Uchiha Yoru followed Danzo Shimura through the soil, all the way to a spacious secret chamber.
His gaze pierced through the earth and saw rows of sealed tanks. Each tank held a child soaking inside. There were boys and girls, all with their eyes closed, relying on breathing tubes to maintain faint breaths.
Uchiha Yoru discovered that all these children emitted Wood Release chakra fluctuations to varying degrees, but the fluctuations were extremely unstable.
Most of the children's lives were already on the edge of mutation. Some had bark growing on their bodies. Some had limbs that had already turned into branches.
Uchiha Yoru instantly understood what this place was.
[Wood Release human experimentation!]
There were many researchers in white coats inside the laboratory. They hurried back and forth, occasionally gathering together to discuss something in hushed voices.
When they saw Danzo Shimura enter, they immediately stood upright and bowed.
Danzo Shimura did not even look at these researchers. His gaze swept across the tanks one by one, and he asked coldly, "How is the experiment progressing?"
The leading researcher answered fearfully, "Lord Danzo, according to Lord Orochimaru's plan, we have successfully fused Hashirama cells into the experimental subjects' flesh and blood, and significantly increased the survival time of the subjects. But…"
Danzo Shimura interrupted him without mercy and questioned, "But you still have not succeeded, correct?"
The leading researcher trembled all over and answered shakily, "I-I am very sorry."
With a bang, every tooth in the researcher's mouth was knocked flying. He collapsed painfully onto the ground, blood pouring out.
"After Orochimaru left, seven whole months have passed, yet you have not made even the slightest new progress. What a group of trash."
"I will give you one final chance. If you cannot produce a plan surpassing Orochimaru's within one month, or give me a satisfactory finished product, you know the consequences."
After saying that, Danzo Shimura did not remain there. He passed directly through the laboratory and entered a secret chamber deeper inside.
This secret chamber was actually wrapped in steel plates, which rendered Uchiha Yoru's Earth Spirit Earth Release vision, which could see through the earth, completely useless.
With no other choice, he could only rely on the protection of the earth and circle around to the angle of the secret chamber's door. Then, in the instant Danzo opened the door, he glanced inside.
With the Sharingan, Uchiha Yoru saw the inside of the chamber clearly in a single instant.
He saw many smaller jars. Inside the jars were soaked flesh and organs, and labels were attached to each one.
The first thing Uchiha Yoru naturally recognized was the Sharingan.
There were at least sixteen and a half pairs of Sharingan, among which there were actually three pairs of three-tomoe Sharingan, as well as one Sharingan that was obviously abnormal.
As Danzo Shimura closed the secret chamber door, Uchiha Yoru could no longer see anything.
Only one thought remained in his mind.
The time had come.
Because among the jars in the secret chamber, he had seen a label that read "Senju Tobirama."
On either side of that jar were "Senju Hashirama" and "Hatake Sakumo."
One important reason Uchiha Yoru had preserved Root and tolerated Danzo's continued existence was to find Senju Tobirama's flesh sample in preparation for the Impure World Reincarnation.
He had not found Senju Tobirama in the cemetery.
Beneath that extremely luxurious tombstone was a fake corpse. Because it had already severely decomposed, Uchiha Yoru could not determine who it was.
But he could clearly confirm that it was not Senju clan flesh and blood, so it definitely was not Senju Tobirama.
Today, he had finally reached the limit of his patience and decided that even if he did not get the flesh sample, he had to act and kill Danzo Shimura.
As a result, Danzo Shimura had actually led him straight to what he wanted most.
This was the truest will of heaven!
[If Heaven grants and I do not take, I will suffer the blame!]
[The will of Heaven has shown itself this clearly. If I do not kill Danzo Shimura here and now, damn it, Heaven will definitely despise me.]
The instant the secret chamber door shut, just as the leading researcher stood up, glared furiously at the others, and opened his toothless mouth to curse, a tiny sapling pierced through the laboratory wall.
Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence.
Saplings pierced through the laboratory walls, floor, and ceiling. They twisted as they grew, expanding their coverage while rapidly thickening and swelling, restricting the enemies' range of movement.
The trees first covered the secret chamber door and the laboratory entrance, sealing every gap, including the vents, before beginning to slaughter the living people inside the laboratory.
These foolish researchers did not realize the danger at first. They even picked up tools and instruments in surprise, wanting to find which "experimental subject" had awakened Wood Release.
Only when the trunks wrapped around several of them and strangled them into clouds of blood mist did these people realize that these branches were not their experimental result, but an enemy's means of attack.
They naturally thought of the Senju clan.
They even thought of their desecration of Senju Hashirama and Senju Tobirama.
So they began screaming and fleeing like mad.
But it was already too late.
There was no longer much space left to move inside the laboratory. Dozens of researchers were quickly seized by branches, then strangled one by one.
Uchiha Yoru did not choose forgiveness.
The crimes they had committed disgusted him, and he had no patience left to distinguish between them.
His greatest mercy was to let them die quickly, rather than taking the trouble to torture them first, making them understand what it meant to die miserably, and only then happily sending them to their deaths.
His true mercy would only be granted to the children in the tanks.
They were the most pitiful and most innocent lives.
After a careful inspection, Uchiha Yoru confirmed that among the eighty-three children in the tanks, only eleven had not been deeply eroded. After the Hashirama cells were suppressed, they had not yet reached the children's internal organs.
As someone who possessed Wood Release, Uchiha Yoru could use Wood Release chakra to attract the Hashirama cells, luring these flesh-and-blood monsters out of the children's bodies.
But only those eleven lightly eroded children could survive. The other seventy-two children had no hope of living.
He sighed and used Lightning Release to tear open his wrist, releasing a small amount of blood to begin the lure.
Under powerful hypnosis, all the children entered a deep sleep and began dreaming sweet dreams.
Even the pain of flesh being torn apart as the Hashirama cells left their bodies could not wake them from their beautiful dreams.
Some children left the world with smiles.
Some children smiled as their torn wounds healed.
But one child was extremely special.
The Hashirama cells inside his body were completely unmoved. They were not tempted at all by Uchiha Yoru's blood, which was filled with Wood Release chakra, and remained quietly inside his body.
This greatly surprised Uchiha Yoru.
This meant the Hashirama cells had already fused with this child's cells.
Because of the fusion, the essence of the cells had changed. They were no longer complete Hashirama cells.
In other words, the Hashirama cell fusion experiment led by the ANBU had succeeded in this boy's body.
Uchiha Yoru's first thought was to take this child away and raise him as his subordinate.
But he immediately realized that he did not have a suitable place to accommodate this child.
He had not yet taken control of the Uchiha clan. Even if he succeeded, it would not be his private territory. The Uchiha clan's collective will would still be greater than his personal will.
The dammed lake and the Cat Castle could be considered two of his burrows, but in reality, they were also places sheltered under the protection of the ninja cat clan. They did not possess complete independence.
Neither place could allow an overly sensitive person to live there. Otherwise, there would be a risk of intelligence leaks.
[In the end, I still need to establish a third burrow, a secret shelter in the plan that completely belongs to me.]
[This child is very likely Yamato. His age and strength both match. But because I don't have a real base, I have no way to accept him. What a pity.]
[Hmph, I can only temporarily let the Third Hokage benefit.]
[Heh, actually, he won't get much benefit either. After all, this kid is still too young. By the time he grows up enough to be used, it should already be the era of the Fourth Hokage.]
[Forget it. It isn't bad for him to fall into Konoha's hands. The stronger Konoha Village is, the better it can shelter the Uchiha clan.]
Although he kept explaining things in his heart to soothe his emotions, Uchiha Yoru's anger still could not be suppressed.
This boy was a rare talent and an incredibly precious research specimen. Even if his inability to take him in was due to his own reasons, he still prepared to vent his anger on Danzo Shimura.
After all, all mistakes were Danzo Shimura's fault!
Uchiha Yoru cleared out the Wood Release living-subject laboratory extremely quickly. Even without using his full strength, he only needed forty-seven seconds to kill everyone. Instead, freeing the children took four minutes.
Now, the laboratory had already been divided into two halves by Wood Release wooden walls.
One half hid the twelve surviving children and the remains of the other children.
The other half was filled with the researchers' corpses and layer upon layer of Wood Release branches and roots.
Uchiha Yoru made a slight disguise, shifting most of the branches toward one tank's position, making the scene look like an experimental subject had awakened Wood Release and lost control, causing a horrific accident.
He did not do it very carefully.
Because he only needed Danzo Shimura to be dazed for an instant.
Only one instant was enough.
Everything would end.
After waiting another six minutes, Danzo Shimura still had no idea what he was doing inside and had yet to come out.
Because someone had come to knock on the laboratory door four minutes earlier, Uchiha Yoru had no choice but to begin a massacre.
At this moment, Root's secret base had already been completely sealed by tree roots. Branches spread everywhere, dividing Root ninja into individual sealed rooms before strangling them one by one.
Uchiha Yoru's control over Wood Release was extremely strong.
He was somewhat similar to Senju Hashirama. He did not need to perform any Wood Release-related ninjutsu at all to freely manipulate the trees created by Wood Release.
Root had suffered repeated heavy losses in the war recently. The quality of its ninja had declined severely, especially since the elite clan ninja had not yet been replenished. Its combat power was quite weak.
These fragile Root ninja could run rampant in Konoha Village entirely because of the Third Hokage's authority.
It could even be said that every time they acted, they consumed the prestige the Third Hokage had painstakingly accumulated.
When they faced a Wood Release ninja who did not worry about exposure and slaughtered freely, they naturally no longer had the arrogance they displayed while running wild in Konoha Village.
One by one, they were captured by branches.
Some were strangled into meat paste.
Some were pierced through like blood-leaking sacks.
Uchiha Yoru did not even give them any chance to send an alarm before he killed more than half the Root ninja in the underground base.
The rest was merely cleanup work, searching room by room and leaving no survivors.
Strangely, Danzo Shimura did not appear.
He had not even noticed that his Root had been thoroughly slaughtered.
Who knew what he was doing inside the secret chamber?
Uchiha Yoru was also very patient. He simply stood silently in the middle of the laboratory that had completely transformed into a jungle, waiting for Danzo Shimura to appear.
He was not like Sasuke.
Not only had Sasuke passively chosen the battlefield and enemy while being manipulated by others, he had even brainlessly waited for the enemy to finish his final preparations before fighting him.
Uchiha Yoru had no ninja way or samurai spirit.
When it came to killing, he only valued the result and never cared about the process.
You die, I live.
That was victory.
Thus, Uchiha Yoru stood behind layers of concealed wooden walls, hidden tightly behind dense branches and leaves. In any case, every branch in the room was his eyes and ears, so there was no need to reveal his own eyes.
After waiting another dozen minutes, just as the time of sunrise had already passed and Uchiha Yoru began wondering whether Miwa Masayo would get anxious, the secret chamber door opened.
Danzo Shimura walked out while tidying the bandage over his right eye.
Then his entire body froze.
"What happened here?!"
"Someone come!"
"Are you all dead?!"
Danzo Shimura shouted loudly and seemed panicked, but in truth, he was fully on guard. His chakra was running to the limit. As he moved outward one step at a time, the muscles throughout his body were tense to the extreme, ready to erupt into a counterattack at any moment.
He passed through the most dangerous doorway with such caution, but no attack came.
Danzo Shimura's mental state, which had been raised to the limit, naturally declined.
Yet he still did not suffer any attack.
Only then did he finally lower his guard and begin carefully examining his surroundings.
His eyes naturally followed the tree trunks Uchiha Yoru had arranged, shifting toward the glass tank where the branches were most concentrated.
With one glance, Danzo Shimura recognized that the shattered glass had exploded from the inside out.
His mind buzzed, and he thought of a possibility that filled him with surprise.
At that exact instant, a branch that Danzo Shimura had just tilted his head around suddenly erupted.
From a branch only as thick as a thumb, a sharp wooden wedge as thick as an arm forcibly grew out and caught him off guard, stabbing straight into the back of Danzo Shimura's head.
The instant the wooden wedge pierced through his skull, at least forty spikes explosively grew out like a hedgehog, instantly growing into the shape of a wolf-tooth club inside Danzo's brain.
As expected, as long as one possessed an absolute intelligence advantage and sufficiently powerful means, then when the prepared struck the unprepared, killing Danzo Shimura was as simple as killing a dog.
The violently growing wooden spikes instantly destroyed Danzo's brain and created tremendous intracranial pressure, directly lifting off the top of his skull.
Under Uchiha Yoru's control, one of the spikes precisely blocked the cavity of his right eye, preventing the intracranial pressure from releasing in that direction and protecting the eye that had always been hidden beneath the bandage.
At this moment, Danzo Shimura was already dead.
Or rather, his body was still alive, but his brain no longer existed.
Brain matter and brain tissue had been blown everywhere along with the lifted skull under immense pressure.
The body, having lost central nervous system control, began its final instinctive struggle.
Along with the body's dying process, seal traps and mechanisms were triggered one after another.
Poison.
Fire Release.
Lightning Release.
Fire oil.
Insects.
Danzo's ordinary body had actually been able to contain so many mechanisms and traps. This truly broadened Uchiha Yoru's horizons.
At the same time, he despised Danzo Shimura even more.
Spending so much thought on so many things that harmed others, all just to disgust people after death—his brain was truly broken.
If he had used all this energy to improve his own strength, he definitely could have gone one step further. Among Kage-level ninja, he would not have remained at the very bottom.
Now, after creating all these messy things, the final result was merely that his own corpse was ruined beyond recognition.
Even his head, under the effect of some kind of toxic fluid, had been corroded into pits and holes, becoming completely unrecognizable.
Uchiha Yoru patiently waited until everything ended before manipulating branches to inspect Danzo's corpse.
First was the carefully protected right eye.
Uchiha Yoru brought it over and examined it closely. Then he struck it with his own ocular power, and through the intense ocular power reflected back, confirmed that it was indeed a Mangekyō Sharingan.
Danzo Shimura had a Mangekyō Sharingan in his possession and had even placed it in his own eye socket.
This matter alone was enough reason for him to die.
This was not the same as the two-tomoe Sharingan Obito gave away.
An undamaged Mangekyō Sharingan was a strategic weapon of the Uchiha clan. It could absolutely be called a lifeline.
Even more importantly, where had Danzo obtained this eye?
Whom had he killed to dig out this eye?
Actually, there were not many suspicious targets.
A Mangekyō Sharingan must belong to a ninja of the Uchiha clan, and that ninja must have been one of the most outstanding Uchiha.
Most importantly, that person must have died under unclear circumstances for an unknown Mangekyō Sharingan to appear.
Looking back thirty years from today, only one person met these three conditions.
Uchiha Kagami.
Uchiha Shisui's grandfather.
Good heavens.
Another Mangekyō Uchiha whose heart leaned toward Konoha.
Since Uchiha Madara, how many Mangekyō had the Uchiha clan produced in total?
Aside from Obito, they had all actually leaned toward Konoha Village.
Wait.
Whether it was Uchiha Obito or Uchiha Sasuke, in the end, they all seemed to "come to their senses."
One died in battle for Konoha Village.
The other exhausted himself for Konoha Village.
The Uchiha clan founded Konoha Village, gave everything for Konoha Village, and even after suffering persecution, merely screamed a few times with their mouths.
Even after being exterminated, the outstanding Uchiha ninja still continued sacrificing themselves for Konoha Village one after another.
The Uchiha clan…
They might as well change their name to the Sacrifice Clan.
While thinking wildly, Uchiha Yoru swiftly collected his spoils.
Then he entered the final secret chamber, locked the door behind him, and swept away every jar and container inside.
Inside the secret chamber, there were not only flesh-and-blood specimens, but also all kinds of scrolls, several weapons that looked extremely expensive, and piles upon piles of money.
No need to say more.
Take everything.
Leave nothing behind.
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