Time flies.
The Five Elements Seal was indeed tough to master. Even with Hiruzen Sarutobi's guidance, Hikari could barely pull it off, and she was still far from using it in the heat of fast-paced combat.
As the short lesson wrapped up, she watched his hunched figure quickly disappear. With a quick scan of the surroundings using her Byakugan, Hikari turned and headed back to her bedroom.
The room was cramped.
A desk, a chair, a bed, and a floor littered with… Hikari.
Several shadow clones, identical in appearance and clothing, sat cross-legged in a circle, each engrossed in a different hefty book.
Yin, Yang, sealing techniques, barriers, curse seals, medical ninjutsu—all dense, complex tomes. Each one was as thick as Hikari's palm. Even with her clones working together, it would take a while to get through them.
These books on seals and curse seals were borrowed from Hiruzen Sarutobi.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Even as his disciple, precious knowledge like ninjutsu wasn't handed out for free. It had to be accounted for.
Ninjutsu knowledge was a valuable resource of the Leaf Village, not Hiruzen's personal property. Any new techniques developed using this knowledge were expected to be submitted to the Leaf's ninjutsu archives.
The word "expected" was key—ninjas were sensitive about this, so the village didn't enforce it strictly.
You could choose not to submit, but that was a one-time deal. The knowledge stayed in your head, and the village wouldn't take it back, but getting access to more knowledge or techniques afterward would be a steep climb. If you submitted a new technique, you'd be rewarded with a secret technique of similar rank.
Plus, you could keep borrowing knowledge books. It was like the village investing in talented ninjas, then reinvesting based on their results.
Developing new techniques to trade for secret ones, buying them from ninja tool shops at a high price, or studying under a mentor—these were the three paths for civilian ninjas to advance beyond the academy.
Those who could develop techniques took the first path, the wealthy took the second, and those with connections or exceptional talent took the third. The Leaf's endless stream of civilian prodigies and quirky secret techniques was the result of these rules working together.
Rumor had it these rules were set by the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, who contributed his clan's ninjutsu and knowledge to fill the Leaf's archives.
Hikari marveled at Tobirama's foresight while happily agreeing to the terms.
Submitting a technique developed using borrowed knowledge? No problem. It was a gentleman's agreement, not mandatory—practically a freebie.
Compared to Hiruzen, Danzo was even more "generous."
No strings attached. Hikari only needed to cite "experimental needs" to get Danzo's approval, then she could freely access and read from Root's secret archives.
When she got there, she was stunned: Root's collection was larger, more comprehensive, and newer than the Leaf's. Most were likely hand-copied from the Leaf's archives.
She found plenty of rare materials, like:
"On the Principles of Medical Ninjutsu" by Tsunade, "Studies on Yin and Yang Forces" by Orochimaru, and "Basic Methods of Ninjutsu Development" by Tobirama Senju.
She even stumbled across books credited to the Uchiha clan—old, yellowed pages with creases, clearly spoils seized after their extermination.
Since it was free, Hikari, eager to develop new techniques, took as many of these precious resources as she could.
But free things often come with the highest cost.
She knew exactly what Danzo was up to.
He thought he could control her with the threat of brainwashing via Other Gods and her involvement in human experiments. Little did he know, Hikari didn't care about that.
Her only concern was her own survival.
Everything else took a backseat.
Creak!
Hikari grabbed the bed's frame, dragging it to the other side of the room, revealing the flat ground beneath.
Byakugan!
Activate!
Her pupil power surged.
A faint red sealing barrier appeared on the floor. Hikari swiftly formed hand signs, her palms glowing with a purple aura. A strange, incomplete semicircle pattern emerged on the barrier's surface.
This was one of her recent achievements.
A sealing barrier that concealed, blocked prying eyes, and repelled enemies—all in one.
It worked like a charm.
Someday, she'd use the principles of this barrier to make anti-vision clothing, specifically to counter the Byakugan. From the Hyuga clan's main branch to the Otsutsuki clan, it could neutralize them to some degree.
Especially the Hyuga's Gentle Fist, which targeted chakra points—it would be useless against something that blocked their vision.
Buzz!
Once the pattern fully formed and matched the expected chakra blueprint, the barrier's color faded, revealing a square underground cavity.
Inside was a roughly nine-square-meter basement. The walls, reinforced with Earth Release chakra, were etched with dense curse inscriptions. Other than a stone table, a glass rod, and a few bottles and jars, there was nothing else—not even a candle.
Hikari had dug this basement herself with Earth Release to store things that couldn't see the light of day.
As a pragmatist, her Byakugan's powerful vision didn't need light, so she hadn't bothered with illumination.
With a hand gesture, one of the shadow clones reading a book set it down, activated her Byakugan, and scanned the entire space.
Confirming no issues, Hikari jumped into the cavity.
Boom!
Boom, boom~
Her landing echoed heavily in the empty room. Though there was no light source, faint beams streamed through the unsealed opening above, illuminating swirling dust particles in the air.
Waving away the dust, Hikari picked up a large glass bottle from the table.
Inside, two pieces of flesh floated in milky nutrient fluid.
The blood-red piece was losing vitality, reduced to the size of a fingernail, faintly glowing purple.
The pale white piece extended roots into the red flesh, steadily siphoning its purple energy. The white flesh grew visibly, its green chakra glow overpowering the purple.
The red flesh was cut from her own arm; the white was Hashirama's cells, taken from the experimental division.
Stealing cells was almost too easy.
She'd scraped a bit off a test subject's transplanted flesh with her fingernail, sealing it in a coin before the cells could devour the energy. Hashirama's cells were resilient and easy to cultivate. With some minced meat, they'd grow from barely visible to a large chunk in days.
If allowed to gather enough energy, the cells would form a chakra core, absorbing energy to produce chakra. If no energy was available, they'd burn their own vitality to force the conversion, eventually spiraling out of control into a vibrant sapling, rendering the cells unusable.
The hardest part of cultivating Hashirama's cells was keeping them from getting too active.
Decades of transplant experiments had solved this, thanks to some genius's idea:
Mix a specially formulated acidic poison into the nutrient fluid.
The cells absorbed nutrients but were constantly killed by the poison. The fluid's energy allowed rapid division, and new cells consumed the dead ones, creating a delicate balance.
Some cells even developed antibodies against the poison, so researchers created different poison variants, switching them every three days to prevent targeted mutations.
Holding the bottle up, Hikari's eye veins bulged, spiderwebbing across half her face.
Her pupil power surged with costly purple chakra, magnifying the bottle's contents infinitely in her vision.
Boom!
A microscopic world unfolded in her mind.
Unlike the calm macro view, the micro world was a brutal battlefield, far worse than any war.
It wasn't even a fight—more like a massacre.
The hyperactive, almost crazed white cells hunted down Hikari's purple-glowing cells.
Soon, the frenzied Hashirama cells surrounded her more numerous cells.
Their outer membranes—or cell walls—sprouted countless tendrils, piercing Hikari's cells and sucking out their energy.
The purple chakra, once infused with tailed beast power and brimming with malice, was now as helpless as a mouse before a cat. After a token resistance, it was slurped up like a drink. Hikari's cells, which relied on that chakra to grow, lost all resistance and were ruthlessly broken down.
As expected, it didn't work.
Hikari's brows furrowed.
Eighty percent of her Bone Pulse's power was in her bones. Her flesh, while unique, stood no chance against the fully matured Sage Body cells of Hashirama.
Worse, her tailed beast-infused chakra was completely overpowered. A light pull from the tendrils, and it melted away—easier than eating a cupcake.
It didn't stop there.
As Hikari observed, the Hashirama cells, having consumed the last of her flesh's chakra, acted like they'd taken a mega-dose of vitality. They split and expanded wildly.
The tiny flesh formed a minuscule chakra core, smaller than a needle's tip—a green speck in her vision.
The green speck churned out chakra, accelerating the flesh's division to a freakish pace.
Even the bottle's nutrient-poison mix couldn't suppress the cells' growth anymore. The fluid was rapidly consumed until it was gone. The crazed cells turned on themselves, annihilating each other to fuel the chakra core.
Mass cell death followed, unable to withstand the chakra's spread.
Crack!
A tender sprout broke through the pale flesh.
Oh no!
The glass bottle screeched as the struggling sapling scratched it. Black roots enveloped the Hashirama cells completely.
In moments, both Hashirama's and Hikari's cells were gone. The large bottle now held a tiny sapling, its green leaves filling the space.
The green glow faded.
Hashirama and Hikari's cells were dead!
Shaking her head, Hikari set the plant-filled bottle on the table and picked up another.
This time, the pale flesh was larger, already containing a fluorescent green chakra core. The surrounding toxic nutrient fluid was highly concentrated, a brownish-yellow like cooking wine.
No purple-charged Hikari cells were inside.
Closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths, Hikari unsealed the bottle and dipped her index finger inside.
Below her knuckle, the Hashirama cells, feeding on the nutrient fluid, wriggled rapidly.
Chakra gathered at her fingertip.
Her smooth fingerpad slowly split, revealing a blood-red gash. A grayish-white finger bone grew slowly from the flesh.
Crunch!
Crunch!
The familiar yet eerie sound of grinding bones echoed in the air.
Her Bone Pulse mutation devoured massive amounts of chakra, the gray patterns on the bone growing wilder.
Suppressing the draining weakness, Hikari used her Byakugan to control the Bone Pulse's consumption, successfully extruding a finger bone.
Snap!
The strange bone, marked with ashen spots, dropped onto the Hashirama cells below.
Sealing the gash on her finger, Hikari didn't dare blink, staring intently at the bottle where life and death—bone and flesh—met.
Lightning crackled across her body.
Her right foot stepped forward, her grip on the bottle tightening.
If anything went wrong, she could bolt from the cramped basement to the Hatake clan grounds in under three seconds.
Crack!
Gray patterns spread rapidly from the bone's contact point with the cells, like vines climbing a wall. The pale flesh was instantly covered in strange markings.
Holding her breath, Hikari's muscles tensed.
Her right leg visibly swelled, muscles coiling like a spring.
Gurgle!
The flesh where the patterns spread seemed to melt, becoming brittle. The gray-spotted finger bone sank into the flesh, bit by bit, until it was fully submerged and still.
Huh?
Seeing the half-evolved ash bone embedded in the flesh, both seemingly at peace, Hikari's racing heart finally settled, replaced by deep confusion.
She'd imagined many scenarios before the experiment.
The ash bone and Hashirama cells fighting to the death, or the half-finished ash bone devouring the cells' energy to evolve, or the cells consuming her bone cells and mutating unpredictably.
She'd considered every possibility—except this. No reaction at all.
Not enemies, not merging, just… two strangers, distinctly separate.
Byakugan activated.
Her vision shifted to a 360-degree transparent state. The calm, gray-patterned flesh split into three layers in her eyes.
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