Main World.
Winter, Year 29 of Konoha.
Konoha, Underground Laboratory.
The first experiment had failed.
Orochimaru stood before the reaction vessel and opened the lid. A cloud of white steam poured out, carrying a strong scorched smell and an indescribable odor that instinctively made him gag. It was not a stench-he had smelled things ten thousand times worse on the battlefield. It was "wrong." Like burned hair mixed with rotting meat, or the smell drifting from a hospital incinerator.
He waited for the steam to clear, then scooped out a spoonful of powder with a long-handled spoon. The powder was black, not grayish brown. Its particles were coarse and uneven, some stuck together in hard clumps. He pinched up a little and rubbed it between his fingertips. Coarse and hard, like sand.
He put the powder into a test tube, added distilled water, and shook it. The powder did not dissolve, merely settling at the bottom, with a layer of oil floating on the water. The oil was cloudy and pale yellow.
He drew off some of the upper liquid with a dropper and dripped it onto a test strip. The strip changed color-dark blue, strongly alkaline.
"pH eleven," he murmured. "Too alkaline. It'll burn the mouth and esophagus."
He set the test tube on a rack and took a slide from under the microscope. There was a thin layer of powder on the slide, which he examined under the microscope. In his field of view, the particles varied in size and had rough edges. There were undecomposed muscle fibers-fine, tough, and tangled together. There were fat globules-large and small, their surfaces cracked. There were bone fragments-tiny, but their trabecular structure remained. And-he adjusted the focus-there were intact red blood cells. They had neither ruptured nor decomposed, merely dried out