Drake Vallen
"Come with me." Fugaku turned around and pushed open a hidden door in the backyard of the Naka Shrine.
Behind the door was a stone staircase that sloped downwards, with Chakra- powered cold lights embedded in the walls on both sides, emitting a faint blue glow.
Drake followed behind Fugaku, his footsteps echoing dully on the stone steps. The further down they went, the lower the temperature of the air became, carrying a chilling scent of metal and potion.
At the end of the stone steps was a heavy alloy door, engraved with the Uchiha Clan's unique Sealing Jutsu —a rubbing taken from a stone tablet in the secret chamber of the Konoha Naka Shrine, and personally carved by the clan's most skilled Elder in Sealing Jutsu.
Fugaku raised his hand and placed it on the center of the seal. Chakra spread out along the patterns of the seal, and with a deep rumble, the alloy door slowly slid open.
The sight behind the door froze Drake in his tracks.
It was an underground space far larger than the Royal Laboratory of the Rune Kingdom.
Cool white light poured down from the Chakra light panel on the ceiling, illuminating every corner with exquisite detail.
On the left is a row of sophisticated culture dishes, each containing Hashirama Cells samples at different stages, encased in transparent glass domes. Each dish is connected to Chakra- driven thermostat, and the display screen shows jutsu symbols that Drake doesn't quite understand.
On the right was the gene sequencing area, where several high-precision instruments he had only seen in conceptual diagrams in academic journals were displayed—centrifuges, PCR Amplifier, Gel Electrophoresis Tank, and some other equipment that he didn't recognize at all and that was clearly not from this world's technology.
In the very center is a central experimental table that is over ten meters long. On the table are neatly arranged microscopes, micropipettes, and several Chakra Analyzer that are humming and running.
Fifteen young people dressed in white lab coats were engrossed in their work at their respective workstations.
Upon seeing Fugaku enter, the leader quickly put down the sample he was holding and hurried forward to greet him.
He was not old, at most in his early twenties, and next to the clan crest on his chest was a silver badge symbolizing his qualification as medical-nin.
"Clan Chief." He bowed to Fugaku, his gaze sweeping curiously over Drake, who was following behind Fugaku.
Fugaku stepped aside to make way for Drake and introduced him to the medical-nin: "This is Drake Vallen, the chief researcher of the North Blue. From today onwards, he will be joining your team."
He then turned to Drake, saying, "The Uchiha's current research team, consisting of fifteen medical-nin, were all selected and trained from within the clan over the past year."
They have a solid foundation in Chakra manipulation and the human body's meridians, but they are far from being good at the kind of 'genetic engineering' you mentioned.
From now on, you will learn from each other.
Drake was barely listening to Fugaku.
His gaze was completely drawn to the Chakra Analyzer on the lab table—the instrument's core component was a crystal ball engraved with Sealing Jutsu, which was now slowly rotating above a pale green liquid sample, emitting a soft fluorescence.
He circled the instrument three times, his fingers hovering in mid-air, wanting to touch it but not daring to. In just a few seconds, the expression on his face shifted from confusion to shock, and then from shock to a kind of almost manic fervor.
"Incredible..." he murmured, his voice trembling. "The patterns engraved in this crystal ball are not circuits, not light paths, and are not any kind of information processing medium that I know of."
How does it operate? Where does its energy come from? How are signals transmitted?
Good heavens, the operational logic of this thing is completely different from that of our computers—what language is it written in?
No, that's not right. It's not even 'written' in; these lines look more like... grown out.
He whirled around and practically lunged at another piece of equipment. He recognized it—it was a gene sequencer—but not entirely.
Its core component is connected to some kind of metal conduit he doesn't recognize. The metal surface gleams with a faint Chakra aura, clearly indicating that it has undergone some kind of special treatment.
"The thermal conductivity of this metal is wrong; it's not a characteristic of any known alloy at all... What method did you use to smelt this?"
Fugaku did not answer.
He simply leaned against the doorframe, a barely perceptible smile playing on his lips.
He had witnessed this scene more than once in the past year.
Every member of the tribe who stepped into this laboratory for the first time had a similar expression to Drake —the only difference being that they didn't scream and circle the equipment like he did.
"These are all from our hometown." A young female ninja with a ponytail peeked out from behind the lab table, her tone carrying a hint of barely concealed pride.
"This is Chakra Activity Detector, that's Meridian Energy Mapping Instrument, and that big thing on your right is Cellular-Level Chakra Micromanipulation Device —we're still figuring out how to use it; the instruction manual is too thick, it's all in classical Chinese."
She shook the thick, thread-bound ancient book in her hand, its pages yellowed, and the cover bearing several characters written in calligraphy that Drake couldn't understand.
Drake's eyes lit up for a moment, as if someone had lit two fires inside them.
"Do you have the instruction manual? Can I borrow it? No, I don't want to see the contents, I want to see how it's bound—no, I want to ask about the manufacturing process of these devices—damn, I have so many questions!"
What followed was quite a spectacle, even for Fugaku watching from the sidelines.
Drake questioned each of the fifteen medical-nin, from equipment operation to the principles of techniques, from the culture conditions of Hashirama Cells to the chromosomal structure of the Uchiha bloodline.
As he asked questions, he himself became the one being asked—a young ninja in charge of gene sequencing pointed at the double helix pattern jumping on the screen and bluntly threw out a series of questions about epigenetics.
Drake paused for a moment, then his eyes lit up even more. He rolled up his sleeves and began drawing and explaining on the whiteboard. Halfway through, he turned around and asked the ninja about the method of measuring Chakra meridian diagrams.
The two groups huddled together in front of the lab bench, talking faster and louder, their voices rising and falling, occasionally bursting into exclamations of Satori or arguments where neither could convince the other.
Fugaku stood in the corner for a moment, not disturbing them, then turned and walked back down the stone steps to the ground.
Inside the main hall of Naka Shrine, the setting sun shone through the wooden lattice windows onto the bluestone floor, casting a long shadow of the clan chief's sword at his waist.
He took out the briefing again and slowly traced the line "Marine Branch retreats" with his fingertip.
The fifteen Research Ninja in the laboratory, along with Drake, this "madman" from the North Blue, might just be the very foundation upon which the Uchiha Clan truly took root in this sea.
It wasn't the Sharingan, nor the Susanoo, but the buzzing instruments and the young people arguing heatedly in the lab.