Sage Fukasaku looked at the clones lining up before the oil pool, plucked a single eyebrow, and said to Sage Shima, who was holding a tray, "I can't eat."
Sage Shima set down the tray. "Are you serious? That wretched oil has been sitting there for hundreds of years with no use. What's wrong with using it now?"
Sage Fukasaku replied, "I know, but it pains my heart."
"How much does it pain you? So much you can't even eat?"
Sage Fukasaku thought for a moment, then pointed to the black rod next to the oil pool used for gathering natural energy. "It hurts as if my heart were being stabbed."
Sage Shima rolled her toad eyes, stuffing a bug onto his plate. "If you were stabbed, you'd be dead."
No one is perfect; everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.
Like Hinata, her virtues are gentleness, domesticity, and managing a household well. Her shortcomings, everyone understands.
Sakura's virtues are liveliness, a strong inner self, and a manly spirit. Her shortcoming is that she's a woman.
As for Sasuke, there's even less to say: full of flaws, his only merit is his good looks.
Humans are like this, and so are toads. Sage Shima manages Mount Myōboku with meticulous order, but she has a sharp tongue and a kind heart. Sage Fukasaku, on the other hand, possesses great teaching ability, but he's overly sentimental about these external objects.
It's not that he forbids their use; you can use them freely. But that doesn't stop him from feeling pain about it.
While Sage Fukasaku was pained, Naruto and Orochimaru's negotiations proceeded fairly smoothly.
The difficulty in their negotiations lay in the fact that both parties were trying to trick each other, and neither had any regard for the spirit of a contract. Naruto might have a contractual spirit with others, but with Orochimaru, it was impossible. As for Orochimaru, if anyone claimed he had a contractual spirit, the Fourth Kazekage could probably smash them dead with a coffin lid.
The first point of difficulty in the negotiations belonged to Orochimaru. Because of Naruto's teleportation and special positioning method, Sasuke's trips to Ryūchi Cave would either be zero or countless. So, if Sasuke was sent there, how could Orochimaru guarantee Naruto would provide him with chakra?
The result of their mutual discussion was to find a trusted third party, namely the Underground Exchange. Naruto would first deposit a fixed-term jar of chakra there, and Orochimaru would send someone to retrieve it when the time came.
The difficulty was then thrown back to Naruto: how to ensure Orochimaru would comply with the latter two conditions. Naruto then proposed setting two passwords, giving one password for each completed condition.
The difficulty was again thrown back to Orochimaru: how to ensure Naruto wouldn't quit halfway and refuse to give the passwords, and how to ensure the accuracy of the passwords.
Finally, both parties agreed to compromise: three conditions became two. Orochimaru would compensate Naruto with a Kusanagi Sword and its usage method, and Naruto would set a ten-year term for the chakra deposit.
This meant that even if Naruto didn't give Orochimaru the passwords, Orochimaru could still retrieve the jar of chakra after ten years. Ten years was certainly not a long time for Orochimaru. If it weren't for his desire to research this chakra sooner, he could have waited until Naruto and Sasuke died, then reanimated them with Edo Tensei to conduct his research.
Naruto, on the other hand, was confident in his own strength. Even if Orochimaru reneged, in ten years, when he was almost twenty-five, he could grab Orochimaru's snake tail and pull that jar of chakra out of his stomach.
This way, both parties gained immediate benefits and could ensure they wouldn't suffer a loss if the other reneged.
A preliminary consensus was reached.
Step one: Orochimaru would send Sasuke to Ryūchi Cave, and simultaneously Naruto would deposit the chakra, with Naruto's clone and an Edo Tensei reanimated corpse supervising each other.
Step two: The exchange of passwords and Kinkaku and Ginkaku was set by Naruto for one year later, with the clone and corpse conducting the transaction face-to-face. The location was tackily chosen by Naruto to be the Tenchi Bridge.
The deal was struck, the clone had completed the negotiation, and it walked back to the teleportation portal, carrying the Kusanagi Sword and a scroll detailing its usage.
"Wait a minute," Sasuke called out to the clone.
"Yes," Sasuke tossed over a scroll and said, "For him."
The scroll contained two ninja blades. When Kimimaro was being treated, Sasuke had said that if he recovered, he would repay the favor with ninja blades. Kimimaro also kept his promise and genuinely went looking for them. Sasuke also knew who Naruto and Orochimaru's negotiation was for, so he and Kimimaro split up, each acquiring one blade.
The information was obtained through Kabuto. Kabuto, having managed to produce four ninja blades during the Fourth Great Ninja War, certainly had information on these blades.
On the other side, Naruto purified the three blades with Nine-Tails Chakra and then had Jiraiya inspect them to ensure no summoning jutsu seals remained before he felt at ease. Hmm, there were a total of three blades. The second Kusanagi Sword he obtained was also blade-shaped; it was likely the one Orochimaru used during the Sannin Battle, the one that could extend.
Afterward, Naruto counted all his blades.
A fake Kubikiribōchō, two broken-pronged Kiba, Kabutowari, and Nuibari.
If the spikes Samehada had cut off were counted, he would only be missing Hiramekarei and Shibuki to collect all seven blades and summon a Divine Dragon. However, if counted individually, including the two blade-shaped Kusanagi Swords, he already had seven.
Emmm, a person with negative talent for kenjutsu was covered in blades.
Those few blades were unpresentable and lacked style, so Naruto decided to only keep the two Kusanagi Swords for daily use.
The next morning, Naruto woke up and instinctively walked to the meat pool. The first thing he did every day after waking up was to add some meat for the fox; if it ate even one less piece of meat, it would sulk. Although he had a slight disagreement with the fox spirit yesterday, he still had to feed it.
Then, rubbing his sleepy eyes, Naruto walked out of his self-built hut.
"Why do you look so tired?" Jiraiya asked in surprise. The two had been together for so long, and he had never seen Naruto look tired after waking up.
"Yesterday, I was fishing and found a huge swordfish. My clone chased it all night," Naruto lied, burying his face in the basin. Yesterday morning, he was frolicking in the Land of Wind. In the afternoon, he battled the fox spirit for three hundred rounds over that nursery rhyme. At night, Naruko created hundreds of clones and fought ants all night. Plus, he hadn't slept for two days, so he was indeed a bit tired.
"What do you need to chase a swordfish for, when you have nothing better to do?"
Naruto took out breakfast. "That fish was huge, and it swam fast. I wanted to catch it to use as a mount." This time Naruto wasn't lying. There really was a huge swordfish in the sea that the Prince encountered on his way to the Land of Lightning. It even used its great sword to give the seasick Might Guy a One Thousand Years of Death.
"Old man, do you know how to form a Summoning Contract with a creature?"
After two days of fighting, Naruko had already pushed into the ant queen's nest. Naruto didn't plan to kill this ant queen; he wanted to contract it. Individual ants weren't strong, weaker even than the two ninja Naruto first encountered when he left the village,
but their sheer numbers were overwhelming. A dozen or twenty could cause some trouble for Tenten and Ajisai, so what about a hundred thousand? Could a hundred thousand black ants go toe-to-toe with a hundred thousand White Zetsu?
Yes, ants aren't strong, but White Zetsu aren't strong either. Since both are just pathetic scrabbling chickens, then just duke it out with sheer numbers.
Mass production of troops has always been the forte of insectoid races. As long as there's ample food, they can spawn so many you'd doubt your life, especially ants. And Naruto, he had no shortage of food.
He only had one thing to do: contract the ant queen, and then, let it breed! If he felt the speed wasn't enough, he could even accelerate the growth of a few more ant queens.
Of course, Naruto's food supply wouldn't be enough to feed a hundred thousand ants, but he could stockpile them. Souls, people, monsters, tailed beasts, gods – all can be sealed. Why not ant eggs? First, seal a batch of ant eggs and food, then catalyze them out before the hundred thousand White Zetsu are deployed. The rest wouldn't even require operation; with this kind of management, you could just box-select and A-move!
"I know." Jiraiya was a veteran driver of the ninja world, he knew a great deal.
"How do I do it?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"I'm your student!"
Jiraiya took out a book and handed it to Naruto. "Don't always expect things to be handed to you; find out yourself." Jiraiya's teaching style was to tell you which path to take, then let you learn by yourself.
With no other option, Naruto picked up the book and began to devour it. And as he devoured it, he reached a certain checkpoint.
At Orochimaru's hideout, Karin had deliberated for two days and decided to apologize to Naruto first, otherwise, she felt she might genuinely be angered to death.
Just as Naruko came through the teleportation portal, she heard Karin say, "What I did before was wrong. I apologize. I'm sorry."
"I don't accept," Naruko refused, her expression unchanging. You have no common sense at all. How can anyone accept that? Everyone talks about apologizing and offering compensation, so where's your offering?
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