Chapter 147: Two Choices: Mechanical Ascension and Biological Ascension
"Senior brother, is this where we live?"
Anko stared up at the absurdly large building in front of her, eyes wide with curiosity.
"Yes," Kenichi said with a nod. "The lab will most likely be moved here in the future, so I brought you early. You should get familiar with the place."
Ancor looked exactly the same as before. There were no signs of an attack.
So the shinobi who escaped, and the shinobi from Konoha, had not come here after all.
Good news.
Next, they only needed to find a way to improve Ancor's flight capability. Once that was done, Kenichi would have an aerial fortress.
After he led Anko inside, they immediately saw Sasori, who also noticed the girl beside Kenichi.
"Kenichi, who is this?"
"This is my junior sister, Anko," Kenichi said simply.
Then he tossed Shinno onto the ground like a sack.
Catching up with Anko and chatting with Sasori could wait. The urgent thing was saving Shinno, because this man was about to die.
Kenichi had deliberately avoided vital points when he used Lightning Flash, but a penetrating wound like that was still more than lethal. Worse, Shinno's wound had clearly become infected, and he had already fallen into a coma.
Kenichi had learned some medical ninjutsu basics from Shizune, but he was not skilled. He could only use Yang Release chakra to keep Shinno barely alive.
Even so, the time it took to return from Konoha had aggravated the injury. Shinno looked like he could die at any moment.
"I don't think there's any point saving him," Sasori said after a glance, shaking his head.
Sasori knew some basic medical techniques. That was exactly why he could tell Shinno was already at the end of the road.
If someone like Tsunade had treated him back then, it might have been possible.
But now, too many days had passed. The wound was infected. It was practically unsalvageable.
"What a pain," Kenichi muttered, annoyed. "Why are people so fragile? The guy next door gets beaten into the ground, does a few sit ups, and keeps fighting."
In the next world over, the Pirate King was basically unkillable. Here, Shinno took one clean penetrating wound and decided to clock out permanently.
"I have no idea what kind of jutsu lets someone recover their fighting spirit with one sit up," Sasori said, giving Kenichi a strange look.
Kenichi pressed his lips together and decided to take Anko to find a place for her to rest first.
But the moment he turned, he noticed Anko staring straight at Sasori.
Kenichi tugged her sleeve.
Anko did not move. She just kept staring blankly.
"Anko?" Kenichi looked at her, confused. What was wrong with his junior sister? Staring at Sasori like that… it could not possibly be…
His expression turned complicated.
At that moment, Anko suddenly snapped out of it. She lowered her head shyly, face flushing red.
Kenichi really wanted to light a cigarette.
Unfortunately, he did not smoke.
"Sasori," Kenichi said, turning back and patting Sasori's shoulder.
"Hm?" Sasori looked even more confused, clearly not understanding why Kenichi had suddenly done that.
Kenichi's feelings were complicated. He did not know how to say it, but it was obvious Anko seemed to care about Sasori.
What was this supposed to be?
Still, considering Sasori's obsession with art, Kenichi had a feeling Anko's feelings would not end well. And for a shinobi, setbacks and crawling back from them were also part of growing up.
So Kenichi did not plan to interfere. He would let it play out naturally.
You could not force something like this anyway.
"Hmph. Shinno, did you really think you could escape death?" Kenichi sneered.
There were not many techniques in the shinobi world that could manipulate the dead, but they existed.
And Kenichi was a master of the Impure World Reincarnation.
The only problem was that while Impure World Reincarnation could raise the dead to fight, it seemed impossible to make them obediently reveal information. That greatly reduced its value.
Even so, forcing the dead to fight was already terrifying enough.
"The soul transfer method from before could also summon the dead," Kenichi thought, frowning slightly. "But it didn't seem to have much combat power. If we could improve it from that base…"
Shinno's importance was obvious.
Kenichi had already confirmed, through the researchers, that Shinno was the leader of the Sky Ninja Village.
And Shinno had clearly developed a very unique jutsu. Kenichi had been caught off guard by Shinno's sudden burst of strength, those arms turning insanely powerful in an instant.
It was ridiculous.
Even Guy, who screamed about youth every day and forced himself through nonstop high difficulty training, was only around that level of raw power.
Yet Shinno had exploded with that kind of strength on demand.
That had nothing to do with consistent training. It had to be some special technique, something Shinno created himself.
Kenichi just did not know what it was yet.
Sasori stared at Kenichi, unsure what was wrong with him. One moment Kenichi looked like he was about to give a final speech, the next he was lost in thought again.
Then Sasori glanced at the girl beside Kenichi.
Anko was secretly watching him.
When she noticed his gaze, she immediately lowered her head, avoiding his eyes like she had done something criminal.
A question mark practically formed in Sasori's mind.
Could it be that Kenichi's junior sister, Anko… had hemorrhoids?
She looked so uncomfortable.
But how would she know he knew the hemorrhoid cutting technique?
Oh. Right.
Kenichi must have told her.
Girls were usually shy about things like that. She was probably too embarrassed to ask him directly.
Sasori's eyes filled with pity.
It was tragic. A young girl suffering from such an embarrassing condition.
Anko froze.
She had just been sneaking glances at Sasori, and then realized he had looked at her too. For a second, she felt oddly smug.
Then she noticed the look in his eyes.
It was not interest.
It was… sympathy?
What was going on?
"Sasori," Kenichi said, shifting to business, "how's the research on Ancor's energy conversion device coming along?"
He handed Shinno off to the medical ninja team that had rushed over. They carried Shinno away with sorrowful expressions.
When it came to serious matters, Sasori's expression also sobered. This was the field he oversaw at the base.
He had left puppets behind for security, and found nothing wrong. The fortress was unchanged, safe. Even the Sky Village shinobi who escaped had vanished completely and never returned.
So he focused on research.
But he quickly discovered a major problem.
"The chakra you provided is very powerful," Sasori said, "and it's fundamentally different from the chakra converted from the Zero Tails."
"And when Ancor was designed, it was built around the Zero Tails chakra supply model," Sasori continued, voice steady. "If you want to convert and use the Nine Tails chakra instead, then everything needs to be rebuilt from scratch."
He handed Kenichi an experimental logbook.
Kenichi took it. He was the one who had recommended keeping such logs, and now it was paying off.
After reading, he confirmed Sasori was right.
Using Nine Tails chakra would cause failures across the entire system. It simply was not compatible.
If Kenichi had to describe it, it was like trying to fuel a normal car designed for ninety two octane gasoline with nuclear fusion.
The energy source was advanced, sure.
But it was not interchangeable.
"Senior brother, what are you talking about?" Anko could not help asking.
After arriving here, she had suddenly realized she could not understand what her senior brother was saying at all.
As shinobi, were they not supposed to train, practice jutsu, and exercise every day?
Why was Kenichi talking about design and energy conversion devices?
What were those even supposed to be?
"Anko," Kenichi said, glancing at her, "you need to understand something. In this world, ninjutsu is the most common path to power, but it's not the only one. There are other ways to make people stronger, and to improve life itself."
Then Kenichi remembered something important.
Anko was also Orochimaru's student, but strictly speaking, she was only Orochimaru the shinobi's student, not someone involved with Orochimaru's true research.
Anko had never participated in their experiments. She had never entered their real laboratory.
She had no idea what Kenichi and their teacher had been doing.
That was exactly why their teacher had left Anko in Konoha in the first place.
Now that Anko planned to live with him and their teacher, whether she could truly accept all of this was another matter.
"I see," Anko said seriously, nodding like she understood everything.
Kenichi stared at her in silence for a moment.
No, you definitely did not understand.
But that was fine.
Explaining it was annoying anyway. He could just have Anko participate in a few experiments later. She would learn faster that way.
And Kenichi remembered Anko had talent in genjutsu. Maybe he could have her specialize in it later. Who knew, she might produce real results.
Besides, Anko was following him and their teacher now. Her future achievements should be even higher.
Kenichi's attention returned to the real problem.
"Can the Zero Tails growth be accelerated?" he asked, frowning at Sasori. "We can't just wait more than ten years, can we?"
If Ancor could not fly, then its value dropped sharply.
A fortress fixed underground was meaningless, and even harder to defend.
If Konoha came searching, where could they hide?
Even if Kenichi was strong enough, being swarmed by mosquitoes every day would still be unbearable.
"As for the Zero Tails, there isn't a good solution," Sasori said, his expression turning strange. "But I tried feeding it chakra, and its growth rate increased somewhat."
During his time with the Zero Tails, Sasori discovered it was, strictly speaking, like a pet. It would whine and cling to him for chakra.
It reminded Sasori of the dog he used to keep in Sunagakure.
It really did resemble the Zero Tails.
"Based on my observation," Sasori added, "its growth rate only increases by about one hundred percent if the chakra supply is sufficient. Even then, it will still take five or six years."
Kenichi paused, then made his decision.
"Then we dismantle it. We take the energy conversion device with us, and we let this place become a true ruin."
If Ancor could not fly, then it was no longer an asset.
It was a burden.
Sasori did not object. He had already considered the same thing while alone at the base.
If you could not take it with you, then you took the most valuable part and abandoned the rest.
Still, Kenichi had other thoughts.
This device seemed tied to the Zero Tails, but if he discussed it with their teacher, it was hard to say what new research results Orochimaru might produce.
As for Kenichi himself, he planned to focus on his current research.
He could do some elective projects too, but ordinary rockets likely would not be very effective.
His main focus was still the fusion of chakra and explosives. Once that problem was solved, the power of gunpowder based weapons could be amplified dramatically.
And as for the uranium refining device still stored in a sealing scroll…
With current technology, refining that material was not very valuable. Nuclear weapons were not something you solved with uranium alone. There were many other problems that had to be addressed.
Thinking about all of this, Kenichi glanced at Sasori.
Come to think of it, Sasori was walking the path of flesh and blood weakness, and mechanical ascension.
From a scientific viewpoint, there were two paths of ascension.
Mechanical ascension and biological ascension.
Mechanical ascension was more stable and controllable.
Biological ascension was far harder.
It was a completely different level of difficulty.
So called biological ascension meant evolving genes toward an optimal state.
For example, improving the way humans obtained energy, so they could gain enough energy through photosynthesis without eating. That was also a form of ascension.
But it was too difficult.
That was why so much science fiction focused on mechanical ascension, while biological ascension was rare.
Or to put it another way, turning humans into Super Saiyans was basically a research route for biological ascension.
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