A sudden skirmish was as commonplace in this era as eating or drinking.
After the battle ended, the real Shirakumaru was wiping his kunai clean on the body of a Nara clan shinobi. Once the blood had been fully cleaned, he retrieved the weapon for reuse.
When it came to reusing deadly tools, Satsuki seemed to maintain an oddly "low-carbon" lifestyle.
The discovery that a human puppet could use a Shadow Clone to open the First Gate of the Eight Gates was the greatest gain from this unexpected battle.
However, it appeared to place a burden on the puppet itself. Since Satsuki was remotely controlling this shinobi's body, she had an acute understanding of the strain on its mechanisms.
While the memory recoil and chakra feedback from the death of the shadow clone were weakened due to the host body's unconscious state, the system still had its limits.
Still, acquiring a practical skill combo was a worthwhile gain for Satsuki.
Although her mental capacity was vast, most of it was focused on planning and experimentation. She hadn't invested much into studying the intricacies of shinobi combat techniques.
But because this was her first time conducting ultra-long-distance remote puppet combat, her control over Shirakumaru hadn't yet reached a smooth and instinctive level.
This area needed further time and practice to refine. Otherwise, the puppet's clone would have been able to fully move its arms or even break free instantly.
As the explosion from the explosive tag cleared, the ambush came to an end.
This was how battles between ordinary shinobi usually played out—high offense, low defense. The outcome was often decided in an instant. One misstep meant death.
Those long-drawn-out, three-hundred-round battles between Tailed Beasts and giant mechas were still not the mainstream of this era.
After a short rest to stabilize the puppet body, lightning once again flickered across Shirakumaru's puppet, and he vanished.
Over the next few days of travel, Satsuki encountered no enemies worth mentioning.
Taking advantage of this lull, she shifted her focus back to her research.
Inside her secret lab, Satsuki concentrated on the object before her.
To most shinobi, it was a common tool—a summoning scroll.
At the moment, this seemingly ordinary scroll was laid out on an experimental platform covered with intricate patterns and formulas. Some of these formulas were deciphered from various jutsu over the past few years.
The rest came from the legacy passed down to her by the Hamura branch of the Ōtsutsuki clan.
Combining both, and after expending great effort, Satsuki had finally built this valuable experimental station.
With her usual meticulous approach, Satsuki changed into a stark white coat completely different from her regular attire.
The style closely resembled that of a doctor from her previous life. She also wore sensory devices capable of recording chakra fluctuations in finer detail.
Satsuki placed her hands on the sides of the platform, where palm-shaped indents acted as activation switches only usable by her.
As she began channeling chakra into the platform, instruments within the field of her Byakugan view lit up and activated. The power system, managed by her puppets, functioned smoothly.
The physical properties involved had already been explored in earlier experiments.
What she needed to analyze now was the meaning and function of the tadpole-like runes—or rather, jutsu symbols—within the summoning scroll.
After stabilizing the chakra output, Satsuki began slowly unrolling the scroll before her.
This scroll was not capable of summoning animals; it belonged to the lowest grade, only able to summon ninja tools.
Its structure wasn't complicated: two rows of symbols arranged in an X pattern, with a circular space in the center left empty for the user to apply their own blood to activate it.
As chakra flowed steadily, the formulas on the experimental platform began to glow pale violet from the outside in, forming a faint halo around the scroll in the center.
Lines of data rapidly flashed across the display screens on either side of Satsuki. The system was automatically cross-referencing known jutsu components from its database and outputting results.
The entire decryption process was highly efficient.
Once the instruments were activated, Satsuki focused her attention on the monitors.
If everything proceeded smoothly, she would be able to fully decode the most basic space-time formula structure embedded in the summoning scroll within just a few days.
In the world of Naruto, there were many techniques or tools that appeared mundane on the surface but contained terrifying truths underneath.
Satsuki happened to possess the ability to see through superficial appearances and pierce directly to the core essence.
Orochimaru, while also conducting research, had not yet reached such an essential level of analysis; he remained focused on secondary applications.
If he had grasped this principle, he wouldn't have obsessed over the Sharingan—he would have studied summoning scrolls instead.
This was the fundamental difference between Satsuki and traditional shinobi thinking.
By researching and unraveling the foundational space-time mechanics within this scroll, mastering techniques like Flying Thunder God or Kamui would not be out of reach for her.
Time flew as she delved into her work. In the blink of an eye, half a day passed.
After recording the experiment's progress and confirming that the procedures could run autonomously, Satsuki summoned a basic puppet to handle ongoing experiment logging and environmental controls.
She exited the lab.
She had expended immense energy in preparing for this round of research.
At the same time, Kiyomaru, who had gone to Iga Castle to purchase large quantities of materials and test subjects, was also expected to return soon. The plan to expand her puppet armor production line needed to begin.
There was much to handle. What she needed most right now was rest.
Over the next few days, Satsuki analyzed the research data recorded by the puppets while simultaneously directing the most basic-level puppets—those that could only follow preset commands—to begin constructing the production line. Supporting infrastructure was also being built.
To achieve this, she had even hollowed out the entire mountain beneath her.
While her operations were progressing in full swing, a long-awaited update arrived from Shirakumaru—he had reached the region of the Valley of Clouds and Lightning and was awaiting Satsuki's next instructions.
"Valley of Clouds and Lightning..." Satsuki muttered as she paused her work and began combing through her memories for relevant intelligence.
In the original anime, Valley of Clouds and Lightning was an expansive region—the Land of Lightning essentially lay within it.
When Sasuke interrogated a Lightning Country ninja about the whereabouts of the Eight-Tails using his Mangekyō Sharingan, the reply had been: the Eight-Tails is training in Valley of Clouds and Lightning.
Which, logically speaking, was a completely meaningless statement.
Because the region was so vast, it was impossible to pinpoint anyone's location from that.
Much of the area was composed of towering spires rising from the sea, isolated from one another.
Ironically, one of those spires just happened to have a gate marked "Valley of Clouds and Lightning," and the Eight-Tails just happened to be there—an absurd coincidence.
The local environment of Valley of Clouds and Lightning was also extremely harsh. Due to massive humidity and frequent lightning storms, the cloud layer was perpetually low, severely affecting an ordinary person's sense of direction.
Without special means, regular people would have trouble even breaching the outer edges of the region.
However, for Shirakumaru, who had Byakugan for long-range vision, it was no problem.
He temporarily captured a large golden eagle. Using chakra to subdue the fierce bird, he rode this majestic creature and flew over the entire region.
After about half a day of flight, numerous chakra signatures began to appear in Shirakumaru's field of vision.
This chakra was fundamentally different from anything Satsuki had encountered before.
If the chakra Satsuki had previously encountered varied in quantity and nature yet still carried an overall sense of vitality,
Then the chakra currently approaching Shirakumaru felt like flames wrapped in ice—a fusion of sickly, negative emotions, carrying a distinctly sinister aura.
Standing on the back of the golden eagle with his arms crossed, Shirakumaru made no attempt to conceal himself. At this point, he had no fear of being discovered.
Satsuki had different ways of dealing with different groups and clans depending on their identities.
The Senju clan could be approached through diplomacy. If you demonstrated value, forming an alliance was practically in their nature.
Dealing with the lord of Iga Castle required noble etiquette. That approach involved minimal effort and left little room for mistakes.
But when it came to the rulers of the Valley of Clouds and Lightning—the Uchiha clan—the strategy needed to be far more forceful.
This was why the Uchiha were placed lower on the priority list.
This clan's defining trait was that no matter how eloquently you spoke or what support you could offer, if you weren't strong enough, they would never respect you, let alone treat you as an equal.
They recognized only strength and respected only the strong.
So Satsuki's purpose in sending Shirakumaru here was simple:
She wanted the Uchiha to recognize the power of the Ōtsutsuki clan.