Ever since he had been assigned to rest, Amamiya Maki had spent his days doing nothing.
But that peaceful life did not last long.
Without torturing people, he could not earn stress points.
In Konoha, he would die if he did not fight.
Even though Hanzō had yielded quite a few stress points, he was still a long way from his goal of becoming the Sage of Six Paths.
Besides, the Sage of Six Paths possessed the two rarest things in the Shinobi World.
No, not two Rinnegan.
A Rinnegan and a mother.
In Naruto, mothers were arguably rarer than the Rinnegan.
The corridors of Konoha Hospital were always filled with the distinctive smell of disinfectant alcohol mixed with medicinal herbs.
Maki pushed open the laboratory door, with Nonō close behind him.
Tsunade was already inside.
The laboratory was even more cluttered than usual.
Several rows of test tube racks stood neatly on the bench, each tube holding a purple toxin.
With her back to the door, Tsunade bent over a microscope, her fingertips racing across a notebook as she recorded the experimental data.
Under the fluorescent lights, the test tubes on the bench beside her gave off an eerie glow.
Maki knew that shade of purple all too well.
It was exactly the same color as the poison mist sprayed from Hanzō's Ibuse's venom sac on the battlefields of the Land of Rain.
Previously, Tsunade had used her exceptional medical chakra to forcibly suppress the poison spreading through the wounded, but she had never managed to develop a true antidote.
After being captured, Hanzō had handed over venom samples, but kept the core formula a closely guarded secret.
Ibuse's unique venom was his exclusive, secret formula.
In the entire Shinobi World, only he knew its complete composition.
Tsunade had