Yamato clutched his chest. Although the blue-green wood-grain markings on his cheeks had faded, his fingers were still trembling.
Tsunade circulated her healing chakra through his body several times, her expression growing uglier.
Goten stood, walked around the counter to Yamato, and looked down at him for two seconds.
"Move your hand."
Yamato looked up. Before he could react, Goten had already extended two fingers and pressed them against his chest.
"Don't move."
A golden column of ki poured in through his fingertips.
Yamato arched backward, his back slamming into the chair. The chair legs scraped across the floor with two piercing screeches.
This was no gentle channeling of chakra, but a force entirely outside this world's system, brutally grinding through every meridian in his body.
Before this power, his Wood Release energy behaved like a cat caught by the scruff, not daring to struggle.
Yamato's body went rigid, and the blue-green markings on his neck vanished completely.
"Urgh..."
He spat a mouthful of black blood onto the floor. Within it was a thumb-sized cluster of blue light that flickered twice before going out.
Sakura crouched beside him, staring at the puddle of black blood.
"This isn't ordinary stagnant blood. There's some kind of synthetic energy residue mixed into it..."
Tsunade reached out to examine the blood, then withdrew her hand.
"Hashirama cells don't produce anything like this."
Goten withdrew his fingers and looked down at Yamato.
"What Orochimaru put inside you back then wasn't pure."
Yamato braced himself against the table and sat upright. Sweat still streamed down his forehead, and he took several gasping breaths before speaking.
"What do you mean...?"
"The patterns of Wood Release energy inside you follow exactly the same lines as the markings on those fragments I have."
Goten did not take out the