So in the end, I still had to write this!
Looking at the coded scroll he had finished, Orochimaru pressed his lips tightly together. His pupils slowly constricted, and his expression was as still as water.
In his mind, images from some animal's perspective flashed past—the crystalline droplets seeping from skin, solidifying and spreading, swelling, hardening into human faces, tender shoots bursting from those faces, and the enormous tree that grew in an instant...
It had failed...
He did not know what he was feeling. If it was the gloom of failure, then he was also somewhat excited. If it was excitement, it was mixed with the gloom and unwillingness of failure. He did not know how to describe his current mood.
But it was feasible. With such power, if it succeeded...
Yet whether it was excitement or the gloom of failure, the wavering notion in his heart gradually became firm. A yearning light slowly shone from his vertical pupils.
It was just a pity about that Taki Chiba... His body had been able to open as many as five of the Eight Gates at the age of eleven, and his further development of the Forbidden Jutsu known as the Eight Gates was truly astonishing.
If his body could be researched...
If the experience and results of his development of the Eight Gates Forbidden Jutsu could be obtained...
Then they would surely greatly advance my goal.
Especially his body... To open the Fifth Gate at eleven was not something a body forged through mere desperate training could accomplish. An ordinary person's body—an ordinary eleven-year-old's body—even with the same desperate training, could never achieve such results.
His body must conceal an enormous secret.
Perhaps if I obtained that secret, I might be able to perfect my... Otherwise, I could only be