Itachi raised his head. The gaze fixed on his younger brother was full of hidden sorrow. For the sake of the village. For the Sake of the Will of Fire…
He slowly stood up and, coming close, put his hand on Sasuke's shoulder.
—I'm sorry, Sasuke,— his voice was quiet. "If you survive... one day you'll understand."
Understand?
Lie. What a disgusting lie!
"Don't touch me, you bastard!" Sasuke shouted, wriggling frantically.
He looked at Itachi with boundless hatred. In that mournful mask, in that quiet voice, he saw only icy hypocrisy and sickening falsehood. Sasuke didn't understand all the details yet, but the gist was clear.: These creatures — the so-called Hokage, the so-called Konoha—were going to use him for something deadly. They wanted him dead.
To use his life as a lever of pressure on Uchiha Yue.
This was the true face of the brother he had once admired. Not a man, but a beast in human skin. "One day you'll understand"... If he had the power now, he wouldn't just kill this beast— he would smash its head in with his bare hands.
Itachi stared with dull pain at his brother, who was thrashing in rage. He's just a kid. He doesn't see the whole picture. But someday, having matured and comprehended the true meaning of the Will of Fire, Sasuke will make the right decision. He will understand that this sacrifice was necessary. For the sake of the village. For the sake of the Uchiha clan's future.
The plan was carried out immediately.
Uchiha Yue's problem, or rather, his Area of Dead Silence, boiled down to a simple but insurmountable barrier. It was an all-consuming anomaly, sucking the very life out of everything that got into it.
The only known way to break through is brute force, pushed to the suicidal limit. Sage White Snake had already demonstrated this by forcibly making his way to Yue and feeding the anomalies enormous amounts of natural energy. He managed to strike, but he paid for it with complete and utter destruction.
But even a limitless supply of chakra was not a panacea. It wasn't just her who was drawn to the area. It absorbed heat, stopped chemical reactions in the body. A Shinobi who retained half of his chakra could drop dead from a rapid hypothermia coming from within. The brain shut down due to lack of energy long before the last reserve of ninjutsu ran out.
It was almost impossible for a living being to enter the epicenter and maintain its ability to act.
However, all these problems concerned the living. They were unimportant to the dead. That was the key to the solution.
Using the senjutsu data obtained at the cost of the Sage's life, they created a new version of Edo Tensei. A concentrated bundle of natural energy was implanted into the resurrected man's body, a kind of autonomous source that supports minimal body functions in conditions of total exhaustion. He did not give strength for battle, but allowed the vessel-body to move until Yue's devouring aura drained this reserve as well.
A similar technology was to be applied to Sasuke.
A similar bundle of energy would be sealed into his body, which was supposed to keep him warm and vital while he was being carried through the deadly field to Yue. Together with the whip in the form of the resurrected dead, he was supposed to become a carrot — the last attempt to awaken the Will of Fire in Yue's heart.
Alas, the technology was imperfect.
She couldn't provide a full-fledged metabolism. Maintaining life in this way turned out to be torture with irreversible consequences: tissue necrosis, organ failure, brain damage. The fate of the test subjects on whom the method was tested was terrible. In the best case, amputation of limbs and dementia. Most simply did not survive. Their bodies, turned into empty shells, were awaiting disposal.