Orochimaru's Old Laboratory

Looking at the pitch-black darkness inside the cave, Chen snapped a thick branch off a tree, tore some cloth strips from his clothes to wrap around it, lit it with a Great Fireball, and prepared to explore the cave.

Though curious about the cave, facing the unknown always brought a sense of fear and awe. So Chen cautiously walked deeper inside, worried that some dangerous thing might suddenly appear, and stayed on high alert.

The tunnel was about three meters high and quite spacious—even three people walking side by side wouldn't feel cramped. But the passage was long, and the walls looked smooth, not rough and uneven like a naturally formed cave.

"This cave is man-made, not natural. What was it for? A shelter for Konoha? No, that doesn't fit either—it's clearly been unused for a long time, the entrance already collapsed, and a shelter shouldn't be this far from the village."

After walking for a while, Chen finally reached the end, finding nothing unusual along the way.

"A dead end? No, this cave is obviously man-made. It can't be that simple. Who would dig such a long tunnel for nothing? Maybe there's a mechanism or a hidden door? Let me look!"

Faced with this situation, Chen naturally thought back to the TV shows and novels from his past life. In those, whenever a scene like this occurred, the protagonist just had to knock on a wall or step on some dog crap or something, and a strange phenomenon would happen—like a wall mysteriously opening to reveal a passage, or a hidden door suddenly appearing. Then the protagonist would find some ultimate martial art inside, like the Nine Yang Divine Skill, the Sunflower Manual, the Evil-Defeating Sword Manual, and so on, and so forth...

The protagonist would then train to become a peerless master and re-enter the world. After that, it was all about cheating and showing off—taking on ten enemies at once without breaking a sweat!

Chen was now imitating the protagonists from those novels, knocking and tapping on the walls around him, but there was no mechanism as expected. Dejected, he stopped this silly behavior and kicked the wall hard, shouting: "Just open the damn door!" Then, something strange happened. As soon as the words left his mouth, the wall in front of him slowly slid open to both sides, revealing a stone staircase descending underground. (Don't ask why, because I don't know either.)

"What the hell?! What's going on? Did I step on some dog crap mechanism too? So cliché! But... I love it!!" Though he didn't know how it happened, the important thing was that a door had opened, making things easier. Chen picked up his torch and followed the stone staircase down.

Fortunately, the staircase wasn't long—he reached the entrance of a hall in less than half a minute. Since it was pitch black all around, Chen couldn't tell where he was. He vaguely saw some bottles and jars, unsure what they were for. But he noticed something that looked like a switch beside him, instinctively pressed it thinking it was a light switch, and only realized what he'd done after pressing it.

Luckily, it wasn't a deadly mechanism—it really was a light switch. The moment Chen pressed it, the dark hall instantly lit up brightly. (Don't ask why there's an electric light; that's just how it's set.)

After confirming there was no danger, Chen walked into the hall and looked around. The hall was quite spacious but looked very messy. Against the wall stood two huge cylindrical glass tanks, looking a lot like cultivation pods for experiments. On another side was a shelf with several small glass jars, probably containing specimens. The table was cluttered with test tubes, papers, and notes lying haphazardly—this place looked like a laboratory.

"What is this place? Looks like some kind of lab." Chen walked to the table, picked up a piece of paper, and looked at it. But it was full of technical terms he didn't understand, so he set it aside and picked up a notebook to browse.

"Huh? This notebook seems to be the lab's experiment log." Chen saw that the notebook was filled with experiment records. Though he didn't grasp the details, the keywords made his heart race the more he read—starting with Chakra experiments, then immortality techniques, then forbidden jutsu research, and finally human experiments, which was utterly horrifying.

"This... this situation seems familiar." Chen suddenly exclaimed: "Damn it, could this be that freak Orochimaru's lab in Konoha?"

The more Chen thought about it, the more likely it seemed. After all, the only one in Konoha who loved doing experiments was that freak Orochimaru. Danzo might have been up to something too, but this lab was abandoned, not Danzo's style. And these experiment records fit Orochimaru perfectly.

From the records, this was probably the lab Orochimaru built when he first started experimenting. Maybe later, as his experiments grew bigger—even involving human experiments and forbidden jutsu—he moved to a more secret location for safety. Since this old lab had nothing valuable left, he couldn't be bothered to clean up and just collapsed the entrance with Earth Release and left it.

In the Original Story, it was also mentioned that Orochimaru researched First Generation Cells and Sharingan transplant surgeries for Danzo. Maybe that was when Orochimaru moved all his experiments to the lab Danzo arranged for him, which explains why the notebook had no records about First Generation Cells—Orochimaru only started researching them after going to Danzo's place. Eventually, the Third Hokage found out for some reason, forcing Orochimaru to defect.

So, no one in Konoha knew Orochimaru had this lab. Maybe Danzo knew but didn't care, since by then Orochimaru had already moved all his experiments and research results to the lab Danzo prepared for him—there was nothing valuable left here.

"Well! This is Snake Uncle's lab—surely there's something valuable? Let me look!" Chen eagerly started rummaging through everything, searching for something useful. But most of it was experiment blueprints he couldn't understand, probably just useless drafts, basically junk with no value.

But Chen didn't give up. He kept searching, and finally, he found a scroll.

"What's this?" Chen was about to open it in confusion.

"Ding! Recoverable skill detected. Recover?" The system prompted.

"Recover a skill? Is this a ninjutsu scroll? What could it be?" Chen opened the scroll with anticipation.

"Holy crap, I hit the jackpot! Jackpot!" Chen jumped up excitedly.

Because the scroll didn't contain just one ninjutsu, but several. It recorded some ordinary ninjutsu and techniques created by Orochimaru himself, including: Shadow Snake Hand, Multiple Shadow Snake Hands, Twin Snakes Mutual Death, Body Modification, Summoning: Rashomon, Wind Release: Great Breakthrough, Slay Many Snakes, Raging Cobra Step...

"These ninjutsu might have been trivial to Orochimaru, so he didn't bother disposing of them—lucky me!"

Chen was overjoyed. Though these techniques were useless to Orochimaru, for Chen right now, it was like manna from heaven. His grin stretched almost to the back of his head, drool spilling everywhere—he couldn't be happier.

"Reminder for Host: Skills already learned by Host are non-recoverable items and cannot be recovered." The system warned Chen. This was necessary—if learned skills could be recovered by rewriting them onto a scroll, Chen would have been rich long ago instead of miserably hoarding the few points from the newbie gift pack. Of course, recoverable skills could only be recovered once, not repeatedly.

"Knew it would be like this. Let me first see which ones to learn, which to skip, and which I can't learn, then have the system recover them." Chen said, looking at the ninjutsu and pondering which to choose.

"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough—this is a wind-attribute technique. I haven't exchanged for wind-attribute Chakra yet, so I'll have the system recover this one!" Chen thought, looking at the Wind Release on the scroll.

Chen knew the system could exchange for Chakra natures. Though Wind Release had strong destructive power, Chen didn't need it right now. And Chakra natures weren't cheap—each one cost ten thousand points. Special natures like Crystal Release or Ice Release, which were Kekkei Genkai, required even more points.

"System, what's the recovery price for Wind Release: Great Breakthrough?" Chen asked.

"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough. Item type: Skill. Item rank: C-rank. Exchange cost: 500 points. System recovery yields: 250 points." The system explained.

"Damn, half the points gone just like that! The system's too shady—a total profiteer!" Chen complained to the system.