Toji seized the final moment of the one-eyed man's life:
"Impure World Reincarnation!"
The summoning formula slowly spread, covering the other's dying body.
"Use a living person as a vessel for a dead soul."
"A portion of the revived person's flesh, a portion of their personal information material, someone whose soul is in the Pure Land..."
Toji concentrated intensely.
As the summoning formula spread layer by layer, his chakra drained at a rapid pace.
At its core, the Summoning Technique was a type of space-time ninjutsu.
The farther away the summoning target was, and the greater the difference between tangible and intangible, the more chakra it required.
And the Pure Land...
It did not exist within the known Shinobi World.
In Toji's understanding, the Pure Land should have lain beyond the world itself. To summon a soul from there was extraordinarily difficult; it took an immense amount of chakra merely to sense the path leading beyond the world.
His body ran beyond its limits as he activated the Summoning Technique, continuously extracting mental and physical energy and converting it into chakra. His long-dormant heart began pounding violently.
It had been a long time since he had expended so much chakra.
"At a time like this, shouldn't I recite a few lines to set the mood?"
"Manifest from the Pure Land, guardian of the gospel!"
"Revive! Test Subject Number One!"
He had suppressed his true self for too long.
This was how Toji relieved his loneliness when he was alone, making the tedious and cruel experiments feel a little less suffocating.
Only this way could he consistently wear a mask before others.
Sweat soaked Toji's back.
As the incantation fell.
Somehow, he truly sensed the existence of the Pure Land beyond the world.
Though it lasted only an instant, Toji confirmed that he possessed talent in space-time techniques, as well as the aptitude to develop Impure World Reincarnation.
At the same time, a talisman slowly floated up from the surface of the one-eyed man's body, which was wrapped in the summoning formula.
Toji recognized that Pure Land talisman.
When Kabuto had used Impure World Reincarnation on Fu Yamanaka, hundreds or thousands of such talismans had wrapped around the vessel. Once they peeled away, the dead would return to the world like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.
This was a sign of success.
Snap!
In the end, Toji only succeeded in summoning a single Pure Land talisman.
Immediately afterward, under the influence of an irresistible force, cracks spread across the one-eyed man's body. It began to collapse and disperse, turning bit by bit into sand before Toji's eyes.
Whether the attempt succeeded or failed, a vessel and sacrifice paid the same price: the complete destruction of the body.
As for the soul of the deceased that had been summoned, once its attempt to take flesh failed, it should have returned to the Pure Land.
Toji carefully recorded this conclusion in his experiment notes.
Then, at the end, he added: Test Subject Number Two survived for 31 minutes.
Looking at the empty laboratory, Toji let out a long breath.
"Time really flies. I just sent off a batch of old test subjects, and a new batch will be arriving soon."
He picked up a broom, swept together the sand and dust left behind by the crumbled body, and carried it outside, intending to dispose of it all tomorrow. After finishing the cleanup, Toji clapped his hands and created an Earth Grudge Fear Clone, which headed toward the tree hollow in the Forest of Death.
Uchiha Yan felt that the two Genin materials she had brought Toji last month had been far too inadequate to demonstrate her worth.
She was a powerhouse with the Three-Tomoe Sharingan. How could the prey she chose be mere Genin?
Thus, after some screening this month, she set her sights on a rogue ninja group near the border of the Land of Rice Fields.
A rogue ninja group was a wandering gang cobbled together from missing-nin and underground shinobi. Murder, arson, robbery, and looting were their everyday activities. At the same time, exterminating rogue ninja groups was also a source of income for many ninja villages.
Killing everyone in it with Explosive Tags might wrong a few innocents, but detonating every other one would definitely leave some survivors.
Uchiha Yan was proud and possessed a strong sense of family honor. Even after defecting, she would not do anything that tarnished her name.
So, she chose targets like these, people who deserved death, rather than ordinary shinobi.
After days of observation, the rogue ninja group she had targeted had a fairly impressive lineup—two Chunin, along with four or five Genin.
Three days before the delivery date.
Under the cover of night, Uchiha Yan attacked them.
Facing strength equivalent to nearly two ordinary ninja squads, Uchiha Yan did not underestimate them and immediately activated her Three-Tomoe Sharingan.
During the battle, she restrained herself from using genjutsu to kill.
The village most skilled in genjutsu in the Shinobi World was Konoha, and Konoha's clan most skilled in genjutsu was the Uchiha.
If she left behind traces of deaths caused by genjutsu, the pursuit squads could easily connect them to her. Therefore, Uchiha Yan relied only on highly versatile techniques such as Fire Release, swordsmanship, and taijutsu.
This was precisely where the Sharingan's strength showed itself.
It not only granted its wielder talent in genjutsu; with the boost of dynamic vision, throwing techniques, swordsmanship, taijutsu... all abilities that relied on hand-eye coordination were greatly enhanced. It was practically a natural-born weapon of war.
Inside the dark cave.
Sinister Three-Tomoe Sharingan shone through the mask with an eerie red glow.
"Those eyes... she's an Uchiha!"
"Damn it, why would an Uchiha monster show up in a place like this?"
"This isn't what Lord Shinnō promised!"
Screams and furious shouts rose one after another.
In mere moments, the rogue ninja group was slaughtered to the last man.
Uchiha Yan used genjutsu to control the two Chunin leaders, intending to send them to the Forest of Death as this month's experimental materials.
She casually sealed the other corpses into a scroll, planning to later take them to the underground bounty exchange for reward money.
At that moment, she noticed that deep within the dark cave, a wealthy merchant hostage seemed to be imprisoned there, his breath weak.
Having vented her urge to fight through the Three-Tomoe Sharingan, Uchiha Yan was in a fairly good mood. She walked over and raised her Kunai, cutting through the cage's lock.
"You're lucky. You ran into me."
"You're safe now."
"No need to thank me. I'm merely someone acting on a whim—"
Before she could finish, the wealthy merchant hostage instantly shed his previous bedraggled appearance. His expression twisted as he launched into a furious tirade at Uchiha Yan:
"An Uchiha ninja, huh? Trash! Why didn't you come save me earlier? Do you know what I've suffered these past few days—"
He did not get to finish either.
A rasping sound escaped his throat as a Kunai pierced straight through it.
"Damn rogue ninja group. You even dared disguise yourselves as hostages."
Uchiha Yan expressionlessly pulled out the Kunai, then turned and left the cave with the two controlled human test subjects. Before leaving, she swept the place with a Fire Release technique, burning away every trace.
Like an escort, Uchiha Yan led the two controlled shinobi toward the Forest of Death to deliver materials to Toji.
Not long after she left...
A group of shinobi wearing masks and purple armor silently appeared in the cave that had just seen fierce battle. The middle-aged man leading them looked at the mess inside, as well as the wealthy merchant's corpse burned into charcoal, and said angrily:
"He's completely dead..."
"They touched our Sky Ninja Group and even killed the fat sheep. Investigate this!"
Before you continue