Main World.
Year 26 of Konoha, autumn.
Mechanical Star, Mechanical City, Underground Laboratory.
Pallid light enveloped the entire space in a cold, warmthless glow. Luminous ores were embedded in the walls, their edges sharp, like countless open eyes. The air was thick with the pungent smell of disinfectant and something deeper, indescribable, instinctively unsettling-the scent of "life being altered."
Sasori stood in the center of the laboratory. He had removed his deep-purple, high-collared uniform and changed into a fitted, silvery-white surgical gown densely covered in runes. His hair had been shaved off, exposing a pale scalp marked with fine red lines-the surgical markings. His glasses lay on the control console; he was not wearing them. Without the glasses obscuring them, his golden serpent eyes looked especially sharp under the pallid lights, like two blades still in their sheaths.
Behind him stood rows of enormous growth chambers. Inside them, assorted biological tissue samples, mechanical parts, and unfinished organs were submerged in fluid. Those organs pulsed slowly in the pale-green nutrient solution, as though still breathing. In front of him was an open operating table. A white sterile cloth covered it, with more than a dozen "materials" arranged neatly on top-each worth a fortune. Each embodied the Empire's painstaking efforts. Each was a cornerstone of his "rebirth."
Sakura Haruno stood at the laboratory entrance, holding a cup of tea that had gone completely cold. She wore the Consort Ying's dark-red formal gown, her long pink hair tied in a high ponytail, her brow furrowed tightly enough to crush a fly. Sasori had summoned her to "witness history." But what she saw was not history. It was madness.
Tsunade stood beside her, long golden hair loose over her shoulders, arms crossed, her brow equally tightly furrowed. Toyotomi Yinglang had summoned her to "help