"The Executioner's Blade is yours."
Kenichi tossed the massive cleaver to Sasori.
Sasori actually smiled for once, and Kenichi couldn't help thinking:
Yeah, this guy's face really could make a lot of girls call him "senpai" in my last life…
He glanced down at Jūzō Biwa's corpse, now completely still on the ground.
This guy's strength wasn't bad at all—solid elite jōnin level.
But now?
Dead on the beach.
Kenichi scratched his cheek.
So that's about my current benchmark, huh…
With Sage Mode and a fully matured Sharingan, if he still couldn't solo an elite jōnin…
he might as well find a piece of tofu and smash his head on it.
"Kenichi, why is your lightning that strange black-red color?"
Sasori drove the Executioner's Blade into Jūzō's chest, letting the blood flow along the blade and repair its damaged edge, then turned to ask.
"I dunno," Kenichi shrugged. "Once I enter that state, my lightning just... looks like that."
He squatted down and started looting the body.
Jūzō didn't have much on him, but Kenichi did find a scroll stuffed with money.
After a quick count, he grinned.
"About thirty million ryō… not bad at all."
For a missing-nin who hadn't been on the run that long, that was a pretty respectable savings.
For Kenichi, it translated directly into: new lab equipment.
Sasori watched him thoughtfully.
He remembered that black-and-red thunder beast that had crashed down near Sunagakure, leaving a field of fused glass in its wake.
The color matched Kenichi's lightning a little too well.
He didn't say it out loud, but he had a pretty good guess who'd caused that "natural disaster."
"Let's go. Since we came all the way to Uzushiogakure, there's something I want to find."
Kenichi waved Sasori over.
With someone like Sasori helping search, tracking something as obvious as a mask should be much faster.
He didn't remember the exact spot, only that the Shinigami Mask was somewhere on Uzushio, in a building surrounded by trees.
Sasori didn't press for details. He watched as Kenichi incinerated Jūzō's body with a fire jutsu, then followed him away from the shore.
"Kenichi," Sasori finally asked, "why did you burn the corpse?"
Kenichi gave him a sideways look.
To be fair, it wasn't a strange question.
In the shinobi world, cremation really wasn't common—most people were still buried, which was exactly why Kabuto in the future could dig up half the history books for Edo Tensei.
If everyone had been cremated, he wouldn't have had nearly so many toys to play with.
"It's convenient," Kenichi replied lazily. "I don't feel like digging graves."
Of course, the real reason was very simple:
Edo Tensei was his now.
Why on earth would he leave random, intact corpses lying around for someone else to use?
He'd already quietly sliced off one of Jūzō's fingers earlier and sealed it away.
For a decent-level fighter like him, that was more than enough material for a resurrected pawn later.
He could already imagine it:
Fighting Konoha? Edo Tensei'ed Dan and Nawaki to emotionally pressure Tsunade while he arranged a sneak attack.
Dealing with Naruto? Edo Tensei Minato and Kushina—though those two would need to be controlled very carefully, or they'd probably figure out how to break the technique on their own.
The samples he had stored so far were already very interesting.
Jūzō Biwa would fit in nicely as another mid-to-high tier piece on the board.
Uzushiogakure wasn't very large.
After running a circuit around the island, Kenichi and Sasori identified a few likely-looking buildings.
They searched them one by one—
Until they finally walked into a dim hall and looked up.
"…That's… a lot."
Lining the stone wall in front of them was an entire wall of Shinigami masks.
Each one looked like an ordinary demon mask at first glance—
but the chakra clinging to them was heavy, cold and wrong, like something watching from behind the eye holes.
Up close, Kenichi noticed they resembled hannya masks: demon horns, twisted features, frozen in an expression midway between laughter and a snarl.
"These masks…"
Sasori studied them, eyes narrowed.
"They feel… connected to souls."
"Probably some kind of special ability bound to them," Kenichi mused.
These weren't just decorative talismans.
They were the remains of every Shiki Fujin ever cast by the Uzumaki clan—
masks born when souls were torn out and swallowed by the Shinigami.
Somewhere among these, half of Kurama and the Fourth Hokage's soul were sealed.
There was even a rumor in some circles that each mask represented a different god.
Kenichi rolled his eyes internally.
If that were true, the Uzumaki clan would've been way too broken.
In theory, he should be able to feel which soul was which through his Edo Tensei experience.
But he'd never personally been swallowed by the Shinigami, so to his senses they were just… a mass of chaotic, mixed spiritual residue.
Only someone like Orochimaru—who'd actually had part of his soul sealed away—could recognize his own spiritual "scent" and pick the correct mask.
Kenichi didn't hesitate.
He started taking them down one by one and sealing them away.
Every single mask here was a top-tier research material.
Studying them might just give him a way to touch, analyze, or even bargain with the Shinigami itself.
And the Shinigami, as far as he was concerned, was real.
Edo Tensei could summon souls from the Pure Land…
but if the soul was locked in the Shinigami's stomach, there was nothing he could do.
And from what he'd seen of the future, no one trapped inside had ever broken free by their own power.
Even Minato and Kushina had stayed obediently in the belly of the beast until Orochimaru used a Shinigami mask to rip it open.
So what was the Shinigami, exactly?
A sealing jutsu construct?
A summoned entity with its own will?
Or some bizarre fusion of both?
Shiki Fujin might not be a sealing technique at all, he thought, but a specialized summoning contract for one very particular "god."
"Hey, Sasori," Kenichi asked as he worked, "in Sunagakure, do you have any legends or records about gods?"
He was suddenly very interested in the pantheon of this world.
After all, if there was a genuine death god, a "Cthulhu" for Hidan, and whatever the Uzumaki worshipped…
Then on the level above ninja and kage and bijū—
maybe the real rules of this world were being written by the things those masks represented.