Medical scrolls.
At first, these were special-issue supplies distributed only to select elite units on Konohagakure's front lines. Their numbers were limited, and their use was kept under strict secrecy.
However, as the war dragged on and clashes became more frequent, more and more Sunagakure and Kirigakure shinobi witnessed the same scene on the battlefield.
A Konohagakure shinobi, wounded and bleeding in combat, would take cover under the protection of his comrades. Instead of waiting for a medical team to arrive, he would pull a scroll from his ninja pouch and activate it himself.
A gentle green glow of chakra would bloom from the scroll.
The bleeding would quickly stop, and the torn wound would begin to heal slowly.
Such injuries were not fatal, but neither were they minor. If the shinobi continued fighting, the strain of intense movement would only worsen the injury, turning a light wound into a serious one.
In the past, without a medical ninja present, treatment required disinfecting the wound with alcohol, applying hemostatic medicine, and wrapping it layer after layer with bandages—a series of cumbersome and time-consuming procedures.
Under battlefield conditions, proper treatment often had to wait until there was a lull in the fighting or until the wounded could be evacuated to the rear.
Yet before that tiny scroll, most of those complicated steps became unnecessary. Within mere dozens of seconds, the wound could be stabilized and the bleeding brought under control.
The appearance of these scrolls sent shockwaves through the front-line forces.
Although their effectiveness against severe injuries such as penetrating wounds or ruptured internal organs was limited, they could still provide partial hemostasis and preliminary healing, preventing the condition from worsening and buying a tiny amount of extra treatment time.
But on the battlefield, that tiny amount of time was anything but insignificant.
In corners of the battlefield where medical shinobi could not arrive in time, lightly wounded soldiers could avoid their injuries deteriorating after simple treatment and might even return to combat quickly.
As for the severely wounded, in moments when every second could determine life or death, a portable scroll that could be activated the instant it was unsealed was enough to noticeably improve a shinobi's chances of survival.
The news quickly traveled from the Sunagakure and Kirigakure fronts to their respective rear areas, and from there gradually spread to other shinobi villages and nations.
After receiving detailed reports regarding Konohagakure's new medical scrolls, the intelligence departments of every major power submitted their findings to those at the top.
And after reading them, every one of those leaders fell into deep silence—and deep apprehension.
...
Land of Rivers, Sunagakure Front Headquarters.
Over the past several days, Sunagakure's frontal offensive had noticeably slowed.
The reason was simple: a far more urgent matter had occupied the attention of the village's leadership.
Inside a laboratory that had been hastily requisitioned within a rear-line field hospital—
A group of elite medical shinobi led by Chiyo, along with more than a dozen members of the sealing corps proficient in Fūinjutsu, had been working around the clock.
Lined up on the workbench were over a dozen medical scrolls.
These were only a small portion of the samples Sunagakure had collected from fallen Konohagakure shinobi on the battlefield.
Although Chiyo's reputation throughout the shinobi world stemmed from her mastery of poisons, poison and medicine were often two sides of the same coin.
Just as Tsunade's poisons in another timeline could rob Jiraiya of most of his combat ability without him realizing it, Chiyo's accomplishments in medical ninjutsu were equally profound.
Within Sunagakure, she could arguably be considered the foremost authority in the field.
It was simply that her medical expertise was far less famous than her poison techniques.
The laboratory door opened softly.
"Fourth Kazekage-sama!"
"Kazekage-sama!"
Several Sunagakure shinobi who noticed the newcomer immediately put down their work and bowed.
Rasa waved a hand, indicating there was no need for formalities, then quietly stood to one side and turned his attention toward the busy researchers.
At that moment, Chiyo was leaning slightly over the workbench, her fingertip hovering above one of the scrolls.
Her brows were tightly furrowed, and she remained silent.
A few moments later, noticing Rasa's arrival, she walked over.
The instant she approached, Rasa asked: "Chiyo-sama, is there any way to replicate them?"
Chiyo shook her head.
"It'll be difficult, Rasa."
Rasa was not surprised.
He merely nodded, as though he had expected that answer from the beginning.
"What are the obstacles? What resources do you need? I can have people gather them."
"Three obstacles."
Chiyo picked up one of the medical scrolls and lightly ran her fingers across the paper.
"The first is the paper itself."
"The material used in these scrolls is unlike any chakra paper we've ever encountered. At present, we have no idea what its exact composition is, nor how it's manufactured."
"The only thing we've been able to confirm is that the paper itself possesses a certain special vitality."
"It is precisely this vitality that allows medical chakra to remain stably sealed within it without rapidly deteriorating."
Rasa nodded.
"According to reports from the front lines, as well as information provided by our spies embedded in Konohagakure, this special paper should have been developed by Higashino Shinichi."
"It's called Shinichi Paper."
Higashino Shinichi.
At the mention of that name, Chiyo fell silent.
Rasa's mood grew heavy as well.
This Higashino Shinichi was not only exceptionally talented and powerful.
More importantly, he was astonishingly versatile.
There seemed to be nothing he could not do.
Even cooking—a field that ordinary people would never associate with shinobi talent—had been brought by him to the highest level in the entire shinobi world.
And he was incredibly difficult to kill.
Just a few months ago, deep within the Land of Lightning, Kumogakure had mobilized an army of ten thousand shinobi to hunt him down, yet still failed to keep him there.
Now, every major shinobi village in the world understood perfectly well how terrifying Shinichi's talent was and what kind of enemy he would become in the future.
Yet despite that, not one of them possessed a truly effective method of eliminating him.
"The second obstacle is the sealing formula."
Chiyo broke the silence first, pointing at the sealing markings on the scroll.
"This sealing formula isn't particularly profound, nor is it especially complicated."
"But it's clearly the work of a master."
"Learning it would actually be quite easy. If someone taught it to you directly, you could probably master it within a few days."
"But reproducing it entirely on your own without a teacher..."
"That's a completely different matter."
"It's like a mathematical theorem."
"People today can learn it in a lesson or two. But without the guidance of those who came before them, trying to derive it entirely from scratch on their own would leave them with no idea where to begin."
"That's exactly the situation we're facing now."
"We can see the finished product. We can see the completed sealing formula."
"But we have no way of understanding the logic behind each step of its design."
"So if we want to work backward and reconstruct the entire foundation and framework of this Fūinjutsu, it's likely to take a very long time."
Rasa nodded slowly, his expression unchanged.
"And the third obstacle, Elder?"
Chiyo did not answer immediately.
A blue chakra blade flickered to life in her right hand.
She lightly drew it across her left forearm, and blood immediately welled from the cut.
She then unsealed one of the medical scrolls.
Under Rasa's watchful gaze, the soft green glow emanating from the scroll seemed almost alive as it automatically flowed toward the wound on her arm.
A few moments later, the bleeding stopped, and the edges of the wound began to draw together and heal.
Seeing this, Rasa understood what she was trying to demonstrate.
"Automatic targeting? Automatic healing?"
"It's Yin Healing Wound Destruction," Chiyo replied.
"Yin Healing Wound Destruction?"
Rasa frowned slightly before asking tentatively, "The medical ninjutsu that minimizes damage by predicting where an enemy will strike and healing that area before the attack lands?"
As the Fourth Kazekage, he knew little about medical ninjutsu, but he had at least heard of the technique.
He had never thought much of it.
If you already knew where your opponent was going to attack...
Why not simply dodge?
Or better yet, kill the enemy outright.
Why go through all that extra trouble?
"That's merely how outsiders describe it."
Chiyo shook her head.
"The true principle behind Yin Healing Wound Destruction is to coat the body in advance with a layer of medical chakra possessing healing properties."
"For a certain period of time, whenever the user is injured, that layer of medical chakra automatically heals the wound, without requiring the injured person to stop fighting or divert their attention to treating themselves."
"In other words, it allows the wounded to continue fighting without being hindered by their injuries."
"Konohagakure incorporated part of Yin Healing Wound Destruction's principles into these scrolls."
"As a result, even an ordinary person with absolutely no knowledge of medical ninjutsu can simply activate the scroll, and it will automatically detect the injury and heal it."
"Furthermore, after studying these scrolls over the past few days, I've realized that the person who designed them was incredibly ambitious."
"Their original vision probably went much further than this."
"I believe they intended for any medical chakra remaining after healing the injury to be converted into energy that would nourish the user's chakra pathways and muscles, allowing the user to recover a certain amount of stamina after being healed."
"But that objective was simply too delicate and too advanced."
"So in the end, they had no choice but to abandon that part of the design and instead allow the remaining chakra to dissipate naturally once the healing was complete."
After saying this, Chiyo fell silent for quite some time before adding in a complicated tone, "Even so..."
"It's already astonishing."
"I still can't figure out exactly how he accomplished it, but the one who designed this entire medical scroll system is undoubtedly a monster."
Who was this monster?
Chiyo never said it aloud.
But both of them knew the answer.
"Of the three obstacles, however, the first remains the most fundamental."
After a brief silence, Chiyo continued, "As long as we're willing to invest enough time, there's hope that we'll eventually overcome the second and third obstacles."
"But the first is different."
"If we can't determine the raw materials and manufacturing process behind this paper, then even if we make breakthroughs in the other two areas, we'll still be unable to produce medical scrolls that are truly usable."
Rasa nodded slowly.
"I'll have people investigate the origins of this paper as quickly as possible."
With that, he turned and left.
As he stepped out of the laboratory, Rasa stopped and looked up at the gloomy sky.
If these scrolls could truly be mass-produced on a larger scale...
Or if even more advanced medical ninjutsu could someday be sealed within them...
Or even, as Elder Chiyo had suggested, if the remaining chakra after healing could be used to nourish the user's body...
Then Konohagakure's overall military strength would rise to an entirely new level within the next few years.
Higashino Shinichi...
Rasa silently repeated the name to himself.
A genius with limitless potential was already terrifying enough.
But what was even more frightening was someone whose innovations could effortlessly raise the strength of his entire side.
'If only someone like him had been born in Sunagakure...'
The thought crossed Rasa's mind.
Then another thought immediately followed.
If Higashino Shinichi really had belonged to Sunagakure...
Would he even have become the Fourth Kazekage?
Even though Shinichi had still been very young when the Third Kazekage disappeared, Chiyo and Ebizō might very well have postponed appointing a new Kazekage altogether, choosing instead to wait until the war ended and Shinichi had grown a few more years older.
If that had happened...
Would the position of Kazekage ever have fallen to him?
Thinking that far, Rasa suddenly felt that perhaps it was for the best that Higashino Shinichi remained in Konohagakure.
He shook his head, driving the complicated thoughts from his mind, then strode toward headquarters.
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