Shikotsumyaku

To Kanna, the Kaguya Clan seemed like primitive people living in some remote place in his previous life. He wasn't looking down on them; it was just that their standard of living was completely out of touch with the rest of the world. They dug their own wells for water, cooked over wood fires, hunted beasts for food, and built their homes out of timber. There really wasn't much to see at their settlement—at most, it was something novel to look at.

Shime took Kanna around the settlement. When they reached a slightly tidier, more ornate shrine, he pointed at it and said, "That's where we worship our ancestors. You'd call it, um, an ancestral temple. Right, an ancestral temple."

Kanna's eyes lit up. Keeping his expression neutral, he said, "So that's the ancestral temple. How about we go inside and take a look?"

Along the way, Kanna had asked to see nearly every unusual building they passed, so asking to visit the shrine now didn't seem out of place.

Shime didn't care either way. "Go ahead if you want, but it's just a pile of dead bones. What's there to see?"

Should I admire how straightforward he is, or wonder if he's got rocks for brains? Kanna thought, amused. But are those bones what I'm looking for?

The Kaguya Clan's ancestral temple had no serious security. An old man served as a night watchman, keeping an eye on the place more as a formality than anything else. After all, not every clan had a stone tablet or some other treasure left behind by their ancestors, like the Uchiha.

Kanna's heart sank. This was bad. No matter how careless the Kaguya Clan was, surely they wouldn't completely disregard the bones left by someone who had awakened Shikotsumyaku? Could it be that there was nothing here at all?

Shime spoke with the old man, who was lounging in the sun. The old man waved them inside.

As soon as Kanna entered, disappointment washed over him. Inside the shrine stood row upon row of memorial tablets, with a ring of burning candles around them. That was all.

"Haha, so these are the Kaguya Clan's ancestors." Kanna forced a smile, trying to hide his disappointment.

So "dead bones" had just meant the dead. It seemed he really had been overthinking it.

But he couldn't blame himself. He'd heard people called "hardheaded," "spineless," or "good-for-nothing," but he'd never heard anyone called "dead bones."

"That's everything. The clan comes here to pay respects once a month," Shime said listlessly.

"Is that so? As a junior, I should pay my respects too." Still unwilling to give up, Kanna stepped forward and bowed several times. He also inspected the memorial tablets closely, hoping to find something hidden among them. Bones, for instance. Bones, or maybe more bones.

That was what all the stories said, wasn't it? What you were looking for was right under your nose.

But there was nothing. Apart from a fine layer of dust, there was nothing around the tablets.

There was nothing in the shrine, and after searching the rest of the settlement, Kanna still hadn't found any useful information. With no other choice, he finally took his leave.

Before leaving, he stuck to his original plan and decided to give the Kaguya Clan the Flying Thunder God Kunai.

"Sorry for the trouble. I'm glad I got to visit the Kaguya Clan. Um, this is a gift—I carved it myself. Please accept it." Hui held out the Flying Thunder God Kunai in both hands, his big eyes blinking with an innocent look.

He hadn't given up after all. There was always another day. He could come back to "visit" every few nights until he found what he was looking for!

"Oh, a gift." The Kaguya Clan Head accepted it readily. Then he felt around his waist and drew out something gleaming. "If you give me a gift, I have to give one in return. Here, kid, take this. This is the real thing."

Bones! Bones! Bones! When he saw the Kaguya Clan Head preparing to return the gift, Kanna silently chanted, Give me a bone, just one bone! But fate played another trick on him: the Kaguya Clan Head gave him a kunai too—an actual iron kunai, sharpened to a keen edge. Its blade gleamed silver and looked quite sharp.

After exchanging gifts, Kanna was ready to leave. But just then, he caught sight of something white from the corner of his eye.

The Kaguya Clan Head lifted his robe and casually hung the Flying Thunder God Kunai from his waist. Beside it, a white bone magatama threaded on a thick cord swayed slightly with his movement.

Kanna's pupils contracted, his gaze fixed firmly on the magatama.

The next moment, his expression returned to normal. He smiled, said goodbye to the Kaguya Clan members, and set off for home.

"The Kaguya Clan inherited its bloodline from Otsutsuki Kaguya, so of course the tomoe is its symbol. It can't be anything else. It has to be it!"

Once home, Kanna suppressed his excitement and went through his usual routine of training and eating. His thoughts were already racing, but he showed no sign of it.

That night, Kanna sat on his bed with a serious expression, thinking something over.

"I can't make a move! At least, I absolutely can't do it for a while!" Kanna silently warned himself. "If I steal that bone tonight, I'll be a prime suspect. Besides, the Flying Thunder God Kunai is already with the Kaguya Clan. There's no need to rush. Don't rush."

But then Kanna reconsidered. Had he been looking at this the wrong way?

"No! No, no! I only need a little Shikotsumyaku DNA. It's not like I have to keep that bone magatama. Hahaha! That's right, I'll steal the bone tonight! Then I'll scrape off a little bone powder, run an experiment, and return it!"

Once he'd figured that out, Kanna finally felt better. He began replenishing his chakra, then, without even taking off his clothes, pulled up the covers and lay down to feign sleep.

At three in the morning, Kanna opened his eyes. Highland activated!

In the Kaguya Clan Head's room, a shadow silently appeared.

"Good. No one noticed." Kanna slowed his movements and began studying the room by moonlight.

Someone was fast asleep on the bed at the far end of the room. To Hui's left, a white robe of the kind commonly worn by the Kaguya Clan hung from a wooden clothes stand. Two thick cords dangled beneath it: one held the Flying Thunder God Kunai Kanna had given Hui, and the other held the bone magatama.

Kanna matched his breathing to the sleeping Kaguya Clan Head's, then gently lifted the robe from the clothes stand. The next instant, the Flying Thunder God Technique activated, and he returned home in a flash.

"Success!" Kanna thought, thrilled. He went to the window and held the magatama in his palm beneath the moonlight. Taking out the iron kunai the Kaguya Clan Head had given him, he crouched and placed a sheet of white paper on the ground. Then he slowly scraped at the magatama's central hole.

The bone magatama was incredibly hard, almost like some kind of metal. Still, it was an inanimate object, no match for the living Shikotsumyaku bloodline bearer. To avoid making a sound, Kanna scraped with extraordinary care. He worked up a sweat, but eventually scraped off about three grams of bone powder.

Kanna folded up the paper and wiped away his sweat. After spending half an hour restoring his chakra, he returned everything without anyone noticing. It had all gone smoothly!

After using the Flying Thunder God Technique to teleport home again, Kanna breathed a sigh of relief. Then he pinched up a little bone powder, rubbed it onto the Highland on his chest, and circulated his chakra.

Nothing happened. Kanna's expression darkened.

"It should definitely be bone from someone who awakened Shikotsumyaku. So either Highland has limited functions and can't analyze bloodlines, or I'm going about it the wrong way."

Thinking of Madara's act of transplanting flesh into his body, Kanna pondered for a moment, picked up the kunai, and made a shallow cut across his chest. Then he poured half of the bone powder into the wound.

The next instant, the Flying Thunder God Formula inside the Highland began to fade rapidly, and a new pattern of symbols emerged on its own. Crack! Crack! As time passed, Kanna's bones began to crack and pop throughout his body, while the wound on his chest miraculously closed.

More bones began growing across his abdomen, beneath his arms, and at his temples, shielding his vital points. The bones in his ears, fingers, and spine grew harder, while his ribs twisted slightly and interlocked, forming an unbreakable bone shield!

"So this is Shikotsumyaku? What an incredible power! No wonder it's the strongest bloodline for close combat! With these bones, my combat strength has definitely reached Chunin level—maybe even higher!"

But that wasn't all. Once Kanna's body had adapted to the power of Shikotsumyaku, a new stream of consciousness flowed into his mind.

"What's this? Dance of the Larch?"

By controlling the bone-forming and bone-resorbing cells, he could create more, harder bones, then make them burst out from all over his body in a hedgehog-like defense. Wasn't that the Dance of the Larch?

Kanna had a vague realization. It seemed that after receiving flesh, the Highland could also extract a piece of memory related to ninjutsu. It was like a different kind of lottery.

That wasn't so strange, either. The autopsy unit could extract the memories a person had held in life from their corpse. It wasn't surprising that Highland could do the same.

According to the memories he'd received, this newly acquired technique wasn't called the Dance of the Larch. But its principles and form were much the same, so Kanna decided to call it the Dance of the Larch anyway.

"The Dance of the Larch's densest defense should be around the chest. That means this bone magatama was made from the chest bone of someone who awakened Shikotsumyaku." Kanna's eyes flickered as he murmured to himself.

Hiss, hiss, hiss, hiss! Kanna tensed his whole body, and one after another, gleaming white bones burst through his flesh, jutting out in a savage display. Against them, he looked like a demon from hell.

Unlike other ninjutsu, Shikotsumyaku's power lay in strengthening and producing bones. Manipulating their shape consumed very little chakra, so even with Kanna's current chakra reserves, he could use the Dance of the Larch freely. Of course, his bones were nowhere near as hard as Kimimaro's.

"Can it control flesh to a certain extent, too, not just cells related to bones?" Kanna mused, looking at the places where bones had broken through. Not a drop of blood had flowed out.