Chapter 217: A Way to Achieve Class Transcendence
After sending Deidara off to train under Sasori, Kenichi returned to his laboratory and headed straight for the underground prison.
Natsuhi had already woken up. She sat there in silence, shoulders slumped, her eyes dull with exhaustion.
Kenichi crouched slightly, studying her expression as if she were another specimen on his workbench.
"What else do you know about the Meteorite from Hoshigakure?" he asked, genuinely curious. "You cultivated the Peacock Method deeply. You shouldn't be ignorant of its dangers."
Natsuhi gaze shifted. Her expression turned complicated, as though the massacre from yesterday was still playing behind her eyes.
First came the dense fog.
Then lightning.
Unprotected villagers and ninja alike were struck down before they could even understand what was happening. And before Hoshigakure could form a proper counterattack, a violent explosion swallowed the village.
The cluster bomb's power had been proven in a place that, in Kenichi's previous life, would have labeled such a weapon forbidden.
Hoshigakure was not large, but it was far from small. Yet a single cluster bomb had nearly covered the entire village. Buildings collapsed, streets were torn apart, and the casualty count was horrifying.
Of course, that was also because Hoshigakure lacked a protective barrier. If there had been a barrier in place, that kind of result would not have been so clean and brutal.
Natsuhi finally spoke, voice hoarse.
"Before… we were planning to seal the Meteorite so no one could touch it."
Kenichi blinked. "Oh? Why were you planning to seal it?"
Natsuhi's agitation surged the moment the topic surfaced.
"Because that Meteorite is ominous! Cultivating near it can turn people into ninja, but it has also caused countless deaths and disabilities!"
Kenichi's mouth twitched.
Of course it crippled people. Of course it killed them. If someone spent that long beside a radioactive source, it would be a miracle if they did not die.
And the ones who lived did not escape cleanly either. Diseases caused by radioactive substances were stubborn, painful, and prolonged. They tormented the body and mind at the same time. Without strong willpower, it was hard to endure, harder still to keep living.
"It will definitely cripple people," Kenichi said calmly. "This is the consequence of not understanding science."
He shook his head.
"Meteorites aren't something you can touch casually. The correct approach is professional testing."
Testing generally fell into two categories.
First were biological tests, primarily to guard against potential bacteria or germs from outside the planet. Meteorites burned intensely as they entered the atmosphere, but there was always the possibility, however small, that something heat resistant survived. That step could not be skipped.
Second were physical tests, meant to determine whether the meteorite contained radioactive substances or other harmful materials that could poison or harm humans.
Most meteorites, in his previous life, were harmless. Meteorite collectors were common, and most never had issues. But some people were lucky, or unlucky, enough to find problematic ones.
Hoshigakure, in this world, had drawn the short straw.
Kenichi lifted his pen and nodded toward a rock set near the center of the room.
"Now. Use the Peacock Method and attack that rock."
Natsuhi stared at him, then rubbed her wrist as if testing the feeling in her joints.
"Aren't you afraid I'll attack you the moment I'm unsealed?"
Kenichi shrugged, completely unimpressed.
"Ten of you together couldn't beat me. Don't look for trouble. If you do, I don't mind dissecting you to see whether your organs have lesions."
His tone was almost casual, but the meaning was cold.
He had already erased Hoshigakure. Killing its remnants again would not be difficult. Natsuhi knew it, too. The village's fate was still burning in her memory.
More than that, resistance was pointless.
She had tried once already. The moment she met his eyes, her consciousness had been stolen away.
If being honest meant suffering less, then honesty was the rational choice.
Natsuhi said nothing else. Under Kenichi's request, she completed every test.
Kenichi recorded everything.
The Peacock Method, he had to admit, had merits. Its effects were real.
He did not know whether Natsuhi could have become a ninja through the conventional path. She had never undergone formal testing. By the time she began learning ninjutsu, she was already training the Peacock Method.
And for her, the Peacock Method had been a shortcut with a blade hidden inside it.
It helped her rise into the ranks of Hoshigakure's strongest. It even granted her the ability to fly.
Kenichi reviewed his notes and spoke with the calm tone of a researcher labeling an unknown phenomenon.
"The chakra converted by the Peacock Method will be temporarily defined as Peacock chakra. It's still chakra, but it isn't common chakra."
The chakra produced through the Peacock Method felt more mysterious, likely tied directly to the Meteorite itself.
Long term exposure to that special radioactive source had changed the bodies of Hoshigakure's ninja.
On one hand, it granted them superhuman strength.
On the other hand, it inflicted undeniable damage.
If someone from Kenichi's previous life saw a person like this after enough time, their remains could be ground into fluorescent powder.
Fortunately, the bodies of people in the ninja world were generally far stronger than those of ordinary humans from his previous life.
Natsuhi was still alive. She showed no obvious external mutation. Cancer cells had appeared in her organs, but her strong body and chakra suppressed them.
Even so, Kenichi felt that as she aged, it might become harder to keep those cancer cells restrained.
Of course, physical differences varied wildly from person to person. Some lived with minor illnesses their entire lives but never faced anything serious. Human genetics were still being decoded even in Kenichi's previous world. Only after truly understanding genes could anyone claim to fully explain why people differed so drastically.
Kenichi capped his pen and put it away.
"Your idea was correct. That Meteorite is a disaster. It's normal for people to die after staying near it for too long."
Natsuhi's eyes lowered.
Deep down, she could not deny the truth. It was because of that Meteorite that Hoshigakure, a village that once kept itself aloof from worldly affairs, had drawn catastrophe down upon itself.
Kenichi resealed her without hesitation.
He left a Shadow Clone to guard the cell, then departed directly.
As he walked, he flipped through his experimental report. It contained the Peacock Method's power measurements and related data.
"At the moment, the greatest use of this thing is giving ordinary people a chance to become ninja," he murmured. "Even if the danger is extreme."
Then there was the success rate.
Natsuhi did not remember every detail, but she said that when she began training, more than fifty people had entered training together.
In the end, only twelve succeeded.
The probability was honestly low.
But Kenichi also understood something very clearly.
If he announced what the Meteorite could do, people would still come in waves.
For most of them, training the Peacock Method was a gamble with their lives, but it was also a path to class transcendence.
In the ninja world, ninja and ordinary civilians lived in completely different worlds.
Even being a mediocre genin was often better than being an ordinary person.
An ordinary person born into a bad family might never own a home in their entire life. They would do basic labor until their body gave out. And in the ninja world, ordinary civilians did not have universities or a real system for climbing through education.
Most people inherited their parents' professions.
A merchant's son became a rich second generation.
A laborer's son stayed a laborer.
The gap between classes was like a natural barrier no one could cross.
But becoming a ninja changed everything.
Ninja were divided into many kinds.
A ninja from a major village like Konoha was one thing.
A ninja from a small village, or a genin with poor aptitude, was another.
Those weaker ninja often worked as caravan escorts, served local nobles, or took jobs under a Daimyo. Many of them still lived comfortably, in a way ordinary civilians could never reach.
So Kenichi was certain.
If he revealed the Meteorite's effects, people would come endlessly, desperate for a chance. Even if the price was death, many would still believe it was better than the life they already had.
"That's why I say this world is sick," Kenichi said quietly, shaking his head.
For now, he had no immediate plan to research the Peacock Method or the Meteorite's 1radioactive nature any further.
He already had too many Shadow Clones active, and the laboratory itself needed reorganization.
People in the ninja world had no concept of radioactive substances. Naturally, they had no protective suits, no specialized shielding materials, no proper containment standards.
Kenichi would have to build everything himself.
He decided he would only begin serious research into the Meteorite and the Peacock Method after his Sharingan research reached a certain stage.
It would not be too late then.
So he returned to the institute and resumed the daily grind.
Tedious. Repetitive. Constant.
He researched Uchiha genes, and from time to time he went out to check on Deidara's progress.
Under Sasori's guidance, Deidara was improving the cluster bombs Kenichi had given him.
It had to be said, Sasori and Deidara shared unexpected common ground. Some of Sasori's ideas opened new doors in Deidara's thinking, and the improvements came faster than Kenichi expected.
And within that repetitive routine, time quickly reached the agreed handover date with Konoha.
"This time, the handover location is here…" Kenichi yawned.
He had stayed in the lab for so long with little sunlight that his skin had grown noticeably paler.
He did not care.
When he first transmigrated, he had briefly considered making beauty products to get rich. But after investigating, he discovered the ninja world already had its own beauty brands.
There were even celebrity endorsements. The endorsing celebrity was a woman dressed casually, like it was the most normal thing in the world.
There were also promotional videos. It took Kenichi a long time to reconcile that kind of advertising with everything else he had seen.
As for making soap, making glass, inventing gunpowder, those were all pointless too.
The ninja world already had them.
Back then, Kenichi simply had not thought about reaching the sky. He never bothered with hot air balloons. He only came up with flying later.
This time, the agreed location with Root was a small town near the border of the Land of Fire.
An ordinary town.
When Kenichi arrived, he almost felt like he had stepped into a medieval era.
Two or three story buildings. Brick paved stone roads. Rustic clothing.
Only the utility poles nearby proved that this was, in fact, the ninja world.
Kenichi was not surprised. When he traveled with his teacher in the past, he had seen remote regions without utility poles at all. People used oil lamps and candles at night, as if electricity had never existed.
Kenichi quickly found Root's base in the town.
He knocked on the door in the agreed sequence.
After a pause, the door opened, and he was welcomed inside.
"These are the goods for this time," a Root ninja said. He wore a mask and dragged out two wooden barrels. Sealing arrays were carved into their surfaces.
Kenichi glanced at them. These should be Uchiha clan ninja.
Still, to be safe, he opened the barrels and checked their contents personally. Only after confirming the situation did he reseal them.
The Root ninja stood aside and watched without saying a word.
Kenichi clicked his tongue lightly.
"Only two test subjects?" he thought. "Did Danzo run out of consumables, or did something happen in Konoha?"
He looked up at the masked ninja.
"We'll report the results to Danzo," Kenichi said, his tone flat.
The last time he left Konoha with Shisui and the others, it must have caused a stir. He just did not know whether that stir had been large or small.
Still, there was one point that made him almost amused.
Itachi was with him now.
So there was no way that famous scene of Itachi squatting on a utility pole would happen again.
Right?
…..
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