"Sage chakra is only born when natural energy and your own physical and spiritual energy hit a perfect balance… Too little, and you get nothing. Too much, and you mutate. So yeah—if your chakra reserves are small, you're basically locked out of Sage Mode."
Amamiya Kenichi rubbed his chin, mumbling to himself.
Right now, he was on the road to the Land of Rain.
A small country wedged between three great nations—a "buffer zone" on the map.
In reality?
A battlefield.
Small nations got the worst of it.
Wars swept through them, refugees poured out of them, and their orphans grew up in mud and blood.
Kenichi knew that in the future, the Land of Rain wouldn't stay helpless forever.
Not once that organization properly took root there.
Still, getting from the Land of Fire to the Land of Rain was a hassle—especially when you were a newly listed rogue ninja.
Luckily, Orochimaru had taught him a very convenient disguise technique:
Shōsha Gan no Jutsu – The Face-Erasing Technique.
He'd quietly mugged a traveling merchant in a roadside tavern, stolen his identity, taken his pass documents and money… and then reshaped his own face and body to perfectly match.
New face.
New papers.
New wallet.
Flawless.
Now he bounced lightly on the back of a wagon horse, eyes half-closed, letting the carriage rock while he sensed the natural energy drifting in the air around him.
It was the same as ever.
Clinging to him. Rushing around him.
Like an army of overexcited aunties on supermarket discount day.
"Should I… test it now?" he murmured, licking his lips.
He wanted to.
But he wasn't stupid.
Orochimaru had been very clear—take in too much natural energy without control, and your body goes rogue. You deform, your form twists, and in the worst case…
You become a weird decorative rock.
Kenichi sighed and reached into his coat.
He pulled out a small glass vial.
Inside floated irregular white growths—distorted, fleshy chunks.
Hashirama cells.
He'd extracted them from Orochimaru's stock and had long since learned the Edo Tensei (Reanimation) basics from his teacher. He'd even run a few live tests.
"If I use an ordinary human as the sacrifice," Kenichi muttered, turning the vial between his fingers, "then even if I summon the First Hokage, he won't be able to use his full power, right?"
His earlier notes flashed through his mind.
Ordinary civilians could be used as sacrifices in Edo Tensei—but the resurrected ninja would be extremely weak. Barely any combat ability, mostly good as disposable suicide soldiers.
And because the civilian body couldn't withstand the power of a shinobi's soul, the reanimation would fall apart fast—usually within thirty minutes.
Autopsies on the sacrifices showed total organ failure afterward.
"I wonder how long Edo Hashirama would last on a normal body…" he mused.
A new thought struck him.
"Wait. If I ever got my hands on the Sage of Six Paths' cells, could I just… Edo Tensei him directly?"
He paused.
Then snorted.
"Yeah. Right."
Madara could already break Edo Tensei by himself. A guy like Hagoromo—who spent half his free time spying on the shinobi world through ghost broadcasts—wouldn't exactly sit still and let himself be puppeted.
He was crazy, not suicidal.
Just as Kenichi was debating how far he dared go with his current supplies—
"Leave your cargo if you want to live!"
A shout crashed into the quiet road.
Kenichi lifted his head.
Five bandits.
Leather armor, cheap blades, bad teeth. The full set.
He blinked.
"Oh. Classic event trigger."
Bandits, in a world full of chakra gods and immortal lunatics.
Somehow, they never went extinct.
Mission boards in every village always had "Clear Out Bandits" requests pinned to them.
Low pay, low status, low risk… unless some wannabe warlord imported stray rogue shinobi to serve as bosses.
These ones were pure, regular human trash.
Kenichi glanced at his vial again.
"This is what they call fate, I guess…"
He'd just been thinking he needed a sacrifice for Edo Hashirama.
Five of them walked into range.
Perfect.
For a ninja, dealing with bandits was instant kill.
For him, even more so.
Or so he thought—
Because before he could so much as form a hand sign, a shadow flickered past behind the bandits.
No surplus movement. No wasted motion.
Just—
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
One by one, the bandits dropped, bodies twitching on the ground before going completely still.
Kenichi froze for a heartbeat.
He adjusted instantly, letting the merchant persona take over—shoulders tense, hands shaking just a little, eyes wide with "normal human" terror.
To this newcomer, he looked exactly like what he was pretending to be:
A small-time trader who'd almost just died.
The masked shinobi sheathed his blade.
Even with his Anbu-style mask, the silver-grey hair gave him away.
Kakashi.
"Travel pass," Kakashi said, holding out a gloved hand. His voice was cold enough to frost stone.
Yeah. He'd gotten colder.
"O–of course, of course, ninja-sama! One moment!"
Kenichi fumbled around with just the right amount of panic, digging into his pouch and pulling out the wooden travel pass.
The Land of Fire's merchants needed these to pass between borders. No pass, no exit.
He'd taken it from the original owner.
The guy had gotten drunk in a tavern and loudly bragged:
"Once this last trip to the Land of Rain is done, I'm going back home to get married—"
Kenichi had listened, smiled…
And kindly relieved him of his future.
Some flags really shouldn't be raised, Kenichi thought.
Kakashi inspected the pass, then lifted his gaze to examine Kenichi's face.
The Face-Erasing Technique held perfectly.
No flickers.
No seams.
No leakage of chakra signature.
Just a frightened merchant.
"Have you seen either of these men?"
Kakashi returned the pass and took out two wanted posters, holding them up.
Two all-too-familiar faces stared back at Kenichi.
Orochimaru.
And himself.
Kenichi's heartbeat didn't so much as skip.
消写颜之术 was absurdly powerful—it erased not just features, but subtle patterns of expression and micro-tension. As long as you acted the part, even people who knew you personally wouldn't recognize you at a glance.
He leaned forward, squinting as though forcing himself to memorize the sketches.
Then he shook his head rapidly.
"N–never seen them, ninja-sama. Absolutely not."
His fear, respect, and eagerness to cooperate were all perfectly calibrated. A textbook civilian performance.
Kakashi studied him for a moment longer.
Then crouched to briefly inspect the cargo, flipping open one crate to check for hidden weapons or stowaways.
Only trade goods.
He straightened up and turned away without another word.
Not even when Kenichi hustled after him, trying to press "travel money" into his hand as a gesture of gratitude.
Kakashi didn't look back.
He was gone an instant later, vanishing between trees like smoke.
Kenichi stood there in the road, watching the direction he'd left in.
"…So Kakashi's been sent out to hunt me and Sensei, huh?"
He scratched his cheek.
He hadn't expected to bump into him this soon after leaving Konoha.
But thinking about it calmly—it wasn't strange at all.
A Sannin defecting wasn't some small internal incident.
Even if it was just for show, the village had to send out search teams.
And Kakashi, as an elite and a walking propaganda piece, was a very natural choice.
Kenichi sighed and glanced down at the bandits' corpses.
"Now I just need to find another batch of idiots for my experiment…"
Or, if he couldn't, he'd have to start "randomly selecting" from the general population.
One way or another—
Hashirama was getting his test body.