Chapter 14: Nicotine
"You are insane."
Kenichi stared at the frail test subject strapped to the table and scratched his head in frustration. He genuinely did not want to keep torturing this man, but there was no helping it. Right now, this was the only person he had who carried active cancer cells.
If he wanted to develop the ninjutsu he had in mind, this was the only path forward.
"Relax. I am not here to dig out your eyes today."
Kenichi sighed as he met the man's bloodshot gaze.
At least one thing was clear now. Yang attribute chakra definitely had the ability to stimulate the growth of cancer cells. But this underground lab was nowhere near a sterile environment, and the cancer cells died off quickly once removed from the body.
Because of that, Kenichi had been forced to move into live testing, injecting Yang attribute chakra directly into the subject's body to provoke the cancer cells instead.
"Let me think. First, I need to get Yang attribute chakra into his body. Then I need some kind of identification mechanism so it can find cancer cells as quickly as possible," Kenichi muttered, jotting notes as he spoke.
In his view, step one in creating this ninjutsu was obvious: his chakra had to be able to enter another person's body smoothly.
That alone was already difficult. Even though his body was gradually adapting to Hashirama's Sage Body, he still could not deliberately condense Yang attribute chakra and inject it into others at will.
And even if he solved that, there was still the key problem.
How was he supposed to make the Yang attribute chakra target cancer cells specifically?
Normal people might have scattered cancer cells inside them, but they did not gather and fix themselves in one place like in this test subject. Most of the time, those cells formed in random tissues and were then eliminated by the body before they went out of control.
There was also another issue.
What if the target did not have any cancer cells at all?
"This is too much trouble. It would be easier to just create a cancer cell inside them and let it grow like crazy. At least then I can choose where the damage appears."
Kenichi smacked the table with his fist.
He had been overcomplicating things. There was no need to hunt for preexisting cancer cells. Why not simply create them himself?
In a sea of healthy cells, picking out a few rogue ones was an extremely difficult problem. But turning a normal cell into a cancer cell was comparatively simple.
His interest instantly reignited. This time, he did not touch the man's brain. Since the existing cancer cells were clustered in the head, he decided to try inducing new ones in the lungs instead.
Kenichi already had a rough theory for how to do that.
Normally, cancer cells arose when the DNA of a healthy cell was damaged, twisting it into something abnormal. That process was often triggered or accelerated by carcinogenic substances.
For example, nicotine in cigarette smoke could cause lung cells to mutate into cancer cells.
If those cells were not detected and destroyed by the body, they could eventually develop into full blown lung cancer.
The lungs were vital organs. Everyone needed them to breathe. Once lung cancer took hold, the damage to the body was immense.
"Want a smoke?"
Kenichi smiled faintly and held up a cigarette between his fingers.
At least there were cigarettes in the Naruto world. That part, he thought, was convenient.
The test subject did not answer. He just stared at Kenichi with hollow eyes, certain now that the boy in front of him was a complete lunatic. In his condition, even living felt like torture. Smoking was the last thing he wanted.
Kenichi did not care whether the man actually smoked. He was more interested in what was inside the cigarettes. He knew there were ways to extract nicotine from tobacco with basic lab techniques, separating it into a concentrated solution.
The important point was simple: the nicotine ended up in the liquid, and that was what he needed.
"It is a pity nicotine does not form convenient crystals. That would make this much easier to handle," Kenichi sighed.
It could be cooled and stored in liquid form, but he did not even need to go that far. Once he had a nicotine rich solution, he poured it into a spray device and misted it directly over the subject's chest.
"What are you doing?"
Terror crept into the man's voice. He had no idea what Kenichi was doing or what that strange cold spray meant. The uncertainty alone made his entire body shake.
"Calm down," Kenichi replied, his tone almost gentle.
Nicotine could be absorbed through the skin. In strong enough doses or if it reached the bloodstream too quickly, it could easily become lethal.
In his mind, Kenichi was already connecting the dots. In the world of ninjas, any substance that behaved like a toxin naturally fell under the realm of medical ninjutsu. A technique like Fine Extraction could probably pull it back out of the body.
"Of course, that would require a medical ninja to help. If there is no medical ninja on hand, then the target just has to endure it all the way," Kenichi murmured, eyes lighting up.
There was potential here. This might work as a subtle method of poisoning.
He remembered hearing that the nicotine from a large quantity of cigarettes was enough to kill a normal adult under certain conditions, and that much smaller amounts could be fatal if they entered the bloodstream directly.
"Still, slipping nicotine straight into someone's veins is not easy these days," Kenichi admitted with a shake of his head. Ninja were not idiots.
Even so, he felt it was worth recording. Cigarettes were cheap and everywhere in this world. Used properly, they might have some very interesting applications.
But then Kenichi discovered a new problem.
Ninja bodies were vastly stronger than the people from his previous life. With their levels of vitality and chakra, the dose that could kill a normal civilian might not even be enough to make a trained shinobi collapse.
He would need a lot of experimental data to figure out how nicotine actually affected a ninja's lungs and how it interacted with chakra and physical resilience.
Kenichi shifted his gaze back to the miserable test subject.
He would need this man to stay alive for quite a while yet.
With that in mind, he decided he would at least feed him properly and treat his injuries minimally. If the subject died too early, finding another with the same condition would be a nightmare.
"What did you do to this one?"
When Orochimaru finally returned, the first thing he saw was the Hyuga illegitimate son lying there on the table, barely clinging to life. If not for the faintest signs of breathing, he would have assumed his disciple had finished him off.
"Hehe, I ran some experiments on him. I wanted to understand how those special cells in his body formed," Kenichi said with an embarrassed smile.
Orochimaru had been gone for eight full days.
Kenichi had done experiments on the Hyuga youth for all eight.
At the beginning, the boy could still spit curses at him. Later, he stopped talking altogether, just staring numbly at the ceiling like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Even so, there had been progress.
At the very least, Kenichi had succeeded in injecting Yang attribute chakra into the target's lungs and making it act there.
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