"What happened to your eyes?" Orochimaru had noticed something wrong from the start. Now that he had stabilized Minato's body, he finally asked.
"They're blind." Alongside his sense of loss, Anyo felt a faint relief, as though something long overdue had finally happened. The Mangekyō Sharingan was useful, but it was not what he relied on.
Orochimaru's pupils contracted twice. He crouched down to examine him carefully, then took a deep breath after confirming Anyo was not lying. "So you were researching Hashirama cells for these eyes. They have a flaw, don't they?"
"Not entirely." Anyo told Orochimaru what he had read on the Uchiha Clan's stone tablet.
"The power of all creation?" Orochimaru murmured the words a few times and sank into thought. A long while later, his gaze sharpened. Without ceremony, he took out a bottle and held it toward Anyo. "Give me some blood. Fill this up."
"Hey, Uncle, I'm already in this state, and you're still after my blood?" Anyo sounded a little aggrieved.
Orochimaru chuckled. "I want to study the cause of your blindness. Don't you want to know?"
"Amazing. That's my uncle for you." Anyo praised him, made a light cut on his finger, and let the blood run into the bottle, soon filling it.
As usual, Orochimaru extended his tongue to taste Anyo's blood. This time, he immediately noticed a difference and frowned deeply. The sweetness that had once been in the blood was completely gone, replaced by a spreading aura of death.
Orochimaru gave the blind Anyo a meaningful look. "I'm afraid your condition isn't much better than Minato's."
Anyo startled, but before he could ask, Orochimaru had already taken the bottle of blood into the laboratory.
Minato began speaking to Anyo within his soul. "Did my body really survive?"
"To be