Don't be fooled by everyone shouting about the Will of Fire—precisely because the Will of Fire wasn't fully upheld, the team led by the Third Hokage kept bringing it up in every conversation.
And in a place like the body disposal department, it was an extremely sensitive area where the Will of Fire mattered most. If even one person's resolve wavered and they betrayed the village, the resulting losses would be incalculable.
The next day, Kaede Tsukasa arrived at the eastern hillside of Training Ground 44 in Konoha.
The area resembled a large cemetery, with incense smoke drifting constantly through the air. Surrounding it were blank memorial stones, and wilted flowers littered the ground.
Pushing open the doors of the body disposal facility, a few crows were startled, scattering dust from beneath the eaves.
To put it bluntly, Kaede Tsukasa's first impression of this place was terrible.
Normally, a department dedicated to handling corpses should have high hygiene standards—practically like a large hospital.
Instead, this place looked more like a Root crematorium.
"As expected, the bodies dissected here are from other villages… at least they don't make someone like me enter a lab to dissect Konoha shinobi."
Kaede Tsukasa handed over his transfer papers and followed a staff member to meet the department head, all while assessing the newly established division.
The village still hadn't figured out how to systematically train medical ninjas, let alone assign enough skilled medical ninjas to study enemy corpses.
"It's been a while since any new recruits arrived, and especially none sent by someone like Lord Ryoma," said the staff member.
With a snick, a middle-aged shinobi, showing his age, used a scalpel to cut open the chest of a Sunagakure ninja. Dark red blood dripped into a container, and the sound of each drop seemed to whisper something cold and grim.
Kaede Tsukasa slightly bowed. "You must be Morino Isuke. From now on, I will serve under you. It seems this department is short-staffed."
"Counting you, five people is already enough. Any more would be a waste—either they belong on the battlefield or in the hospital," Morino Isuke said.
"Your workstation will be in the Special Cell Recording Room. Your first task is to shine some light on the heads delivered yesterday, especially those from Sunagakure—they love covering up that awful hair with cloth."
Kaede Tsukasa's fingers brushed over the cold metal nameplate on the mortuary table. Three bodies lay neatly covered in white sheets. From the last one, a toe poked through the cloth, sand from the Land of Wind still stuck under the nail.
"Understood, Morino. Since serving the village, I've often dealt with corpses."
This was his element, and it felt like returning home.
Gently lifting a white sheet, the Sunagakure ninja's grayish expression was frozen forever in fear. The right arm bore fire-style burn marks, charred black—a perfect material for developing his Zombie Release technique.
Getting to work, Kaede Tsukasa displayed impressive skill—unless it involved chakra consumption, he always delivered excellent results.
There was enough material here, enough space, a stage where he could properly showcase his abilities.
Occasionally, he gave commands to reanimated corpses to perform different actions, which didn't surprise his colleagues much.
Everyone knew Kaede Tsukasa was practicing Zombie Release. There were few shinobi in all of Konoha capable of this technique.
But in truth, those working in the body disposal department weren't exactly paragons of virtue. What righteous shinobi would leave the battlefield to dissect enemy corpses?
"Occasionally there are Jonin-class materials… but still, no bloodline corpses yet."
Kaede Tsukasa finished processing a corpse and reluctantly removed his mask.
Morino Isuke said coldly, "Our people on the battlefield keep an eye on enemies with Kekkei Genkai, and the enemy does the same. No village would tolerate their bloodlines being exposed—they'd rather destroy the body on the spot than let the opponent get it. Have you ever seen an enemy with a Sharingan or Byakugan appear on the battlefield?"
Kaede Tsukasa shrugged. In the future, Aoi-kai would fight Konoha shinobi while wielding a Byakugan, though this was just a thought he entertained quietly.
Morino Isuke suddenly seemed to remember something, muttering, "I recall last year on the battlefield in the Land of Rain, several Uchiha went missing after a fierce battle. Lord Orochimaru and the others practically turned the battlefield upside down… maybe the Rain Village obtained some Sharingan."
"Didn't the Sannins ended the war with the Rain Village? After the war there'd be negotiations, so the eyes should have been returned," Kaede Tsukasa said.
But he knew that was impossible.
The ones who obtained them might not have been Hanzō—they could have been Uchiha Madara.
Last year, Jiraiya stayed in the Land of Rain to train Nagato, which meant Nagato received the Rinnegan earlier.
Madara, having lost the Rinnegan, would need some Sharingan as substitutes.
"War… the truth the world believes and the reality of how it unfolds are completely different," Kaede Tsukasa murmured.
Every time he thought of Uchiha Madara, Black Zetsu, Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki, and the Ōtsutsuki descendants on the moon silently observing the ninja world, he couldn't help but marvel at how complicated this world was.
But those figures were far beyond his reach. Right now, he was just a lowly Genin, scheming about how to change his own body.
Time passed, and the few people in the body disposal department were as if forgotten. Apart from the occasional corpse of some value sent over, no one paid attention to them.
Perhaps only when they regularly reported research results—providing a small boost to contemporary biological science—could they prove their worth.
Kaede Tsukasa still hadn't seen a corpse of a Kekkei Genkai user, even though he had observed and studied every body brought here.
"So, there really must be a higher, more secretive department studying the most valuable Kekkei Genkai corpses," he thought, unsurprised.
Since Senju Nawaki died under Orochimaru's eyes, Orochimaru had officially begun his pursuit of immortality.
Considering the secret events that took place during the brief peace between the Second and Third Ninja Wars, Kaede Tsukasa was almost certain that Orochimaru and Danzo had already joined forces by this point.
"After the Second Ninja War, the village officially initiated experiments on the First Cells to enhance combat strength for the next great ninja war. They even conducted human experiments on Konoha shinobi and villagers, causing massive casualties."
"If they could conduct human experiments directly, that means the village had already mastered all the preliminary research necessary for such experiments."
The corpse disposal work they were doing now, and all the data submitted, would eventually become the building blocks supporting large-scale human experiments years later.
First Cells… just thinking about them made Kaede Tsukasa's face light up with longing.
No one understood better than him how agonizing it was to live in a weak body, and no one desired a body full of vitality more than he did.
Ordinary Konoha natives had 130 trillion cells—what about ninjas who had trained their chakra and conditioned their bodies? How many cells would they have?
And the Senju and Uzumaki clans, famed for their bodies?
And… Senju Hashirama?
Absolute quantity equals absolute power. Without sufficient vitality, everything else is meaningless.