Time passed.
On an empty plain where no one ever walked, a hidden laboratory lay buried from the world.
Inside, corpses piled up.
Ordinary animals.
Chakra-bearing beasts.
Gen Takuya stood amid the stench, holding a thick bundle of experimental data.
He began with animal-to-animal fusion tests.
Then progressed to ninja beasts.
Only after the process stabilized did he use higher-grade materials.
At first, he fused those higher-grade materials with ninja beasts—
Because while wild animals were plentiful in the wilderness…
Living high-grade subjects were troublesome to obtain.
"The data…" Gen Takuya murmured, eyes scanning his records. "Something's off."
It wasn't that fusion failed.
The fusion succeeded.
The problem was what happened afterward.
The fused body gained the ninja beast's constitution—
But as time passed, subtle distortions appeared.
A creeping instability.
A hint of collapse.
The progression was slow, but it was real.
Gen Takuya tapped his temple, sifting through what he remembered.
Finally, three words left his lips.
"Heaven. Earth. Man."
Hiruko's plan had never been as simple as gathering kekkei genkai bodies.
He had also prepared the most suitable fusion location—
And a rare celestial event: a ring-shaped solar eclipse.
Only then would he attempt the final fusion.
Perhaps he needed to borrow a surge of natural energy from the shifting phenomenon.
But—
That was for fusing five bloodlines.
Hiruko's first four fusions didn't require such harsh conditions.
"So this is the flaw of the Chimera Technique itself."
Gen Takuya exhaled.
He remembered Hiruko's transformation—
Once broad-shouldered and imposing, yet after using the technique he became a thin, almost delicate youth.
And after his final fusion failed, he became something neither human nor beast.
Gen Takuya had expected flaws.
A technique like this couldn't be perfect.
Even if Hiruko prepared Heaven, Earth, and Man perfectly and truly fused five kekkei genkai—
At best, it would reduce the flaw.
Not erase it.
So should he abandon the technique?
Gen Takuya's lips curled.
As if.
If he didn't use this technique, his current flaw was worse.
And he'd already considered the possibility of defects.
Now, he simply had proof.
It was regrettable—
But it wouldn't stop him.
This was his only road.
There was no alternative.
Senjutsu?
He'd tried.
He couldn't even enter the door.
And he didn't dare force it.
Besides, even in the late era, senjutsu's ceiling wasn't that high—unless the God Tree somehow disgorged all the world's natural energy, giving senjutsu an impossible growth curve.
Which wouldn't happen.
Ten-Tails jinchūriki?
A joke.
With his current frail constitution, even hosting a minor tailed beast would be a gamble between life and death.
The Ten-Tails would be certain death.
So Chimera Technique—
Even with a fatal flaw—
He would still use it.
Gen Takuya stared at his data and drew a steady breath.
It was time for the final stage of experimentation.
He wasted no time, preparing everything and beginning again.
As for the subjects' struggles?
Ninja beasts were meaningless.
Even jōnin-level strength couldn't break the restraints he'd created—unless the target had an abnormal constitution.
Gen Takuya might have been only a Tokubetsu Jōnin—
But his understanding of ninjutsu, and the destructive scale of techniques across ranks, was extensive.
Every component of this lab had been built for this purpose.
Nothing would go wrong.
He formed seals beside the restrained subject.
More complex than Hiruko's original hand signs—
Because he wasn't casting it on himself. He'd had to modify the process.
The seals finished.
"Ninja Art—Chimera Technique!"
Gen Takuya watched with cold eyes. He'd witnessed this change countless times already.
At last, fusion completed.
He turned toward the instruments at the workstation.
Verification could begin.
A faint smile—almost demonic—appeared on his face.
He felt no guilt.
No one who ended up on his table was innocent.
Even so…
If there truly were a heaven and hell that judged good and evil—
Then Gen Takuya suspected he would descend into hell without question.
And not to the shallow levels.
But those were matters for after death.
In the living world, if he became strong enough—
Who could judge him?
Not long after, Gen Takuya completed the record.
One successful trial wasn't enough.
Even if every step matched his predictions, it still wasn't "safe."
He repeated the experiments again.
And again.
Each time, flawless.
Each time, perfectly aligned with his hypotheses.
Not a single accident.
Only then did Gen Takuya finally exhale.
But he still didn't immediately fuse the Uzumaki bloodline.
Instead, he washed, then forced himself to rest.
After so many days—so many precise trials—his mind felt "fine," but he knew that was only the illusion of excitement.
He needed his condition perfect.
Only then would he take the step that would decide his life.
While Gen Takuya slept…
In a dark cavern far away, a shinobi who had been confirmed dead by Konoha finally regained the ability to move freely.
Uchiha Obito.
He could now control the half of his body that had been rebuilt.
Across from him, the ancient figure who had once dominated the shinobi world—Uchiha Madara—noticed it at once.
Which meant the next stage could begin.
He listened to Obito's shouting—Obito's desperate insistence on returning to Konoha to see his comrades—
And a faint curve touched Madara's lips.
Yes.
That purity was exactly what he needed.
The purer the heart…
The more violent the reaction when hope was shattered.
Only then would Obito have the greatest chance of awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan-
And becoming a worthy piece on the board.
Madara also heard the name Obito kept repeating.
A little girl.
Through Black Zetsu, Madara already knew who she was.
And he knew what she meant to Obito.
Kirigakure…
It was time to move.
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