Chapter 221: My Attempt to Create Godzilla in the Ninja World
[Log: After three days in close proximity to the Meteorite in a sealed room, Subject 4 could not withstand the Meteorite's energy. His eyes were the first to show abnormalities.]
Kenichi watched the wailing subject and silently wrote the result into his experimental log.
This was already the fourth test subject to collapse since the Meteorite experiments began. He was not dead yet, but it was only a matter of time. The process was always the same. First came the visible symptoms, then the internal organs began failing one by one, and finally life slipped away. The first three had ended like that too.
The frightening part was that these four were considered relatively strong individuals, yet they still could not endure the Meteorite's radiation.
"The Meteorite's energy causes irreversible damage to internal organs," Orochimaru said, voice sharp with excitement. "But I found something very interesting, Kenichi."
Kenichi's mouth twitched as he looked at his teacher.
To be honest, he had planned to return and continue his Sharingan research. He urgently needed more data on the Sharingan to prepare for his own experiments. But after Orochimaru asked him a few questions, his teacher immediately ordered him to create a Shadow Clone to keep dismantling Uchiha genes, while Kenichi's main body stayed here to assist with the Meteorite experiments.
Kenichi could only agree.
"Teacher, you mean the First Hokage's cells we added earlier?" Kenichi sighed.
Of course he knew what Orochimaru was talking about. He had participated in the entire process. All four test subjects had failed, and none had successfully trained the Peacock Method.
Still, it was not a complete waste.
In Kenichi's view, the biggest gain was the Senju Hashirama cells Orochimaru had introduced.
Hashirama's cells were similar to cancer cells in a sense. Their vitality was terrifying, and their invasiveness was extreme. If an ordinary person received a transplant and the growth was not cut off in time, there was only one outcome.
Death.
In the end, Hashirama would not "revive" through the host body. Instead, the host would become an irrational, mindless, harmless monster and then die of malnutrition.
Yes. Malnutrition.
Or, more bluntly, starvation.
Once Hashirama's cells invaded most of the body, their energy consumption became absurd. Without enough nutritional supplementation, the host would literally starve to death.
But now Hashirama's cells had met an enemy.
The Meteorite.
The Meteorite's radiation caused continuous, subtle damage to all living organisms close to it. Hashirama's cells, meanwhile, kept proliferating. As long as they had enough energy, they could keep multiplying.
And now, the Meteorite and Hashirama's cells seemed to have formed a balance.
Kenichi flipped open his experimental log and scanned the entries.
At first, with nutrient solution provided, Hashirama's cells proliferated rapidly and efficiently, overflowing the culture dish in a short time.
Then, the proliferation rate withered abruptly. For half a day there was almost no growth at all, while necrotic cells kept accumulating. Soon, a layer of decayed flesh had piled up outside the dish.
Those were dead cells killed by the Meteorite's radiation, proof of how lethal radioactive substances could be to the human body.
However, once nutrient solution was replenished, Hashirama's cells maintained continuous growth again. The proliferation rate did not surge like before, but it stabilized, forming a strange equilibrium with the rate at which the Meteorite's radiation destroyed them.
"Look." Orochimaru handed him a photo, eyes bright with interest. "I took this up close."
Kenichi glanced at it and immediately felt something was off.
The arrangement of the cells looked strange.
"I found the key problem," Orochimaru continued, clearly energized. "Hashirama's cells are dying in massive numbers, but their proliferation ability lets them maintain a relatively stable growth state."
Orochimaru pointed at the center of the image.
"But the cells in the middle are dying too. They're being pushed outward automatically, forming a layer that resists the Meteorite's terrifying energy."
Orochimaru was excited for a reason.
Normally, aside from their invasiveness, Hashirama's cells behaved much like ordinary living cells. But under the influence of the Meteorite, they now seemed to be adjusting themselves autonomously, adapting in a way that reduced the Meteorite's impact over time.
Kenichi's mind immediately jumped to something else.
In some old science fiction movies, radiation and radioactivity caused creatures to mutate into monsters like Godzilla.
That kind of creature was usually the result of long, brutal biological screening, a freak miracle born from countless failures. Godzilla itself was a miracle.
But here, the conditions were different.
The Meteorite's radiation was continuous. A normal person would have died long ago. A ninja might last longer if they resisted, but the cellular damage would never stop, and the impact would only accumulate.
Hashirama's cells, however, were different. They kept proliferating. Their growth was fast enough to match the rate of death.
So if the experiment continued, would Hashirama's cells eventually mutate into something truly abnormal?
Kenichi did not think it was impossible. In fact, the possibility felt uncomfortably high.
Hashirama's cells had tenacious vitality. Under constant radiation pressure, it was hard to say when a genetic mutation might occur and create something completely new.
Especially since the proliferation speed was so fast, as long as nutrition was sufficient.
"Teacher," Kenichi asked carefully, "if this continues, could Hashirama's cells become some kind of intelligent creature?"
That possibility truly existed.
Orochimaru hesitated.
To be honest, this was the first time his thoughts had gone in that direction. In the past, he had considered whether Hashirama's cells could independently develop into Hashirama himself, but testing proved it was impossible.
Hashirama's cells were just Hashirama's cells.
They proliferated, but they did not turn into organs. They did not form a spine. They did not produce a brain.
They were only cells.
But now, after such a short period of exposure to the Meteorite, those same cells had begun "learning" to push dying cells outward as a shield.
That meant the possibility was no longer purely fantasy.
In the end, Orochimaru made a decision.
He would replenish the nutrient solution daily and continue observing. He wanted to see whether the Meteorite would truly force Hashirama's cells to mutate and evolve into intelligent beings.
If it happened, it would be a major discovery.
Kenichi was finally freed.
This phase did not require more consumables or new test subjects. It only needed a Shadow Clone to remain behind and replace the nutrient solution each day.
Before leaving, Kenichi offered one more suggestion.
He told Orochimaru to record the nutrient consumption rate of Hashirama's cells, to see whether it would increase over time. If the consumption rate rose, it might indicate that the cells had undergone some special internal change.
"I didn't expect Teacher's research obsession to be this intense," Kenichi muttered as he left the laboratory. "For… let me count. Thirteen days already, and he's still going."
Orochimaru's enthusiasm was frightening, especially when he encountered an interesting research topic. He always looked like he wished he could pour every second of his life into experiments.
Kenichi was not surprised. Still, since leaving Konoha, he had rarely seen his teacher this energized.
At that moment, a wave of exhaustion hit Kenichi.
At the same time, new memories surfaced in his mind.
Kenichi rubbed his temples.
His rice had matured.
He hurried to the cultivation area. By the time he arrived, a Shadow Clone had already finished everything that needed to be done. The statistical report had been handed over cleanly.
Kenichi took it and scanned the numbers.
The yield increase effect was still roughly the same as before. This batch showed a slight improvement, but it did not reach the previous peak of ten percent. It seemed this method might not be reliable, though it was still too early to declare it dead.
"It looks like this time's… huh?" Kenichi paused. "What's this?"
A new data point jumped out.
Compared to the rice seeds he had given Nagato, this batch's yield was twenty percent higher.
"This one is special." A Shadow Clone walked over and placed a sample of the harvested rice into Kenichi's hands. "The yield is much higher, but there's a new problem."
The moment Kenichi held it, he felt something was wrong.
There was a faint smell, hard to describe.
It was not pleasant. If anything, it was strange. Almost like a very faint durian scent, mixed with something else he could not identify. The more he tried to define it, the more his words failed him.
For the first time, Kenichi felt his vocabulary was inadequate.
The scent was just too weird.
Still, he did not think the issue was fatal.
"If this gets cooked… can people eat it?" Kenichi asked.
As long as it was edible and not poisonous, there would be no shortage of people willing to plant it. After his trip to the Land of Bears, Kenichi understood the reality of small countries in this world far better than before.
For people who could not get enough to eat, people who had even resorted to exchanging children for food, what was wrong with a little smell?
Compared to ordinary rice, a crop that produced such a huge increase in yield was practically a gift from heaven.
"We're testing that right now," the Shadow Clone replied.
The clone had the same thought as Kenichi.
They had not seen it firsthand, but Kenichi's Shadow Clone understood exactly what poverty looked like in his previous life.
.....
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