Human Experimentation

In the world of Naruto, everyone suffers, yet everyone struggles on without cease. In the Warring States period, the struggles and pains of commoners and civilian ninjas went unseen and unheeded. In this era of peace, these hardships have only been magnified as they struggle to survive. If not for Ruri pushing for the mechanization of farming to liberate labor, they would still be toiling day and night just to exist, much like that child who gives his all to become a ninja. Now living in Takigakure, the commoners have felt a difference; they feel their struggles have hope, just like Luffy, who one day will also set sail.

The matter of the puppet theater has been handed over entirely to Jianming. Once they perfect the puppet arts, Takigakure will produce capable puppeteers in a dozen years or so—perhaps even sooner than Sunagakure.

During the month Ruri was away from the village, Takenaka Masakata handled administrative affairs quite well, so Ruri simply left all such matters to him, only sparing time for major policy decisions.

The new sake at the izakaya is a hit, and the sushi at the Sukiya remains as popular as ever. Some genin, led by chunin, are plowing fields, weeding, and sowing seeds; the number of missions is rising daily, and the village's income is growing. After school, students from the Ninja Academy also organize to clear riverbeds and tend to fields. The entire village of Takigakure is thriving. Having set aside administrative duties, Ruri was naturally not idle; he and Seimei had begun a major research project.

Human experimentation.

To accelerate the development of medical ninjutsu, human experimentation is the only way forward. It is also the foundation for future biotechnology, bloodline transplantation, and various forbidden arts.

Ruri had originally planned to wait a few years for stability before conducting human experiments, but the data Seimei produced forced him to move the schedule up.

Seimei was able to create those heaven-defying ninja tools only because of data he found in some ruins. It covered not just various tools, but also life force and human experimentation. He merely used his own conjectures to perfect those incomplete blueprints. The data also contained many other ninja tools and incomprehensible items that could not be manufactured due to a lack of materials.

Ruri was shocked when he saw this data; it was undoubtedly the embryonic form of science that had never developed in this world!

It wasn't just the ninja tools in Seimei's hands; the railways and trains that Ruri had mentioned at the Five Kage Summit as being under development in the Land of Snow were even briefly touched upon in these documents!

Ruri finally understood: the Naruto world's tech tree hadn't been stunted; rather, predecessors had already achieved scientific breakthroughs. With the arrival of the ninja era, the emergence of chakra and ninjutsu had caused these scientific achievements to be lost!

This also explained why there was never any science or technology during the Warring States period, yet it began to develop rapidly once the era of peace arrived. Cameras, railways, electric lights, movies... these were technologies Ruri had never seen in all his years here; they couldn't have been researched from thin air and perfected overnight!

Moreover, only a few years after the Fourth Great Ninja War, the entire ninja world had entered a scientific age by the time of Boruto. With all sorts of high-tech innovations, even if ninjas were the ones doing the research, it would be impossible to bypass countless failures and obtain results directly!

The only possibility was that predecessors had already researched them, and those of the current era were merely picking up the pieces and making improvements!

Science was something discarded by war; those undeveloped scientific creations were far less useful than ninjutsu during times of conflict, so they were slowly forgotten. Only upon entering a peaceful era were they remembered once more!

Of course, since very little in the data related to chakra, even Seimei was only half-guessing when he made his modifications. Although Ruri possessed the creativity and ideas of his past life, he was only half-informed, and trying to put it into practice himself was difficulty MAX.

Fortunately, the medical human experiments mentioned seemed to have been conducted during the period when chakra first appeared, which allowed them to continue their research. This was also essential for healing Kakuzu.

At this moment, a male corpse lay on the operating table. Calling it a corpse wasn't entirely accurate; its vital signs hadn't completely vanished, but some organs had failed, and it had lost consciousness.

This was naturally Ruri's handiwork. He didn't know which village the spy belonged to, but the man had brazenly targeted ordinary Takigakure villagers, so Ruri felt no guilt in using him as material for human experimentation.

"Takikage-sama, please restore his heart function according to the chakra circulation method I've organized." Seimei tossed over a scroll. He had been studying these things for days; how wonderful a ninjutsu that could bring the dead back to life would be! If taken to the extreme, could one imbue ninja tools with life? A living ninja tool was the lifelong pursuit of the man who styled himself a master craftsman!

Ruri adjusted his chakra and placed his palm over the corpse's heart, stimulating it with chakra. An ordinary person truly couldn't pull this off; Seimei had long had such ideas, but his chakra control was abysmal, leaving him completely helpless.

According to Seimei's hypothesis, the corpse should have regained some consciousness once heart function was restored, but things went awry. After a long while, the corpse still showed no reaction.

"That's strange..." Ruri could feel his chakra stimulating the cells within the corpse. Not only the heart, but other failing organs were gradually recovering, so why was there no consciousness at all? At the very least, there should have been a sensation of pain.

"Takikage-sama, let's dissect the body." Since nothing could be seen from the outside, they had to observe directly from within.

Ruri nodded and picked up a scalpel from the side. This was his first time performing an autopsy, but having walked through the Warring States period, he had killed many people. His technique was highly skilled; he knew exactly where to cut and where not to touch.

Watching Ruri's clean and efficient movements, Seimei couldn't help but sigh. High-level ninjas were truly killing monsters; even for a first-time dissection, they could rely on their rich experience in killing to find the most suitable places to cut!

Ruri started from the corpse's abdomen. The muscle tissue was easy to slice through, but the moment he cut it open completely, the corpse suddenly "came to life"!

Its stomach suddenly expanded like a balloon, and with a bang, blood sprayed everywhere as the internal organs flew out through the incision!

A fair amount of blood splattered onto Seimei's face, but he didn't show a hint of fear. Instead, he crouched down and picked up the heart that had flown out.

The blood vessels on the heart were knotted and bulging, and there were dozens of tiny, heart-shaped objects hanging from it. They looked like offshoots, or perhaps a coagulation of blood.

Aside from the heart, the other internal organs were also completely deformed. It wasn't necrosis in the true sense; the organs that were originally healthy hadn't lost function, and the damaged ones were gradually recovering, but they had undergone excessive, mutated division. For instance, that heart with all the tiny hearts hanging from it—these divided organs were simply not something a human body could withstand!

"The chakra stimulation wasn't controlled well; it caused excessive division." Seimei looked at the alien organs scattered on the floor without the slightest discomfort; if anything, he looked a bit crazed. Although they hadn't managed to bring the man back to life, running chakra in a certain way could indeed promote cell growth!

Ruri didn't have Seimei's iron stomach. Looking at the indescribable organs all over the floor made him feel nauseated. This had nothing to do with strength; it was a psychological repulsion.

"It seems I must find an assistant for Seimei soon. As Takikage, I have a thousand things to attend to; I cannot waste my time on human experimentation, and it wouldn't look good if word got out," Ruri muttered. Seimei, however, didn't notice him at all, preoccupied with studying the now-thoroughly-dead corpse.