Naruto: The Bone-Eyed Maiden Chapter 175: Tsubaki-hime

"If I were you, I wouldn't touch it casually."

The lamp pillars embedded in the ceiling and walls flared to life all at once. A harsh white light flooded the underground chamber, turning the dim basent into broad daylight.

The sudden shift in brightness made Kono Taketori squint in discomfort.

Tap. Tap.

Soft leather heels clicked down the steps, each sound crisp in the hollow space.

A woman with long black hair draped over both shoulders descended slowly. She wore a standard-issue black uniform. Her face was cold, her gaze dull and lifeless, and beneath her eyes were two dark bruised shadows.

It was the mysterious "panda girl" from the Equipnt Division.

Why was she here?

Kono Taketori's brows knit instinctively.

At this hour, most of Root's staff would already be asleep. Only a few on-duty shinobi should still be patrolling the base. If she wasn't going back to rest, what was she doing down here?

And the Research Division and the Equipnt Division were far apart. There was also the barrier outside the basent. How had she even gotten in?

Suppressing the storm of questions in her chest, Kono Taketori withdrew the Chakra Scalpel that had been hovering over Sahada's belly and turned toward the approaching woman.

"You know what's going on with it?"

The woman stopped nearby and glanced down at Sahada, which was rolling on the floor, belly swollen.

"It… ate too much."

The answer was so unexpected that Kono Taketori's eyes widened.

Sahada looked like it was in labor from the pain, and she was telling her it was just overeating?

Kono Taketori didn't want to believe it.

Sahada's appetite was monstrous. In the original records, even Killer B, the Eight-Tails' jinchūriki, had been drained of six tails' worth of chakra in a single bite.

How could it tap out after only a mont?

"There's no such thing as a perfect ability," the woman said calmly. "A technique that devours chakra is not omnipotent. Wood Release chakra isn't sothing you can swallow that easily."

"Leave it alone and let it digest for a while. If you cut open its chakra-devouring organ, this…"

She paused slightly, eyes flicking to the sword-hilt that was still thumping against the ground behind the strange creature. She clearly didn't know what to call sothing shaped like this.

"It's called Sahada. The Greatsword Sahada. A living ninja tool."

Seeing her hesitation, Kono Taketori introduced it smoothly.

Sahada was originally a symbiotic creature of the Three-Tails, Isobu. It clung to the Three-Tails' belly, helped clear food residue, and refined chakra. It could extract roughly five tis the chakra a normal organism could from food and feed it back to the Three-Tails to sustain combat energy.

When the Three-Tails was sealed, Sahada separated from its host and beca independent.

Later, Kirigakure modified it into a weapon, and it beca one of the tools wielded by the Seven Ninja Swordsn of the Mist.

It didn't even have eyes. It could only recognize its owner through chakra sensing. In its world, chakra was the only truth. Everything else was false. If it encountered delicious chakra, it would chase it recklessly.

That was why it betrayed its masters so easily.

"Mm. Sahada. Its chakra core should be in the digestive area," the woman said. "That can't be repaired. If you damage it by accident, it will never be able to produce chakra again."

Kono Taketori nodded.

She knew her control and technique would never be sloppy enough to destroy Sahada's chakra core, but the warning wasn't baseless.

If it really was only overeating, there was no reason to split it open. Letting it digest naturally was best.

"Can it digest it on its own?"

Sahada struggled on the ground for a while, then noticeably improved. Its trembling hilt automatically slid into Kono Taketori's hand, sending a simple signal.

"Okay…"

The ssage was blurry. It was hard to tell whether it was answering her question or simply saying it felt better now.

But it didn't look like there was any real danger.

"Thank you," Kono Taketori said, watching the mysterious woman closely. "What's your na?"

This was the second ti she'd asked. The first ti, before the Raikōzan mission, the woman had ignored her entirely.

The woman looked at Kono Taketori's young face. For the first ti, sothing like ripples moved in her dull eyes.

"Tsubaki-hi."

Then, without another glance back, she headed straight toward the giant tree at the center of the chamber. Slender, thin, yet upright, her figure looked like a lonely blade of wild grass.

Tsubaki-hi?

Kono Taketori shook her head slightly. She was certain she'd never heard the na.

But that was normal.

In a real world, the famous nas from the "original story" made up a tiny fraction of the population. They were the exception, not the rule.

"What's the difference between Wood Release chakra and normal chakra?" Kono Taketori asked. "Why did it make Sahada like this?"

"It's not that Wood Release chakra is different," Tsubaki-hi replied. "It's chakra after nature transformation. That alone is harder to digest than ordinary chakra. And a kekkei genkai ford by fusing two natures is even worse."

"Among Yin and Yang Release, there are countless secret arts that can absorb chakra. But the problem of digesting transford chakra… no one has a good solution to this day."

Kekkei genkai?

Just from a casual answer, she'd dropped Yin-Yang Release, nature fusion, and kekkei genkai.

Kono Taketori's curiosity deepened.

She had access to Root's and Konoha's libraries and had browsed freely, yet she'd found very little about Yin-Yang Release or kekkei genkai. But from this Equipnt Division woman, those secrets sounded like everyday common knowledge.

And she was telling them to soone she'd t only two or three tis.

Noticing that Tsubaki-hi seed willing to talk now, not as cold and blank as before, Kono Taketori didn't want to waste the chance.

She asked directly.

"What's the difference between chakra ford by fusing two nature transformations and ordinary single-elent chakra? Why does it beco harder to digest?"

While Kono Taketori was speaking, Tsubaki-hi had already stopped before the tree.

"The stability is different," she answered bluntly, as if she didn't care about being sounded out, or perhaps she simply didn't care about anything at all.

"Wood Release is ford by fusing Earth and Water, two of the most stable 'physical' natures."

"Water's flow is absorbed by earth. Earth's rigidity is softened by water. A trace of Yang Release acts as the catalyst. Two forces whose original structures should have been shattered are revived and restructured, and sothing new is born: wood."

"Wood that inherits both becos naturally terrifying in stability. Harder and heavier than earth. Stronger than water."

"And it gains the resilience of life itself. Just a little is enough to make that strange fish suffer."

She braced both hands against the glass cylinder and leaned forward, staring at the imnse flesh mass beneath the roots.

Her posture was eerily similar to Chihaya Tōru in his most deranged monts.

Severed limbs and torn fascia were nothing more than passing clouds to her. Faces lted like wax didn't make her flinch. That icy gaze simply settled on a head whose features were impossible to distinguish.

And within those eyes, Kono Taketori saw sothing unexpected.

A different kind of tenderness.

And pride.

"I ca to see you again."

Tsubaki-hi pressed her face to the glass. Her clear, lake-like eyes looked at the base ford by countless bodies. Sothing unspeakable rolled within her gaze, thick and violent.

A longing.

A loneliness.

So intense it nearly spilled out.

This woman…

Kono Taketori watched her, gray light flickering in her own eyes. Within Tsubaki-hi's heart burned a chakra core powerful enough to rival an elite jōnin, flashing like a beacon.

She understood Wood Release and kekkei genkai with intimate clarity.

Yet her muscles were slack, without the dense conditioning of a fighter. There were no scars on her body, no marks of battle. And still, she possessed such enormous chakra.

Back when Kono Taketori first t her in the Equipnt Division, she'd already felt sothing was off.

But with those Nara brothers who had Sharingan implants as her reference point, she'd assud this woman was just another experintal product like them.

Now, it didn't seem that way at all.

"Senju… Tsubaki-hi?"

The mont she heard the surna she'd abandoned long ago, Tsubaki-hi's body stiffened. Slowly, she turned.

The strange blind girl was looking at her, as if searching.

"How do you…?"

"The Senju of the Forest," Kono Taketori said quietly, almost with a sigh. "Their clansn are born with vigorous life force. Their chakra is vast. Even a child of six or seven can extract chakra comparable to a jōnin with ease."

"You're similar."

Kono Taketori's gaze drifted to the massive chakra core within Tsubaki-hi.

The Reverse Eight Gates she was exhausting herself to develop was for one purpose.

To cultivate the Senju's Sage-like body.

At Kono Taketori's words, a flicker of sorrow and loss crossed Tsubaki-hi's face.

"The Senju of the Forest… are already one with Konoha. They no longer exist… they no longer exist…"

She repeated it, not sure whether she was speaking to Kono Taketori or warning herself.

Then she turned back, leaned against the glass cylinder, and slid down inch by inch.

Her voice grew thinner, quieter, until only a sigh remained, heavy with grief, drifting through the empty basent like the murmuring of a lonely ghost.

Kono Taketori wanted to say sothing.

But she didn't know how.

The wheel of history rolled forward.

And it didn't crush only the Uchiha.

Senju, Uzumaki, Taketori, Uchiha… the great bloodline clans of the Warring States era had all been ground into dust beneath the sa wheel.

Were they unlucky?

No.

Had they beco weak?

Not that either.

The era had changed.

Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara pacified the world and built the shinobi villages. It was like inventing firearms and cannons in an age of cold steel.

Every secret-school tradition, every tactical master, had to bow before a new age.

In the Warring States era, those clans had ruled entire regions.

But before the village system, a massive war machine made from countless secret techniques, bloodline clans, and civilian-born geniuses, those forr giants beca like children clutching gold bricks.

When the balance of strength reversed, there were only two choices.

Submit completely, like the Hyūga did.

Or produce a supre monster like Senju Hashirama.

If you had no power but clung to old glory, you would be destroyed by endless greed.

Like her.

Like Naruto Uzumaki.

Like Uchiha Sasuke.

Like the woman in front of her.

Their clans had all t the sa fate.

There were no exceptions.

Silence spread through the basent.

Kono Taketori stared at the thriving giant tree, at the piles of bodies beneath it, at the woman slumped against the glass like a puppet.

And she simply watched.

If she ever stopped becoming stronger, she would end up like this.

So she could not stop.

Even if it killed her, she would die on the road to power.

Clack. Clack.

Sahada flopped on the floor, spines scraping pale lines into the hard stone tiles. Its swollen belly had already deflated a good amount.

Looks like Tsubaki-hi was right.

It really had overeaten.

Her conviction hardened.

Kono Taketori tightened her grip on Sahada's hilt. Thread by thread, pure chakra traveled up her arm and into her heart.

After devouring external chakra, Sahada could convert it into a universal chakra without impurities. It was pure in nature and extrely efficient in absorption and conversion.

Her chakra core feasted on Sahada's universal chakra, transford it into violet energy, then sent it flowing along the double-helix chains, drifting far away.

Gurgle.

Bubbles rose from the yellow solution at the base of the glass cylinder, making strange sounds.

Ti passed swiftly.

In the blink of an eye, it was deep night.

"Tsubaki-hi… you're not going back?"

Kono Taketori watched the woman still leaning against the glass cylinder, showing no sign of leaving. She held Sahada, whose belly had gone dry again, and grew anxious.

She wanted Sahada to eat more chakra. The more it carried, the more security her main body would have for the research.

But with Tsubaki-hi here, she couldn't bring herself to do it openly.

The woman had just "treated" Sahada and explained Wood Release to her. Turning around and draining chakra from the tree that held her family would be shaless.

Kono Taketori didn't have skin that thick.

"Go back where?" Tsubaki-hi replied, her voice weak.

Her eyes, rimd with heavy dark circles, were hazy, as if her soul had already wandered elsewhere.

"Back to sleep," Kono Taketori said.

"I can only sleep with them here."

Still wearing those dark circles like bruises, Tsubaki-hi looked at Sahada's now-flat belly. She nodded as if she understood.

"It's fine. If it wants to eat, let it. Just don't make noise."

"I only want to stay here… and sleep a little longer."

After that, she seed to run out of strength. She closed her eyes and leaned into the glass, her face aligned with the blurred human faces inside.

Only then did Kono Taketori realize how similar their features were, especially the distance between their brows and eyes, as if carved from the sa mold.

That body inside, neither clearly male nor female, was probably Tsubaki-hi's family.

Kono Taketori let out a heavy sigh.

Permission granted.

She carried Sahada and leapt up to the hatch at the top of the glass cylinder in a few steps, feeding it inside.

This ti Sahada was smarter. It only ate until its belly was slightly swollen, then released the branch. No matter what she did, it refused to eat more.

She pulled the full Sahada back out and sealed the hatch. The glass she had cut open with Wind Release was patched with Earth Release.

Lowering her head, she looked at the woman below, who seed to have already fallen asleep.

Kono Taketori pressed a hand down on Sahada, which had begun to squirm as it digested, keeping it from making any sound.

Then she climbed down slowly.

Sahada needed ti to digest Wood Release chakra. Reverse Eight Gates wasn't sothing that could be completed in a single day.

Today would be enough.

She carried Sahada on her shoulder again and tiptoed out of the basent, switching off the glaring lights on the way.

Whoosh.

The crimson barrier opened, then closed.

In the empty darkness of the underground chamber, the green sea of branches swayed within the glass. Pale corpses drank the nutrient solution, making wet, squelching sounds.

The woman leaned against the glass, nestled beside the tree. Her head drooped.

She slept in peace.

On her puppet-like face, a faint, moving smile appeared.

Pure.

Fresh.

Not like wild grass at all.

More like a callia bud, just beginning to bloom.

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