Life is meaningless.
Things that remain stagnant are even more meaningless.
As an elite Jonin of Konoha and one of the Sannin renowned across the Great Nations, Orochimaru had long proven himself during the Second Shinobi World War in his battle against the leader of Amegakure, Hanzo of the Salamander. Even though he, Jiraiya, and Tsunade had teamed up, they hadn't gained much of an advantage in that fight.
However, being able to clash with a Kage-level powerhouse and hold his ground for a short time made the world believe Orochimaru truly lived up to the title of an elite Jonin. Many even thought he was destined to become a Kage-level expert in the future. But... the masses were mostly ignorant... There were simply too many boring people in this world.
Having experienced countless battles and grown accustomed to life and death, Orochimaru felt himself gradually growing numb. He grew weary, slowly sinking into a state where nothing could pique his interest... a state of absolute emptiness...
"My heart is empty." One night, the man with deep purple eyeshadow stood with the corpses of enemy ninjas at his feet. As he looked up at the moon, a profound sense of bewilderment crept onto his snake-like face under the moonlight.
He knew he had to make a change, or else he would be destroyed by the numbness of his unchanging life and the endless wars. Fortunately, the Second Shinobi World War came to an end. For the sake of passing down the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, the village desperately needed a failsafe... an insurance policy that could suppress the Nine-Tails at any moment to prevent it from running rampant—[Wood Style]!
Thus, Orochimaru remembered it clearly. Not long after Kushina Uzumaki inherited the Nine-Tails from Mito Uzumaki, his teacher, Sarutobi Hiruzen, approached him. Hiruzen entrusted him with a daunting task: to research the First Hokage's cells and find someone capable of withstanding the First Hokage's power to successfully inherit [Wood Style].
[Wood Style]... The First Hokage... When these two terms were placed before Orochimaru at the same time, he remembered vividly how he trembled with excitement. The emptiness hidden deep within his soul faded away, as if he had welcomed a rebirth.
"Leave it to me," Orochimaru, having finally found himself again, confidently promised his teacher that very day.
However, perhaps he was too arrogant, or perhaps the God of Shinobi was simply too powerful. Even though Hashirama Senju had been dead for many years, the immense vitality hidden within his cells turned every ninja Sarutobi Hiruzen sent to participate in the experiments into monsters consumed by [Wood Style]—mindless, vegetative husks drained of their very brains.
Naturally, after this tragedy, the project was halted. Even though he stubbornly told his teacher that it wasn't his fault and that they simply lacked enough experimental samples, he couldn't change Sarutobi Hiruzen's decision. Because of this, he felt angry, lost, and disappointed, followed by a deep, overwhelming fear... the fear of returning to his past, of being swallowed whole by that massive sense of emptiness until not even his bones remained!
Fortunately, just as Orochimaru despised unchanging things, Danzo Shimura also despised an unchanging Konoha—or rather, the unchanging Konoha under Hiruzen's rule. Thus, the two frustrated men naturally came together. One did it for Konoha—his version of Konoha—while the other did it to escape the emptiness, attempting to find the meaning of existence by continuing the research on [Wood Style]. They hit it off instantly. Therefore... the human experiments continued.
And today was once again the day of the month for Orochimaru to scout for Sharingan on Danzo's behalf. This time, he had expanded his selection pool... and noticed a boy named Jin Uchiha!
Rumor had it that he had once followed Fugaku onto the battlefield, slaughtering dozens of ninjas with just a single blade and making quite a name for himself.
Rumor had it that he had blown up the academy, unleashing a D-rank ninjutsu that displayed power rivaling a B-rank technique.
Rumor had it that Danzo was also keeping an eye on him, yet had quietly concealed all information about the boy from him. Residing within the body of a white snake, Orochimaru flicked his tongue, immediately realizing that this child named Jin might possess a side completely different from the rest of the Uchiha. And so, he saw it today. The boy cast hand-seal-less ninjutsu with effortless ease... His talent in space-time ninjutsu was unparalleled... It even roused a rare fighting spirit in Minato Namikaze—the man Danzo had mentioned might become his rival—making him want to test his skills against the boy. Unfortunately, they were interrupted halfway by the very teacher who had nearly dragged Orochimaru back into the void!
'You always ruin the mood at the most crucial moments,' Orochimaru thought, watching sinisterly from the shadows. He had assumed his observation for the day was over and that his harvest was already bountiful enough. Who would have thought that this young boy, Jin Uchiha, would not only harshly voice the very words Orochimaru had always wanted to scream but never could, but also pull off something massive—he had independently mastered [Wood Style] without relying on the First Hokage's cells!
Boom! It was like a sudden clap of thunder on a clear day! Instantly, Orochimaru felt as if a bolt of lightning from the heavens had struck him right between the eyes, traveling all the way down to his tail, splitting him completely in half along his central axis!
'Then what was the point of all my years of research?' Orochimaru was dumbfounded. His mind turned to mush. In that split second, it felt as though his life had lost all meaning once again, swallowed whole by that massive, familiar emptiness he despised and feared so deeply!
Rustle... The snake's body slithered through the dark corners of Konoha's streets, through the lush green bushes, and across the thick trunks of massive trees. Orochimaru trailed behind in a daze, silently following without even knowing what he was doing. At a certain moment, he suddenly saw... The boy re-entered the southern forest, abruptly stopped in his tracks, and without looking back, said, "You've been following me for so long, at least let a guy catch his breath."
"Don't you agree, Lord Orochimaru?"
A sharp gaze pierced through the air. Orochimaru, in the form of a white snake, propped himself up against a tree trunk with his tail, standing upright like a human, and let out a sinister chuckle.
"You clearly noticed me a long time ago. Why didn't you expose me right away?"
The tailing hadn't just started. It had begun the moment Roy appeared at the training ground carrying the log. Orochimaru believed that if the boy could detect him now, he must have noticed him back then as well.
"Two reasons," Roy said, stopping and turning around. He looked up calmly at Orochimaru. "First, you harbor no ill intent. Second, I also wanted to see what the legendary Sannin was up to."
"Hehehe..." The white snake flicked its tongue, giving off a dark, raspy vibe. Orochimaru's slit pupils gleamed with a faint light as he stared intently at the boy beneath the tree. "So, did you see it?"
"I did," Roy replied, sounding somewhat disappointed. "Just a heartless, pitiful peeping tom who has no idea what he's even doing."
A guy who nearly ended his own little brother's life over the phrase "life itself has no meaning," only to eventually live as the very person he hated most—Jiraiya. Looking at the white snake Orochimaru had transformed into, Roy felt as if he were peering through time and space, seeing the man after the Fourth Shinobi World War. Running wildly around Konoha, sometimes working at a restaurant, sometimes walking pigeon-toed while sucking his fingers in front of a ramen shop, and sometimes sticking his butt out while screaming "bakayaro" at the Hokage building... completely unleashing his true nature. Roy couldn't help but sigh.
"Pitiful?" Orochimaru looked down from his high vantage point, meeting Roy's faintly shimmering gaze. He raised an eyebrow slightly and narrowed his eyes. "You seem to understand me quite well..."
Strange. The look in the boy's eyes gave him a sense of deja vu... Yet Orochimaru was absolutely certain that this was their very first encounter.
Roy kept his hands in his pockets and slowly shook his head. "I wouldn't say I understand. If you don't tell me, I wouldn't know."
"I tell you?" Orochimaru's gaze shifted.
Roy shot a deeply meaningful look at the white snake's weak point—its seven-inch mark—and said, "That's right. 'It' has already told me."
Orochimaru subconsciously looked down. It was the spot where his heart was beating.
Thump, thump... His heart beat, his blood ran hot. Leaning in closer, Orochimaru could almost see his own heart expanding and contracting. Just as he looked up, he suddenly froze!
With a harsh, raspy caw from a crow, his vision blurred, and he plunged into a profound darkness.
The darkness was pitch-black; he couldn't see his own fingers or tell which direction was which. All he could hear was a rustling sound, like some sort of gastropod worm crawling about. When Orochimaru finally regained his senses and looked over... not far away, a Heart Bug extended its long mouthparts. Tracing the threads of cause and effect, it crossed the distance of space and time, arriving right in front of him in the blink of an eye. Before he could even react, it plunged its mouthparts into him. Following that...
A boy with black hair—bearing a three-parts resemblance to Fugaku and a seven-parts resemblance to Mikoto—stepped forward with his hands behind his back, planting his foot directly into Orochimaru's mindscape.
Rustle... Memories unlocked. The past of Orochimaru's life unspooled like a film reel, slowly unfolding before Roy's eyes as he stood on the ridges of the mindscape. Among them were memories of his childhood, learning ninjutsu alongside Jiraiya and Tsunade under Sarutobi Hiruzen... The embarrassment of being promoted to Chunin, heading to the battlefield with his teacher, and secretly vomiting against a wall after killing an enemy for the first time... The joy of growing stronger, gradually revealing his brilliance, establishing his footing in the ninja world, and being promoted to Jonin... The glory of teaming up with Jiraiya and Tsunade to fight Hanzo of the Salamander, earning the title of the Sannin... And of course, the numbness that came from killing too many... The bewilderment and helplessness of being engulfed by a massive sense of emptiness... The coldness and cruelty of treating people not as humans, but as mere consumables... The anger and despair when Sarutobi Hiruzen forcibly shut down his experiments for violating human ethics... The secret thrill of colluding with Danzo to restart the project... The descent into darkness, maintaining a glamorous facade while rotting away in the shadows.
All of this constructed a colorful tapestry of life, taken in entirely by Roy, leaving absolutely no privacy. Orochimaru stood beside the boy on the ridge of his mindscape, tilting his head to look at him. "What kind of ninjutsu is this?"
There was no fluctuation of chakra, so it wasn't a genjutsu. There was no sensation of his mind being devoured, so it wasn't the Yamanaka clan's Mind Transfer Jutsu. Yet, he couldn't resist. He could only leave his heart wide open, allowing the boy to stroll in casually, taking and viewing whatever he pleased. This feeling of having his deepest secrets completely exposed for the first time in his life—like streaking naked in broad daylight—made Orochimaru experience a profound terror that rivaled being swallowed by the void!
"Do you think I'd tell you?" Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself. Roy casually flipped through Orochimaru's life, not even sparing him a glance. "If you can peek at me, naturally, I can peek at you."
"Lord Orochimaru, this is my answer to you."
"Hehehe..." A violent tremor of chakra suddenly shook the area. In an instant, the mindscape collapsed, the sky falling and the earth shattering.
Roy finally seemed to react, glancing sideways at Orochimaru. "I didn't expect you to be this ruthless."
"As you've seen, to me, people can die. Naturally, summoning beasts can die too..."
Crash! The mindscape shattered, and consciousness returned. The Heart Bug flew out, whimpering as Roy snatched it out of the air with one hand. The boy withdrew from Orochimaru's mindscape and looked up. The white snake's head drooped as it slid down the tree trunk like a piece of hemp rope, landing on the ground with a soft thud. It was dead beyond dead.
Roy watched silently. He truly hadn't expected Orochimaru to use suicide as a way to escape his [En]. As expected of a man crowned with the title of Sannin by Hanzo of the Salamander—none of them were easy to deal with.
Tap, tap... After a moment of silence, Roy let out a soft breath and resumed walking toward the training ground near the Uchiha clan compound.
Shisui and Itachi were still waiting for his inspection. As their older brother, he naturally couldn't let his little brothers down. Roy simply tossed the unnecessary thoughts from his mind, transformed into sunlight, and flickered away, vanishing with the light.
"Huff... huff... What a bizarre boy..."
In a secluded, hidden laboratory deep underground in Konoha, a massive snake slithered faintly through the darkness. "..."
The snake's scales scraped against the dark floor, making a chilling sound. At a certain moment, under the dim light...
The giant snake raised its head, opened its jaws, and regurgitated a slender man. He had straight black hair, golden slit pupils, purple eyeshadow extending to the bridge of his nose, and pale, bloodless skin. Blue magatama earrings dangled from his ears. Standing up while dripping wet, he immediately began packing up his experimental materials and data. At the same time, he divided his attention to use the Summoning Jutsu, calling forth a messenger snake and directing it toward a certain location.
Within half an hour... Tap, tap... The muffled sound of a cane striking the ground echoed faintly from the dark, deep corridor leading straight to the laboratory door.
The sound grew louder, followed by a creak as the door was pushed open. Two men walked in. They weren't particularly tall, but they exuded a deeply sinister aura. The one trailing a step behind carried a long sword on his back and wore a mask over his eyes, obscuring his face—it was Torune Aburame. As for the one in front...
Bandages wrapped from his arm all the way up to his right eye. His remaining left eye narrowed, constantly radiating a gloomy malice. Especially upon noticing that Orochimaru had nearly emptied the entire laboratory, he glared at him dangerously and demanded, "What do you mean by telling me you're leaving Konoha?"
The messenger snake had already delivered the message to him. Danzo and Orochimaru had a prior agreement: unless it was an absolute emergency, Orochimaru was not to contact him directly. Orochimaru, of course, knew this perfectly well.
The man cast the Summoning Jutsu once more, summoning an even larger snake with a poof. He had the snake swallow all the experimental materials and data in one gulp before finally turning to look at Danzo. "I've been exposed!"
"By who? I'll kill them!"
Orochimaru's gaze darkened as he spat out a single name: "Jin Uchiha!"
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