After Neji finished explaining his ideas, he instructed Hayashi Ki to organize personnel to quickly research and refine the details of the plan, striving to produce a complete and effective plan for implementation as soon as possible.
He then rode the Black-Winged Thunder Roc back to the inner base of Spring City and entered the underground Natural Energy Purification laboratory. The equipment was still the same as before. Aside from having Saki-Dragon assist him the first time, whenever Natural Energy needed to be purified afterward, Neji simply created Shadow Clones to do it.
When it came to this kind of core technology, Neji did everything he could to prevent information from leaking out.
What he needed to consider now was how to relocate this equipment to the Summoning Realm.
The former nest of the Black-Winged Thunder Roc was actually a fairly good location. The mountain was massive, and they could excavate another laboratory within the nest. Two or three hundred square meters would be enough, and the construction workload would not be too great. Most importantly, it was well hidden, and Black-Winged's chicks could help guard it.
Neji had signed contracts with all five of Black-Winged's chicks last year. With that, he now had six Summoning Beasts.
Two of them had been tempered by Natural Energy, and their bodies were nearly as large as Black-Winged's. In another year or so, they would surely surpass their mother.
The troublesome part was transporting the equipment. The smaller items were easy enough to handle, as they could be sealed into storage space. But the eight compression tanks were all enormous, and storage space could not hold them.
If there was no other way, he would have to use the crude method and summon all six Summoning Beasts to work as laborers, carrying the compression tanks in their beaks as they flew over.
Neji was not worried about whether Black-Winged and her chicks could carry them. Although the compression tanks looked huge, they were hollow inside and not especially heavy. With the Thunder Rocs' strength, it would not be a problem.
After thinking for a while longer and failing to come up with a better method, Neji decided to summon all the Thunder Rocs after nightfall and have them handle the transport.
Before it got dark, he packed up all the equipment and facilities in the laboratory that were not especially large and sealed them into storage space, aiming to complete the transfer of all the equipment within a day.
It would save him a lot of trouble in the future. He would only need to send a clone to the Summoning Realm periodically.
If ninjutsu had rankings, then in terms of practicality, the Shadow Clone would definitely rank near the top. It was practically a divine technique!
Late at night, Neji called out all the ninjas in the base and had them swiftly excavate the ceiling of the underground laboratory. The nearly ten-meter-thick roof was completely dug through in just one hour under the full efforts of the Chunins and Jonins. Their speed was astonishing.
Neji did not waste any time. He directly mobilized a massive amount of Chakra and summoned all six Thunder Rocs in one go. Six enormous birds of prey with wingspans exceeding fifteen meters appeared in the sky at once. The sight was utterly spectacular.
But tonight, they were not here to look impressive. They were here to do manual labor.
Ropes were threaded through the Thunder Rocs and the compression tanks, binding them tightly together. It looked rather comical. With limited space, they could only tie them up one at a time. Little Gold and Little Black, the two particularly robust ones that had been tempered by Natural Energy, each carried two tanks at once. The scene was still quite magnificent.
Nearly two hours passed before all the tanks were secured. Neji checked the sky and estimated that there were still three hours until dawn.
He stopped delaying, leaped onto Black-Winged's back, and gave the order. The six Thunder Rocs took off at the same time, rose high into the sky, and then flew toward the Summoning Realm.
Since they were carrying tanks, the Thunder Rocs could not fly too fast. What should have been a journey of an hour and a half took nearly four hours. By the time they reached the cliffside nest, day had already broken.
The pressure exuded by the six Thunder Rocs was considerable, and they flew high in the sky, so nothing unexpected happened along the way.
Upon reaching the nest, Neji created six clones to quickly help the Thunder Rocs untie the ropes and move all the compression tanks into the newly excavated space.
This space would mainly be used for Natural Energy Purification in the future.
He busied himself here and there until close to evening before all the work was finally completed. After making slight adjustments to the equipment and confirming there were no problems, Neji let out a sigh of relief and declared the relocation of the Natural Energy Purification Device a success.
Unless something major changed in the future, it would not be relocated again.
Neji left behind a Shadow Clone to purify a batch of Natural Energy Compression Fluid to meet their recent needs, while he himself rode Black-Winged back to the Shinobi World once more.
Because he lacked secret methods for cultivating the mind and soul, Neji had always wanted to find Orochimaru and trade with him for the techniques he needed. Among them, the Spirit Transformation Technique was one of the cultivation methods Neji favored.
If he could obtain the Eight Branches Technique and Orochimaru's signature Living Corpse Reincarnation as well, that would be even better. He might not necessarily use those two techniques himself, but researching them would likely provide plenty of inspiration.
Living Corpse Reincarnation in particular was far more powerful than body snatching!
If his physical body were ever destroyed one day, this technique would be a divine method for making a comeback!
But how to make Orochimaru willing to trade with him was also a difficult matter.
If he directly offered the Natural Energy Purification technology, Orochimaru would certainly agree, but Neji was unwilling to do that.
Alternatively, he could withhold the technology and only provide purified Natural Energy Compression Fluid. Whether that would work depended on whether Orochimaru had enough foresight to recognize Natural Energy's immense potential and the inherent shortcomings of Chakra.
Neji did not hesitate. He had the Black-Winged Thunder Roc adjust its direction and fly toward the Land of Rice.
About an hour later, Neji arrived at Otogakure's territory in the Land of Rice. This place was not difficult to find. On the surface, Otogakure was still a legitimate organization and, like the Five Great Nations, followed the one-country, one-village system.
However, because of Orochimaru, it was hard to say who Otogakure truly obeyed. In any case, Orochimaru was definitely its highest leader.
Above Otogakure, Neji repeatedly scanned the area with his Byakugan. After confirming that Orochimaru was not there, he used Otogakure as the center and began searching the surrounding area for Orochimaru's bases.
Because Neji's Byakugan could already observe distances of nearly eight kilometers, the search area was broad, but his search speed was not slow.
In just over a dozen hours, Neji found seven suspicious locations. After ruling out four as underground exchange houses, one of the remaining three was a base operated by an unknown organization, while the other two were Orochimaru's bases.
One of them was relatively deserted and likely not an important base. The other was far larger in scale and much more heavily guarded. Orochimaru was most likely at the latter location.
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