Pulled an SSR?

They then explored several more bases, but still found nothing.

Sakura was starting to get a little restless.

She was just joking! There's a significant difference between carrying out a mission and doing a ten-pull gacha—at least the former involves the risk of death.

However, the bases they entered were generally quite large and could not accommodate too many people; they seemed to be temporary venues rather than long-term residences.

There were even two, and one was simply a few rooms and a huge hall, the floor of which was stained with blood. No one knows what Orochimaru did there.

Some bases looked like they had never been used at all, with no trace of anyone ever living there. It's possible that they were sealed off and never used again after Orochimaru built them.

The good news is that the further you go towards the Land of Rice Fields, the later these bases were abandoned. It seems that you might find a few bases still in use by the Sound Ninja in the later locations.

In that case, a battle would be inevitable.

"Are you ready for battle?" Shino checked his equipment, looked at the dark cave entrance in front of him, and asked his two subordinates behind him.

The cave in front of them was clearly much larger than the previous bases they had explored, which had been so small that they barely had any entrances.

The faintly visible footprints at the entrance and exit also give it a touch of "humanity".

Clearly, there are still people around here, at least for the foreseeable future.

This means that... they are very likely to encounter enemies.

For some reason, Sakura Haruno felt a faint sense of anticipation.

The Fourteenth Squad quickly adjusted to a battle formation: Yugao drew her long sword and stood at the front, Shino provided support in the middle, and Sakura covered the rear.

I hid outside the door and listened quietly for a while.

The dark, silent cave entrance was completely still, without a sound or any fluctuation of Chakra.

It was eerie, like the gaping maw of a giant beast.

Yugao turned to look at Shino, asking him with her eyes what he meant. The latter simply raised his hand calmly, gesturing for him to move forward.

The Fourteenth Squad was quickly swallowed up by the darkness.

Continuing down the narrow passage, Orochimaru's base was much deeper than the previous ones, probably more than a hundred meters underground.

The moment the passage ended and we entered the base, we were greeted by a spacious hall. Oil lamps were stuck in the walls, their flames dim and flickering, casting indistinct shadows all around us.

However, there was no one in sight.

Apart from the barely audible footsteps of the Fourteenth Squad, the place was eerily quiet.

The three Anbu exchanged a glance.

"Bang!"

A door was kicked open violently, and the cat-faced ninja rushed in, bursting through the door, and then—

Whoosh whoosh!

The mechanism inside the room fired hundreds of Kunai, turning the intruders into a swarm of beehives!

Crackling sounds.

The cat-faced ninja's body became transparent and crystalline, transforming into an ice sculpture filled with Kunai.

"Safe, no one's here!" Yugao strode in, pulled a Kunai from her Ice Clone, examined it, shook her head, and laughed, "Not bad for a greeting, coated with snake venom, how wicked."

"It seems they really are gone," Shino, slowly stepping Earth Flow the room through the broken door. "No one would set up traps in their own home."

The last one to walk in was a girl wearing a cat-face mask.

"This kind of mechanism is just child's play..." Even through the mask, Shino could hear the deep disdain in the girl's voice. "You think you can hurt someone with these things?"

"Don't be like that, Tobi, this snake venom is no ordinary poison." Shino shook his head; he had just glanced at the layer of venom on the Kunai, which glowed with a faint green light. "Even the Third Lord Hokage was forced to sever his own arm by Orochimaru's snake venom."

Yugao chimed in, "Even a simple scrape can be troublesome. But since such a treacherous mechanism has appeared here, doesn't that mean... we're close to a valuable target?"

That's true.

Sakura looked up and carefully examined the room's layout. The bookshelves stood tall, almost touching the ceiling.

"This room appears to be a document display room, but most of the documents have been moved away."

The bookshelves were littered with scrolls and other debris, scattered haphazardly across the floor. Clearly, the Sound Ninja had only hastily taken the valuable documents with them when they left, hastily using the remaining useless scrolls to conceal and set up a trap before departing.

After eliminating the danger with her Ice Clone, Sakura casually picked up a scroll from the ground, opened it, and flipped through it.

"The Human Modification Experiment Data Manual of Jugen Uzumaki..."

She read it softly.

They seem to be some very evil things.

Further down the scroll, there were only some messy writings, with blackened words covering the entire scroll.

There's no useful information to be found.

Judging from the few words above, this person named Jugen Uzumaki seems to have undergone Orochimaru's Soft Body Modification, becoming a half-human, half-snake creature...

The experiment data was abruptly cut off halfway through, seemingly foreshadowing the person's fate...

She flipped through the pages again, only to find it blank. It couldn't have been any important or effective experiment, otherwise it wouldn't have been carelessly tossed on the ground.

"Captain, should we take this scroll back with us?" Sakura asked, somewhat helplessly.

"What's on the scroll?" Shino asked, turning around as he unfolded the huge scroll in his hand after clearing a clean area in the hall.

"A scroll recording experimental data on human modification," the girl said, shaking the scroll in her hand, "But there's not much useful information; most of the data written on it has been blacked out."

She smiled and continued, "And this guy named Jugen Uzumaki was short-lived; he died before he could even finish half of the experiment."

"Did he hang up?"

"Uh... it just means dead." Sometimes she would unintentionally use internet slang from her past life, making everyone confused and quite embarrassing. However, sometimes she would also spread some meaningful words, which would become popular terms among the young people of Konoha.

"Alright," Shino didn't mind Sakura's slip of the tongue, taking it as just a cute quirk that girls often use. He waved to the girl, "I want them too, the scroll and the book! Anyway, the scroll the Lord Hokage gave me can seal a lot of things."

Sakura shrugged and casually tossed the scroll over.

Human modification sounds evil, but similar experiments were being conducted in the village, and Sakura couldn't decide which was more noble. Anyway, as long as the experiment was done voluntarily, Sakura Haruno felt it was acceptable—that's how low the moral standards were in the Hokage world, and there was nothing she could do about it.

At least her Hokage faction wouldn't force its own people to undergo human modification. Over a decade ago, they even expelled Orochimaru, a Kage Level savior, because of this.

As for the extent to which Danzo could achieve this... that's not good either...

These things aren't convenient to discuss with teammates, even though they've been through thick and thin together. They seem a bit distant from being true friends. It would be better to talk to the members of Team 7, but Naruto and Sasuke might not understand. Kakashi, on the other hand, is someone I could talk to about it with if I had the time.

For now, Sakura could only keep her thoughts to herself.

Then he rummaged through the scrolls and books scattered on the ground, throwing the ones that looked useless to Shino, and opening the useful ones to read through the contents.

Most of the scrolls contained experimental reports on Orochimaru's evil experiments, his insane experimental hypotheses, and so on.

Although there was no substantial content, the mere use of suggestive terms left the young woman speechless and completely opened her eyes.

Most of the scrolls had already been sorted when the girl discovered an old book with faded gold trim at the very bottom of the pile.

It looks like something good?

She opened it and took a look.

The basic principles and implementation methods of cloning technology...

Sakura Haruno's tiger-like body... her delicate body trembled.

Is this an SSR?

(Bonus chapter for those afraid of heights! This is the fourth update. A few comments and chapters would be greatly appreciated!)