While the Akatsuki Organization was adjusting its strategy, Stone Village's technology tree underwent another massive explosion. Behind an alloy door deep underground, the commotion was so intense that even the ground trembled. The air was thick with heavy engine oil, preservatives, and the raw iron scent of brass welding. Vast cold-white shadowless lamps brightly illuminated the several-hundred-square-meter alloy laboratory. Yoru stood with both hands in the pockets of his black trench coat, his soles making sticky slapping sounds against the metal floor streaked with oil. Orochimaru sat in a steel swivel chair spotted with dried bloodstains, gripping an oil-smeared screwdriver, so excited that drool was nearly dripping from the corner of his mouth onto his collar.
"Lord Yoru, look! This is practically a gift from the gods!" Orochimaru spun around sharply. His golden vertical pupils were bloodshot, and the darkness beneath his eyes looked as though it had been smeared with soot from the bottom of a pot. Clearly, he had been pulling all-nighters in the basement for days again. He ripped the black cloth off a glass tank behind him, two men tall and filled with preservative fluid bubbling green, then pointed at Hidan's severed limbs inside. Though chopped into more than a dozen pieces, they still twitched faintly. "That lunatic from the Jashin Faith may be brainless, but the chakra flow inside this immortal body is so perfect that it resembles a naturally formed artificial meridian diagram!"
As he spoke, Orochimaru used grime-covered finger cots to pick up a palm-sized cylindrical vial from a temperature-controlled case nearby. Its casing was made of special obsidian, and it was translucent. A bright green viscous liquid flowed within, occasionally emitting harsh ionizing hisses that dyed the entire room green. "I extracted active samples from his tissue slices, fused them with the