Relieved to see a familiar face at last, Naruto bounded over to Sakura and hugged her, but the instant their chests touched, he felt something was not quite right. Sakura's normally soft breasts felt firmer than usual, almost rubbery, as though they were water-filled balloons.
'Naruto, don't trust—'
Sakura's eyes glowed red, and almost as soon as the Nine-Tails' gruff voice had rung out inside Naruto's head, he howled in pain as something important in his brain snapped. His shoulders sagged and his gaze went blank, a thin rivulet of blood mixed with liquefied brain matter trickling from his nostrils.
"Mou~, Naruto, you giga-perv!" Sakura giggled, lightly flicking his forehead. Then she leaned in and whispered into his ear, "As for you, little puppy, you'd better keep quiet unless you want your host's head to explode."
Stunned, Naruto barely registered the words she spoke. Patting his cheek almost affectionately, Sakura (?) drifted away from his side to check up on the White Zetsus she had caught in her web of blood.
Originating from the west, the tunnelling underground dwellers had been crossing through her home in the Valley of Hell in ever-increasing numbers, so much so that she had taken notice of the ordinarily stealthy buggers. Believing the valley to be uninhabited, the Zetsus had lowered their guard and begun using it as a shortcut to reach the Land of Lightning, where they had recently begun gathering in ever-greater numbers…
"Now, let's see what news the Zetsu Network has in store for us today, shall we?" Sakura (?) said cheerily. She walked up to a White Zetsu hanging upside down from the ceiling and fixed him with her scarlet gaze, her purple pupils shifting into the shape of a Toad Sage's. "Speak."
The White Zetsu began jittering uncontrollably as it weakly tried to ward off her mental probe.
"Ketsuryūgan… Chinoike clan… survivor!" he growled through gritted teeth. "To think… there was one of you left!"
The White Zetsus could communicate at the speed of thought by laying down roots, which they had spent the past millennia spreading across the continent. Unfortunately for them, they had made a grave mistake by cutting corners and tunnelling into the Valley of Hell.
Even though they were legion, the Zetsu Spy Network could not possibly cover the entirety of the immense shinobi continent. How could they possibly have guessed that a Chinoike clan survivor would ever return to the hellhole where their entire clan had tragically perished? They had carelessly exposed themselves to her, and got their precious network hijacked as a result…
"I didn't ask for my résumé, I asked for the news," said the Chinoike clan woman who had taken Sakura's guise. Her sclera and horizontal pupils turned blood red, while her irises shifted to pitch black. "Give me what I want."
…
The Ketsuryūgan, the Blood Dragon's Eye, was an extraordinarily powerful Kekkei Genkai. The dōjutsu allowed its wielder to use sight-based hypnotic genjutsu on par with the Sharingan's Saimingan, granted penetrative vision on par with the Byakugan, and also gave them the power to infuse chakra into any iron-rich liquid and manipulate it as they wished.
Although he hadn't realised it, Naruto had already encountered this dōjutsu in its unevolved form once before, in the eyes of Ranmaru, Kurosuki Raiga's young ward. Ranmaru mostly used its blood-bending powers to perfectly read his target, which allowed him to navigate and survive Raiga's erratic mood swings, as well as help his protector in combat by whispering his opponent's next moves in his ear.
Ranmaru had also developed a way to fool sensory ninjutsu by discharging a veil of microscopic, chakra-charged blood particles from his body's pores. To ordinary eyes, it merely looked as though he were dispersing red dust or mist around him, when in fact the blood cloud was concealing his own chakra signature and constructing false chakra pathways out of thin air that could deceive even Neji's eyes!
That being said, Ranmaru's use of his dōjutsu was not the true extent of the Ketsuryūgan's formidable abilities. Limited by his weak, disabled body, he had been forced to develop such creative techniques to remain useful enough to avoid being discarded, while also avoiding chakra overexertion.
…
The light in the White Zetsu's yellow eyes faded.
"The Akatsuki is mobilising in the Land of Rice Paddies to force the Hidden Leaf to spread itself thin," he said dully. "The plan is to temporarily release the Two-Tails as bait to lure the Eight-Tails Jinchūriki out of Kumogakure, and then blame the Hidden Leaf."
The Land of Rice Paddies, now Orochimaru's Land of Sound, lay directly north of Konohagakure, just beyond the Valley of the End. It sat well past the defensive line against the Land of Earth, which spanned the Lands of Waterfalls and Grass. Since Konoha was not expecting an attack from Kumogakure this early, any ambush from behind would be extremely troublesome indeed.
Incidentally, as the Land of Rain was controlled by the Akatsuki, it remained the only gap in the western defensive line before it continued through the Land of Rivers to ward against the Land of Wind. However, since Konoha's shinobi were the greatest in the world, Sakura did not mind having the village's foes funnelled through a narrow corridor, where her forces would need only face a limited number of enemies at a time.
"I don't care about such things," the Chinoike woman said dismissively. "I want the locations of the Uchiha clan's remnants!"
A long time ago, during the Warring States Period, the Chinoike clan operated in the Land of Lightning as mercenaries for hire. Unfortunately, as they grew in strength, the powers that be began to fear them, and after her husband's untimely death, the Daimyō's first wife hired the Uchiha clan to chase the Chinoike out of her country.
The powerful Uchiha clan successfully drove the Chinoike clan out of the Land of Lightning, routing them and forcing them to flee into the Land of Hot Water, where they hid themselves in the Valley of Hell… and it was there that they remained, until their hot tempers inevitably led them to annihilate one another through infighting.
"There are four— no, five— survivors that we Zetsus know of…" the White Zetsu said slowly. "The Sixth Hokage, Uchiha Sakura; the former clan leader's son, Uchiha Sasuke; the woman forgotten by time, Uchiha Hikari; the Akatsuki's temporary leader, Uchiha Obito…"
The Chinoike woman grinned. So many targets for her revenge!
"…and lastly, the Akatsuki's true leader… Uchiha Madara."