Chapter 11: How Many Laboratories Does Orochimaru Actually Have?
"You seem to really enjoy collecting strange things."
Orochimaru sat in Kenichi's small house, watching patiently as his disciple packed. They would be out of the village for a while, so he had come to pick Kenichi up in person.
"Haha, teacher, there isn't much entertainment in the village. I just started collecting little curios here and there."
Kenichi scratched his cheek with an awkward laugh. In truth, most of these "little things" were materials he had gathered for future research.
Orochimaru nodded without much comment and let his gaze drift over the shelves and table. Some of the items were rare enough to be interesting, though not unfamiliar to him.
But his attention paused when he noticed the piece of amber.
Kenichi did not go over to see what Orochimaru was examining. He quietly continued packing his clothes. For a ninja leaving the village on a mission, there actually was not much to prepare.
If Orochimaru had not told him to change his clothes, Kenichi would have simply grabbed his tools and ration pills and left.
"Where did you get this amber?"
When Kenichi came out of the bedroom, fully changed, he saw Orochimaru holding up the amber, studying it carefully.
"I bought it at the market," Kenichi answered honestly. "A merchant from Sunagakure was selling it. He said they dug it up there and that it was some kind of ancient amber."
Orochimaru nodded, his golden eyes thoughtful. He vaguely remembered having seen similar insect patterns and records somewhere before.
He just could not recall exactly where.
It was probably not related to ninjutsu. If it had been, he was sure he would not have forgotten.
Once Kenichi finished packing, the two of them left the village together. Orochimaru said very little along the way, simply leading the route at a measured pace.
Two days after they left Konoha's gates, he finally stopped.
"Kenichi, why do you think the Third Hokage approached you today?"
Orochimaru was fiddling with something on the ground, his back half turned. Kenichi did not peek. He could already guess what was going on.
They were officially on a mission, but in reality, they were heading to one of Orochimaru's laboratories.
"Hmm… I think the Third Hokage might have some personal intentions regarding you, teacher, and wanted to test something through me," Kenichi replied, voicing his guess.
Of course, it was also possible it had simply been a coincidence and that Hiruzen really had been heading to the hospital when he ran into him.
"Not bad. Compared to Anko, your thinking is more satisfactory."
Orochimaru smiled faintly. A moment later, the ground opened to reveal a hidden passage, and he led Kenichi down into the darkness.
Kenichi followed obediently. His teacher was the embodiment of a serpent with many dens, and Kenichi sometimes suspected that the entire Land of Fire was riddled with Orochimaru's secret testing grounds.
He truly had no idea where all the money for these labs came from.
When they reached the underground chamber, Kenichi was surprised to see a person floating in a glass tank. It was not the existence of a test subject that stunned him, but who that person was.
The man in the tank was clearly still alive. His most striking feature, however, was his pale, featureless pupils.
He had the Byakugan.
"Surprised?"
Kenichi had not said a word, but Orochimaru easily guessed what his disciple must be thinking. After all, this was a member of the Hyuga clan.
"Teacher, isn't the Hyuga clan supposed to have the Caged Bird Seal?"
Kenichi frowned. By all rights, the Byakugan almost never left the Hyuga clan's control. The Caged Bird Seal engraved on the foreheads of branch family members could completely destroy the Byakugan and the brain at the moment of death.
It was an extremely cruel cursed seal, ostensibly a form of protection, but in Kenichi's eyes it was nothing more than a tool of enslavement.
Just like the so called Will of Fire the Third Hokage liked to preach.
If Hiruzen truly respected the Will of Fire, then why had the Fourth Hokage died while he himself survived? Why had Naruto, the child of the Fourth, spent his childhood suffering such blatant mistreatment?
"The Caged Bird Seal is there, and it is very special," Orochimaru said, stroking the outside of the glass tank. "I do not know how to break it yet."
His gaze lingered greedily on the pale eyes floating in the liquid. This was his biggest prize of the recent period.
"Is he from the main family?" Kenichi asked. That was the only explanation he could think of. Ao from Kirigakure possessed a Byakugan, and as far as Kenichi knew, only main family members lacked the Caged Bird Seal.
Orochimaru smiled and shook his head.
"He is an illegitimate child. An unregistered child of the Hyuga clan. Naturally, he does not bear the Caged Bird Seal."
At that, Kenichi understood how his teacher had gotten his hands on a Hyuga test subject.
The Caged Bird Seal was said to be impossible to remove once inscribed. Only death could release it. But no one was born with a cursed seal already on their head. The seal was applied later, once a child reached a certain age.
If a child was born outside the clan's official records, then there was indeed a small chance that the Caged Bird Seal would never be placed on them.
That chance, however, was very small. The Hyuga clan took that matter incredibly seriously, and the Byakugan's appearance was far too conspicuous. Anyone with those eyes wandering outside the clan would usually be discovered very quickly.
"Teacher, you really are incredible."
Kenichi's praise came from the heart. Even so, he was not particularly fixated on the Byakugan itself. If he truly wanted to study it, all he needed was a strand of Hyuga hair.
For now, he was already immersed in research on the Sharingan and did not have the time or energy to handle the Byakugan as well.
What he really could not understand was why Orochimaru had never implanted the Byakugan into himself. Even while competing for the Fourth Hokage position, and later after defecting, he did not use it.
Even if he chose not to embed it in his own body, he could have used it on one of his subordinates.
Yet there had been no rumor of Byakugan appearing in the hands of outsiders in the future, which meant something had changed somewhere along the line.
"There is something very unusual about this test subject," Orochimaru murmured, frowning slightly. "I feel something in him that is similar to the cells of the First Hokage."
"The cells of the First Hokage?"
Kenichi was stunned. Hashirama's cells were unique in the entire ninja world. How could anyone else possibly possess something similar?
Then his mind jumped back to what he had been investigating before they left the village.
He had just gone to the hospital to inquire about a particular kind of disease.
Kenichi's interest was immediately roused. He began explaining again what he had observed about the First Hokage's cells: their extreme aggressiveness, the way they threatened surrounding healthy cells, and how their frenzied rate of division reminded him of something from his previous life.
They behaved exactly like cancer cells.
Could this Hyuga test subject's condition be the same?
Could it be that he was looking at cancer cells in the body of someone from the ninja world for the very first time?
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