Chapter 275: The Heart of the Puppet
"Incredible!"
"Truly impressive!"
Li Yao's Wind Clone gazed at the spherical, mechanical heart before him with clear admiration. It really was the work of a puppet master genius unseen in Sunagakure for a century.
A single suggestion from him had led Sasori to create this.
The chakra emanating from the puppet core before him gave off an aura strikingly similar to that of a Tailed Beast—not in raw chakra type, but in the essence of life it radiated.
To Li Yao's Wind Clone, it felt like standing before a newly born Tailed Beast.
"Explain. How did you do it?" Li Yao asked, turning slightly to Sasori with a smile.
"It's all thanks to your insight, Lord Kazekage," Sasori replied. His puppetified face remained expressionless, but his tone was alight with fervor—as if he were a mad scientist raving about a breakthrough after a year and a half of obsession.
"By using a portion of Shukaku's soul that you extracted, I uncovered the secret behind Tailed Beast chakra production."
"Lord Kazekage, are you familiar with natural energy?" Sasori asked.
"Yes," Li Yao nodded.
In truth, during his battle with Shukaku, he had already guessed the origin—Tailed Beasts convert natural energy from the environment into chakra.
That's why they never needed to eat or rest. Their chakra was virtually limitless.
Sasori continued, "The soul of a Tailed Beast is unlike a human's. It's more like the spirit of a living puppet, embedded with a special puppet sigil that allows it to absorb natural energy and convert it into chakra."
Tailed Beasts were, after all, fragments of the Ten Tails.
And the Ten Tails was originally the God Tree.
The God Tree naturally absorbed natural energy.
Back in the day, the Great Toad Sages of Mount Myōboku helped Hagoromo seal Kaguya precisely because the God Tree was draining natural energy from the planet.
For beings like the toads—whose power was rooted in nature—such a theft was an existential threat.
If Tailed Beasts inherited that trait, their ability to absorb and convert natural energy made perfect sense.
Li Yao realized he should've seen it sooner.
"Through research on Tailed Beast souls, I developed a new puppet sigil six months ago. Using a small amount of Tailed Beast chakra as a catalyst, I created a puppet core that could absorb natural energy and transform it into Tailed Beast chakra."
"But that prototype had a problem: since it relied on Tailed Beast chakra, it carried intense negative emotions and could be influenced by the original Beast's will."
"Then I reexamined the Third Kazekage's human puppet sigils and finally—today—I completed a new puppet core that no longer needs a Tailed Beast catalyst."
At this, Sasori's eyes gleamed madly.
"This new puppet core only needs my chakra to begin drawing in natural energy. It generates chakra that belongs entirely to me—and I can control it fully."
"Not only that, but thanks to the transmissive nature of natural energy, puppets powered by this core no longer need chakra threads to function. They can be remotely controlled mentally."
Like the puppet dove earlier—crafted using this new core. It operated with no threads, no risk of being disabled.
This eliminated the greatest weakness of traditional puppets: if the chakra threads were cut, they became useless scrap.
With remote control via puppet core, puppet masters no longer had to fear losing command mid-battle.
That alone could elevate the battlefield effectiveness of Suna's puppet corps exponentially—possibly even redefine warfare.
"This… this is incredible!"
Ye Yi stood frozen, mouth agape. She too had realized what it meant—
A puppet army with no need for chakra threads, powered by self-replenishing natural energy…
The once fantastical dream of an infinite puppet army was no longer fiction.
As long as they had the materials, Suna could build an army of thousands.
Ye Yi looked at Sasori with awe… and a hint of unease.
His power… was beginning to rival even Lord Kazekage.
And as someone who always put Li Yao first, Ye Yi gave her lord a subtle glance—to silently warn him of Sasori's growing threat.
But Li Yao paid her no mind.
His attention was completely on the enormous puppet core—more precisely, on the new puppet sigil engraved within it.
Inside the core, the sigils Sasori had etched were complex and precise. Like peering into the microscopic world of cells—there was a deep, structured beauty in the intricacy.
Even with Li Yao's chakra sensing abilities, it took him ten minutes to fully memorize it.
What he saw was the final embedded version—not the original schematics.
Before he could speak, Sasori handed him a scroll—clearly, he had already prepared it.
"This contains all the notes on the new puppet sigil," Sasori said.
"Excellent," Li Yao smiled.
This was what he had cultivated Sasori for.
He had recruited and funded the genius puppet master for this very moment.
"Without your support, I never could've developed this new sigil—or taken a step closer to true immortality," Sasori added.
He showed no reluctance in giving Li Yao his research.
Because he knew—without Li Yao's help, without his insight into the energy-flesh conversion, and without access to Shukaku—none of this would have been possible.
No matter how talented he was, he wouldn't have discovered the concept or had the resources.
He was deeply grateful.
And the scroll was only the beginning—Sasori had a bigger gift in store for the Fourth Kazekage.
Li Yao unrolled the scroll and began reading on the spot.
With his knowledge of sealing techniques, the sigil was easy to understand—especially the parts on energy conversion, which Sasori had carefully annotated.
That section fascinated him the most.
Right now, Li Yao had no weaknesses.
Ninjutsu, genjutsu, taijutsu, sealing arts, even barriers—he had surpassed all others.
Beneath Sage-tier, he was invincible.
Against Madara with the Rinnegan or even Hashirama with Wood Release, with his own Rinnegan-tier Yin chakra and black hole space techniques, he could fight and win—even if they teamed up.
But even he had one blind spot—
Natural energy.
And the Senjutsu chakra formed by merging natural, spiritual, and physical energy.
Li Yao couldn't sense natural energy.
That meant he couldn't master Sage Mode—he lacked access to the strongest energy in the ninja world.
Senjutsu-enhanced jutsu had powerful amplification effects.
What intrigued him most was this:
Bloodline Omnipotence (Kekkei Mora) couldn't erase natural energy.
Every chakra-based technique (except space-time jutsu) could be nullified by a Kekkei Mora user.
So if Li Yao ever developed such an ability—
Natural energy and Senjutsu chakra would be his only possible counter.
He had never given up on mastering it.
But he seemed immune. No matter how refined his soul or chakra sense became, he simply could not perceive natural energy.
That's why he asked Sasori to research Tailed Beast puppets—hoping to find a method to sense it.
And Sasori did not disappoint.
(END CHAPTER)
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