Cells: Leave the Rest to Me

Uchiha Madara looked over the Clan Land, took a deep breath, and slowly closed his eyes. No one dared 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 Land. See if there are any survivors."

Upon receiving the order, the clansmen immediately got to work. Some put out fires, while others searched for people.

Uchiha Izuna seemed to have lost his soul as he stumbled toward the infirmary where Uchiha Gen 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 shout, Uchiha Madara immediately snapped back to his senses and looked over. The voice had come from the shrine.

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

Still, even though he had been prepared for it, he had to take a look. With 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? Wasn't it just that the place had been emptied out?

He turned to look, only for an expression of shock to appear on his face. He looked exactly like the clansman beside him.

Inside the shrine, the surviving elderly, weak, sick, disabled, women, and children had formed circles.

Looking closely, Chakra was 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 in the middle? Why did he need several hundred clansmen to transfer Chakra to him?

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

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

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

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

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

"Uh, yes!"

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

Inside the shrine, Uchiha Gen's skeletal body was wrapped in Chakra. Though he barely had an ounce of flesh on him, his body continued to absorb it like a sponge.

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

The great battle between the Uchiha Clan and the Senju Clan had ended, and many ninja clans were watching to see who had won and who had lost.

Yet after a long time passed, not a single member of either clan came forward to boast of their achievements. Instead, both sides fell silent, as if nothing had happened.

A week later, news arrived that the Uchiha Clan had launched a massive assault against the Kaguya Clan. The move left everyone deeply puzzled.

Afterward, the Kaguya Clan was pursued by the Uchiha all the way to the sea. Fewer than two hundred people remained, and they escaped by jumping into the ocean. All of the clan's holdings were uprooted.

Every clan following the news was dumbfounded. What kind of gunpowder had the Uchiha taken?

Why were they beating the Kaguya to death the moment they caught them?

Most importantly, and most confusingly, even if the Uchiha Clan was strong, it should not have been able to drive the Kaguya to such a state, right?

What those ninja clans did not know was that the Uchiha had deployed two Mangekyō Sharingan users against the Kaguya this time.

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!

Only half of the Clan Land had been relocated, and they could not bear to abandon the assets they had built up over the years. They could only try to fight to the death, but the Mangekyō Sharingan was no joke. Madara and Izuna fought them to the death in their armored giants.

In the end, only a scattered few from the Kaguya Clan managed to escape by jumping into the sea. It was hardly any different from extermination.

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

Two months passed in a flash. During that time, the ninja clans were unusually quiet, as if they had been frightened by the previous great battle. Everyone merely stretched their necks and watched.

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

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

Uchiha Gen lay on the bed and turned over, his restless feet kicking at the blanket.

A pair of slender, fair hands reached over from beside him and gently pulled the blanket over his exposed feet.

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

"Ah!"

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

He let out a heavy breath and deactivated his Sharingan.

"Sorry, I scared you."

"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 Gen slowly withdrew his gaze.

He extended his hands from beneath the blanket and examined his skin-and-bones arms, his expression calm.

He had been awake for two days now, 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 sort of mental illness. Uchiha Gen did not know why this was happening, but there was one thing he could be certain of: anxiety over his own strength was definitely at work here.

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

Hah... dying would have been better.

He had not expected that the Chakra Breathing Method he had stumbled upon by chance would pull him back from the brink of death.

From the clanswoman who had been caring for him, he had already learned what had happened while he was unconscious.

After he had fallen unconscious that day, he had entered a near-death state. Not only had most of his physical nerves died, but much of his flesh had charred and fallen away.

Yet in the final moment before his brain lost consciousness, he had still spoken a few words. By chance, the clansmen who caught him had heard them.

After that, several hundred people refined Chakra and supplied it to him. Uchiha Gen's cells had been remarkably capable as well, accepting all that Chakra of varying quality, rapidly converting it into biological energy, and continuously repairing his body's injuries.

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

"I never thought this body of mine was really so impressive. Or rather, cell enhancement truly is powerful. To keep its owner from dying, it really split itself desperately."

Touching his hair, Uchiha Gen already knew from the clansmen that it had turned completely white.

Hah...

As everyone knew, human cells could only divide a limited number of times. Human lifespan was determined by cellular division. When there were no longer enough cells to sustain the body's metabolism, when they could no longer support this great machine called the body, one's lifespan had reached its end.

There must have been another reason behind Hashirama's death back then. Could it be that after Madara left, he fell ill at heart?