Both start in hell: but their talents are multiplied a hundredfold.

The disappearances in Konoha Village are escalating.

Public resentment was boiling over, and Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura felt immense pressure.

After all, it was Team 7 who was handling the case of the missing Konoha villagers.

This has also led to some extreme views among Konoha villagers.

The missing person case was forcibly pinned on Naruto's name.

Because Naruto is currently seen as a symbol of bad luck and misfortune in the village, he is like a pot in the pot.

Whenever any misfortune or bad thing happens in Konoha, the villagers who experienced the death of their loved ones and the destruction of their homes during the Nine-Tails rampage more than ten years ago usually pin the blame on Naruto.

This is also one of the root causes of Naruto's unhappy childhood.

The disappearance case caused Sasuke and Sakura to suffer a lot of scorn and prejudice in Konoha.

However, neither of them criticized or disliked Naruto because of the negative impact he brought.

As members of Team 7, the two silently supported Naruto.

Thus, Sasuke secretly sneaked into Shen Jue's residence under the cover of night.

As a ninja, Sasuke did not wear a black mask, but instead wore a black bodysuit.

He simply used genjutsu to transform into Naruto's appearance, and after Sakura confirmed that Shen Jue had gone out to buy food, he quietly sneaked into Shen Jue's room.

Sasuke's fingers slid along the cracks in the wall inch by inch, the touch from his fingertips cold and rough.

He had been in this room, which was less than 50 square meters, for almost 15 minutes.

He didn't overlook any place, from the inside of the wardrobe to the tatami mat, where there might be hidden compartments or sealing spells.

But Sasuke got nothing, and even the gaze he had felt in Shen Jue's room a few days ago did not appear.

As a residence for a man living alone, Shen Jue's room was eerily tidy.

But that's the problem: Shen Jue's room is too "clean".

The fact that a Chunin known to the outside world as a serial killer lives in such a clean and tidy room, without any ninja tools or characteristics, is itself the biggest abnormality.

Sasuke, feeling gloomy, was about to turn and leave when he saw Shen Jue, who was supposed to be out buying food.

Sasuke's pupils suddenly contracted.

He was startled and immediately unleashed his ninjutsu!

"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"

The Great Fireball Technique is one of Sasuke's most prized fire-style techniques. Even though it is only a C-rank ninjutsu, after years of diligent practice, its power has now reached the threshold of a B-rank ninjutsu.

The scorching fireball expanded within the cramped room, instantly heating the air to a point where it distorted vision, and the orange-red light illuminated the entire room as if it were daytime.

However, Shen Jue simply raised his right hand.

The hand's movements weren't particularly fast; it was as if it were shooing away an annoying flying insect.

The moment the palm touched the fireball, the extremely hot fireball, capable of melting gold and breaking iron, vanished silently like a crushed soap bubble.

A few sparks landed on the wooden floor, leaving no scorch marks.

Sasuke's right foot had already slid half a step back, and his left hand subconsciously reached for the ninja tool pouch behind his waist.

This is a ninja's fighting instinct. When a powerful attack is easily neutralized by the opponent, any qualified ninja will immediately create distance and reassess the situation.

Shen Jue was standing less than three steps in front of him, a distance that would be fatal for a ninja.

What truly immobilized Sasuke was Shen Jue's gaze.

Those eyes held no murderous intent, nor even anger at the intruder's intrusion; they merely held a slight smile.

"Uchiha Second Child," Shen Jue said, using a strange form of address.

"What are you looking for, dressed as Naruto?"

Sasuke's brain was working at lightning speed.

Shen Jue revealed his identity, which means that the other party saw through his transformation technique from the very beginning.

Moreover, he didn't believe that an ordinary Chunin could casually shatter a C-rank ninjutsu.

What kind of martial art is that?

According to Sasuke's understanding, even Might Guy, who is quite skilled in taijutsu, could not do this.

Shen Jue's strength is the biggest abnormality in itself.

"Oh?" Shen Jue tilted his head, the corners of his mouth slightly upturned, the smile carrying a hint of mischievousness.

"Young Uchiha, have you come to me because you crave power?"

These words caused Sasuke's pupils to shrink slightly again.

"Who exactly are you?" Sasuke finally spoke, his voice low and tense.

At this time, although Sasuke had awakened the single-tomoe Sharingan on the night of the massacre of his clan, he had forgotten about it.

In the original Naruto storyline, Sasuke only remembered his awakened Sharingan after the mission in the Land of Waves.

Shen Jue did not answer his question, but turned and walked to the wooden table in the corner of the room.

He had his back to Sasuke, his posture casual to the point of being almost provocative.

Sasuke had already gripped the three shuriken, but he didn't make a move.

He had a strong intuition that any attack would be futile before he understood the other party's background.

"I am Shen Jue," Shen Jue answered slowly, rubbing the wooden table that had been with him for many years.

"It wasn't a ninja from another village impersonating him."

"Uchiha Second Brother, have you tasted enough the pain of being powerless?"

Sasuke took a step back and said, "What exactly are you trying to say?"

"Power is the very reason why ninjas are able to thrive."

I can give you power beyond your imagination.

Shen Jue turned around and looked at Sasuke with a smile on her lips.

Sasuke felt a chill run down his spine, but he didn't turn around and run away immediately.

"So what's the price?" Sasuke asked in a low voice.

"No rush." ​​Shen Jue looked at Sasuke, a boy whose heart was filled with revenge, with a mischievous look in his eyes.

"I will give you a gift, as a small experiment for researching bloodline limits these days."

With a flick of his finger, Shen Jue sent a stream of golden chakra, its magnetic field rotating through nine heavens, into Sasuke's body.

Sasuke covered his eyes in pain and knelt on the ground.

A sharp pain exploded from deep within my eyeballs, and warm blood trickled down between my fingers.

His body was pressed down by Shen Jue's magnetic force, rendering him unable to move.

But that strange magnetic chakra flowed upwards, rushing straight to his eyes.

The layers of rotating force were like countless slender knives repeatedly cutting inside his eyeballs, forcibly tearing open a shackle that had been suppressing his pupil power.

At the moment the stinging pain reached its peak, the lone tomoe in the left eye was pulled by the magnetic force and spun rapidly, suddenly splitting in two.

At the same time, his right eye was also awakened, skipping over the single tomoe and with two tomoe steadily appearing in his blood-red pupil.

Two-tomoe Sharingan, awakened.

Sasuke released his grip, and blood dripped down his chin.

He was breathing heavily, his newborn eyes slowly turning amidst the excruciating pain, the world's structure clearer than ever before.

"Not bad, the ninja's bloodline limit is decent."

"The increase in combat power after awakening is also quite considerable."

Shen Jue nodded with pleasure upon seeing Sasuke's change.

"So, Uchiha Erwa, after you've become familiar with this weak power..."

Let's think about what to do next.

After saying that, Shen Jue's figure dissipated into specks of light. His body was nothing more than the condensation of chakra from the Nine Heavens of Yuan Magnetic Rotation.

Wherever he senses, Shen Jue can create a similar clone.

Sasuke struggled, panting, in the cramped room.

Thirty meters underground in Konoha Village, in an experimental base that doesn't exist on any official blueprints, the air is filled with the pungent smell of formaldehyde mixed with blood.

Shen Jue stood in front of the lab table, her hands wearing thin rubber gloves.

On the table, a pure black kitten was fixed to a stainless steel frame, its chest cavity precisely cut open to reveal its still faintly beating heart.

In the petri dish next to it, a piece of intercolumnar cell the size of a grain of rice was emitting a faint, shimmering white light.

That was the original sample extracted from the body of the First Hokage; there were no more than ten of those in the entire ninja world.

Shen Jue inserted the tweezers into the petri dish, her movements as steady as a precision machine tool.

The black cat let out a weak whimper, and its limbs twitched slightly due to nerve reflexes.

Without pausing, Shen Jue implanted the Hashirama cells into the connective tissue on the outside of the myocardium. His ten fingers then fluttered like butterflies, and chakra light condensed into hair-thin threads at his fingertips.

The sealing techniques were layered upon layer, guiding the raging cells to merge with the cat's body, like chaining a ferocious beast that could go berserk at any moment.

The black cat's body began to swell.

Beneath the skin, countless tiny protrusions slithered around like worms, and the bones made a creaking sound.

The cat's eyes rolled back, its mouth was torn, and the blood oozing out splattered onto Shen Jue's gloves.

The expansion stopped after three seconds.

The black cat's breathing gradually became steady, and at the incision site in its chest cavity, granulation tissue was visibly re-woven, and the sound of its heartbeat changed from faint to deep and powerful.

The initial fusion of the intercolumnar cells was successful.

Shen Jue threw the tweezers into the sterilization tray, took off her gloves, and then turned around.

Inside the laboratory, Shen Jue walked to the specimen rack by the wall.

On the three-layered tempered glass partition, twelve complete specimens of spirit beasts are neatly arranged.

On the far left is a ninja crow with an arm span of nearly two meters, cut open from the center of its chest cavity, with its heart structure displayed layer by layer in slice form, each layer separated by an extremely thin layer of resin.

Next to it is a large, muscular ninja dog, its muscle fibers stripped off one by one and fixed to the display board with fine needles. Its vascular system is infused with blue and red dyes, making it look like a bizarre work of ergonomic art.

The preparation of these specimens was extremely professional, with clean incisions and precisely calculated anatomical routes that preserved the spatial relationships between organs to the greatest extent possible.

A label was attached to the bottom of the specimen, with neat handwriting indicating the date of dissection, species name, line of study, and a brief experimental conclusion.

All the intelligence, secret techniques, and experimental data accumulated by the Root over the past decades were engraved into Shen Jue's mind.

What interests him most is the study of interstitial cells.

The First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, possessed Wood Release power and terrifying life energy within his cells, enough to break the limits of a ninja's physiological functions.

Danzo himself collaborated with Orochimaru to conduct human experiments, attempting to transplant Hashirama's cells into himself in order to obtain the Wood Release power sufficient to suppress the Nine-Tails.

However, there is a huge obstacle that cannot be bypassed on this path: the interstitial cells are extremely erosive, and eight or nine out of ten transplant recipients will be devoured by the uncontrolled proliferation of cells and turn into a human-shaped tree.

The dense array of Sharingan eyes on Danzo's arm was precisely to suppress the erosion caused by Hashirama's cells.

After reviewing all the experimental records, Shen Jue turned his attention to the summoned beasts.

Summoning beasts are born with greater vitality and adaptability than humans, especially in terms of chakra capacity.

If a way can be found in summoning beasts to stably fuse Hashirama's cells, the success rate of human transplantation will be greatly improved.

After confirming the success rate of the experiment, Shen Jue decisively performed interstitial cell transplantation on the pure black kitten.

Shen Jue stretched out her finger and gently touched the black cat's forehead.

The primordial magnetic chakra transformed into extremely fine probe wires, traveling throughout the body.

Under the constraints of the sealing technique, the intercolumnar cells ceased their disorderly expansion and began a slow exchange of substances with the host cells.

The pure black kitten's vital signs were stable, and it was even more active than before the transplant.

Shen Jue withdrew his finger, and the black cat purred softly at his touch, curling up in a ball with its eyes closed, completely unaware that a power capable of changing the landscape of the ninja world resided within its body.

Under the constraints of the sealing technique, the Hashirama cells behaved themselves, the kitten's vital signs stabilized, and its chakra fluctuations were even more active than before the transplant.

According to normal biological processes, this kitten needs about four weeks to complete full integration at the cellular level.

Four weeks is a bit too long for Shen Jue's current schedule.

He put on a clean pair of gloves again.

"It can be faster."

Shen Jue held her right hand about ten centimeters above the kitten's body, her five fingers slightly spread.

The chakra of the Nine Heavens Circulation Flowed from his palm, the golden light not dazzling, but flowing down slowly like liquid sunlight, enveloping the kitten completely.

This is not a simple chakra infusion.

Shen Jue closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking into the microscopic perception field constructed by the power of the primordial magnetic field.

In his perceived world, every single cell in the kitten's body is clearly visible.

The fusion process, which would normally take several days to complete, now unfolded before him like a scroll slowed down a hundred times.

The primordial magnetic field rotates through the nine heavens, forming the most fundamental component of interferometric matter.

The fusion process between the interstitial cells and the kitten accelerated dramatically.

The kitten's body suddenly arched, its limbs convulsed, and it let out a sharp scream.

Shen Jue remained unmoved, using his left hand to form a hand seal to reinforce the sealing technique while his right hand continuously outputted primordial chakra.

The golden light grew stronger and stronger, transforming from a liquid state into a nearly solid cocoon-like structure that completely enveloped the kitten.

The sealing technique suppresses the rampaging tendencies of Hashirama's cells, while the magnetic chakra re-weaves the genetic chains of the two types of cells at the atomic level.

Two forces formed a strange balance within the kitten's body.

Three minutes later.

The light reached its peak, and then it suddenly went out.

Shen Jue withdrew his hand, composed himself, and looked down at the lab table.

The kitten is missing.

On the lab table, someone was curled up...

Shen Jue's pupils dilated slightly.

It was a young girl.

She looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old, with skin as white as fresh snow.

Her long, jet-black hair was spread out in a mess on the lab table, with two fluffy black cat ears sticking up from her hair, the tips of which trembled slightly.

A similarly jet-black cat tail meandered out from behind her, its tip gently tapping against the stainless steel tabletop, making a soft pattering sound.

She was completely naked, curled up in the same position as when she was a kitten, with her hands tucked in front of her chest and her knees against her chin.

The outline of the shoulder blades was faintly visible beneath the delicate skin, and the lines of the spine extended from the back of the neck to the tailbone, where it connected to the soft cat tail.

The girl opened her eyes.

"dad?"

"?" Shen Jue's face appropriately showed confusion.