Night.
Everyone found an inn to stay at.
Before this, they had already checked the local brothels, but had found nothing unusual. After all, this place was still quite close to Konoha.
It was hardly likely they'd get lucky and find Jiraiya here.
They could only stick to their original plan and leave Jiraiya a message.
Then they found an inn to stay at.
It was very close to Orochimaru's laboratory.
To make it easier to purchase supplies, Orochimaru had built his laboratory on the outskirts of this town.
Tomorrow, all Kimura Takuya had to do was lead everyone in that direction.
He had made up his mind.
This time, he'd give Orochimaru a real shock and make sure he and Sasori paid for it.
Those two had been at it for two whole days and still had nothing to show for it. Kimura Takuya didn't need such useless employees!
What? He wasn't paying them, and they were still expected to throw themselves into their research?
People had even paid to work in his previous life!
Wasn't he just refusing to pay them while planning to freeload off their research?
Was that any excuse for them not to work hard?
No wonder one of them was a Sannin, yet spent all his time skulking around, never quite making the grade, and eventually got killed by Uchiha Sasuke. If Kabuto hadn't resurrected him, he'd be gone for good.
The other was a genius puppeteer from Sunagakure, ruthless enough to turn the Third Kazekage into a Human Puppet, yet in the end he still lost because of plot armor.
Their fates had made both of them seem a lot less impressive.
Kabuto was better. His boss never paid him.
He even sent him all over the place, through wind and rain, and when his boss died, he still brought him back to life and preserved his chakra for him.
For that alone, Kabuto was the kind of employee you could count on!
Kimura Takuya wondered if he should find a chance to use a Pseudo-Kotoamatsukami on Kabuto later.
Though they'd both grown up at the Konoha Orphanage, Kimura Takuya didn't know Kabuto well.
That was because Orochimaru hadn't defected from the village yet when Kabuto joined Root and began his life as a spy.
Kimura Takuya had probably been only three years old back then. He'd never even seen Kabuto as a child.
Later, when Orochimaru defected, he took Kabuto with him after Root abandoned him.
At the time, Kabuto had accidentally killed the former head of the orphanage who had taken him in. But this had actually been the result of Root's manipulation.
The plan had been for the matron to kill Kabuto, but Kabuto had killed her instead.
This incident had also been used earlier as part of the public campaign against Danzo.
Had Kabuto been upset by it?
Could Kabuto have leaked the real information about the Uchiha Clan Massacre out of anger?
Orochimaru shouldn't have had any reason to do that.
After getting beaten by Itachi in the Akatsuki, he'd wanted Itachi's Sharingan. But when he couldn't get it, he'd settled for trying to take Itachi's younger brother Sasuke's body instead.
This time, he'd also returned to Konoha under the pretext of gathering information, hoping to take Sasuke's body.
It seemed Kimura Takuya had already had a major impact on the plot.
He lay in bed, with the others already asleep beside him.
But his thoughts kept multiplying.
He'd pushed a lot of events forward by quite a bit.
He was worried the Akatsuki might speed up their hunt for the Tailed Beasts as a result.
He still wasn't strong enough.
Although he'd copied Naruto's method of instantly entering Sage Mode with Shadow Clones,
he'd also left several clones at the base, endlessly gathering Senjutsu Chakra in a cycle.
Because of the special nature of Kimura Takuya's Soul Energy, he could remotely dispel his Shadow Clones and instantly enter Sage Mode without needing Reverse Summoning Jutsu.
But this method could only be used in an emergency, not as a regular practice. And since his Senjutsu Chakra was still unstable, the chakra sent through his clones could only remain stable for a minute.
So he urgently needed to increase his Soul Energy and improve his control over it.
He needed to reach a level of precision down to ten decimal places. Only then could Sage Mode become stable.
Then, as he grew more and more adept at using it, he could truly enter Sage Mode in an instant and gather Senjutsu Chakra while maintaining the mode, achieving an unlimited Sage Mode.
And the thing that could increase his Soul Energy was the negative energy he'd discovered earlier.
Negative energy. Did he really have to mess around with a Tailed Beast?
As for the Tailed Beasts, One-Tail Shukaku was in Sunagakure.
Two-Tails Matatabi and Eight-Tails Gyuki were in the Cloud Village.
Three-Tails Isobu and Six-Tails Saiken were controlled by Kirigakure.
Four-Tails and Five-Tails Kokuō were in Iwagakure.
Seven-Tails Chomei was in Takigakure.
Nine-Tails Kurama was, of course, in Konoha.
Three-Tails Isobu had died, but should have been revived by now.
"Forget it. I'm going to sleep. I don't even know where they are right now. I'll think about it later."
The night passed without incident.
The next morning.
"We didn't find anything here. Let's go to the next famous brothel."
"Yeah! All right, let's go!"
Everyone left the inn and followed Kimura Takuya.
Kimura Takuya, meanwhile, followed the guidance of his Soul Energy and arrived in front of a hill.
Neji suddenly stiffened behind him.
His Byakugan flared open.
"Wait! I've found something suspicious!"
"What is it?"
Everyone quickly hid, while Kimura Takuya pretended to ask Neji what was going on.
Neji opened his Byakugan wider and looked toward the hill. What hill? It was clearly the entrance to a passage hidden by a sealing technique!
Neji told the others what he'd seen.
Kimura Takuya put on the same surprised expression as everyone else.
"There's an entrance hidden by a sealing technique? If it were one of our village's facilities, there'd be no need to hide it like this. It must be an enemy country's outpost!"
Everyone agreed with Kimura Takuya's reasoning. They were still close to Konoha, after all.
There'd be no reason to conceal one of their own facilities like that. It had to belong to an enemy country.
But the squad had another mission. A ninja's own mission had to come first.
Under normal circumstances, they should avoid any unrelated fights they could.
But this time, they'd found an enemy outpost built right beside Konoha.
This was outrageous. The enemy was practically at their doorstep, so they had to take out the outpost!
Lee immediately prepared to charge in recklessly.
But Might Guy stopped him.
"Lee, we don't know how many people are in this base or how strong they are. Rushing in would be no different from throwing your life away. Let's wait until Neji finishes scouting before deciding what to do."
"Sorry, Guy-sensei. I got carried away!"
Then they all waited for the results of Neji's Byakugan scouting.
The Byakugan couldn't see through the seal over the entrance, but it could still see what was inside the underground base.
As Neji surveyed the base,
Kimura Takuya watched his Byakugan and pondered a few things.
The Byakugan could see things directly, ignoring obstacles and light. It could even detect faint chakra invisible to ordinary people, and had a 360-degree field of vision.
That ability wasn't like ordinary eyesight at all.
It was actually a kind of spatial vision.
The Byakugan didn't see things as light reflected onto the retina. Instead, it sensed the presence of objects in space.
That was why the Byakugan's vision had no color, only the objects themselves.
Simply put, the Byakugan wasn't an optical device like a normal eye, but a kind of spatial perception device.
That was why it had a 360-degree field of vision and could see through obstacles and ignore light.
Because the Byakugan wasn't really an eye at all, but a spatial sensor.
Of course, it could also do what ordinary eyes did.
But the Byakugan should have been capable of far more than that!
In the original story, the Hyuga were a kekkei genkai clan that could rival the Uchiha.
But later on, they were completely overshadowed by the Sharingan.
Maybe it was because they weren't the main characters.
The Tenseigan, the Byakugan's evolved form, was still very powerful.
And by the era of the unburnable stuff, the Jōgan was even more powerful.
"Orochimaru!"
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