Root's training continued day by day. Yōkō went to Root daily as the Jonin instructor without showing any change in expression, gathering intelligence.
Root had selected another 4-year-old child from the orphanage to fill the vacancy left by Shizune.
Seven days later, Danzo mastered the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal. He branded all 20 children with it.
On these children's tongues appeared a cursed seal pattern of two Yin Yao and four Yang Yao.
Yōkō thought to himself, Danzo, you certainly never imagined that I possess a small part of the Uzumaki clan's heritage. The Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal, which you consider your trump card, will one day be undone by Little Three, Uzumaki Yuka. When it comes to sealing techniques, the Uzumaki clan are the genuine article, the real deal, while you, Danzo, are a counterfeit, a fake.
The Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal, with Lower Gen and Upper Qian, corresponds to the Dun Gua (Hiding Hexagram) symbol among the sixty-four hexagrams of the Zhou Yi.
Among the Uzumaki clan's sealing techniques – the Four Symbols Seal, the Eight Trigrams Seal, the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal – there seemed to be some relation to the Liang Yi (Two Forms), Four Symbols, Eight Trigrams, and Sixty-Four Hexagrams from his previous life's Zhou Yi.
Yōkō suspected that these seals required Yin Release and Yang Release chakra.
Not the 'unorthodox' Yin-Yang Release of Kyōi, but the genuine Yin and Yang Release.
The Four Symbols Seal was a core Uzumaki clan seal; he needed to find an opportunity to learn it from Yuka.
Those branded with the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal could not reveal any information related to their missions.
Even if Danzo ordered them to assassinate the Hokage, no intelligence could be obtained from them if captured and interrogated, or from their brains after death.
Thus, they would become true mission machines.
It didn't matter if they were absolutely loyal to Danzo or not, as long as they completed missions for him and wouldn't leak his intelligence.
They were utterly and completely tools.
Uchiha Itachi once said that any ninjutsu has a weakness.
If Danzo absolutely trusted ninja branded with the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal, and if Yōkō and Yuka could crack it, they could easily feed false intelligence to Danzo and turn the tables on him.
After training Yamanaka Ryuu and the others, Yōkō occasionally went to observe Hei training the children.
Today was dissection training.
Hei brought the corpses of experimental subjects who had died in Orochimaru's laboratory to the training ground.
He ordered all the 4-year-old children to dissect the corpses and extract the heart using their own methods.
After assigning the task, Hei noticed Fox standing nearby and walked over to stand beside him.
"Captain Fox, Root will become stronger in the future."
"You have my congratulations then."
Yōkō couldn't help but say: "The children are too afraid of the corpses. Look at those few children; tears are flowing from under their masks, dripping onto their feet."
Hei said: "It's fortunate to be an ordinary villager of Konoha, not having to face the cruelty of being a shinobi. Being a shinobi is cruel; being a Root shinobi is even more cruel. They must become accustomed to death and corpses as quickly as possible."
Yōkō turned and left, unwilling to watch any longer.
—
The full moon was like a silver plate.
Yōkō had waited for the new night of the full moon.
He corresponded with Yuka. Yuka said the Scroll of Seals she possessed did not contain a method to release the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal, but she could try to crack it.
The Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal required the blood of the caster; the seal applied by each person was different.
Yuka believed that to crack Danzo's Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal, it would be best to capture a specimen and send it to her for study.
Forget about using the children. Yōkō was the lower limit of Anbu morality, but even he couldn't bring himself to send a child to Yuka for experimentation.
He would have to start with Hei or Ki.
Given Danzo's ruthlessness, Hei and Ki might have been branded with the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal.
He wanted to use the Guardian Ninja of the Shimura clan in the Land of Grass to lure Hei or Ki out of the village, then deliver Hei or Ki to Yuka.
To defeat a Jonin from the Shimura clan's Guardian Ninja, the strength of his minor identity, White Ghost, was a bit lacking.
This month, how could he strengthen himself?
The strength of the minor identity White Ghost wasn't top-notch. Should he... equip White Ghost with the Sharingan?
The power of the Two Tomoe Sharingan now provided a decent combat boost.
The Single Tomoe enhanced insight, and now the Two Tomoe greatly increased the power of Genjutsu.
Why not learn a few Genjutsu to increase White Ghost's strength?
The only trouble was, if exposed, Danzo would fight the Uchiha to the death.
The Uchiha clan would shoulder another major blame.
Thinking carefully, the Uchiha clan was doomed to annihilation anyway. Could bearing more blame be worse than annihilation?
Might as well let the Uchiha endure a bit more.
He still had to be as careful as possible not to let Yuka discover he had the Sharingan.
If Yuka found out, he would claim he transplanted it to hide his Senju identity.
Yuka trusted him absolutely and was much easier to fool than Tsunade.
Once decided, he acted. Yōkō found his squad's ninjutsu scrolls and looked for Genjutsu among them.
Demonic Illusion: Temple of Nirvana Technique – he had already mastered this one.
Demonic Illusion: Stakes Staking Technique – a technique that renders the target unable to move.
After reviewing them, Yōkō prepared to learn the Stakes Staking Technique.
While waiting for Yuka's intelligence, Yōkō spent his days training the Root recruits and learning Genjutsu.
He occasionally went to the outside of the orphanage.
Many children were missing from the orphanage, having been taken by Danzo to Root.
On the small blackboard used for writing the menu in the orphanage, a contact signal appeared.
Yakushi Nonō urgently wanted to contact Fox, but Yōkō didn't want to deal with her.
The false intelligence she provided last time nearly got Yuka and the others killed in the Land of Iron; that was unforgivable.
A few more days later, Yōkō saw that the signal on the blackboard pointed to a location 3 kilometers in a certain direction.
Yōkō remembered that place was a park.
Did Yakushi Nonō want to meet him at the park?
Yōkō saw the signal but ignored it, leaving Yakushi Nonō waiting for a few days.
Five days later, Yōkō saw the signal was still there, confirming that Yakushi Nonō was truly anxious.
That evening, Yōkō appeared in the park.
On a bench beside a small lake sat a girl wearing black-rimmed glasses.
The girl's long hair was smooth, and her figure looked slender from behind.
The girl suddenly looked up, the anxious expression on her face easing slightly as she sensed someone had appeared in the dense woods behind her.
"You finally came, Fox."
"Why did you seek me out?"
Yakushi Nonō heard the hostility and aloofness in Fox's tone and asked, "Fox, why are you suddenly so dissatisfied with me?"
"You told me last time that Root sent two people to the Land of Iron, but in the end, four went, nearly causing the death of the subordinates Lord Yellow Dog was secretly training. You caused a failure in my duties, of course I'm dissatisfied with you."
Yakushi Nonō thought, So the four Root members were indeed killed by people sent by Yellow Dog?
Yellow Dog is the Third Hokage's son. If I were to expose Yellow Dog, I would surely die without a burial place.
"Sorry, Fox, intelligence work is like this. I cannot guarantee my intelligence is 100% accurate. You, who receive the intelligence, have the obligation to judge its authenticity. I am a spy, not the final decision-maker."
Yōkō asked: "You risked returning to Konoha and repeatedly used the blackboard to send the meeting signal. What do you want?"
Yōkō wasn't afraid of Yakushi Nonō.
Her weakness was the children of the orphanage.
Those with weaknesses are the easiest to control. Danzo could control her, and he, Fox, could too.
It's just that Yōkō wasn't that despicable for now.
Yakushi Nonō said: "Fox, we can cooperate on certain matters.
Do you know where the 7 children from the orphanage went?"
***
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(Chapter End)