Orochimaru had truly gone mad this time. Half the makeup on his face had been washed away by tears, leaving him looking like a ghost that had just crawled out of a morgue.
He clutched the black mass of energy he had just dug out of the brain of Kara's leader, Jigen.
The thing looked like a chunk of moldy sludge. Under the blue glow of the cultivation tank, it twitched every now and then, sending chills down the spine.
"Lord Yoru, take a look. This thing is truly the work of a genius."
As he spoke, he reached out with a glove stained with medicine residue and old blood to touch it.
The black grime beneath his fingernails looked even more conspicuous by comparison.
"This is the source of that so-called Karma?"
Yoru leaned back in the laboratory's squeaking swivel chair and casually pulled out a moldy-smelling cigarette from who knew where.
He did not light it. He simply held it between his lips and stared at that lump of black sludge as if it were trash.
The thing felt freezing cold in his hand, like ice wrapped around shards of ice.
"This is the cheat the Ōtsutsuki Clan uses to back up their consciousness inside someone else's brain."
Orochimaru pushed the jar containing the Karma beneath the surgical lamp. Its shade was coated in a thick layer of greasy soot, as though it had not been wiped in years.
He stuck out his absurdly long tongue and licked his lips, trailing a hint of green saliva.
"I used to think Living Corpse Reincarnation was perverse enough. Who would have thought those alien monkeys played even dirtier?"
"This Karma is essentially a highly compressed genetic code with self-repair capabilities."
Yoru chewed the flavorless gum in his mouth, picked it