Orochimaru Changes His Research Direction!

No heartbeat!

That was right—the Puppet Crow had no heartbeat.

No matter how much it resembled a living creature, a puppet was still a puppet. Jingyi would not devote all his efforts to puppets either. They were only a transitional measure, not worth too much of his attention.

The smile vanished completely from Orochimaru's face.

"This is a puppet?"

"Yes."

Jingyi deliberately picked up the cup himself, letting Orochimaru see clearly and confirming that he was not controlling the puppet.

It looked alive, yet it was a puppet, and it was not controlled by chakra threads...

Orochimaru's eyes immediately lit up. This puppet was worth studying in depth.

Get it!!

Though he dearly wanted to take the puppet away, Orochimaru restrained himself.

After all, the puppet still belonged to Jingyi. He had only shown it to him; he had not said Orochimaru could take it away.

To take this crow puppet, he would probably have to pay some price.

"Hahaha, I knew I hadn't misjudged you. Jingyi-kun, you're an interesting person."

"I think I'm quite interesting too."

Jingyi raised his hand. The Puppet Crow broke free from Orochimaru's grasp, hopped onto Jingyi's palm, and tilted its head as it examined Orochimaru.

I have to study it thoroughly.

Under the Puppet Crow's curious scrutiny, Orochimaru felt his breathing quicken.

A puppet actually had life.

This was too miraculous.

Orochimaru, who had always yearned for immortality, felt as though the door to a new world had opened before him.

He had to obtain a puppet like this. At the very least, he needed to get one.

After thinking for a moment, Orochimaru was about to speak when Jingyi beat him to it. "I need money."

He was not joking. Jingyi truly was short on money right now. Even if his debt to Orochimaru were written off, he would still be desperately short of funds.

Aside from repaying his debt to Orochimaru, most of his money had gone toward buying all kinds of materials and parts. None of those things were cheap. It could be said that Jingyi had invested all his savings into puppets.

From the time he had started making puppets until now, he had nearly lost count of how many he had made in total.

There were a lot of them, anyway. At least several hundred.

Jingyi planned to work harder and put together another batch of puppets, forging his own Puppet Corps.

When he got the chance, he would definitely let Sunagakure's puppet masters see what a fucking Puppet Corps really was!

Sunagakure's so-called Puppet Corps was merely a unit formed by a group of puppet-using ninja.

Jingyi's path, on the other hand, was for one man to become an army.

He wanted not only quantity, but quality as well.

As for how Orochimaru would study the puppets, Jingyi could not be bothered to think about it.

Without Tenseigan chakra, no matter how he studied them, he would never uncover their secrets.

Of course, if Orochimaru somehow developed something useful through researching them, Jingyi could only say, you're amazing!

Short on money?

This put Orochimaru in a difficult spot, because he was short on money too.

This was no joke. Orochimaru's income had basically all gone into building bases and purchasing various equipment. Constructing a research base required no small amount of money, to say nothing of his daily expenses and the costs of conducting all sorts of experiments.

It had completely drained Orochimaru dry.

He really could not come up with much money.

"I'll find a way."

Since the condition had been laid out, what was the point of talking about anything else? He just needed to find a way to make money.

As for what methods Orochimaru would use to get that money, that had little to do with Jingyi.

After leaving the border camp, Orochimaru rushed toward Konoha at top speed. A journey that would take others roughly two days took him only one.

To save time, Orochimaru did not even fear exhausting himself to death.

Upon returning to Konoha, Orochimaru headed straight for the Hokage Office Building.

"Teacher."

Orochimaru, who had arrived uninvited, was breathing slightly hard as he shut the door.

The Third Hokage looked up in confusion. "Orochimaru, do you need something from me?"

As the Third Hokage's favorite disciple, Orochimaru's nature was known to him better than anyone. Unless it was something important, Orochimaru would almost never take the initiative to visit him.

"About the research project you mentioned last time, Teacher—I think I can give it a try. However, I need the village's financial support. I need money."

There was a reason the Third Hokage favored Orochimaru above his other disciples. In everyone's eyes, Orochimaru was an all-around genius. He dabbled in every field of knowledge and excelled in every kind of ability, a ninja developing in every direction.

"A research project?"

The Third Hokage froze for a moment. He had once suggested that Orochimaru shift his research toward the village's development. Improving civilian life was the best path.

But Orochimaru had refused his suggestion.

Developing everyday household goods was not particularly difficult for Orochimaru. He simply had no interest in it.

Who would have thought that Orochimaru, who had rejected it without hesitation in the past, would change his mind today and bring up the project himself?

Though he was curious why his disciple wanted to take on the project, the Third Hokage was glad that Orochimaru was willing to do so.

He knew very well how capable his disciple was.

"Since you're willing to take over this project, I'm very pleased. The project has been ongoing, but progress has been limited. It would be best if you could take it over. You needn't worry about funding."

No one knew what the Third Hokage and Orochimaru discussed.

Soon afterward, Orochimaru entered the village's research and development base. In less than a month, a refrigerator bearing a white snake emblem was born.

With the village's promotion, it was quickly accepted by the villagers.

Holy crap!

Could Orochimaru have gone into appliance development just to make quick money?

Jingyi was a little dumbfounded when he learned the news.

"Pfft—hahahaha..."

The thought of Orochimaru racking his brains for ways to make money, even taking on a project he had once looked down on and lowering himself for the sake of money, made Jingyi burst into laughter.

Why was there such an inexplicable sense of comedy to it?

Orochimaru in a white lab coat developing household appliances was like Tsunade becoming an anti-gambling ambassador, or Jiraiya writing a youth romance novel about heartbreak. The contrast was absurdly huge.

Though it was a little ridiculous, Jingyi thought Orochimaru had done brilliantly. Now that he had made a refrigerator, could other household appliances be far behind?

They could not.

Once these basic household appliances were all available, everyday life would certainly become much more convenient.

With enough effort, perhaps the Shinobi World could enter an era of development ahead of schedule.

The truth proved that the Shinobi World's technology tree was not impossible to develop. The people doing research had simply gone down the wrong path.

As long as they settled down and focused, these people could definitely give everyone a surprise.

There was a rather unfunny joke in the Shinobi World: in the eyes of other countries, the people of the Land of Lightning were mountain barbarians—unreasonable brutes whose brains were supposedly made entirely of muscle. Yet the Land of Lightning's technological development far surpassed that of every other country.

Jingyi could not understand where those people found the nerve to mock the Land of Lightning's people as brutes with muscles for brains.

"I hope Orochimaru doesn't go so far down the road of civilian research that he never comes back."

After all, research could become addictive, and these things made money quickly. It was unlike the biological research he used to do, which was practically nothing but a money pit.

What Jingyi did not know was that Orochimaru was brimming with drive right then.

He was full of energy, wholeheartedly immersed in appliance development.

In the past, he would hardly have touched such things, much less respected projects like this. But now, constantly short of money, he had already tasted the benefits.

Tsunade came to the border camp once again, but this time she had arrived with a mission.

"Kushina's mood has improved a lot, right?"

Jingyi poured Tsunade a cup of water.