Chapter 103: Legacy of the Grave-Digger
The revelations in the Pure Land chat had escalated from scandal to outright historical atrocity. Tobirama Senju's clinical admission of grave-robbing, corpse procurement, and human experimentation—all in the name of "Konoha's security"—had opened a chasm of spectral outrage. The fact that his first victims were his own family only added a layer of horrific absurdity.
[The Ultimate Sister-In-Law Connoisseur - Uchiha Izuna: You dug up YOUR OWN BROTHER?! AND YOUR FATHER?! TOBIRAMA, YOU ARE A PSYCHOPATH!]
[Hashirama Senju: …Tobirama. Our father. Our… mother. You… used us?]
The God of Shinobi's text was a quiet, devastated thing.
[The Brilliant Analyst - Tobirama Senju: Scientific inquiry requires a control group, brother. Who better than our own genetic line? The data from Father's musculature was instrumental in refining the chakra pathways for the Shadow Clone technique. Your cells… well, they were the entire foundation of the 'Senju Cell' project. I had to understand the source of your vitality. It was for the village.]
It was a confession so cold it burned. The legendary Senju brothers, one a beacon of life, the other a surgeon of the dead, their legacy intertwined in the most macabre way.
[Hashirama Senju: My… cells? The 'Senju Cell' project?]
[The Brilliant Analyst - Tobirama Senju: I termed it the 'Interstitial Cell Initiative.' Named in your honor. An attempt to replicate your unique life force and Wood Release capabilities in other shinobi. Grant Konoha an army of Hashiramas. The ultimate deterrent.]
The ambition was staggering. The methodology was monstrous.
[Jiang Cheng: So that's the origin story. The infamous 'Hashirama Cells' weren't a natural resource. They were harvested. By his own brother. From his corpse.]
[The Brilliant Analyst - Tobirama Senju: 'Harvested' is a crude term. 'Procured for strategic bio-enhancement.' Unfortunately, the project was a catastrophic failure. Test subjects exhibited uncontrolled cellular mitosis, followed by explosive exsanguination or transformation into grotesque, wooden abominations. The failure rate was 100%. The initiative was shut down, the data sealed. The cells were deemed 'ominous' by the surviving families. A fitting, if inaccurate, epitaph.]
He reported the failure with the same detached tone as the grave-robbing.
[Hashirama Senju: You turned my body into a bioweapon that killed your own people. And you named it after me.]
There were no words, only a profound, silent grief emanating from the First Hokage.
[Senju Butsuma: My sons… one a naive fool, the other a corpse-defiling lunatic. I failed as a father.]
The family drama was so intense it momentarily overshadowed the Uchiha's fury. Even Madara was stunned into silence, perhaps relieved his own revival via Izanagi had spared him a posthumous dissection.
Back in the tangible world, Ren pushed the horrific family history from his mind. He had a more immediate idiot to deal with.
The search for Naruto and Sasuke led Kakashi, Sakura, and Ren back to the training grove. It was empty, save for the scars of Naruto's earlier struggles on the tree bark.
"They probably went to find a latrine," Kakashi mumbled, his eyes heavy-lidded from his… eventful night.
Ren didn't bother pointing out the obvious. His gaze traveled upward, past the lower branches, to a higher crook where a patch of orange was doing a terrible job of blending with the grey-brown wood.
"Isn't Naruto right there?" he said, pointing.
Kakashi and Sakura looked up. Naruto, perched precariously on a branch a good twenty meters off the ground, grinned down at them. He'd clearly mastered the basics of tree-walking, his chakra control sufficient to hold him in place, albeit with visible effort.
"Hehe! You found me!" Naruto called down, his voice tinged with exhaustion and triumph. "See, Sakura-chan? I can get this high now! Next time the boat sinks, I can totally carry you across the water!"
Sakura blinked. "…What?"
Kakashi's single eye narrowed. "Don't get cocky, you brat. Come down before you—"
"WHOAAAA—!"
It was a classic Naruto move. The triumphant pose, the shift in balance, the sudden, graceless slip. He windmilled his arms, let out a comical yell, and plummeted from the branch.
Sakura screamed, hands flying to her mouth. Kakashi straightened, his lethargy vanishing in a spike of adrenaline.
Ren just watched.
Naruto fell for about two meters before his foot hooked under the branch he'd just vacated. His momentum swung him in a wild arc, and he ended up dangling upside down by one ankle, swaying gently like a bizarre, orange fruit. His grin was even wider.
"HA! Gotcha!" he crowed, his face flushed from the blood rushing to his head. "You were so scared! Believe it!"
The relief that washed over Sakura was immediately drowned by a tidal wave of pure, unadulterated rage. Her hands clenched into fists so tight her knuckles cracked. She took a deep, shuddering breath, the picture of forced calm for the benefit of the boy she actually had a crush on, who was standing right there.
"Naruto," she said, her voice sweet as poisoned honey. "Don't… scare people like that. Really."
Internally, her thoughts were a crimson haze: As soon as Jiang Cheng isn't looking, I am going to punch you into the stratosphere.
Kakashi slumped back into his slouch, the burst of energy leaving him. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Minato-sensei, he thought, with a weariness that transcended the physical, what did you and Kushina-san create? And why?
Of the three, only Ren's expression hadn't changed. He watched Naruto's antics with a faint, knowing smile. The boy's improvement was real, if clumsy. His idiocy was also real, and apparently incurable. It was a package deal. The raw power, the stubborn resilience, and the brain-to-mouth filter that seemed to be installed upside-down.
In that moment, as Naruto hung laughing upside down, as Sakura seethed, and as Kakashi contemplated the cosmic joke of his life, Ren felt the lingering cold of Haku's ice-mirror on his skin, and saw the phantom image of Gato's seaside fortress in his mind's eye.
The clown show was necessary, perhaps. It was the camouflage. The distraction. The proof of life and fallibility that made them seem like just another genin team on a botched mission.
But beneath the comedy—beneath the tree-climbing, the pranks, the eerie family secrets of dead Hokage—the real gears of the mission were grinding forward. Zabuza was out there, healing. Haku was watching, assessing. Gato was waiting, smug in his fortified cove.
And Ren was standing in the middle of it all, a repository of stolen techniques and future knowledge, watching the pieces move on a board that was becoming less familiar by the hour.
The day was young. The mist hadn't burned off. And somewhere, a cross-dressing master of ice was reporting to a wounded demon, telling him about the clumsy genin, the tired jonin, the angry girl, and the one who didn't react, the one who just watched and smiled.
The game was afoot. And Ren was done being just a player. It was time to start moving his own pieces.
💫 Liked the chapter?You can read 100+ extra chapters on Patreon, including the current
Chapter 204: The Kettle's Boil and the Snake's Strike
👉 Patreon.com/KudosNey
Your support helps me write more and update faster 💖And don't forget to drop a Power Stone ⭐ — it really motivates me!
Thank you for reading! 🙌✨