The wear on the stone bed was quieter than any testimony from White Zetsu.
It could not give a name.
But it could prove how long someone had lain there.
Using the pressure marks on the bed, the height of the tubes, and the drug residue, the Medical Squad reconstructed the occupant's approximate condition.
He had been at least sixty years old.
His spine and lower limbs had long been unable to support his full weight.
His chakra pathways had been extraordinarily powerful, but were in continuous decline.
His right hand had moved more frequently than his left, and the weapon beside the bed had also been placed on the right.
The occupant had not been an ordinary patient.
He had once possessed tremendous combat ability, but near the end of his life, he had depended on an external structure to stay alive.
One end of the white tubes connected to the Underground Root Network.
The other had originally connected to his back and limbs.
The tubes contained traces of both Uchiha chakra and a highly concentrated reaction from Hashirama cells.
The Medical Squad found scratches from repeated disassembly and reassembly at the tube fittings.
The old scratches were wide and deep, as though someone with unsteady fingers had made them using tools.
The new scratches were fine and hurried. Whoever had removed the fittings had been stronger, but lacked patience.
The two sets of marks were years apart.
The old man had once maintained the life-support structure himself. Later, after he had died or left, someone had hastily taken its most essential core.
There was no grave in the room, nor any intact remains.
Where the elderly occupant had ultimately gone remained a gap that had to be investigated.
Two kinds of power had coexisted here for years.
If