Cells: Leave the Rest to Me

Uchiha Madara looked over the clan grounds, took a deep breath, and slowly closed his eyes. No one dared to speak. Silence spread through the air.

After a while, Uchiha Madara raised his head and swept his gaze over the remaining Uchiha clansmen behind him. At a rough count, their numbers had already fallen below a thousand.

"Clean up the clan grounds. See if there are any survivors."

Upon receiving the order, the clansmen immediately began clearing the area. Some put out fires, while others searched for people.

Uchiha Izuna looked as though his soul had left his body. Stumbling unsteadily, he made his way toward the infirmary where Uchiha Yuan had once stayed.

Madara saw him, but said nothing more. This time, the Uchiha had truly been crippled. Those damned Kaguya had gone back on their word. Not only had they failed to send troops as promised, they had even launched a sneak attack from behind.

This grudge... I, Uchiha Madara, will remember it!!

"Clan Head! Clan Head Madara!!"

Hm?

Hearing the shouts, Uchiha Madara immediately came back to his senses and looked over. The voices seemed to be coming from the shrine.

Heh, I suppose everything in the clan must have been cleaned out. That was to be expected.

Even though he had already anticipated it, he still had to take a look. After several leaps, he arrived beside the clansman who had called out.

"What is it?"

"Clan Head! Look inside the shrine!"

Uchiha Madara frowned slightly. Why was this clansman making such a fuss? Hadn't the place simply been emptied out?

He turned to look, only for an expression of shock to instantly appear on his face, identical to that of the clansman beside him.

Inside the shrine, the surviving elderly, weak, sick, disabled, women, and children were gathered in circles.

Looking closely, chakra was actually flowing across every one of their bodies.

What shocked Madara was not that these surviving clansmen were refining chakra, but where that chakra was going.

Who was the person surrounded in the center? Why did hundreds of clansmen need to send chakra to him?

Without hesitation, Uchiha Madara silently approached. He activated his Mangekyō Sharingan and focused his gaze, only to be shocked once more.

"Yuan is still alive!! No... his current condition..."

In an instant, surprise, confusion, incomprehension, and relief flashed through Madara's heart like a revolving lantern. His expression changed again and again.

After watching for a while longer, he did not disturb them. Instead, he quietly withdrew and said to the clansman still standing outside the shrine:

"Guard this place. No one is allowed to approach. Even if Izuna comes, don't let him near."

"Uh, yes!"

With that, Madara left, leaving behind a thoroughly confused clansman.

Inside the shrine, Uchiha Yuan's skeletal body was wrapped in chakra. Though he barely had any flesh on his bones, his body continued absorbing it like a sponge.

The night sky gradually brightened. At last, the night had passed. As the sun rose, a new day began.

The great battle between the Uchiha Clan and the Senju Clan had ended. Many ninja clans were watching closely, eager to know which side had won and which had lost.

Yet even after a long time, not a single person from either clan came forward to boast of their victory. Instead, both sides fell silent, as if nothing had happened.

A week later, news arrived that the Uchiha Clan had launched a massive attack on the Kaguya Clan. This move left many people deeply puzzled.

Soon after, the Kaguya Clan was chased by the Uchiha all the way to the coast. Fewer than two hundred people remained, and they escaped by jumping into the sea. Their entire clan industry was uprooted.

The clans following this news were all dumbfounded. What kind of medicine had the Uchiha taken? Why were they beating the Kaguya to death after getting hold of them?

The most crucial and puzzling part was that, even if the Uchiha Clan was strong, they should not have been capable of driving the Kaguya Clan into such a miserable state.

What those ninja clans did not know was that the Uchiha had deployed two Mangekyō Sharingan in their campaign against the Kaguya.

When the Kaguya Clan Head saw those two giant figures of different colors, his mind went blank. He could not even handle one of them, yet two had come at once!

The clan grounds had only been half relocated, and they were unwilling to abandon the industries they had built up. They could only try to fight to mutual destruction, but Mangekyō Sharingan were no joke. The brothers Madara and Izuna, clad in their armored constructs, beat them without mercy.

In the end, only a scattered handful of Kaguya managed to jump into the sea and escape. It was not much different from exterminating the clan entirely.

For a time, the Uchiha Clan's prestige rose another level. However, no one knew that after dealing with the Kaguya, Madara had prepared to enter seclusion to recuperate. The Uchiha had lost too many clansmen in their battle against the Senju and desperately needed fresh blood.

Two months passed in the blink of an eye. During that time, the various ninja clans were unusually quiet, as though the previous great battle had frightened them. Everyone simply stretched their necks and watched.

After absorbing the Kaguya's spoils of war, the Uchiha likewise began to rest and rebuild.

Within the repaired infirmary of the Uchiha Clan Grounds, in the same old spot.

Uchiha Yuan lay on the bed and turned over. His restless feet kicked at the blanket.

A pair of slender, pale hands reached over and gently pulled the blanket back over his exposed feet.

Though the movement was slight, Uchiha Yuan suddenly sprang upright. The Sharingan in his eye sockets spun wildly, startling the person beside him.

"Ah!"

The woman's scream tugged at his heartstrings, and only then did Uchiha Yuan realize where he was.

He let out a heavy breath and shut off his Sharingan.

"Sorry. I scared you."

"I-It's... it's fine."

"You should go out first. Let me calm down."

"O-Okay."

Watching the woman hurry away in tiny steps, Uchiha Yuan slowly withdrew his gaze.

He pulled his hands out from beneath the blanket and examined those skin-and-bone arms, his expression calm.

He had already been awake for two days, but he kept waking from dreams with a start. Logically, he should not have had any nightmares to speak of, but...

"War trauma? Or a side effect of the Mangekyō Sharingan?"

Or perhaps some kind of mental illness. Uchiha Yuan did not know why this was happening, but there was one thing he could be certain of: anxiety over his own strength had to be playing a part.

He was too weak. In a world like this, he not only had to worry about dangers and attacks that could occur at any moment, but also about the unseen gaze of Black Zetsu and Hagoromo Otsutsuki. His nerves were constantly on edge.

Sigh... maybe it would have been better to just die.

He had never expected the Chakra Breathing Method he had stumbled upon by chance to pull him back from the brink of death.

From the clansman who had been caring for him, he had already learned what had happened during his coma.

After he lost consciousness that day, he had fallen into a near-death state. Not only had most of his physical nerves died, but much of his flesh had carbonized and fallen away.

Yet at the final moment before his brain slipped into unconsciousness, it had still forced out a few words through his mouth, words that were fortunately heard by the clansman who caught him.

After that, hundreds of people refined chakra to sustain him. Uchiha Yuan's cells had also done their part, accepting chakra of every quality and rapidly converting it into biological energy, continuously repairing his body's injuries.

It was not until nearly two months later that he woke from his coma. During that time, someone took turns feeding him chakra every day.

"I never expected this body of mine to be so formidable. Or rather, cell enhancement really is amazing. To keep their master from dying, they split themselves like mad."

He touched his hair. Uchiha Yuan had already learned from the clansmen that it had turned completely white. Sigh...

As everyone knew, human cells could only divide so many times. A person's lifespan was determined by cell division. When the body no longer had enough cells to sustain its metabolism, when they could no longer support the great machine that was the body, one's lifespan had reached its end.

"Perhaps Hashirama's death back then had another hidden cause. Could it be that after Madara left, he developed a sickness of the heart?"