Inside the laboratory.
Zou Hyuga exchanged a glance with Vortex Shizuko. After she nodded, he took out a Sealing Scroll and retrieved the Fourth Hokage Couple's slumbering bodies.
Thanks to the fortune the Third had spent, the Fourth Hokage Couple looked just as they had back then, even younger than Kakashi.
Even in a vegetative-like state, Minato Namikaze still wore a faint, captivating smile. Zou Hyuga had to admit that Minato might be only slightly less handsome than he was.
Vortex Shizuko, meanwhile, could not take her eyes off Kushina's red hair. Since Uzushio Village's destruction, she had never seen another member of the Uzumaki Clan, and she had only heard of Kushina.
Seeing that familiar hair color again after so many years, she could almost feel their shared blood resonating, bringing back memories of her life in Uzushio Village.
That was one reason she had agreed to perform the Dead Demon Consuming Seal Technique despite knowing it would cost her life.
Besides securing a future for her daughter Karin, she wanted to awaken a fellow clan member from the old days and give the Uzumaki Clan one more member.
Oto Uchiha watched silently from the side, her gaze fixed on the Fourth Hokage Couple.
In her memory, the Fourth Hokage had been an exceptionally capable Hokage, one who had briefly restored normal relations between the Uchiha and the village. Unfortunately, he had died far too young.
After a moment of reflection, Vortex Shizuko stepped forward, took out a God of Death Mask, and put it on. Forming hand seals, she shouted in a low voice, "Dead Demon Consuming Seal Technique!"
As the Reaper Death Seal Technique took effect, familiar chakra fluctuations rippled through the air, and the God of Death's spectral form appeared before Zou Hyuga.
Zou Hyuga narrowed