it will react when a new power system appears."
"This trigger will almost certainly cause a strong backlash. But our current monitoring equipment can already detect probe signals coming from the moon toward the ninja world. If they want to stir up the ninja world's chakra again, they will need to fire an even stronger signal to interfere."
"That kind of activity will inevitably be picked up by our instruments. From that, we can infer whether chakra is still considered necessary to this world. And we also need to observe the results inside a sealed space. To be honest, Kagami's performance in earlier attempts was less than ideal. This time he can finally release his full power in a closed environment, and even suppress the Hokage himself. If their monitoring equipment can reach that deep into the space, then the situation changes."
"Of course, as researchers, we have to admit there is a chance they simply do not care what the insects on the ground are doing. But this is still a test, still a hypothesis."
"...Aizen."
Tobirama narrowed his eyes at him, his tone dry.
"Shouldn't you deal with that urge to keep explaining things to people? We discussed this plan in detail. We built it ourselves. There is no need to repeat it to me."
"I'm truly sorry. I just like to review it out loud to keep myself from losing my way once we start moving."
"Personal quirks are fine," Tobirama said, "as long as they do not interfere with your work."
He paused, then added with pointed emphasis.
"And make sure Kakashi and Sakumo clearly state who developed this technique. That point is important."
"..."
"..."
The two of them held each other's gaze in silence for a moment, as if quietly confirming that the other was a bit troublesome, then turned back to the glowing screens, watching the shifting rows of data and graphs.
To prepare for a possible attempt to cleanse the biosphere a few decades from now, Tobirama and Aizen had formed a cooperative relationship of sorts.
In truth, Aizen did not like treating these researchers as mere subordinates. When he could see someone's true nature, he preferred to treat them as companions on the same path. The problem was that such people were extremely rare compared to the sheer number of lives in the ninja world.
Most people, bound by their habits and experiences, were trapped in their existing perceptions, unable to transform any further. That, to Aizen, was a tragedy. He knew very well that the ninja world was a place overflowing with potential, where ninja theory and basic science had been developed to an almost absurd degree of detail.
Even basic ninja academy students learned advanced math and research methodology, only to use it to calculate how to throw shuriken faster and straighter.
If this level of education and talent were funneled into normal research and development, if everyone worked together to create things that truly changed the world, Aizen had no doubt the people of the ninja world could build something for space exploration within a few decades.
"We have to investigate the signal problem," he continued. "It is urgent. We need to use the time before Madara dies, while that signal is still circulating inside the ninja world, to test whether this world has a deeper defensive mechanism."
"Yes, that is a necessary line of inquiry," Tobirama replied. "But what about forbidden technique research? Just stabilizing the chakra signals is already something that only the two of us can manage."
"As for the forbidden techniques, we can hand that work to members of the Uchiha and Hyuga clans," Aizen said calmly. "The eyes of those two clans are very interesting. Their evolution does not follow the normal path of this world."
As he flipped through the documents in his hand, his earlier speculation solidified into certainty.
Compared against the bloodline limits of other clans, the Uchiha and Hyuga clearly stood apart.
Most bloodline limits were inherited anomalies, born from fusions between chakra natures that were then passed down through genes. Even the legendary Dust Release was, at its core, a fusion of three elements.
But the Sharingan and the Byakugan were different.
Although they were inherited, they did not manifest as simple physical traits or bodily abnormalities. Sharingan chakra was tied to emotion and existed only in the eyes, disconnected from the rest of the body. The Byakugan had a form of perception completely unlike any other bloodline limit, something self contained and isolated, its all seeing vision clearly originating elsewhere.
Question the clans and their answers varied, but the stories always circled back to myth, tracing things up to the Sage of Six Paths and the rabbit goddess. That alone intrigued Aizen.
More importantly, later research proved that the Sharingan and the Byakugan were not true eyeballs at all, but rather evolved organs that only resembled eyes. At the fundamental level, Uchiha and Hyuga were less "clans with special eyes" and more "living containers" for two different ocular organs.
After all, who had ever seen an eye transplant without rejection?
As long as the chakra pathways were connected, both Byakugan and Sharingan could be plugged in like tools and used immediately, with no rejection at all. That compatibility could even be limited to the eyes alone, since they only needed to connect to the optic nerves to replace vision.
If one wished, one could embed Sharingan or Byakugan almost anywhere on the body, and the eyes would still function. That fact was, in itself, terrifying.
The two great clans had even conducted internal experiments here, confirming their eyes could be fused. But the moment fusion was achieved, the resulting organ began to radiate a high intensity chakra signal into the world, and the experiment had to be shut down immediately.
That kind of test could only be tried again after the decoy plan was fully in place.
Chakra was an extremely versatile energy system, and with the ninja world's unique level of formal education, it was impossible to say what kind of power they might unleash if they truly focused. The problem was that the ninja world was instead trapped in endless civil wars, wasting that potential in pointless bloodshed across every corner of the map.
The source and nature of the chakra signals remained unknown, but Aizen believed it was necessary to keep probing them.
Just like now. They were using the power system of the Shinigami to undermine the very foundation of chakra, or using large scale experiments to see how those signals reacted. Little by little, step by step, slicing away like a sausage, testing the limits over and over again.
The signal inside Madara's body had never left. It was firmly within Aizen's grasp. Once Madara died naturally and that mass of chakra began to move, it would be easy to deal with.
The Black Zetsu Madara had sent out also contained traces of ancient chakra. But because it showed almost no high level intelligence, Aizen handed it to Tobirama for harmless containment, and instead focused his own attention on dissecting the structure of Yin Yang Release.
That black thing did not have any particularly impressive active abilities, but from the perspective of Yin Yang Release analysis, it was the perfect teaching material. Its raw essence was sound, yet its power had been stripped away. As a body, it was ideal for experimentation.
By reverse engineering that thing, Aizen developed the prosthetic bodies now used by the Shinigami in Las Noches. Created through the Creation and Regeneration functions of Yin Yang Release, those bodies had strong resistance to ninjutsu and almost limitless chakra adaptability.
In other words, they could be used in the ninja world as easily as a human body, sometimes even more smoothly. That counted as a small milestone in Aizen's research on artificial bodies.
But that brought them back to the original problem.
Aizen did not know what the original "Naruto story" had been. He only knew that at some point alien beings had descended and that chakra was part of a larger conspiracy.
So how was he supposed to explore safely and reorganize the truth?
There was, in fact, an answer.
Resurrect people from older eras using Impure World Reincarnation, question them, have them reveal where their predecessors were buried, collect DNA, clone those bodies, and then revive them again.
In theory, that method allowed them to work backward through history without limit, tracing all the way back to the oldest mythological periods, perhaps even earlier.
But something went terribly wrong.
There were no older souls in the Pure Land.
The furthest point they could reach was the end of the mythic age, a vague era whose beginning could not be found, not even for the Sage of Six Paths.
All Aizen could confirm was that there had once been a special group called the Shinobi Sect, a sect that tried to connect the entire world. The Sage of Six Paths had linked everyone's hearts through chakra, attempting to create a perfect, peaceful world built on mutual understanding.
Beyond that, the trail simply vanished.
What unsettled Aizen the most, and what convinced Tobirama to join him outright, was something else.
In human bodies from that ancient period, he had detected high concentrations of Wood Release chakra. In a sense, modern humans of the ninja world were not naturally occurring at all.
Human genes, unlike those of animals and plants, were extremely susceptible to being overwritten by chakra imprints, reshaping them into entirely different chakra creatures. Trace that influence backward and almost every line showed signs of Wood Release, leading to conclusions too shocking to ignore.
Most likely, they really did fall from the tree.
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