Danzō was dead.
So dead, in fact, that there was probably no chance of even bringing him back with the Impure World Reincarnation.
The blaze that night had been impossible to ignore.
Wood Release fed the flames, while Fire Release turned them into an inferno that painted the entire sky red.
For ordinary civilians—and even for many lower-ranking shinobi—they could never truly understand what that night had meant.
But they did know one thing:
After that night, Konoha had changed completely.
The dark specter that had hovered over the village was gone, reduced to ashes in that sea of fire. It would never again keep them awake at night in fear.
At the same time, they also understood that after tonight, an even more terrifying giant would rise within Konoha.
Even so, they were far more willing to accept this new giant.
Because the one controlling it would be Senju Hikaru of the ANBU.
They might not know all that much about Hikaru, but they knew enough.
He was calm. Rational. Restrained.
Compared to someone like Danzō—who had looked downright mad—Hikaru seemed gentle enough to pass for an angel.
And to be fair, the way Hikaru carried himself in front of others really did make people feel as though they were standing in a spring breeze.
That alone had earned him a frightening number of goodwill points.
Still, Hikaru himself didn't care much about any of that.
It wasn't that he didn't care what was happening inside Konoha.
It was that he genuinely had no time to think about it.
For the stretch of time that followed, one word became his new label:
Busy.
And the key point was that he had done this to himself.
"Take too big a step and you'll tear something important. The old saying really wasn't lying to me."
Hikaru had always thought one particular movie from his previous life deserved to be preserved as cultural heritage.
Too many of its lines were simply too accurate.
After calculating against Orochimaru, then Danzō, and finally taking a vicious bite out of Hiruzen as well, he really had eaten his fill in one shot.
But no matter how big your appetite is, there's still a limit.
Even if you can swallow it all, you still need time to digest it.
Right now, Hikaru was stuffed to the point of bursting.
He had to spend enough time digesting what he had taken, or he'd end up choking on it himself.
As far as he was concerned, though, there was no chance he would spit any of it back out.
People were greedy.
Hikaru was no exception.
If anything, he was greedier than most.
This time, he had taken a portion of Root's authority.
If he translated it into terms from his previous life, then he had just gotten his hands on part of the FBI and part of the CIA.
On top of that, he had also seized a share of the Medical Department's authority.
Politics was the art of language and compromise.
Hiruzen had admitted defeat, but that didn't mean he had simply handed over everything.
And after killing Danzō, while also securing the backing of so many clans, Hikaru couldn't appear too overbearing either.
On the surface, it might have seemed like he hadn't taken much.
But in reality, what he had gained was already enormous.
Root had been expanded under Danzō, and Root's main responsibility had always been dealing with matters outside the village.
The reason it had caused so much chaos inside Konoha wasn't only because Danzō wanted to interfere with ANBU affairs.
Another reason was that Hiruzen himself had never wanted to dirty his own hands.
ANBU was the Hokage's direct force.
When dealing with certain incidents—cases where the evidence wasn't entirely solid, but action was still necessary—using ANBU was effectively the same as the Hokage taking action personally.
So, with Hiruzen's silent approval, Danzō had taken that burden onto himself and started proving his existence inside Konoha with a butcher's knife.
Hikaru had no interest in Root's internal Konoha responsibilities.
He already had the ANBU. There was no need to take over another filthy organization with overlapping authority.
So what he chose instead was Root's external division.
And to him, that mattered a great deal.
For one thing, it meant that outside Konoha—and even outside the Land of Fire—he could now use that network to push the reach and influence of his newspaper much farther.
After all, from the very beginning, he had never defined that paper as a simple media outlet.
In his mind, it was an intelligence and public-opinion institution.
Not a mere newspaper office.
An intelligence organization with political coloration like that had one essential purpose:
Control public opinion.
If necessary, erode and overturn the political order elsewhere.
Without power outside Konoha to help protect its distribution and circulation, how was it supposed to achieve his goals?
"After all, I'm shamelessly borrowing tricks from the so-called beacon of freedom across the ocean. If I can really fool a few people with it, the payoff will be huge."
In his previous life, that self-proclaimed beacon of freedom had used this tactic to crush one place after another—at least until it ran into his motherland.
Of course, if he were being honest, even his own country had suffered under that pressure for quite some time.
There had been too many so-called "springs" before that.
Even some old giants had capsized under those waves.
If not for the global pandemic that swept the whole planet, the tide might not have turned so quickly, and so many people might never have seen the beacon of freedom for what it really was.
Truthfully, Hikaru felt a little embarrassed about that.
Because he himself had once been influenced too.
And precisely because he had gone through that, he understood exactly how terrifying a war of public opinion could be.
"Besides newspapers, film needs to be put on the schedule too. That's another major weapon for cultural and ideological export."
His target was still the Hokage's seat.
But to complete that so-called unique mission, he needed to expand his influence as far as possible.
And now, with that slice of Root's external network in his hands, he could finally cut loose.
The problem was that this piece of Root was huge.
To take it over, reorganize it, reassign it, and purge Danzō's die-hard loyalists—it would all take time.
And energy.
As if that weren't enough, the Medical Department share he'd taken was another headache entirely.
Hiruzen had been sly about that.
The moment Hikaru asked for the Medical Department, the old man had seen through him.
He hadn't asked for the Administration Department because this time Danzō had offended Yamanaka Inoichi, and the Administration Department was effectively in Nara Shikaku's hands already.
There was no need for Hikaru to waste effort there.
Hiruzen had actually been willing to hand him the Finance Department.
Because the real talent base there had already been monopolized by Hiruzen's side. Even if Hikaru took it, he'd only inherit an empty shell.
In Hiruzen's mind, the things Hikaru truly wanted had to be either the Mission Department or the Medical Department.
One controlled the livelihood of ordinary shinobi.
The other controlled the life and death of nearly everyone in the village.
Both were the kind of departments absolutely worth fighting over.
And in the end, Hiruzen had been right.
Hikaru did want one of them.
Still, Hiruzen had no intention of giving up the Medical Department so easily.
After all, Tsunade wasn't in Konoha.
Once upon a time, Tsunade had been one of Hiruzen's most important cards.
But Hikaru was born a Senju. By nature, he stood much closer to Tsunade than Hiruzen ever could.
Once that was factored in, Hiruzen would clearly be the one losing out.
Tsunade was gone, yes—but Hiruzen knew very well that if she ever returned, it would be far more natural for her to support Hikaru.
Fortunately for him, Tsunade wasn't in the village.
That gave him room to argue on the basis of medical personnel.
What he had not expected was that Hikaru never had his eyes on the entire Medical Department in the first place.
He went straight for the department responsible for medical experimentation.
Of course, he hadn't asked for it openly from the start.
First he gave the impression that he wanted to swallow the whole Medical Department.
Then, through bargaining, he took exactly what he had been after from the beginning.
And the result was simple:
All the personnel in that department now belonged to him unconditionally.
Hiruzen no longer had any right to interfere.
"Now that I've got the medical research division, a lot of projects just became much easier."
For a long time, experimental research had been a field Hikaru wanted to get involved in but simply couldn't.
Now that he had this department, things would be much simpler.
You could say everything was developing in a beautiful direction.
The only real problem was how much of his time it consumed.
…
Stretching slightly, Hikaru looked out the window.
The sky was clear again.
The snow-white Konoha of before had once more turned bright and lively.
Winter had given way to spring.
A new year had arrived.
And somewhere along the way, Hikaru had also passed his birthday.
Sometimes, he really couldn't help feeling emotional about it.
Without realizing it, he had already lived fifteen or sixteen years in this world.
After all these years, he honestly didn't know whether he had become a monster… or the kind of person he had once wanted to be.
Unfortunately, he had no answer to that question.
At least, not one he could give himself.
He remembered hearing a joke once in his previous life.
A man forgot the password to his first chat account.
His password hint was: my dream.
He tried countless possibilities and failed every single time.
Only at the end did he realize that he had long since forgotten what his dream even was.
Hikaru felt much the same.
He no longer remembered what kind of person he had once wanted to become when he first arrived in this world.
He had simply walked forward one step at a time—
until he became the foremost figure in Konoha's darkness.
"But at least I still know what I want to do."
He shook his head gently and pulled his thoughts back.
He knew that much clearly enough:
He wanted to become Hokage.
That was the system's mission.
But no matter how you looked at it, it was a worthy goal to pursue.
A moment later, though, he laughed at himself and shook his head again.
"My body's only fifteen or sixteen. When did I get so sentimental?"
He smiled.
But the instant his eyes returned to the stack of files on his desk, irritation rose immediately.
There were too many of them.
Too many, and too messy.
And worst of all, he had to handle them himself.
Because these files dealt with the development of the laboratory, research projects, and how to make use of Hidan.
In plain terms, the information inside them was the sort that would make any normal person's blood pressure rise just by reading it.
Hikaru, however, knew very well that no matter how much he bent the line, as long as he didn't touch the soul, nothing serious would happen.
The subject of these experiments was Hidan.
Strictly speaking, Hidan had not yet fully mastered his immortality.
But according to what Hikaru had observed, he wasn't far off.
As his development and use of the Jōgan deepened, Hikaru was realizing more and more that its so-called "absolute insight" really did mean he could see almost anything he wanted.
He could clearly tell what state Hidan was in.
More precisely, he could see Hidan's progress in learning his twisted ability.
By Hikaru's judgment, the guy was already around seventy percent of the way there.
His talent, it had to be said, was actually quite good.
Of course, reaching a full hundred percent would still take time.
But that time probably wasn't too far off.
At least, Hikaru was fairly confident of that.
And now that he had acquired the Medical Department's research section, Hidan's value had climbed even higher in his eyes.
That value wasn't limited to Hikaru's own experiments, either.
Those experiments mattered, naturally.
But he also had outsourcing now.
Orochimaru was effectively his contracted research lab.
And the snake had already spent a great deal of time on this.
Kabuto had entered his role quickly, and Orochimaru hadn't bothered hiding his work from the boy.
So Hikaru had a pretty good grasp of what Orochimaru was doing.
Whether it was the Uchiha experiments or the revival-technique project Hikaru had handed him, the man was pushing both lines forward simultaneously.
With Orochimaru handling so much, there was no need for Hikaru to throw all his own attention into that side.
Besides, now that he had the medical experimental division, it would be impossible to start them off immediately on something that extreme.
He intended to proceed gradually.
And in the process, make Hidan display even more value.
The method he had in mind was simple:
Let the Medical Department do something much more normal at first.
For example—
drug research.
Hikaru himself didn't really need drugs anymore.
But he hadn't forgotten the fear of being ruled by soldier pills when he was younger.
And beyond that, pharmaceutical research was something that would benefit all of Konoha.
For him, that was the kind of thing that boosted personal prestige enormously.
There was no way he'd pass that up.
Konoha's development in that field had never gone especially smoothly.
Part of that was because they already had Tsunade's medical-nin system.
But there was another awkward problem too.
"This world doesn't have a country like India."
In his previous life, India had been an interesting place.
Besides its constant urge to overstate itself on the world stage, it had one other enduring trait:
endless internal self-hypnosis.
The funniest line he'd ever heard about it was that Indians are peaceful.
Which, in a twisted way, made sense.
In a country where a caste system still survived into the modern age, the lower castes had no real means of changing their fate.
Other than waiting to die, what could they do?
And the upper castes already lived in comfort, sitting on enormous amounts of resources.
One group waited for death.
The other indulged itself.
Maybe that really did count as "peace."
Still, Hikaru couldn't deny one thing:
India had made two huge contributions to the world.
Generic drugs.
And human test subjects.
Generic drugs weren't fake medicine.
They were simply drugs that bypassed patent fees while keeping the same formula and effects as the originals.
That old film Dying to Survive had basically revolved around buying generics from India.
But why did everyone else have to pay patent fees while you didn't?
Part of it was India's special domestic reality.
But another part was the price India paid in exchange:
Pharmaceutical companies could conduct human testing there without following the normal constraints.
Drug effects had to be tested.
Drug development had to be refined.
In other countries, those processes had to begin with animals, and then still deal with animal-rights activism.
In India, companies could go straight to people.
Why wouldn't they prefer that?
Medicine was for humans in the first place.
No matter how well an animal trial went, there would always be a huge gap when applied to actual human beings.
That rule held true both in his previous world and in this one.
Unfortunately, the Naruto world had neither Indira Gandhi nor a country like India.
Look at Danzō and Orochimaru.
Both had nearly destroyed themselves through human experimentation.
And both had been shoved off the cliff personally by Hikaru.
He had no intention of repeating that kind of disaster.
But if he couldn't use normal people as test subjects…
then who said he couldn't use abnormal ones?
At that moment, Hidan's value became perfectly clear.
The man could be used both for ninjutsu experiments and for drug trials.
And by starting with pharmaceutical testing, Hikaru could let the researchers slowly understand that this guy truly was a deathless existence.
With that gradual process in place, by the time he started using Hidan for ninjutsu-related trials later, the experiment staff wouldn't have nearly as much psychological resistance.
"As for Hidan himself, he's easy enough to handle. Give him respect, give him money, and give him a certain amount of freedom inside Konoha."
"At the same time, keep telling him that using his body for experiments can help countless people. Later, I can even let him spread his religion outside the Land of Fire."
If you wanted to lure someone, you first had to give them respect.
And while giving them that respect, you also had to understand what they truly wanted.
Hikaru could roughly guess what Hidan wanted.
Nothing more than faith in that so-called Jashin cult.
And that was something Hikaru could absolutely help with.
As long as Hidan didn't cause trouble inside the Land of Fire, Hikaru didn't care how many idiots he conned outside it.
He could even invite them to Konoha to participate in experiments.
Wouldn't that be wonderful?
"The dead can be hauled back up with Impure World Reincarnation and put back to work. An immortal is even better. At least he won't die from overwork."
After sorting through the idea in his head, Hikaru picked up his pen again and went back to recording and revising the files in front of him.
This really wasn't work he could hand off to anyone else yet.
Not even to the Secretariat.
Those documents would not even be shown to the Administration Department for the time being.
He did, in fact, have two secretaries.
But he still wouldn't let them touch work like this.
"Judging by the time, Fugaku's eye has been planted for quite a while now. And besides that, I should also check on Kimimaro's condition."
As he wrote, he muttered to himself.
He hadn't paid attention to any of that for some time.
Now he felt it was time to look back at it.
He was genuinely curious what kind of result a Mangekyō Sharingan could produce.
And on top of that, he hadn't forgotten Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku.
The last attempt had basically failed.
He had been waiting for another chance ever since.
Especially because he still had that special chakra-fusion power sitting unused inside him.
As for what kind of Kekkei Tōta he should create with it…
even now, Hikaru still didn't have a fully settled answer.
But no matter what he fused, it had to be something suitable for Senju Hikaru to use.
Of course, the biggest gain last time had still been that tiny amount of special attribute-less chakra.
That stuff had directly boosted the development of his eyes.
Thinking of that, Hikaru slowly closed his eyes.
The next moment, his status panel appeared across his vision.
Name: Senju Hikaru
Gender: Male
Birthday: March 24, Konoha Year 34
Level: Quasi-Kage (system evaluation without using any abilities) (Massive chakra reserves) (A small portion of Dragon Vein chakra remains sealed)
Dōjutsu: Jōgan (initial stage) (Development: 52%)
Bloodline Development: Intermediate (Senju secret arts, beginner Yang Release secret arts), Kekkei Tōta (unnamed)
Jinchūriki: Nine-Tails (Intermediate, can grow by devouring large amounts of special chakra; plant a high-grade Nine-Tails fruit to let it develop) (Has consumed excessive chakra; still continuously growing)
Seeds: Beginner Three-Tails Chakra (99%), Intermediate Wood Release Seed (99%)
Fruits: Intermediate Fire Release Fruit (1), Intermediate Water Release Fruit (1), Intermediate Earth Release Fruit (1), Special Fusion Power
Mission: Become the true Big Boss of the ninja world (unique) (Progress: 45%)
"It rose again?"
When Hikaru saw the panel, he froze for a moment, then smiled and nodded in understanding.
The unique mission progress had gone up again.
That was clearly tied to Danzō's death.
Even if ordinary people and low-ranking shinobi didn't fully understand what had happened this time, Hikaru had killed Danzō in front of the Third Hokage, the clan heads, and the jōnin.
That alone was enough to give him another solid push.
And after all this effort, he had finally watched the progress bar edge toward the halfway mark.
That hadn't been easy.
Although, strictly speaking, if he truly wanted to, it probably wouldn't have been that hard.
But he had chosen a path of inducement and control rather than simply copying Danzō.
So he wasn't about to complain.
The only part truly worth complaining about was the ninety-nine percent progress on the Three-Tails chakra and the Intermediate Wood Release.
"It's hard to believe that after everything I stirred up this time, neither of these got pushed to full completion."
Naturally, Hikaru wasn't exactly thrilled with that.
Still, it wasn't something he couldn't accept.
At the end of the day, it wasn't as though he lacked power right now.
His strength was already more than enough.
At least—
for the time being.
…
Inside the Land of Rain, Nagato sat weakly with his back pressed against the shell of the Ten-Tails.
His eyes were dim.
He looked even more withered than before.
His body had shrunk down to a near-skeletal state.
If not for the faint rise and fall of his breathing, anyone would have thought him a corpse.
Ever since he had gone to meet Orochimaru and crossed paths with that Konoha ANBU member, Senju Hikaru—only to suffer what could only be described as a one-sided slaughter—Nagato had ended up like this.
Konan looked at him with deep worry.
She didn't know exactly what the battle that day had looked like.
But she knew exactly what Nagato had looked like afterward inside the cave.
His body had been visibly failing.
His chakra had been all but drained.
She had seen all of it with her own eyes.
And beyond that, there had been the terrifying tremors outside the cave.
Then, when she stepped out later and saw the battlefield that looked like the end of the world itself…
it was a sight she would never forget for the rest of her life.
The Wood Leaf Nightingale's power had truly seemed demonic.
That overwhelming might was enough to terrify anyone.
And according to the intelligence they had before, this man shouldn't have been that strong.
So how had it turned into this?
"How did it become this bad?"
Sighing, Konan decided not to dwell on that.
Because there was something far more urgent right now:
Nagato.
The blow this time had been unimaginably severe.
He had always thought of himself as a god.
And the Wood Leaf Nightingale had simply knocked him down from that altar in a single brutal strike.
That kind of blow was worse than death.
When a shinobi's belief collapsed, the result could be even more terrifying than killing them outright.
"Hm?"
Suddenly, Konan spun around.
Several sheets of white paper silently appeared in her hand.
Behind her, space itself began to distort.
The still air twisted into a spiral.
Then two figures stepped out of that warped void.
The moment she saw them, Konan's heart relaxed slightly.
But her expression remained guarded.
Because neither she nor Nagato trusted these two at all.
"No need to be so tense. If I really wanted to kill you, you wouldn't have even noticed I was here."
Obito's tone was indifferent as he glanced at Konan, then turned his attention fully to Nagato.
He completely ignored her.
Or rather, in his eyes, she simply didn't matter.
If he truly wanted to act, he was confident Konan would die before sensing anything unusual.
That said, he had not come here to do that.
Not yet.
That was why, before arriving, he had deliberately leaked his chakra a little—
a way of signaling his presence.
Even coming here this time was an act of frustration for him.
The Hidden Mist Village was a mess right now.
The Fourth Mizukage's condition was especially bad.
After being attacked by that bastard who wielded Nine-Tails chakra, the Mizukage's life force and control over the village had both taken severe damage.
If he hadn't been the Three-Tails Jinchūriki, he likely would have died already.
But the one who had manipulated that Nine-Tails power had hit far too hard.
The Three-Tails itself had practically been smashed apart.
As a result, Yagura's recovery was pitifully slow.
And with Kirigakure itself still deeply unstable, Obito was already buried under one headache after another.
If Konan hadn't said Nagato was on the verge of collapse, he never would have come.
The longer he stayed away from Kiri, the less control he had there.
"What happened to him?" Obito looked at Nagato for a long moment before finally asking in a low voice. "How did he end up like this? He looks barely human."
"Because of the Wood Leaf Nightingale," Konan said with a helpless shake of her head.
But before she could finish, she was interrupted.
"Senju Hikaru?"
Obito blurted the name out in shock.
He truly hadn't expected that answer.
Senju Hikaru.
That was one name Obito would never forget.
The one who had beaten him alongside Minato Namikaze, again and again.
His former classmate.
A man he could never forget.
But how could that man have defeated Nagato?
How could he have crushed him this badly?
What the hell had happened?
Yet just as Obito was about to question further, Nagato finally spoke.
"Jōgan…"
"Hm?" Obito's face beneath the mask was full of confusion.
But beside him, Black Zetsu's expression shifted slightly.
Jōgan.
He had never heard of such an eye either.
But that didn't stop him from knowing certain very special things.
For example, the relationship between the Byakugan, the Rinnegan, and even the Tenseigan.
To put it simply, the Rinnegan was what emerged after an Ōtsutsuki consumed the chakra fruit and underwent a mutation.
And when the Byakugan was influenced by the power of the fruit, it too could mutate into something special—
such as the Tenseigan.
Black Zetsu had never heard of the Jōgan.
But that didn't stop him from guessing.
Was it possible that Hikaru had awakened the mutated portion of Kaguya's bloodline?
The Senju were descendants of Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki.
And Hagoromo, being Kaguya's son, had inherited her bloodline as well.
He had also been one of the people most heavily altered by the chakra fruit.
But that didn't change the fact that he also carried the pure blood of his mother.
Before Hagoromo fully awakened the Sharingan and then the Rinnegan, he had also possessed the Byakugan.
"Could it be this brat experienced some kind of ancestral reversion… and then his eyes mutated into this?"
Black Zetsu thought silently.
Looking at Nagato's half-dead condition, he made a decision.
One glance was enough to tell him the truth:
Nagato's conviction had shattered.
If he didn't do something, the boy was finished.
And if he was finished, then who would revive Madara?
Who would become the sacrifice needed for Mother's return?
"You said you were Uchiha Madara. You said you knew everything."
Nagato spoke again at that moment.
"So tell me—what is the Jōgan? What kind of eye is it? Why… why…"
"Are you sure what you saw was the Jōgan?"
Black Zetsu cut him off at once.
"Describe it in detail. I need to confirm something."
"You know about the Jōgan?"
At that moment, a spark of life returned to Nagato's deadened eyes.
Then he hurriedly spoke.
"It was a pair of glowing blue eyes, full of flowing light."
"That man could also wrap that chakra around his body. He looked…"
"…like a god."
"Those eyes made me feel fear. And I could tell they were on the same level as my Rinnegan."
"Isn't the Rinnegan supposed to be the eye of creation?"
"So why does another pair like that exist?"
Nagato poured all of it out in one breath, then stared at Black Zetsu with desperate expectation.
Not only him—even Konan and Obito both turned to look at Zetsu.
But Black Zetsu said nothing.
He looked as though he were thinking.
Yet inside, he was anything but calm.
He could barely believe what he was hearing.
"This is the Jōgan?"
"No. Damn it—this sounds like the Tenseigan!"
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