Chapter 226: Breakthrough Research on Sharingan Transplantation
With chakra as an aid, locating the visual pathway of the optic nerve was not difficult. Kenichi quickly and carefully traced the subject's optic nerve with chakra, then began removing it along the visible connection.
After extracting the nerve and the eyeball, Kenichi started again, attempting to complete the ninja world's first Sharingan transplantation surgery using his own method.
Of course, the subject was only an ordinary genin. Whether the transplant would succeed was still uncertain. Even so, Kenichi strictly followed the neural network layout he had previously observed, refusing to cut corners.
"Teacher, how should I connect this nerve to the subject's brain tissue now?" Kenichi asked, glancing at Orochimaru beside him. "Should I use chakra to guide it?"
Orochimaru did not answer. He simply watched.
Kenichi froze for a heartbeat.
Orochimaru rarely acted like this. When he stayed silent and only observed, it usually meant one thing: this was knowledge Kenichi should already have learned.
Kenichi immediately searched his memory, replaying past experiments. Then he recalled the day Orochimaru transplanted the First Hokage's cells. During that procedure, Orochimaru had once tried implanting the cells into the subject's heart, and the technique he used to connect and anchor the tissue was…
Kenichi's mind snapped into place.
He already knew what to do, but for a moment he could not recall the exact hand seal sequence. He frowned, thought hard, then finally formed the correct seals and performed the same ninjutsu Orochimaru had used that day.
In an instant, the terminals of the three nerves connected cleanly into the genin's brain tissue.
No visible damage appeared throughout the process. Cellular damage might have occurred, but Kenichi could not observe it. The scientific level of the ninja world had not yet reached the point of directly viewing cells.
Still, at least for now, the transplant was stable.
Next came the main step: transplanting the Sharingan he had removed into the subject's eye socket, then completing the nerve and blood vessel connections.
Compared to the earlier part, this was far simpler.
Kenichi moved quickly. When he connected the final nerve, he finally exhaled, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and used medical ninjutsu to heal the subject's eye area.
Orochimaru had watched the entire procedure from start to finish. He stared at the scene with a thoughtful gaze, his eyes deep and unreadable, as if he were turning over some conclusion in his mind. Yet he said nothing.
Kenichi cleaned his hands and checked the clock.
From the start of the surgery until now, a total of fifty three minutes and twenty one seconds had passed. The speed was largely thanks to Kenichi's Three Tomoe Sharingan, which let him track and coordinate every fine connection with frightening accuracy.
"Teacher, I'll begin the awakening procedure now," Kenichi said.
Orochimaru nodded, holding the experiment log. This time Kenichi was leading the operation, so the responsibility of recording the data had been handed to Orochimaru.
Kenichi leaned in, carefully watching the light in the subject's eyes.
"Can you see?"
The subject looked dazed at first after hearing Kenichi's voice. But soon his pupils focused, locking onto Kenichi's face.
"How do you feel?" Kenichi asked, keeping his tone steady.
He was not overly excited yet. This alone was not enough. His goal was for the subject to freely activate and deactivate the Sharingan. Only then could this thorny problem be considered solved.
"I feel… about the same as before?" the subject murmured, touching the area around his eyes.
The chakra drain was still there, a constant pulling sensation that made him instinctively want to start refining chakra to compensate for the loss.
Kenichi observed the subject's expression and posture, then checked the body monitoring instruments, confirming heart rate, blood pressure, and other readings.
Then he asked the question he cared about most.
"Now focus on your eyes," Kenichi said slowly. "Then think about temporarily dispersing the chakra gathered in your eyes. Can you do that?"
To some extent, activating and deactivating the Sharingan should be an instinct, like breathing. People do not consciously notice breathing, but once they pay attention to it, it starts to feel manual.
The Sharingan was similar.
For the Uchiha and for Kenichi himself, switching the Sharingan on and off was as natural as inhaling and exhaling.
When you decided to stop, it stopped.
When you decided to start again, it resumed.
There was nothing mystical about it.
But the subject had never experienced that sensation before, so Kenichi needed to guide him.
"I… I'll try," the subject said, staring blankly at Kenichi at first. Then his face tightened with seriousness.
Kenichi had made it clear earlier: cooperate well, and he could at least survive.
Fail to cooperate, and he would be subjected to tests with extremely high mortality rates.
Anyone who had suffered under Orochimaru understood what that fear meant. If there was even a chance to live, and to live safely, they would do anything.
Under the combined gaze of Kenichi and Orochimaru, the subject's eyes shifted.
The single tomoe Sharingan faded.
The eyes returned to normal, becoming ordinary eyes.
In that instant, Kenichi nearly wanted to leap into the air and pump his fist. The test had succeeded.
Just as he suspected, the inability to activate and deactivate the Sharingan came from incomplete nerve connections. In the ninja world, eyeball transplantation had always been crude: dig it out, put it in, then rely on medical ninjutsu and call it finished.
That approach was not enough.
The eye was a precise organ with countless nerves distributed across it. If even three critical nerves could not be connected, problems were inevitable.
Now Kenichi had found the solution.
Transplant the Uchiha's unique nerve pathways into the target's body.
"And now," Kenichi asked immediately, keeping his excitement contained, "do you still feel the chakra being consumed?"
.....
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