Could genjutsu help awaken the Sharingan?
At that moment, Arata was a little puzzled. Inside the dream, Sasuke had very clearly awakened a one-tomoe Sharingan while experiencing the Night of the Massacre genjutsu.
To Arata, the chakra fluctuation from the Sharingan opening was about as obvious as a lion sitting on a bald man's head.
But that was the problem.
If genjutsu could awaken the Sharingan, then practically every Uchiha in the clan would have one.
There was no way he could be the first to discover it.
Was it because the illusion was too realistic?
Arata made a mental note of the guess. He could study it properly later.
Time to end this.
He brought the illusion, which had already run its course, to an end and let Sasuke fall into real sleep.
What someone experienced inside an illusion did not count as rest. It took a serious toll on the mind.
Even though he was secretly sneaking into a little boy's body, stealing Konoha's documents and knowledge, and trying to gain control over a five-year-old child, by ninja-world standards Arata was still a pretty decent guy.
As a mentally healthy adult from Earth, he had never once thought about stealing Sasuke's body, much less doing anything outright evil.
At least for now, his goal was simply to keep the Uchiha alive and figure out whether there was some way for him to become a little freer.
If he could get stronger along the way, even better.
"Mmph..."
A meaningless sound escaped Sasuke's mouth. His body twitched once, and a fine sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead.
He still had not woken up. His emotions had swung too violently, and his mind was too exhausted. Now that his consciousness was taking control of his body again, some abnormal physical reactions were only natural.
If Itachi had not kept such a close eye on his little brother, and if he had not only recently taken a mission that would keep him out of the village for more than three days, there would have been no need for Arata to rush things by tormenting Sasuke with an illusion like Night of the Massacre.
Itachi had only become a chunin half a year before Sasuke entered the Ninja Academy. Most genin-level missions did not take someone away from the village for very long.
An ordinary illusion, one that differed from reality in no visible way, could have produced the same controlling effect. It just would have taken longer.
But longer meant a greater risk of exposure, and Arata had no desire to reveal himself to Itachi at this stage.
After all, behind Itachi there was Shisui, there was Obito, and if you really wanted to make it sound grim, Black Zetsu might be watching too. Even Indra himself had been played like a fiddle by Black Zetsu. Arata was just a lump of sentient chakra. He had absolutely no confidence that he could fool that thing.
After confirming that Sasuke was not in any real danger, just badly shaken by everything he had been through in the illusion, Arata drifted out as usual. He passed through the wooden wall and rode the wind, gone in a single whoosh, far into the distance.
Chakra actually had mass.
Even Greed Chakra, refined purely from spiritual energy, was only a semi-material substance with nearly negligible mass, not something completely intangible.
Because of that, different kinds of chakra moved through the air at noticeably different speeds.
But none of that really mattered. Arata could freely convert chakra into any nature, which meant he could pass through matter at will and use any ninjutsu he wanted.
The most powerful part was this: once he left a human body, he no longer had to worry about chakra flow limitations.
A ninja's chakra pathway system restricted how ninjutsu could be released. Aside from the Hyuga, even jonin could only gather and release a certain amount of chakra through their hands, feet, or mouth. In the middle of high-speed combat, that placed enormous demands on a ninja's control and concentration.
Without those flow restrictions, Arata could pour huge amounts of chakra into a jutsu whenever he pleased, making any offensive ninjutsu overwhelmingly destructive.
Unfortunately, when other people cast ninjutsu, they were spending stamina.
When he cast ninjutsu, he was spending his life.
And once someone had died once, they tended not to want a second round. So Arata had always been extremely cautious in the way he used chakra.
"Hoo..."
Changing his own nature from Wind back into Greed Chakra, Arata quietly slipped into Konoha's library. Invisible, he dove into book after book related to medical ninjutsu, then quickly emerged again.
Rows of black ink streamed across his unseen body, twisting, fading, and disappearing in moments.
To a chakra spirit, this counted as reviewing material he had already studied.
That convenient way of learning had contributed enormously to how quickly he had grown strong within the chakra system.
Just as I thought, Konoha's medical ninja have a small but definite misunderstanding when it comes to the nervous system and the chakra pathways...
Arata quickly pinpointed the mistakes he had already discovered through practice.
That was not really the medical ninja's fault. The human body on Earth was already complicated enough. People in the Naruto world came with an entire chakra pathway network on top of that, plus even more complex cell structures. Fully understanding all of it was no simple thing.
Especially in a world where wars never seemed to stop.
Then again, the fact that medical ninjutsu had advanced as far as it had owed something to the ninja world's abysmal moral standards. Casual human experimentation had, to some extent, pushed medicine forward.
Arata came and went quickly. Once he had confirmed that he had not remembered things wrong and that the books themselves were mistaken, he left the library and floated, as he often did, toward the Hokage's office.
The Third Hokage was standing on the office balcony, looking out over the village's lively streets as he smoked one puff after another. The wrinkles on his face only deepened the worry written there, though what exactly he was thinking about was anyone's guess.
Most nights, the old man stayed up working until midnight before going home.
Or simply did not go home at all.
A little over a year ago, Konoha had still been at war with Kumogakure. A year before that, the war with Iwagakure had still been ongoing. And before that came the Nine-Tails' attack, the Third Great Ninja War, and everything else that had followed.
Yet when the wars finally ended, the peace that arrived only placed even greater pressure on a village scarred by devastation and drained of talent.
Creation was always harder than destruction.
As casually as breathing, Arata began "reading" the classified papers on the Hokage's desk right in front of the Third Hokage himself. As long as he did not bump into a barrier or deliberately possess someone, no one in Konoha could detect him at the moment.
The elderly Third Hokage certainly could not.
Even encrypted sections of classified documents did not stop him from getting the information inside. If not for the fact that the Scroll of Seals was protected by barriers, and that many secret techniques were passed down orally, Konoha probably would have had no secrets left from him long ago.
Konoha's spies in the other villages are gradually reducing their activity.
Mission volume is rising. The number of chunin promotions this year is being reduced. The chunin exams are being restructured. The Academy student body is being expanded...
Based on the intelligence he had already seen, Arata drew his conclusions. Even though there were still a few lingering conflicts with the other villages, the larger trend was clearly moving toward peace.
Regarding the Sharingan's control over the Nine-Tails...
He paused over a document originating from the ANBU. Both advisors, Koharu Utatane and Homura Mitokado, had signed off on it.
But the more important detail was the one listed as the initiator of the file.
Shimura Danzo.
Now that was interesting.