Konome's ocular power pierced straight through Hashirama's cells.
The lump of flesh in the bottle immediately turned semi-translucent, like jelly, yet it had none of jelly's softness. Instead, it looked brittle, crisp as a biscuit.
Only then did she realize that with the finger bone as the center, the gray force hadn't merely coated the surface of the Hashirama cells. The patterns ran everywhere inside the meat as well.
Her vision slipped down into the microscopic cellular layer.
The pale cells had been completely dyed by that ashen death. The tendrils on their surface flared outward, like mouthparts opening to tear prey apart. Yet that earlier madness, the frenzy they'd shown when they'd hunted Konome's cells, was gone.
Deathly still.
Quiet.
Almost… peaceful.
Gray Bone hadn't absorbed Hashirama's power.
It had simply used that silent force to kill everything.
Konome snatched up the glass rod on the table and slid it into the bottle, cautiously prodding the Hashirama cells that had been infected by Gray Bone.
Crack.
She didn't even apply pressure. She only rested the glass rod on the lump of flesh, and the gray patterns instantly split into countless fractures.
Crack… crack-crack…
The fissures raced along the paths where the markings had spread, branching into smaller and smaller cracks, until the entire chunk collapsed, crumbling into gray powder that mixed with the brownish-yellow nutrient solution into sludge.
What a domineering power.
Konome narrowed her eyes, studying the mixture in the bottle with extreme caution.
This was only an incomplete form of Co-Killing Gray Bone, and it was already this vicious. Even Hashirama's cells, with their endless division and devouring, couldn't escape being shattered into nothing.
If every bone in her body finished evolving… she didn't even want to imagine how dangerous it would become.
But it didn't make sense.
Hashirama's cells were already close to the peak of a Sage Body. If even the strongest Sage Body couldn't withstand an incomplete Gray Bone, then even if she developed the Reverse Eight Gates, what would it matter?
No matter how strong her vitality became, it could never surpass Hashirama's cells.
Konome turned her gaze inward.
Those speckled bones lay quietly wrapped in flesh. They did nothing except drink her chakra and vitality, yet they didn't spread the gray markings through her body.
Maybe her bones were harder than steel, but they were still made of bone cells.
Konome's cells and Hashirama's cells were fundamentally different. They couldn't be compatible.
Konome's bone cells couldn't recognize Hashirama's vitality, so they treated it as an enemy and killed it with that special gray pattern.
Maybe only Konome's own cells, filled with immense vitality, could make Shikotsumyaku distinguish friend from foe and trigger some unknown change.
Then why had the Nine-Tails chakra been devoured so smoothly?
Back when she swallowed the Nine-Tails chakra, Shikotsumyaku had absorbed it without the slightest rejection. By logic, it should have counted as a foreign substance too.
Was it because Shikotsumyaku hadn't evolved into Gray Bone yet back then?
As she silently traced the relationship between them…
The finger bone sank quickly through the sludge, settling on the bottom of the glass cup. Before Konome could react, the ashen markings appeared again, crawling up the clear glass.
Bang!
The finger bone was as heavy as a solid iron ingot. The stained bottom of the cup shattered instantly under its weight.
The flying shards of glass disintegrated into powder midair. Even the flowing nutrient solution was infected by the gray markings and ground into dust.
Finger bone and gray powder scattered across the floor.
And it still wasn't over.
With the finger bone as its center, the gray patterns began crawling across the Earth Release-compacted ground under Konome's shocked gaze.
This time, the gray stain only spread into a circle about the size of a coin before finally stopping.
Konome flipped the bottomless glass cup upside down and set it on the table.
Wide opening up top, narrow opening below. A perfect funnel.
She crouched and lightly nudged the finger bone with her fingertip. This time, the domineering markings recognized friend from foe and did not creep toward her skin.
Through her Byakugan, Konome saw that the unknown ashen force inside the bone had dwindled to a tiny thread, faintly flickering as if it might vanish at any moment.
Crack.
With a thought, the bone split.
Hard as it was, it crumbled the same way everything it infected did, breaking into ash-gray dust.
She'd been able to make her bones self-destruct like this since the day she awakened Shikotsumyaku.
Back then, she'd never thought much of it.
Only now, staring at the layer of gray-white powder on the floor, did she belatedly realize that the power of Co-Killing Gray Bone had been showing its teeth from the very beginning.
After cleaning up the dust, Konome jumped out of the underground room and sealed the opening again with her barrier formation.
A clone shoved the bed back into place, then asked, "Well?"
"See for yourself."
Konome pressed a finger to her heart.
In the void, seven spiraling chains of chakra flashed, each carrying its own memories and information, weaving back and forth.
Six chains were close.
One was farther away.
Perfectly matching the six clones in the room, Wind, Water, Earth, Fire, Yin, Yang, and the Academy clone who was currently walking home with a pink teddy bear backpack.
"Gray Bone's rejection is even harsher than Hashirama's cells," the Yang Release clone said, tapping her forehead. Hidden beneath the black cloth over her eyes, a Mangekyo Sharingan turned slowly.
"Organic, inorganic, it doesn't matter. Touch Gray Bone and it's death. Only our own cells can be recognized by Gray Bone and avoid being infected by the death markings.
"As for why the Nine-Tails chakra could be devoured without resistance, it's probably an order-of-operations issue.
"Our chakra fused with the Nine-Tails first. Even our chakra core turned violet. At that point, the Nine-Tails chakra had already become similar in nature to our own chakra, so Shikotsumyaku could recognize it, absorb it, and evolve toward Gray Bone."
The Yin Release clone rubbed her temples, frowning.
"Forget transplanting Hashirama's cells. Our Tailed Beast chakra can't resist being devoured by Hashirama's cells at all.
"I just finished reading Orochimaru's hypotheses on Yin power.
"Combined with the Yin and Yang scrolls Shikamaru and the others sent earlier, my guess is that Yang, the force of life, is the source of all power, and Yin is what you get after absorbing Yang and transforming it.
"It comes from Yang, but it's above Yang. That's why only the Sharingan, the extreme of Yin, can barely suppress Hashirama's cells."
"And the Byakugan can't?" Konome asked.
"The Hyuga protect the Byakugan too well. No one's ever tested whether a Byakugan can control Hashirama's cells. The Byakugan's strength is control and harmonization, so in theory it should have some effect, but it's probably worse than the Sharingan."
The Yin and Yang clones continued discussing the underground experiment.
The other clones automatically muted them and went back to reading.
Their primary job was to pour knowledge into the brain. Actual ninjutsu development was handled by Yin, Yang, and the main body.
Of course, all their information and chakra were identical. They could swap roles at any time. It was only division of labor.
Konome shook her head, her forehead throbbing.
The information returning from every clone was too much, too chaotic. When it all merged together, her brain felt like it was splitting open.
"No more thinking about Hashirama's cells. The priority is still the Reverse Eight Gates."
Once the main body made the call, the Yin and Yang clones fell silent immediately.
"Main body, you saw the experiment I did in Root, right?" the Yang Release clone asked.
Konome closed her eyes and sifted through the memory fragments Yang had sent back, quickly finding what she meant.
In the memory, it was a carp experiment.
As Yang Release Konome's medical ninjutsu grew more refined, and with the Byakugan assisting, she finally saw something incredibly close in nature to Yang Release chakra, the fundamental vitality that represented a living being's origin.
That vitality was extremely difficult to control.
And the stronger the lifeform, the more fiercely its vitality resisted.
At first, she couldn't extract even a trace from a single carp.
Later she tried everything: Yang Release induction, ocular control, anesthesia injections, slicing and carving. After exhausting method after method, she finally pulled out a tiny bit of carp vitality, then used it to heal a white mouse that had been cut by Wind Release.
The wound closed quickly.
But on the surface of the healed area, scales grew, a structure only fish should have.
About twelve hours later, the mouse began showing obvious rejection.
First it became unusually violent, then within a few more hours it grew weak and listless, and finally it slipped into dying breaths and died fast.
From vitality transfer to death took only a single day.
Then she ran another test.
This time she used carp vitality to heal another carp.
The injury still healed rapidly, and nothing strange grew.
This time, the carp that received the vitality survived healthily for several days.
Just when Yang Release Konome thought the experiment had succeeded, one day the carp suddenly began rejecting it too.
Not long after, it died the same way.
"Different species, different individuals, different vitalities," the Yang Release clone said. "If you just transfer and devour things at random, main body, your best-case scenario is becoming a carp spirit."
Maybe from assisting Chihaya Tōru so long, Yang Release Konome had picked up a taste for cold jokes.
"If the main body becomes a carp spirit, you won't escape either," Yin Release Konome shot back, closing her book and landing the point perfectly.
"What a headache." Konome pressed her fingers to her temple.
The development process for the Reverse Eight Gates was hurdle after hurdle. No wonder even a genius like the Fourth Hokage had taken three years just to develop the Rasengan.
She had medical ninjutsu as a foundation, clan scrolls of Yin and Yang, the Eight Gates as a base, Byakugan and Shikotsumyaku for support, and even Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzo feeding her ninjutsu development knowledge.
With everything stacked like this, it still felt impossibly hard.
It was hard to imagine what Tobirama Senju's brain was even made of.
If she ever got the chance, she'd cut it open and study it.
"How did Hashirama's cells solve this problem? Any clues?" Konome asked directly, rubbing her head like it had turned to paste.
Shikotsumyaku could block physical fatigue, but it couldn't do much about the mental exhaustion that came with absorbing knowledge and memories.
Right now her mind was a tangled mess. Seals, Yin-Yang theory, medical techniques, everything mixed together until her brain felt like a rusted machine, too heavy to turn.
Still, this kind of state could be fixed by sleeping. Her subconscious would sort the memories out.
The urgent thing was still Gray Bone.
Yang Release Konome recognized the main body's fatigue and summarized her findings from the past month in Root, concise and sharp:
"Hashirama's cells have a special protective layer on the surface, like a hybrid of cell membrane and cell wall. It filters out impurities inside different kinds of vitality.
"Then it reshapes that layer into tendrils, inserts them into another cell's cytoplasm, and absorbs energy directly."
The bed let out a tortured creak.
Half-asleep, Konome faceplanted onto it. Her neck landed on Yin Release Konome's thigh while the clone massaged her temples to ease the strain.
"Peel that skin off and use it as a filter."
"I can't do a cell-level skinning surgery," Yang Release Konome replied quickly, biting back the urge to complain. "Physical or chemical extraction isn't pure enough, and it can damage the structure. If impurities leak through, the consequences could be catastrophic."
Yin Release Konome kept massaging Konome's temples and offered an idea:
"I have a plan. If the main body devours the chakra from Hashirama's cells, could we inherit that power?"
"Lighter," Konome mumbled.
The pressure instantly eased. Satisfied, she closed her eyes fully and relaxed into it.
Under the bed were "ministers" sacrificing themselves for her secret art.
On the bed were "consorts" kneading away her worries.
Right now she was living like an emperor.
The only flaw was that minister and consort were the same person.
A bit monotonous.
"When you devoured the Nine-Tails chakra, Naruto's chakra was mixed in too," Yang Release Konome said. "Did we inherit Asura's power?"
"…Fair." Yin Release Konome nodded, still massaging.
A long, slow breath came from Konome's chest.
Yin lowered her gaze.
Silver hair spilled across the pillow. The girl had fallen asleep.
The Yin and Yang clones looked at each other and smiled helplessly.
Eight times training intensity didn't sound that terrifying on paper, but shadow clones didn't need sleep.
Twenty-four hours a day, nonstop training for a full month.
Even Naruto might not survive that.
Even though the main body slept every day, she still couldn't digest all the fatigue.
Exhaustion kept stacking until it began affecting her daily rhythm.
She might collapse and sleep without warning, or wake at random times just to eat. For the sake of developing a secret art, her life had lost all regularity.
The Yin and Yang clones lowered their voices and continued discussing, while the other clones kept reading, pages rustling softly.
On the bed, Konome didn't move at all, as if she'd drifted into another world.
Two days later.
"Ahhh!"
A man with all four limbs broken lay on a hospital bed, his eyes bloodshot with terror.
He screamed in agony, body twisting and jerking. His bare dark upper body was covered in spiderweb-like burn scars.
But the most striking thing was the dense sealing arrays spread across him.
"Kumo shinobi really are thick-skinned," Chihaya Tōru said lazily. He sat in a chair with one leg crossed over the other, calmly chewing on an apple.
The roles had reversed. The assistant had become the surgeon. Konome was the one holding the blade.
A purple chakra scalpel coated her palm.
She pressed her hand to the man's chest and slid downward. Crimson blood streamed along his dark skin.
With her fingers, she pried open the chest cavity.
She took out a prepared culture dish.
The milky nutrient solution inside swayed gently, revealing a fleshy sphere submerged within.
It was only about the size of Konome's fist, completely pale.
At its center, a shining chakra core had already condensed. Chakra rich with vitality flowed slowly, lacking the usual aggressive, predatory edge.
Because three scarlet, single-tomoe Sharingan had been embedded across the surface of that flesh sphere.
Purple-red nerves, like blood vessels, pierced into the meat.
That sinister ocular power had locked Hashirama's vitality down brutally, like a wolf clamping its jaws shut.
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