Chapter 59: The Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan is Finally Obtained
Black Zetsu streaked through the earth, a shadow rushing toward Konoha. He had to arrive before Ida Mutzuki could react, had to find Madara's other eye before she could spirit it away.
Right now, all of Konoha's heavy hitters were deployed at the border, leaving the village's interior defenses dangerously thin. It didn't matter if the eye was truly in the laboratory Ida Mutzuki had mentioned or not. He would scour every inch of the village before she returned. Sooner or later, he would find it.
Konoha's barrier was a masterwork, personally designed by the Uzumaki Clan and typically maintained by their members. Any ordinary person who so much as brushed against it would be instantly detected by the Barrier Team.
But Black Zetsu was no ordinary person. In his long existence, he had seen and learned more than any living shinobi. While he might have his weaknesses, slipping through a mere village barrier was a trivial matter.
He explored deep underground, his senses easily locating the barrier's weakest point. With a flicker of chakra, he activated the Mayfly Technique, his form phasing through the earth and into Konoha's borders without a sound.
Curiosity gnawed at him. He decided to first check the laboratory on the village's west side, just to see if Ida Mutzuki had actually been telling the truth. It wasn't entirely impossible. After all, the person she seemed to care about most in Konoha was Senju Tobirama. At the time, Tobirama had been clinging to his last breath; to buy time to save him, she might have been forced to offer up a genuine bargaining chip.
Following the directions from the scroll she had provided, Black Zetsu did, in fact, find a laboratory.
It looked brand new, as if it had been constructed only recently. The Fūinjutsu array guarding the entrance, however, was ancient and incredibly powerful.
'Ida Mutzuki is quite the monster,' he thought with a sliver of apprehension. Her Flame Release was already potent enough to make ninja of her generation cower, and now it seemed her sealing techniques were just as formidable. He made a mental note to keep his distance from her in the future, to never let her touch him. Black Zetsu had no doubt that if she got her hands on him, his end would be the same as the Nine-Tails—sealed away for eternity.
Unfurling the scroll, he located the release formula and pressed his hand against the complex seals on the door. With a soft click, the laboratory door swung open.
Black Zetsu let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and cautiously slipped inside.
The laboratory wasn't particularly large, containing about ten rooms. Each door was layered with its own complex sealing arrays, making it impossible to see what lay within.
He had no choice but to break the seals one by one. But what he found left him utterly dumbfounded.
After forcing his way into nine consecutive rooms, he discovered they were all completely empty. The only thing inside was a series of strange, interconnected formulas etched into the floors and walls, all of them leading toward the very last room.
"What in the world is she playing at?" Black Zetsu panted, exhaustion seeping into his amorphous form. "Setting up so many seals just to protect empty rooms?"
His hope began to dwindle, but since he was already here, he figured he might as well see what was in the final room. With a weary sigh, he began the arduous process of analyzing and dismantling the last set of seals.
Finally, the barrier broke. He seeped through the floorboards and reconstituted his form inside.
When his eyes adjusted and he took in the scene before him, Black Zetsu couldn't help but gasp. He lunged instinctively toward an oversized glass tank dominating the center of the room.
The massive container was filled with a pale green preservation fluid, its purpose unknown and unimportant. What was important was the body suspended within it.
It was the corpse of Uchiha Madara, long since vanished from the world.
Black Zetsu vividly remembered taking Madara's body after his final battle. He had been so overcome with grief at the loss of his pawn that he had mourned for days before venturing out to gather information. When he had returned just one day later, the corpse was gone.
"So, it was Ida Mutzuki who took it."
He found it deeply unsettling. At the time, Konoha's two greatest powers had just died, and the entire village leadership should have been in absolute chaos. How did Ida Mutzuki find the time and presence of mind to hunt for Madara's body?
Shaking off the thought, he turned his attention to the rest of the laboratory. Several thin tubes extended from the large tank holding Madara, stretching across the floor. He followed their path with his eyes.
They led to a small, square platform nearby. In the center of the platform lay a child, no older than five or six, also connected to a web of tubes and sealed beneath a glass dome. Around the platform were carved Fūinjutsu formulas of a kind Black Zetsu had never seen before. They were bizarrely complex; no matter how he tried to decipher them, their purpose remained a complete mystery.
Stranger still, the child's face bore a striking resemblance to Madara's, as if he were his own son. The entire scene was deeply eerie.
Black Zetsu pressed his form against the glass dome, peering at the young experimental subject. He scanned the room, searching for any notes or data that might explain what he was looking at.
Suddenly, the motionless child's eyes snapped open.
The right socket was hollow and empty. The left, however, glowed with an eerie, crimson light.
The child was clearly not conscious; it was a subconscious reflex. The crimson eye held no focus, no glimmer of awareness. If anyone else had witnessed this, they would have been startled into a scream.
But Black Zetsu saw only one thing: that red eyeball.
In that moment, the dim laboratory seemed to flood with light. He saw a divine beam shining down upon the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan he had searched for so long, the prize he had finally found. He could almost hear a heavenly choir chanting in his ears, congratulating him on his success.
A wide, triumphant smile stretched across his featureless face. His hardships had finally borne fruit. Ida Mutzuki hadn't lied to him after all.
'Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, I'm coming.''Mother, I am one step closer to you.'
He phased through the glass dome. Instead of gouging the eyeball out directly, he decided on a different course. An experimental subject hidden this securely was clearly no ordinary specimen; he would take the entire thing. He carefully placed the other eye—the one he already possessed—into the child's empty socket.
The instant the second Sharingan settled into place, the entire platform shuddered to life. Countless rays of light erupted from the Fūinjutsu formulas, which lifted from the platform and floated into the air. They linked together in an orderly, terrifying pattern and began to rotate at a blinding speed.
Simultaneously, identical seals appeared on the large tank holding Madara's corpse. Before Black Zetsu's eyes, the body began to dissolve, breaking down bit by bit. It was as if the Sharingan he had just inserted was the key that unlocked the entire array.
Although he felt no particular surge of energy, the sight was enough to send a jolt of pure terror through him. He tried to pull back, to flee the platform.
But the floating formulas seemed to have a life of their own, wrapping around his body like ethereal chains. He felt a sharp, pulling sensation as a small piece of his essence was shaved away, drained into the array.
Though it was only a tiny amount, it was enough to scare Black Zetsu out of his wits.
'Mother, I'm not going to die, am I?'he wailed internally.'I haven't rescued you yet! I can't die!'
With a deafening BANG, the tank holding Madara's corpse exploded. The body within had vanished completely, as if it had never been there at all.
The Fūinjutsu formulas flickered and disappeared. Black Zetsu finally regained control of his body.
He practically scrambled off the platform, collapsing into a black puddle and hiding in the darkest corner of the room, his form trembling as he darted his senses left and right.
Only after confirming that the danger had passed did he dare to poke his head out.
By the time he re-formed himself in front of the platform, the child was fully awake. He sat up, looking around with wide, curious eyes, taking in the world for the first time.
Seeing Black Zetsu appear, the child tilted his head, then curiously reached out a small hand to grab him. He even opened his mouth, as if to take a bite.
Black Zetsu stared at that face—a face that was now almost eighty percent identical to Uchiha Madara's—and a horrifying thought struck him.
'Holy crap,'he realized, his earlier triumph curdling into dread.'Is this a brat made from Madara's genes? Could he have the same potential?'
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