Chapter 225: Filial Piety Gone Awry?
Shisui instinctively stepped forward, blocking Kenichi's line of sight. His expression turned wary as he stared Kenichi down.
"What do you want to do?"
Shisui's suspicion flared. Sasuke was still a child. Kids that age normally studied at the Ninja Academy. Even if someone was taken as a personal student, that usually happened after graduating at twelve.
But Kenichi wanted to take Sasuke now.
That made Shisui's thoughts drift somewhere unpleasant. He could not help suspecting Kenichi had an ulterior motive, like using Sasuke as a test subject.
After all, Kenichi had a dark reputation. Back in Konoha, he and Orochimaru had been driven out and branded rogue ninja because of cruel human experimentation.
"What could I possibly do?" Kenichi looked at Shisui blocking him and rolled his eyes. "I'll train Sasuke into a qualified ninja. Obviously."
Shisui's face stiffened.
"Sasuke is still young. If he's in the Ninja Academy…" Shisui started to object, but when he met Kenichi's calm gaze, his voice faded.
Shisui knew Kenichi's strength. It was not something to underestimate. And Kenichi had an even more dangerous teacher behind him.
Orochimaru, one of the Sannin, was a figure even Danzo treated with caution. A ninja like that, already infamous across the world, stood at a level most people could not touch.
To be blunt, among the clan members Shisui had brought out, there really was no one stronger than Kenichi.
Except for Shisui himself.
Even then, Shisui did not feel confident claiming victory. If he truly fought Kenichi, the result was hard to predict. He had Kotoamatsukami, but he had never used it on anyone else, and whether it would work on Kenichi was still an open question.
Itachi still needed time to grow. As for the current Itachi, he probably had no chance of winning against Kenichi. Kenichi was simply too dangerous, especially when you added his ability to fly.
Shisui knew Kenichi's other identity.
Heavenly Demon.
A ninja worth that much in bounties was an anomaly. There were even rumors that the Heavenly Demon already possessed Kage level combat power.
"You're not going to tell me someone in your clan is stronger than me, are you?" Kenichi asked with a faint smile. "You're fine, but do you actually have time to take on a student?"
Shisui stayed silent for a moment before answering.
"I need to ask Sasuke what he thinks."
He still did not agree immediately. Kenichi did not mind. It was only an idea, and a fairly unusual one at that.
Everyone knew how the story of the ninja world went. Naruto and Sasuke were the absolute protagonists. Boruto was a disappointment, sure, but if you ignored that era, Naruto and Sasuke were unquestionably the core.
Raising protagonists sounded interesting.
Kenichi was also interested in their bloodlines. On top of that, having Naruto and Sasuke would help him unify the ninja world later.
Still, it was only a sudden thought. If Shisui refused, Kenichi would not lose sleep over it. Even if Naruto and Sasuke were destined protagonists, they still needed time to grow. It was not like they could suddenly master Six Paths Sage Mode today.
By the time Naruto and Sasuke reached their peak, Kenichi suspected he would have already completed his plan and unified the ninja world.
At that point, Naruto and Sasuke could play their roles somewhere else. At worst, they would become powerful assets under his command.
"No rush," Kenichi said, smiling. "If you don't want to, forget it."
With that, he turned and left.
He had only come to check whether Sasuke was doing well, and he had not felt any immediate trouble while staying here.
More importantly, there was no sign of the plot trying to force itself back into place. Kenichi did not believe the ninja world had any true self repair mechanism. The Sage of Six Paths might keep an eye on the reincarnations of his two sons, but he would not actively intervene.
After leaving the small Uchiha village, Kenichi returned to his laboratory, planning to continue refining his genetic programming modifications.
"Oh, right. The reply to Konoha…" Kenichi rubbed his forehead as the thought resurfaced.
Before, he had assumed that non Uchiha could not freely activate and deactivate the Sharingan because the ninja world's transplant techniques were crude.
They basically installed the eye, used medical ninjutsu to speed up recovery, then declared the transplant complete. No one seemed to care about nerve pathways or vascular integration beyond keeping the eye alive.
But once Kenichi began experimenting himself, he discovered something else.
Uchiha eyes were genuinely different.
They had three extra nerves.
Those three nerves were very likely connected to the mechanism that allowed the Sharingan to activate and deactivate. Kenichi still needed a proper experiment to confirm it, though.
So he went to Orochimaru and requested an ordinary genin, intending to bring the person back to his lab as a test subject.
"Have you made progress?" Orochimaru asked, interest flickering in his eyes.
The moment Orochimaru heard Kenichi wanted a genin to research the Sharingan, he immediately understood that Kenichi had found something.
"Yes, Teacher." Kenichi did not hide anything. "I found that the Uchiha Sharingan has three more nerves than a normal eye. I want to test whether the inability to deactivate the Sharingan happens because those three nerves are not properly connected."
As he spoke, Kenichi's thoughts briefly tangled.
He had long grown used to his relationship with Orochimaru: teacher and disciple, inheritance and guidance, a partnership built on ambition and research.
But after Orochimaru switched bodies, Kenichi could not ignore a new problem.
Orochimaru's Living Corpse Reincarnation seemed to be showing irregularities. There were moments when Orochimaru displayed behaviors that matched the current body more than his usual mannerisms.
Was something wrong with the technique?
Was the body influencing Orochimaru's habits, or worse, pressing on the soul itself?
If that influence could be strengthened, could Orochimaru be changed at the core?
And the body Orochimaru had chosen was undeniably striking. Not in a way that inspired affection, but in a way that created friction. It was visually distracting, a variable Kenichi had to constantly account for. During this time, Kenichi admitted he felt pressure, and he sometimes avoided looking too directly, as if his instincts were warning him not to underestimate how much a vessel could shape a mind.
"Three extra nerves… so they have a purpose like this?" Orochimaru did not notice Kenichi's shifting thoughts. He was already deep in analysis.
Orochimaru had dissected plenty of bodies and even drawn anatomical diagrams, but he had never paid special attention to meridians and fine nerve structures in this context. He had always treated those pathways as part of chakra circulation, nothing more.
"I'll observe your experiment," Orochimaru decided immediately.
He wanted to see it with his own eyes and confirm whether those nerves truly controlled activation.
Kenichi nodded. He was not surprised.
That also meant Orochimaru would be coming to Kenichi's laboratory. Was this the first time Orochimaru had stepped into Kenichi's lab?
Orochimaru showed no hesitation. He calmly followed Kenichi.
After entering, Orochimaru scanned the surroundings. The laboratory was well built, but his mind was still focused on the Sharingan.
Kenichi understood Orochimaru's temperament, so he wasted no time. He led Orochimaru deeper inside and began the eye transplant surgery.
This time, the donor eye came from one of the two Uchiha ninja Root had delivered earlier.
"Teacher, look," Kenichi said as he worked. His hands were steady, his movements efficient. "These are the three extra nerves."
He had become far faster since his earlier operations. The transplant was completed quickly, and the three nerves were clearly isolated and marked.
"Put the eyeball back first," Orochimaru said, nodding. "Then test it."
The Sharingan had three unique nerves, but the recipient's nerves and blood vessels were already connected in their normal configuration.
Kenichi placed the eye back, woke the test subject, and ran vision checks. The results came quickly.
The subject could see normally.
But the subject's chakra consumption rate immediately rose. The Sharingan was draining him just by being active, similar to Kakashi.
The subject could also use the Sharingan's basic functions, like copying hand signs.
But he could not deactivate the Sharingan.
Kenichi watched the subject's condition stabilize, then sedated him again.
Orochimaru looked down at the unconscious test subject and spoke evenly.
"Then how do you think this problem should be solved?"
The largest issue was clear. If the Sharingan could not be turned off, it would continuously consume chakra, which directly harmed combat efficiency.
That was exactly the problem Konoha wanted solved.
"I think we should separate the three extra nerves unique to the Uchiha," Kenichi said. "Then install the original ones into this test subject and test again."
His earlier idea had always been straightforward.
Detach the specific nerve pathways between the Uchiha eye and the brain, transplant those pathways into someone else, and see whether the mechanism finally functioned.
If it still failed, then he would dig deeper.
He would extract the Sharingan granules from the Uchiha amygdala.
.....
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