Barrier Division.
Dense black curse-script crawled over every surface like wall-clinging geckos, staining the entire room. On the similarly worn floor stood rows of tal pillars, each topped with a silver disk engraved in strange patterns.
At the base of every pillar, crimson chakra mbranes connected one to another, pulsing with a bloodlike glare. Combined with the formulas carved into the walls and ceiling, the whole place felt cold, eerie, and oppressive.
Beep. Beep.
A pale, delicate hand, strong enough to crush steel into pulp, pressed down on one of the silver disks.
A harsh, piercing sound filled the air. Violet power slowly traced itself across the gray plate, leaving behind a chakra map. A diagram of yin and yang, and the flow of water, gradually fixed into place line by line.
Buzz.
The final stroke ford. The violet light imdiately dimd.
The mont the pattern stabilized, Abura Ryūma ford seals quickly. He transferred the chakra imprint etched onto the silver disk into the red barrier network through the barrier hub.
Kono Taketori clearly sensed a thread of her chakra rging into the barrier itself.
Barrier Technique: Simulated Concealnt Recognition Gate Formation.
A B-rank barrier jutsu used by Root and ANBU bases everywhere. It concealed what was inside, mimicked the outside environnt, and by preloading chakra signatures, it could compare the intruder's chakra fluctuation to stored samples.
If the match was confird, the user could pass by inputting chakra normally. If it failed, the barrier would lock automatically and trigger an alarm.
It was a highly versatile technique. The barrier at her secluded training site in the Forest of Death had been derived from this very system.
"You can pass normally now," Ryūma said.
He quickly sealed the silver disk away, then extended an arm politely, guiding Kono Taketori out of the Barrier Division.
This place was not open to outsiders.
There were only three people in the Barrier Division. The head was Abura Ryūma. The other two were Chō and Yamanaka Fū.
There was no helping it.
Sensor-type shinobi were rare no matter where you went. Even Root, for all its resources, only had two or three people with that talent.
In fact, the Barrier Division had another na: the Sensor Barrier Unit. If Kono Taketori had not entered the Research Division, this was the departnt she most likely would have joined.
Now that her goal was achieved, Sahada on her shoulder was like a child who hadn't been fed dinner. It was already throwing a tantrum.
Kono Taketori lifted a hand, ready to bid Ryūma farewell.
"Wait."
Ryūma suddenly spoke, stopping her. He curled a finger and tapped his right eye behind the sunglasses.
"Be careful," he said again, earnest and direct.
Kono Taketori already knew Danzō's right eye held Kotoamatsukami. She understood imdiately. She nodded, accepting Ryūma's strange goodwill, then carried Sahada and rushed straight toward the Research Division.
Whatever was going on between Ryūma and Danzō could wait.
Handling the urgent matters ca first.
Tap tap tap.
Her pace quickened. Like a gust of wind, she swept through the dim corridor. The small figure carrying a door-slab-sized blade vanished in a blink.
She reached the entrance to the Research Division quickly. The layout here was already familiar.
Click.
The heavy door opened, and that familiar chill rushed at her.
The hive interior used大量 living materials for experints. To prevent valuable tissue from rotting and stinking, the temperature here was kept lower than outside.
She stepped in.
Normally, the hive was brightly lit.
Now it was pitch-black.
Test subjects, chained to their beds, lay pale and motionless. No one else was around. Sterilized scalpels and hemostats were neatly arranged in the tool cabinets, and in this darkness, they looked even more terrifying.
When she returned to Konoha, it had already been evening, the sun sinking low.
After the discussion with her main body about Reverse Eight Gates and the negotiation with Danzō, it was now night. Everyone in the Research Division had gone to rest.
Only she remained.
Perfect.
It ant she could test Sahada's abilities without interference.
She stopped before the hidden door that led to the underground chamber. Taking a deep breath, Kono Taketori pressed her palm against the pale red barrier.
She injected chakra.
Her chakra signature rose on the surface instantly. The imprint she had just registered in the Barrier Division appeared and compared itself to the newly injected chakra.
Once it confird the match, the barrier swallowed her chakra and vanished.
Kono Taketori wasn't surprised by the chakra she felt leaving her body.
Maintaining a barrier long-term consud a vast amount of chakra. The Barrier Division's handful of mbers could never sustain it alone.
In truth, every ti the barrier opened or closed, it swallowed a portion of the chakra used to activate it, to feed its daily consumption.
Creeeak.
The iron door, old and rusted, scread sharply in the silence of the Research Division. Below it, the staircase was completely unlit, swallowed by darkness.
Kono Taketori opened her Byakugan and stared greedily into the darkness where a flourishing green light burned.
Then she stomped down the steps.
Her silhouette, carrying the massive sword, sank deeper and deeper until it vanished into the black.
Buzz.
The crimson barrier re-ford over the basent entrance. A ripple passed, and everything returned to how it had been.
The hive-like Research Division fell into total silence.
Only after a long while did the main iron door outside open slowly.
A single black eye appeared in the crack, sliding left and right.
Then it froze.
Its gaze locked onto the door on the far side of the operating room.
The concealed passage leading to the basent.
Down the stairs, all the way to the bottom.
Once the barrier closed, her Byakugan could no longer see outside. Her vision held only one thing.
The towering tree sealed inside a massive glass cylinder.
Its branches and lush leaves filled the space like a green storm cloud. The thick trunk was carved by deep grooves, twisted into countless faces frozen in terror.
Below it, countless bodies had lted together into a base. Pale limbs, impossible to tell whether they were hands or feet, jutted from tumors of flesh. Exposed muscle fibers had turned a corpse-wax blue-gray, covered in a moss-like biofilm that constantly secreted sli.
A brown-yellow liquid, like aged rice wine left to rot, soaked the flesh beneath the tree. Bubbles rose, gurgling constantly, filling the air with a sharp sour stench.
Gulp.
Kono Taketori swallowed without aning to.
Sahada, sensing the enormous chakra, was already rolling and thrashing with excitent. She gripped it and moved quickly toward the tree.
A chakra core as massive as a star was buried deep in the flesh.
Sky-high green life force mixed with chakra more terrifying than a tailed beast, boiling and shining inside the tree.
It was a spring of chakra.
An endless sea of life.
Hundreds of Senju with Sage-like bodies, implanted with Hashirama's cells, had ford this giant tree through the life force of an entire clan. Then over decades, Root had continued feeding it with test subjects.
The chakra it contained had long surpassed anything Kono Taketori could comprehend.
It couldn't be asured.
And she couldn't see an end to it.
The last ti she felt this kind of shock was when she sensed Kurama inside Naruto Uzumaki.
Szzzt.
Sahada's spines extended. It tore away the bandages that wrapped its body, opened its mouth wide, and its sharp teeth spread like a sunflower blooming toward the sun.
"Be careful," Kono Taketori warned, forcing down her own greed. She patted Sahada's hard body gently, not sure if she was warning the blade or herself. "This thing is… twisted."
With countless seals restricting it for years, the tree's chakra was extrely stable. And because it was a plant, it held no consciousness, no aggression, no desire to attack.
Beneath the flesh base, there was even a Four Symbols Seal Formation.
If the tree's chakra ever spiked beyond specification, the seal would trigger and destroy the tree along with the entire basent.
That was why Danzō dared let her research it.
Even so, Hashirama cells were still corrosive.
And for a living weapon like Sahada, that danger was even greater.
She couldn't afford carelessness.
"Mmmn!"
Sahada roared with excitent, spines flashing as it extended and retracted. It was hungry beyond restraint.
Using the smooth surface of the glass cylinder, Kono Taketori dashed up in a few steps and reached the top of the tree.
The green ocean churned more violently up here. She released the seal at the top and revealed a small hatch that could be opened freely.
This was where test subjects were dropped in, and where suppression toxins were replaced.
Click.
She yanked the hatch open.
Even before she touched the tree, the sll hit her.
A heavy, concentrated sourness mixed with the stench of rot, like dumping a lump of spoiled at into a vat of pickles and letting it fernt. It was so strong her vision swam, and her shadow clones nearly popped on the spot.
She grimaced and forcibly muted her nose's feedback.
Then she grabbed Sahada, which had no nose to speak of and was sticking out its tongue, and shoved it straight into the hatch.
Its thick body sealed the opening completely.
The burning sting in her nostrils eased at once.
Gulp. Gulp.
The mont Sahada touched the tree's leaves, it opened its mouth in bliss and bit down on a thick branch.
Its fat body writhed, barbs scraping the edge of the hatch with a teeth-grinding squeal.
Kono Taketori pressed against the glass, eyes tight with tension.
If Sahada showed even the slightest sign of distress, she would rip it out imdiately.
Gulp. Gulp.
Her worry proved unnecessary.
Sahada chewed and swallowed happily, drinking in the rich green chakra. The chakra gathered along the leaf veins, then poured into its body.
It showed no discomfort at all.
Huff.
Sahada swallowed at a terrifying speed. A huge hollow appeared in the green sea above the treetop, and chakra as thick as liquid spiraled into it.
A faint breeze even ford inside the glass cylinder.
Leaves trembled.
Branches swayed like they were dancing.
Thin streams of chakra flowed along Kono Taketori's right arm ridians and gathered into the purple chakra core in her heart.
That familiar sensation of swelling power spread through her body.
Her left hand clenched.
She hamred her heart once.
In the void, the spiral chakra chains lit up instantly. Endless violet power surged through the spiral, transmitting wildly toward a distant point.
Two seconds later.
"That helps a lot."
Her main body's exhausted voice reached her mind through the link.
Opening the Eight Gates consud life force, the fatigue transferred when clones dispersed was crushing, and her main body wasn't resting either. She was still exploring the feasibility of Reverse Eight Gates.
Three layers stacked together. Even an iron man would struggle.
And that was only because the Gray Bone had been sealed. Otherwise, the exhaustion would have stacked even higher.
"Don't die in that cave," the Yang Release clone said, worried. "If Reverse Eight Gates doesn't work, we can try sothing else. There's no need to push this hard."
"It's because there's hope that I'm pushing this hard."
Her main body's voice was exhausted, but it carried a fierce excitent, even a hint of madness.
"That fast? You already made progress?"
The Yang Release clone was stunned. It had been less than three hours since she left the cave. Reverse Eight Gates was advancing that quickly?
"Sixty-six clones training at once. If you haven't lived it, you can't imagine the speed. You've only been gone three hours, but for it's been the equivalent of nine days without sleep."
"If you convert that to an eight-hour workday, that's twenty-five full days."
"Hiss. Can your body handle it?"
"My body's still holding. My brain is starting to stop working. Naruto really is insane."
"Don't compare yourself to a cheat. I secured six months of Senju Tree access. We have ti."
"Relax. I know what I'm doing."
The chakra communication cut off.
The Yang Release clone suppressed her worry and shoved Sahada deeper into the glass cylinder.
She gripped the hilt, continuing to drain chakra and send it far away.
This was all she could do right now.
Screeeeeech.
The glass-scratching noise suddenly grew sharp and violent.
Sahada, still biting the branch, began twisting wildly.
"What's wrong?"
Startled by the change, Kono Taketori yanked hard, trying to pull Sahada out.
But Sahada had swollen to its limit.
Its expanded spines were wedged into the hatch fra, stuck tight. It couldn't go forward or back.
Szzzt.
Kono Taketori exhaled a razor-thin blast of wind. The narrow opening was instantly cut wider.
Sahada's spines scraped against the glass, leaving pale gouges.
With a violent pull, she dragged the frantic Sahada out of the hatch.
Boom.
She jumped down, carrying the thrashing blade.
The reinforced floor, layered with seals, cracked into a shallow crater under her impact. A shockwave blew dust outward.
She didn't care.
She set Sahada down. Her palm was already gathering a dense violet edge.
To operate on a living weapon with absurd durability, ordinary Wind Release wasn't enough.
dical Ninjutsu: Chakra Scalpel.
A Yang Release cutting technique designed specifically for living bodies. By mimicking life force, it ignored physical defense and sliced directly into the delicate weak points inside.
Thump. Thump.
Like a massive fish thrown onto shore, Sahada flopped in agony. The steel hilt at its tail smashed against the ground again and again, sending heavy tremors through the basent.
Kono Taketori focused her Byakugan.
In her vision, Sahada's belly bulged like a giant tumor, packed with dark green chakra.
That was the source of its pain.
The violet blade hovered over its round belly.
And just as she was about to cut, in that split second.
Clack.
The basent door opened.
The sudden sound made Kono Taketori's whole body jolt.
She whipped her head around.
A pitch-black figure stood in the doorway, eyes cold and blank.
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