Chapter 69: A Truly Ruthless Person Dares to Bathe in Benzene
The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, naturally would not stroll into this laboratory for a transplant procedure. Instead, he chose to have Orochimaru send the arm back.
That was reasonable. If Kenichi were in Hiruzen's position, he would not risk meeting Orochimaru alone, especially when he was already in a vulnerable state due to the need for an arm replacement.
If the previous arm could no longer be used, then forming hand seals with one hand would inevitably affect combat performance. It would not stop the Third Hokage from beating most ninjas senseless, but against a true Kage level threat like Orochimaru, even a small handicap could become fatal.
"Teacher, what are you planning to do?" Kenichi asked, watching Orochimaru secure the letter onto the operating table.
The man on the table trembled, yet still clenched his teeth and refused to make a sound. That alone made Kenichi look at him again.
By now, Kenichi already knew why this man had volunteered as a test subject. He wanted to learn cloning technology. That kind of determination was ruthless.
Kenichi knew he could not be that ruthless. Even if he wanted cloning knowledge, there were other ways. Turning himself into someone else's experiment was not one of them.
"Take a look," Orochimaru said, giving the exact answer Kenichi expected. "See if you can induce the same kind of abnormal growth in his arm."
Kenichi felt both amused and helpless.
Inside the arm, though?
Most people knew malignant growths were linked to organs, but Kenichi did have a candidate in mind that fit what Orochimaru wanted.
The problem was what to use as the trigger.
Lung cancer had obvious culprits like cigarette smoke, nicotine, and tar. But bone cancer?
"Teacher, do you have any crude oil here?" Kenichi asked quickly, thinking he had found a path.
"Crude oil?" Orochimaru raised an eyebrow and looked at him strangely. "You want that?"
Kenichi nodded. His idea was simple. From crude oil, one could isolate certain solvents. One of them was benzene, a substance infamous for damaging the body and leading to severe illness. It was also relatively easy to obtain in a world that already had fuel and refined oils.
But after a brief exchange, Kenichi realized he had made a ridiculous mistake.
If this world had fuel, how could it not have benzene?
It was just that no one called it benzene here.
They called it "sesame oil."
Sesame oil.
At that moment, Kenichi's expression turned blank, like an old man trying to read a complicated seal formula with his glasses upside down.
What made it worse was the way Orochimaru described it. In this world, "sesame oil" was considered a high end luxury. Ordinary people could not afford it.
Then Orochimaru added, almost casually, that some wealthy people even had the habit of bathing in it.
Kenichi nearly choked on air.
"That's terrifying," he said, genuinely suffocating for a moment.
He could not understand how anyone could endure that pungent fragrance in a bath. In his old world, if someone said they bathed in benzene, Kenichi would quietly call a mental hospital and report a patient trying to speedrun the afterlife.
And yet, when he thought about how, in history, people once treated dangerous substances like miracle cosmetics, Kenichi forced himself to calm down.
This kind of madness would probably only stop once people in the ninja world understood how harmful it was. Unfortunately, most people here did not live long enough for slow lessons to spread quickly.
With benzene available, everything became straightforward.
Once Orochimaru had prepared the subject and opened the arm for treatment, Kenichi carefully applied the method he had in mind. It was not clean or elegant work, but it followed the grim logic Orochimaru wanted.
Before long, the abnormal growth developed successfully within the bone.
"Teacher, I want to take a sample," Kenichi said.
This man was a national treasure level test subject, someone whose body showed no rejection at all. Kenichi desperately wanted to see what these cancer cells looked like under such conditions.
Orochimaru had no objections. He simply smoothed his hair and nodded.
Kenichi gave him a strange look.
That gesture just now felt… oddly delicate.
Was something wrong with the Impure World Reincarnation?
Kenichi did not know. Still, he silently noted it down. Maybe later he could observe his teacher more closely and figure out what was happening. Orochimaru himself did not seem to notice anything unusual, which only made Kenichi more cautious.
When it came to researching the soul, one mistake could spiral into real trouble.
After leaving the operating room, Kenichi returned to his research space. He needed to keep the cancer cells alive and growing. If they died out, restarting the cultivation would be a hassle.
Cancer cells were like masters of civil war and idiots in foreign lands. Inside a body, they could rampage like an unstoppable plague. Outside the body, they were pitifully fragile.
In fact, many cells and bacteria became strangely "delicate" the moment they were taken into controlled conditions. Yet once tossed into harsher environments, they somehow learned to "find a way out" again.
Kenichi enveloped himself in Yang nature chakra and watched the cells begin to proliferate. Only then did he finally exhale.
Good. That was enough.
He placed the dish into a specialized incubation room and left.
His next focus was still the thermobaric bomb. He planned to test a normal version first before attempting a chakra fused thermobaric weapon.
Now that the explosive ratio was solved, assembling the bomb itself was not especially difficult. Following the blueprints step by step, there was little room for error, as long as he stayed careful.
"Would you even call this handmade?" Kenichi wiped sweat from his forehead, feeling slightly overwhelmed.
The industrial system in the ninja world had plenty of flaws. Thankfully, chakra existed, an unreasonable advantage that could make impossible tasks possible. With his three tomoe Sharingan guiding precision and his hands doing the rest, Kenichi truly could build one by himself.
He just had to make sure it did not explode in the lab.
Staring at the finished thermobaric bomb in front of him, Kenichi licked his lips.
If this thing detonated here, there would be no peaceful way to resolve anything.
A sudden thought crossed his mind from his old world. Recently, the so called breakthrough in room temperature superconductivity from a certain country had stirred global chaos.
Whether it was real or fake was still being verified.
From what he had seen so far, it did not look like it had been conclusively proven.
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