A few days later, Ryusei and Orochimaru met again in the same secret spot to finalize their trade. Words were few; both knew what they had come for.
Ryusei handed over his prepared notes, the clan secrets, and his personal research into souls, and in return, Orochimaru gave him the complete framework of Edo Tensei, along with his own handwritten, life-long researched principles of advanced fuinjutsu and jutsu-shiki.
Later that day, once he returned to his den, Orochimaru ordered that no one disturb him.
He set the papers out before him and began to read.
Hours passed. Evening bled into night. Night into dawn. He didn't stop. His eyes devoured every line, every mental model, every annotation in Ryusei's writings. By the time the first light of a new day crept through the cracks of his lair, he finally set the last page aside.
His lips curved faintly.
"So that's how it is…" he muttered.
His golden eyes gleamed.
"It doesn't look like that little fox is making things up."
Amusement laced his voice, but the weight of his fascination was undeniable.
The boy impressed him more than any newcomer he had seen in Konoha in all his years.
Orochimaru subcounsly found himself curious now — how much chaos could this boy stir in Konoha, or even the shinobi world at large, given enough time?
And perhaps, if Ryusei's growth accelerated, he might even serve as leverage.
A piece to use against Danzo should the man ever try to corner him.
Yes… that possibility alone was worth keeping the boy alive.
As for the information itself, it was groundbreaking — yet grounded.
The Senju and Uchiha… the two halves of a whole.
The ultimate direction was clear now.
Fusing their bloodlines directly, not chasing scattered fragments.
With their powers united at the highest densities, something beyond either alone could be born.
Orochimaru's mind spun.
Many paths of research he had once pursued eagerly now seemed like dead ends, wastes of time.
He cast them aside without hesitation.
Instead, he would focus forward — on Senju cells, like the ones Danzo had once hinted at.
He would bring that work years ahead of schedule.
And from there… he would begin seeking the Sharingan.
Whether through Danzo's cooperation or his own means, he would find a way.
Science. That was the true path.
Not exotic kinjutsu that reached into impossible realms and yielded only diminishing returns.
No, the key was the foundation. The blood. The hardware.
If he could change the base, the body, then the limits of chakra and jutsu could be rewritten.
He leaned back, fingers steepled, eyes bright with a feverish gleam.
"Bloodlines are everything. DNA is everything," he whispered.
"Not the tricks layered above them. The source."
Eventually, perhaps, he could even manipulate genes directly.
Reengineer the shinobi race itself.
But for now… the science of this world was still crude.
Decades would be needed to reach that height.
Perhaps longer. He couldn't do it alone.
For now, he would focus mostly on the cruder cellular levels.
Still, he felt the clarity of direction he had never had before.
And all because of a boy.
Orochimaru's smile lingered, faint and dangerous. "Interesting…"
The true solution had always lain in depth, not breadth.
Orochimaru had sensed this truth vaguely in recent years.
The more jutsu he collected, the more papers and scrolls he devoured, the closer he drew to some hidden core.
Yet until now, it was only instinct, a feeling without conviction.
Each new technique brought diminishing returns.
His arsenal had grown vast, his reach wide, but the results were hollow.
What he had just read changed everything.
It crystallized the vague into certainty.
It shattered his old framework completely.
Science. Only human intelligence, endless research, and ruthless curiosity could break through the biological limits written into flesh.
That was the battlefield. That was where power could be rewritten.
He leaned back in his chair, eyes glittering.
His jutsu collection had reached its limit.
Breadth had served him well, but from here on, it would only dilute him.
He had touched every niche already, learned enough of every discipline to weave them together, from A-rank elemental jutsu to summoning defensive and offensive constructs to regeneration and other body modification techniques that applied anatomical and medical knowledge properties.
The software, so to speak, had peaked. What mattered now was the hardware.
The body itself. The foundation of bloodlines and cells.
Learning "every jutsu" had always been a false banner.
It was never about numbers. It was about knowledge itself, all of it, every hidden corner of shinobi understanding.
And above that, his true goal had always loomed: immortality.
Now, he felt the threads tighten.
The key wasn't scattered kinjutsu. It wasn't exotic rituals. It was blood.
Didn't Ryusei's notes point exactly toward that truth?
Didn't they highlight the Uzumaki, cousins of the Senju, nearly identical but just skewed, with their life forces so overwhelming they were practically the closest thing to "immortals"?
How long had they been feared for their vitality, their sealing prowess, their ability to endure what killed others?
If Senju and Uchiha were halves of the Sage's legacy, then Uzumaki were the third angle of the triangle.
They too had fragments of that same "divine" origin.
Orochimaru's tongue slid across his lips slowly.
"Bloodlines. Vitality. Genes…" he murmured. "So that's where the path has been hiding..."
However, this didn't mean Orochimaru's research into transferring himself into a new "vessel" would stop. If anything, it only grew more important.
The truth was clear: gene manipulation was way ahead of the shinobi world's current level of science and equipment.
So if he wanted a better "shell" for himself, any time soon, the only path was to abandon the body entirely and transfer his soul into one that suited him better alongside his own mind, the personality, and knowledge, all packed inside a soul.
Thankfully, the boy's notes on souls were perfect for this. Too perfect.
They weren't the fumbling theories of a precocious shinobi; they were advanced, complete, elegant. The kind of insight that didn't come from speculation, but from direct experience.
It unsettled him.
The notes almost implied Ryusei had personally undergone such an experience, the separation of body and soul, the understanding of how to manipulate the connection between them.
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes at the memory.
Impossible… and yet, not.
"Just what are you hiding, Ryusei-kun…?" he thought, his tongue sliding across his lips.
The boy was even more mysterious now. Perhaps his spiritual constitution was different, a quirk of fate, a mutation, or some hidden inheritance Orochimaru didn't know about.
After all, Ryusei's notes highlighted how refined spiritual energy and chakra control, among other things, were supposed to be the Uchiha's domain, yet here was a Senju excelling at them effortlessly.
That contradiction alone made him dangerous. And fascinating.
Perhaps Ryusei himself was the missing factor. Something to dissect directly one day, or at least to study closely, if he couldn't.
Then, better yet, to pull him into his own orbit, into his "boat," where observation could be done freely under the guise of cooperation.
Orochimaru's smile stretched thin, a spark of rare acknowledgment in his eyes. By now, he truly recognized the boy, not as an equal in strength, but as an equal in mind. In research.
And in this world, that was far rarer.
His thoughts then circled back to his current power in this world and what he needed to continue and expedite or abandon during the precious time on this front of near-perfect freedom alongside an endless supply of "materials".
His motivation for the acquisition of strength and thirst for knowledge was now reinvigorated again and at its peak state.
He already possessed the very rare summoning contract with the snakes of Ryūchi Cave.
He could call forth Manda and the other great serpents, though they often demanded "sacrifices" in exchange.
More than that, he was their primary summoner in the world.
All those snakes were interconnected, and through that network, he could summon not only the titans but literal armies of smaller snakes at once.
And that wasn't all. Through his forbidden experiments, on this front specifically, he had begun to push the summoning technique further, slowly learning how to bypass complex formulas and scrolls, and instead manifest snakes as extensions of his own body seamlessly, in real time, during fights.
However, that required a bunch of real experiments performed on living humans, like many other things he recently ventured into, as well, inside this "den".
He was also teaching himself to soften and reconfigure his flesh in all kinds of ways, some would call "disgusting", molding himself in imitation of the creatures he commanded.
It was another path to a kind of immortality: a body flexible enough to shrug off external harm, to strike unpredictably, to choke, constrict, and lash out with serpent speed.
This intended core style was already terrifying. It was made of three principles. Body Extensions - elongating his neck, arms, or tongue for sudden and deceptive strikes.
Body Shedding - his personal replacement technique, discarding an entire layer of skin to escape fatal damage. Costly, but near invincible.
Hidden Weapons - storing snakes and blades in his sleeves, mouth, or even inside his body for ambushes, creating a new, unique kenjutsu.
As it stood, he fought and aimed to perfect that style like a slippery battlefield controller, versatile, deceptive, difficult to pin down, with endless regenerations and overwhelming summon support. But this was only a beginning.
Orochimaru now intended to shift completely as soon as possible, slowly, from this versatile style into something far more absolute: overwhelming power, stolen through bloodlines, until he was no longer a shinobi but a demigod.
His ninjutsu foundation was already unmatched.
Known as the most versatile shinobi of his generation after Hiruzen, he had mastered all five basic natures plus yin–yang at advanced levels. But he was no longer satisfied with breadth.
He was testing the limits of how much foreign chakra and DNA a body could endure before rejection.
He harvested endlessly from this war, never wasting a single corpse, friend or foe.
He dissected anatomy, mapped chakra systems, and experimented with sealing methods.
He dabbled in bio-enhancements: drugs, enzymes, and hybrid jutsu designed to create more durable soldiers.
Yet all of this circled back to one truth. Bloodlines were everything. DNA was everything.
Ryūchi Cave had taught him that a few years back, even before he met Ryusei, and he had now even begun testing how to artificially infuse chakra and natural energy into subjects.
Because his mortal body had a flaw: it couldn't master their advanced "Sage Mode".
That limitation stung. If he could have accessed it, it might have vaulted him to Hokage far more easily, allowing him to claim overwhelming merit in battle against Kumo or anyone else.
But he couldn't. Not yet.
The revelation Ryusei's notes had given him also gnawed at his mind.
It wasn't technique or will; perhaps Senju or Uzumaki bloodlines would make it possible directly. Their vitality, their resilience, might be the missing key.
Danzo had Senju cells. Orochimaru now felt an urgency to bring them into his lab right away, even faster, to leverage them not only for Sage Mode, but for something greater.
And this tied directly to his other obsession again: vessels.
It wasn't only about gaining new bloodlines or stolen power.
It was about cheating death itself.
Death was the ultimate enemy, since life was so fragile.
His defining trauma had always been mortality, the knowledge that no matter how skilled, one day his body would wither.
He didn't chase mere longevity. He wanted eternity.
A single human body was finite.
Even in perfect health, prime always gave way to decline.
That decline was unacceptable.
The solution was simple: when the body reached its limit, abandon it.
Shed it, like a snake sheds its skin. 'Recycle' yourself endlessly.
Hopping from vessel to vessel, always refreshing himself, would not only preserve him but also allow him to continually upgrade, with each generation, better bloodlines, stronger chakra, and greater potential each time.
That was the path now clear to him as a day.
For now, he was still in his prime. But what about a few decades from now?
He would not allow himself to grow weak.
That was why vessel research remained as crucial as ever to him.
Bloodlines would grant him power. Vessels would grant him eternity.
And together, they would make Orochimaru into something far beyond human.