The boy re-entered the southern forest and suddenly stopped in his tracks, saying without turning his head, "You've been following me for so long, it's only fair to let someone catch their breath."
"Wouldn't you agree, Lord Orochimaru?"
A sharp gaze shot forth with a "whiz~",
Orochimaru transformed into a white snake, supporting himself against the tree trunk with his tail, standing upright, smiling sinisterly....
"You've clearly discovered me long ago, why didn't you just expose me directly?"
The tailing wasn't new; it had already begun when Roy was carrying logs to the training ground... Orochimaru believed that if the boy could detect him now, he must have noticed him long ago as well.
"Two reasons," Roy stopped and turned around, looking up at Orochimaru with a faint gaze, saying, "One, you have no malicious intent. Two, I also want to see what the legendary Lord Sannin is up to."
"Hehehe..." The white snake's tongue flicked, giving off a dark, hoarse feeling, Orochimaru's vertical pupils glowed eerily as he stared at the boy below the tree, "So, did you see?"
"I saw," Roy was somewhat disappointed, "Just a pathetic voyeur without a heart, not knowing what he's doing."
Because of the phrase "life itself has no meaning," the guy almost ended Mamen Beans' life, yet he eventually turned into the "Jiraiya" he despised the most... Roy looked at the white snake Orochimaru had transformed into, as if seeing through time and space, witnessing him scurrying around the Konoha Village after the Fourth Shinobi World War, sometimes working odd jobs at a restaurant, sometimes walking with pigeon-toed steps, nibbling his fingers in front of a ramen shop, occasionally shouting "baka yarou" at the Hokage's building with an uninhibited nature...
Couldn't help but feel a bit sentimental....
"Pathetic?" Orochimaru looked down at Roy, meeting his luminous gaze, raising an eyebrow slightly, and squinting his eyes, "You seem to know me well...."
Strangely, the boy's gaze gave him a familiar feeling... yet Orochimaru was certain this was their first encounter....
Roy, with his hands in his pockets, shook his head slowly: "I wouldn't say I know. If you don't tell me, I won't know."
"I tell you?" Orochimaru frowned.
Roy, with underlying meaning, pointed at the white snake's seven-inch point: "Yeah, 'it' already told me."
Orochimaru instinctively looked down, seeing the location where his heart was beating....
"Thump... thump..." The heartbeat, the warm blood, as he moved closer, Orochimaru could almost see his heart contracting and expanding. Just as he looked up, he was suddenly startled!
A crow's harsh caw rang out, a "caw~" echoing, and in a blink, he fell into deep darkness.....
This darkness was impenetrable, completely disorienting, with only the "squish, squish..." noise, seemingly from a crawling gastropod. As Orochimaru came to his senses and looked up... not far, a heart bug extended its long proboscis, crossing the distance of time and space along causal lines, reaching him in an instant, piercing down without giving him time to react, followed by.....
A boy with jet-black hair, three parts resembling Fugaku, seven parts resembling Mikoto, stepped back, planting a foot in his mental landscape....
"Rustle..." Memories unfolded, Orochimaru's past life experiences rolled out like film at the boy's feet, scenes of him learning ninjutsu alongside Jiraiya and Tsunade under Hiruzen Sarutobi... being promoted to Chunin, following his teacher to the battlefield, experiencing the awkwardness of vomiting secretly after his first kill... growing stronger, gradually showing his edge, standing his ground in the Shinobi World, the joy of being promoted to Jonin... teaming up with Jiraiya and Tsunade to fight Hanzo the Salamander and being awarded the title of 'Sannin', of course,
also the numbness from too much killing... the confusion and helplessness surrounded by a vast void... the coldness and cruelty of treating people not as humans but as expendables... the frustration and despair of having his experiments forcibly shut down by Hiruzen Sarutobi for violating human ethics and the... illicit joy of restarting the project with Danzo's compromise... maintaining a glorious facade while secretly descending into darkness.....
All these constructs a "colorful" life story that Roy took in completely, with no privacy left... Orochimaru, standing beside the boy in the heart's field, turned his head to look at him and asked, "What is this ninjutsu?"
No chakra was stirred, unlike Illusion Technique... there was no sensation of the mind being swallowed, unlike the Yamanaka clan's "Mind Body Switch Technique"... yet he couldn't resist and could only open his heart, allowing the boy to leisurely walk in, taking and viewing at will,
this feeling of having his entire life exposed for the first time, like running naked... made Orochimaru experience a terror no less than being enveloped by "nothingness"... a great terror!
"Do you think I would tell you?" Do not do unto others what you would not want done to you,
Roy casually perused Orochimaru's life, not even glancing at him as he said, "If you can peek at me, naturally I can peek at you,"
"Lord Orochimaru, this is my answer to you."
"Hehehe...." a sudden violent shake from chakra, the heart's field... in an instant, the sky collapsed and the earth caved in.....
Roy finally seemed to react, turning his head to glance at Orochimaru, saying, "I didn't think you'd be so ruthless."
"You've seen that, to me, people can die, and naturally, so can summoned beasts...."
"Crash~" The heart's field shattered, consciousness returned... the heart bug flew out, whimpering as it was grabbed by Roy with one hand, the boy exited the heart field, looking up... the white snake dangled lifelessly from the tree trunk like a rope, with a "thud~" it fell to the ground, dead beyond any doubt,
Roy silently watched, truly not expecting Orochimaru to escape his "En" by "self-termination"... as expected, he lives up to the title of "Sannin" given by Hanzo the Salamander, not one to be trifled with lightly.
"Step... step....." After a moment of silence, Roy lightly exhaled, lifting his foot again, heading towards the training ground near the Uchiha clan's residence....
Shisui and Itachi were still waiting for his review, as the older brother, he certainly couldn't let his brothers be disappointed,
Roy simply discarded the unnecessary thoughts from his mind, transformed into sunlight, disappearing in a flash.....
......
"Whew... whew... What a bizarre boy....."
In a remote and concealed laboratory beneath Konoha,
A large snake was slithering through the darkness,
"Rustle...."
The snake's skin rubbed against the gloomy ground, making a creepy noise, and at a certain moment, in the dim light....
The snake raised its head and opened its mouth, spewing out a slender man,
He had long, straight black hair, elongated golden pupils, extended purple eye shadows to the nose wings, pale skin devoid of blood, with blue-green magatama-like earrings... standing up damply, he immediately began packing his experimental materials and data while simultaneously using a summoning technique, calling forth a messenger snake, directing it towards a certain direction.....
In less than half an hour....
"Tap~ tap..." The dull thumping of a cane hitting the ground echoed faintly down the dark, deep corridor leading directly outside the laboratory....
The sound grew louder until "creak~" the door opened,
Two men, not particularly tall but rather sinister, walked in... the one following a step behind had a long sword on his back, a blindfold covering his face, obscuring his features, it was Aburame Torune... as for the one in front...
Bandages wrapped from arm to right eye, the remaining left eye squinted, revealing a hint of sinister intent, especially upon noticing that Orochimaru had almost emptied the entire laboratory, looking at him menacingly, saying, "What do you mean when you say you're leaving Konoha?"
A messenger snake had already carried the message to him,
Danzo had an arrangement with Orochimaru, instructing not to contact him unless absolutely necessary,
This, Orochimaru knew well,
The man, using a summoning technique again, "poof", called forth a larger snake, ordering it to swallow all the experimental materials and data, turning to look at Danzo only then, "I've been exposed!"
"Who? I'll kill him!"
Orochimaru's gaze turned ghostly, uttering four words: "Uchiha Jin!"