Chapter 327: The Serpent's Philosophy
Human life was finite. That was the fundamental truth that Orochimaru had never been able to accept. A few decades—sixty years, eighty if one was fortunate—was not nearly enough time to learn everything there was to learn. The world contained too many mysteries. Too many techniques. Too many secrets buried in ancient ruins and forgotten scrolls. To master even a fraction of them would require centuries. Millennia. The kind of time that mortal flesh simply could not provide.
If one wanted to pierce the veil of reality—to understand the true nature of chakra, of life, of the universe itself—one needed to transcend the limitations of the human body. This conviction had grown stronger with every passing year. The Second Shinobi World War had only reinforced it. Orochimaru had watched countless shinobi die. Friends. Comrades. Enemies. All of them, in the end, reduced to the same thing. Corpses. Dust. Memories that faded with each passing generation. He had seen the frailty of human existence, and he had recoiled from it.
Human potential was infinite. Human wisdom could encompass the stars. But the human body was a cage—a fragile, temporary vessel that decayed and failed just when its occupant was beginning to understand. The only logical response was to escape that cage. To shed it like a snake shedding its skin. To become something that could endure.
As a student of the Third Hokage, Orochimaru had access to resources that most shinobi could only dream of. The Scroll of Seals was not forbidden to him—Hiruzen had permitted his prize student to study it, trusting that Orochimaru's brilliance would be tempered by his loyalty. The trust had been misplaced. Orochimaru had memorized the Impure World Reincarnation. He had studied the Living Corpse Reincarnation. He had begun, in secret, the long and bloody work of turning theory into practice.
Sarutobi Hiruzen knew. Of course he knew. The Professor was many things, but naive was not one of them. He had seen the signs. He had chosen to look away. Among the three Sannin, Orochimaru was the one Hiruzen believed most suited to inherit the mantle of Hokage—provided, of course, that his more... unconventional research never came to light.
It was a gamble. And like all gambles, it would eventually come due.
"Ye-kun." Orochimaru's voice was almost playful. "I think we are more alike than you care to admit. You seem to understand me remarkably well. Is this not a spiritual connection between kindred souls?"
He was half-joking. But only half. The fact that Ragnar had found his secret laboratory—had walked in as if he owned the place and calmly discussed forbidden techniques as if they were dinner recipes—suggested a certain... compatibility. Ragnar was a shinobi, yes. But his loyalty was not to Konoha. It was to himself. Orochimaru recognized that quality because he shared it.
"Don't lump me in with you," Ragnar replied evenly. "But if your research ever comes to light, I suspect Konoha won't have a place for you anymore."
"Heh heh. Perhaps not." Orochimaru walked toward one of the tables, where a corpse lay under a white sheet. He pulled the cloth aside with the casual familiarity of a man unveiling a piece of furniture. The body beneath was male. The remnants of clothing bore the Senju clan's emblem. But the body itself was barely recognizable as human. Half of it had transformed into wood—rough bark spreading across the torso like a fungal infection, strange pale flowers blooming from the cracks. The other half was withered and desiccated, the skin pulled tight over bones that had been drained of all vitality.
"Although Impure World Reincarnation and Living Corpse Reincarnation require extensive human experimentation, I am not so far gone as to prey on the living. I am still, in my own way, a successor of the Will of Fire." Orochimaru's lips curved into something that was not quite a smile. "The subjects in my laboratory are all castoffs from Konoha's Wood Release Development Program. Volunteers who did not survive the process. And prisoners condemned to death by the shinobi courts. Waste not, want not."
"Wood Release experiments."
Ragnar studied the corpse. The Senju clan had once been the most powerful bloodline in the world, but Hashirama's death had left a void that no successor could fill. None of his descendants had inherited Wood Release. The clan had declined, its power fading with each generation. In desperation, many Senju had volunteered for the experimental program—hoping to reclaim the First Hokage's legacy, to awaken the bloodline that had once bent the Tailed Beasts to its will.
They had failed. Hashirama's cells were too powerful. Too aggressive. They consumed the host rather than integrating with it. The volunteers had died in agony, their bodies transformed into half-wooden horrors like the one on the table before him. The program would be terminated soon. The results were too poor. The cost was too high.
"Wood Release is not so easily obtained," Ragnar said. His voice was flat. Dispassionate.
The power of Wood Release was, in many ways, the ultimate anomaly in the shinobi world. Among the five elemental natures, it was theoretically one of the weakest—a simple combination of Water and Earth. And yet Hashirama had used it to conquer the world. He had suppressed the Nine-Tails with a single technique. He had shattered Madara's Perfect Susanoo. He had bent the Tailed Beasts to his will as effortlessly as a farmer leashing oxen. The same Wood Release, in the hands of Yamato, was a pale shadow. Useful. Versatile. But nowhere near the godlike power of the First Hokage.
The difference was not in the technique. It was in the man. Hashirama's Wood Release was unique because Hashirama himself was unique. His body was not merely a vessel for chakra—it was a perfected Sage Body, the ultimate expression of Yang Release vitality, infused with the power of Asura Ōtsutsuki. Ordinary shinobi could not replicate that. They could not even contain the cells that carried its memory.
"Ye-kun seems to have thoughts on the matter?" Orochimaru leaned forward, his golden eyes gleaming with interest. Ragnar's reaction was wrong. He had looked at the Wood Release corpse—at the evidence of one of Konoha's greatest failures—with something approaching indifference. Not disgust. Not horror. Indifference. As if he knew something Orochimaru did not.
"The reason the First Hokage could push the entire shinobi world into submission with Wood Release was not solely because of the technique," Ragnar said. "It was because his body was special. He possessed the Sage Body—a physique that surpasses ordinary humanity. It is the most perfect physical form that exists in this world. Without the Sage Body, no one can contain Hashirama's cells. Let alone awaken Wood Release."
"Sage Body." Orochimaru tasted the words. His pupils contracted with barely concealed excitement. "I didn't expect Ye-kun to know about the Sage Body."
"Is that strange?" Ragnar asked, his tone carefully neutral.
In truth, he had deliberately revealed this information. In the current timeline, the concept of the Sage Body was virtually unknown. Even Sarutobi Hiruzen—the Professor, the master of a thousand techniques—probably did not understand its true nature. The secrets of the Sage of Six Paths had been lost to history, scattered among ruins and half-remembered legends. But Orochimaru was different. Orochimaru had spent his entire life chasing secrets. If anyone in Konoha knew about the Sage Body, it would be him.
"I wonder, Ye-kun, if you have heard of another type of energy? Different from the chakra within our bodies. An energy that comes from the outside world. An energy that can, under the right conditions, be harnessed by humans."
Orochimaru's golden eyes were fixed on Ragnar with predatory intensity. The question was a probe. A test. Ragnar had revealed knowledge about the Sage Body. Now Orochimaru was probing to see how deep that knowledge went. Each of them was testing the other. Two predators circling, measuring strengths, looking for openings.
Ragnar's expression remained perfectly still. Internally, he was reassessing his assumptions. Orochimaru had already encountered the concept of Sage arts. That was earlier than expected. In the original timeline, Orochimaru had never mastered Sage Mode—his soul was too unstable, his body too heavily modified. But he had certainly found it. He had discovered Ryūchi Cave, the domain of the White Snake Sage. He had learned its secrets. He had simply been unable to apply them, first because of his damaged soul, and later because the Third Hokage's Dead Demon Consuming Seal had crippled his arms, preventing him from forming the necessary hand seals.
But that was the future. In the present, Orochimaru was whole. His soul was intact. His research was just beginning. If he had already found traces of the Sage arts—
"Natural energy," Ragnar said. "Senjutsu."
Two words. Simple. Direct.
Orochimaru's eyes blazed. The reaction was instant—a flash of pure, unguarded excitement that broke through his usual mask of sardonic detachment. He had expected confirmation. He had not expected Ragnar to name it so precisely.
"It seems you know more than I do, Ye-kun." Orochimaru's voice was soft, but it carried the particular hunger of a man who had just found a door he had been searching for his entire life. "I have only fragments. Whispers. The Ryūchi Cave—one of the Three Holy Places of the summoning world—is said to contain the method for cultivating this power. The White Snake Sage guards the secret of Senjutsu. But I have been unable to locate the cave itself. I have searched for years. The snakes know, but they will not tell. Not yet. Perhaps not ever."
He looked at Ragnar with an expression that was difficult to read.
"I suspect, however, that you already knew this."
Ragnar did not confirm or deny. He simply stood there, calm and still, as the serpent's laboratory hummed with the silence of things unsaid.