The small courtyard by Konoha's eastern gate sank into the silent night, cut off from the faint clamor drifting from the village center as preparations for the Joint Chunin Ninja Exams continued. Kyohaku Uchiha slipped soundlessly into the house. Without lighting a lamp, he headed straight for a corner of the bedroom.
Hand seals. Release.
A floorboard slid aside without a sound, revealing a narrow stairway leading down, barely wide enough for one person. The deep darkness carried the faint scent of disinfectant and an indescribable aura of energy—the unique trace left behind by multilayered barriers and seals operating year after year.
Kyohaku descended the stairs, and the entrance quietly closed behind him. As the sensor lights flickered on one by one, the underground laboratory came into view.
It was utterly unlike the plain residence above, resembling a compact yet highly advanced research fortress. Every inch of the walls, floor, and ceiling was covered in dense, layered sealing formulas and barrier runes. They flowed slowly like living things, giving off a faint glow as they firmly locked all energy fluctuations and sound within this space, shielding them from White Zetsu's omnipresent and eerie perception.
Precision instruments stood in orderly rows: high-powered electron microscopes glimmered dimly, centrifuges remained quietly on standby, and complex glassware and tubing formed sets of cultivation and purification systems. Within the temperature-controlled incubators, various tissue samples could vaguely be seen pulsing in nutrient solution. The air was filled with the cold scent of metal, the slight acidity of reagents, and an extremely faint trace of blood.
Kyohaku's gaze slowly swept across everything before finally settling on a specially reinforced glass containment chamber at the center of the laboratory. Inside, a mass of pale, twisted biological tissue, seemingly somewhere between plant and animal, still writhed faintly. Dozens of