Chapter 229: The Future Development of Flight and Obito's Fury
"Is this what you use to fly?" Orochimaru circled Kenichi's airship, lifting a leg as if testing the space around it.
Kenichi nodded and gave the hull a quick inspection of his own.
The construction itself was not complicated, and building another one would not be hard, but saving time was still a virtue. Besides, he could already picture the future. Maybe this thing would end up displayed somewhere as a historical artifact.
The ninja world's first manned airship.
Just thinking about it made his blood stir.
"Yes, Teacher. This is the flying tool I created. I call it an airship." Kenichi finished checking the seams and frame. The structure was intact. All it needed was power to lift off again.
"Airship…" Orochimaru repeated the name with mild interest, then patted the white fabric beside him. It did not feel like ordinary cloth at all. It was sturdier, tougher, almost like a specially treated membrane. "So how does it fly?"
"Why don't you guess, Teacher?" Kenichi did not answer immediately. Instead, he smiled and tossed the question back.
He knew Teacher preferred reaching conclusions with his own mind.
And if Teacher figured it out, there might be unexpected gains. Orochimaru's research ability was terrifying. Sometimes he produced results so bizarre that even Kenichi was left speechless.
Orochimaru nodded, then studied the airship more carefully.
From the outside, it looked bloated, yet when he pressed against it, there was nothing inside. No water. No chakra.
That left only one possibility.
Invisible air.
And once he accepted that, the method of flight was not hard to imagine.
"Hot air?" Orochimaru asked.
Kenichi nodded without hesitation. Correct.
It was buoyancy, born from heat.
To demonstrate, Kenichi formed hand seals and released Fire Release. Heat filled the chamber inside the airship, and it began rising steadily. Then he followed with Wind Release, pushing the airship upward faster, carrying it cleanly into the sky.
Orochimaru watched the entire process.
Once the airship stabilized, he moved to the window and looked out at the clouds and the land far below. For a moment, he seemed lost in thought.
Kenichi stayed quiet. He did not want to disturb him.
The first flight always felt fresh, almost intoxicating. But once you stayed in the air long enough, it became ordinary, even a little dull.
Fortunately, Kenichi already knew the direction of the Land of Snow. He only needed to maintain the course.
"It's truly marvelous." Orochimaru's voice finally broke the silence. "Such a simple concept, yet it has chained shinobi dreams of flight for so long."
He exhaled, as if the realization still irritated him.
He knew Fire Release raised the surrounding temperature, and he knew heated air rose. But even he had never thought to use such a principle to fulfill the dream of flight.
Yet his disciple had done exactly that.
Not only that, he had turned it into a usable tool and earned a title in the process. The Heavenly Demon.
The feeling in Orochimaru's chest was difficult to put into words.
"Teacher," Kenichi asked, watching the rare emotion on Orochimaru's face, "how does it feel to fly for the first time?"
It truly was unusual to see Teacher react like this.
In the past, Orochimaru's expression rarely changed. Surprise and emotion were almost foreign to him.
"It's strange," Orochimaru admitted, then sat down. "Once I'm in the air, I still feel… unsettled." He turned his gaze back to the airship's structure. "Tell me about your design concept."
Kenichi answered readily.
They had time. Flying from the Land of Rice Fields to the Land of Snow was not a short trip.
"So you think hot air buoyancy still has room to improve," Orochimaru said after listening, examining the frame and cloth again. Ideas surfaced quickly. Expanding the space, reinforcing the structure, adjusting the airflow.
But after turning the possibilities over, he realized most modifications were still trapped within the same "airship" concept.
An improvement, but not an evolution.
So he looked at Kenichi. "What do you think the next step is? You seem to have your own path."
Kenichi rubbed his hands together, eyes bright. "Teacher, you know about the Sky ninja village, right?"
That place was not only tied to the Zero Tails and that strange fortress.
It also had something else.
Old devices that used chakra as power for flight.
They were flawed, and they were single user tools, but if you armed them on a large scale, they would become valuable. And flaws could be fixed.
"Are you talking about the Zero Tails?" Orochimaru's brow furrowed slightly. Those flying tools could convert Zero Tails chakra, but that meant relying on the Zero Tails itself, and it would take time for it to grow.
"No." Kenichi shook his head. "I mean their old single person flying devices. They only carry one person, sure, but what if we scaled them up proportionally?"
His voice grew more animated as the idea took shape.
"Turn them into something like… a fighter jet."
In his previous life, fighter jets were the undisputed overlords of the sky. Their speed and altitude were terrifying, and with specialized weapons, they were brutally practical.
This world had oil and crude petroleum, but it did not have aviation fuel or kerosene.
So what?
Chakra itself was energy.
Kenichi realized he had been trapped in a misconception, thinking power had to come from familiar sources like wind, electricity, nuclear reactions, or petroleum.
But this was the ninja world.
Chakra was a unique energy system.
If he adapted certain tools and weapons from his old world into chakra powered versions, he might open a completely new path.
"It's not impossible," Orochimaru murmured, eyes narrowing as he imagined it. "But if you want the speeds you described, it will require further breakthroughs."
Even so, the direction fascinated him.
High speed and extreme altitude were inherent advantages.
And the faster the speed, the greater the kinetic energy.
If such a "plane" became a weapon, then a strike delivered from the sky at ultra high speed…
That would be far too interesting.
"We can improve it slowly," Kenichi said, using his own development as proof. "My first version was tiny. I refined it into what you see now."
He even mentioned the earliest hot air balloon concept as an example.
As for whether fighter jets, aerospace bombers, or even future space fighters could appear, that still needed proof.
But Kenichi believed the possibility was high.
After all, the Ōtsutsuki existed.
If he could not build every weapon himself, then he could let his enemies build them and seize the result.
What Kenichi did not expect was how quickly Teacher's interest ignited.
Orochimaru took items from a sealing scroll and began experimenting right there inside the airship.
Kenichi did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Still, he had to admit it. Ever since Teacher had taken that body, something about his overall temperament had shifted in strange ways.
"I wonder what Teacher will create…" Kenichi licked his lips, then returned his focus to navigation, keeping the airship aimed toward the Land of Snow.
Elsewhere.
Obito stared at the Fourth Mizukage, the man he was controlling, and hatred flickered in his eyes.
He still forced it down and spoke evenly. "How has the Akatsuki been lately?"
Beside him, Black Zetsu waited, smiling that unsettling smile.
If Obito did not still need this creature, he would have already torn him apart.
And he would have gladly killed the Three Tails along with the Mizukage, too.
"Hehehe… still the same as always." Black Zetsu chuckled in that familiar, twisted tone. "Do you want to push them to move faster?"
Obito's mouth tightened. That laugh always made his skin crawl.
"There's no need." Obito watched the Mizukage's body closely. The man's will occasionally struggled, but Obito crushed it again and again. "We still don't have the exact locations of the tailed beasts. Without that, the plan can't move."
The Bloody Mist policy had already thrown the Hidden Mist into chaos.
In truth, countless people had died because of it.
If this continued, the Hidden Mist would sink deeper and deeper under his control, becoming another tool for the plan.
And every time Obito saw the hatred in the eyes of Mist shinobi, he felt a sick kind of satisfaction.
Rin's death had other layers to it, but the Hidden Mist had been a blade in that tragedy.
They were absolutely responsible.
"These tailed beasts are hard to find," Black Zetsu said lightly. "But I found something interesting. Want to hear it?"
Obito's gaze snapped toward him.
Why did that smile look even stranger?
"What?" Obito asked anyway. He hated the feeling, but he could not deny the pull of wanting to know.
Black Zetsu's voice turned playful, almost singing.
"While I was investigating, I accidentally discovered that part of Rin Nohara's corpse is missing."
In an instant, Obito's eyes turned completely red.
.....
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