Crack.
The crystal jade shattered outright, spraying fragments all over the workbench. Rinto swore, "Fuck," and slammed the remaining half-piece into the iron box by his feet. The box was so full that scraps spilled over the sides and the lid would not close, all of it material ruined by explosions over the past three days.
He slumped backward, the chair legs scraping a long, piercing screech across the concrete floor. Sinking into the chair, he closed his eyes and rubbed between his brows. His head was full of shattered patterns, every winding path leading to a dead end.
The idea had first come to him while replicating Lava Release-could the same carrier hold a Lava Release engraving today, then work as Explosion Release tomorrow without needing to be engraved again?
He had first tried isolation chambers, giving each of the two configurations its own territory and opening a gate to release material when switching. But the water-and-earth chakra exploded the instant it touched the fire-and-wind chakra, ruining seven or eight pieces of crystal jade in a row. Then he had switched to dual-track channels, each taking its own route, but residual chakra mixed during the switch, and it still exploded. Nested isolation layers, buffer structures-he had tried everything he could think of. Either they would not switch, or they collapsed outright. Not one worked.
After lying there with his eyes closed for a long time, he straightened up and rummaged through the towering pile of discarded notebooks at the edge of the desk, looking for the original Lava Release data. Instead, he dug out a battered notebook from the Hashirama Cells experiments half a month ago. Its pages were crumpled, their water-damaged edges curling. He flipped through it idly, only intending to find an anchor-point parameter, but came across a crooked line penciled into a blank margin, something he had jotted down after working through the night: Don't lock them rigidly. The harder you lock them, the more they explode. Let the anchor points move with the flow.
Rinto froze.
He held that page and stared at it for nearly five minutes, his fingertips crumpling its edge. Until now, he had been stubbornly focused on engraving two complete configurations in advance, storing them safely, and releasing whichever one he needed. But if tracking anchor points could adjust with the flow of chakra, then could he... simply not engrave complete configurations in advance?
Something seemed to explode in his head. The dead ends he had spent three days circling suddenly opened up. He lunged forward, knocking the workbench with a clang, and reached for a charcoal pencil, only to sweep the pencil box onto the floor. Charcoal pencils rolled everywhere. He could not be bothered to pick them up. Holding the half-broken one in his hand, he scribbled wildly on blank scrap paper, muttering nonstop, "Fuck, I had it all wrong. The more isolation, the more explosions... just keep one main channel, build whatever's needed, dismantle it afterward... no, the clearing has to start earlier. If the residue isn't fully drained, it'll still explode..."
The lines on the paper were an illegible mess. He revised and crossed things out, crossed them out and revised again. Where he drew something wrong, he simply scribbled it into a black lump, without a single proper annotation. Halfway through, the pencil tip wore flat. He tossed it aside, bent down, and felt around on the floor until he found an intact one. After just two strokes, he suddenly stopped again, frowning at the paper for a long time before swearing, "My brain must be waterlogged. Put the anchor points there, and of course it'll collapse." He slashed out half the page and started over.
As he drew, he suddenly stopped and got up to rummage through everything for the discarded Ice Release interlocking configuration drafts. He scattered paper all over the floor and searched for more than ten minutes. Once he found them, he glanced over them twice, tossed them aside again, and sat down to continue the diagram, as though the search had never happened.
When the door was gently pushed open, he did not even look up. Kabuto had barely stepped inside when he trod on shattered crystal jade and nearly slipped. He held only two glass tubes, with his own notebook tucked beneath his arm. He had not come specifically to deliver anything; he had left a centrifuge tube here during an earlier Cursed Seal test.
"Mr. Rinto, Lord Orochimaru asked me to bring these samples on my way over. Lava Release from Iwagakure, Boil Release from Kirigakure, and three samples of Uchiha fire-nature chakra." Kabuto slid the glass tubes into empty slots on the materials rack, knocking over a crooked stack of scrap paper as he did so. It scattered across the floor. His face went white, and he hurriedly crouched to pick it up, straightening the sheets one by one and carefully blowing off even the iron filings clinging to them. His hands were trembling slightly when he stacked them back at the edge of the desk.
Rinto grunted through his nose. His pencil never stopped, and he did not spare Kabuto so much as a glance.
After collecting the papers, Kabuto crouched on the floor to sweep up the fragments. In a corner, he found a spoiled rice ball and picked that up too, stuffing it into the rubbish bag as he casually complained, "Those people downstairs in research and development who work on ninja tool improvements keep blocking me at the department entrance every day. They want me to ask you for tips on basic solidification. Someone even offered top-grade force-conducting crystals from the Land of Wind in exchange for blueprints. I turned them all away and told them you had no time to see anyone. They keep blocking me every day. I've been taking detours these past two days."
He added offhandedly, "There's been absolutely no movement from Root lately. Lord Orochimaru spoke to Danzo, and the Anbu haven't been hanging around either. People from the Hokage's office asked about your progress twice, but his lordship put them off, saying you were doing supporting research on military ninja tools."
"Got it." Rinto finally lifted his head, his brows tightly knitted. "Don't tell me about this bullshit again. Just turn them away. Don't bother me."
"Understood," Kabuto hastily replied. He took a fresh roll of gauze from his pocket and set it beside Rinto's hand. "The cut on your fingertip has been open for days. Please bandage it, or your grip on the knife could slip." Then he found the centrifuge tube he had left in the cabinet beneath the workbench, quickly pocketed it, and tiptoed out. As he closed the door, he heard the click of a bench vise tightening inside.
Rinto spent nearly another hour poring over the drawing, revising and crossing things out. Finally, he tossed the pencil aside, grabbed a piece of starfall iron, and clamped it into the vise with a click.
When he began cutting, he turned the desk lamp up to its brightest setting and leaned his face extremely close to the iron, even lightening his breathing. Before he had engraved a third of it, his knife hand went numb. He shook it out for a long time. Blood seeped from the split in his fingertip and smeared onto the starfall iron, but he ignored it and leaned in again, his eyes almost touching the metal.
One cut went a fraction off course. He swore, "Fuck," immediately unclamped the starfall iron and threw it away, then started over with a fresh piece. He worked into the small hours, long after the sky outside had gone completely dark. He never switched on the main light, working only beneath the desk lamp overhead, the engraving knife in his hand never stopping. At one point, he yawned and tears blurred his eyes. He wiped them away with his sleeve, smearing charcoal dust and iron filings all over his face without caring.
By the time he finished the final stroke, the sky outside had turned pale. He removed the starfall iron, his hand so stiff that he had to flex it for a long time before walking over to the steel target plate and feeding in a trace of chakra through his fingertip.
Thick Lava Release acid sprayed out instantly. White smoke hissed from the thick steel plate, and a deep pit melted into it in moments. He pressed the trigger point on the side of the metal, but the clearing lagged half a beat. The residual water-and-earth chakra collided with the emerging fire-and-wind chakra, and the starfall iron instantly became frighteningly hot. He hurriedly cut off his chakra, but he was still a little too late. A small section of the pattern along the edge broke apart.
"Fuck." Swearing with the metal in his hand, he spun around and lunged back to the workbench. He grabbed the drawing and revised it, moving the clearing trigger earlier and packing the anchor-point locking positions more densely. Afterward, he stared at the drawing for a long time, decided the anchor points were still positioned incorrectly, and crossed them out to revise them again. He spent nearly an hour on it before taking a fresh piece of starfall iron and engraving it anew.
This time, he engraved even more slowly, only finishing at noon. Kabuto brought a meal in the meantime and left it in the corner. Rinto never so much as glanced at it.
The next test finally went smoothly. The instant the Lava Release acid stopped, the residue drained completely away. The anchor points in the channel rapidly rebuilt the structure, and in less than a blink, an Explosion Release shock wave slammed into the steel plate, blasting out a large crater without the slightest hitch.
He tested it seven or eight times, switching back and forth between Lava Release and Explosion Release. It did not collapse again, but by the fifth switch, the starfall iron started heating up and felt painfully uncomfortable in his hand. He clicked his tongue, tossed the metal onto the desk, and grabbed scrap paper to record the data. His handwriting flew across the page in scrawls only he could read.
As he wrote, his elbow knocked over his water cup, spilling half a cup across the freshly written sheet. The ink spread into a broad smear. He cursed, tore away the wet paper, crumpled it up, and threw it out. He did not rewrite it; the data was all in his head anyway. He simply took a fresh sheet and hastily jotted down a few key parameters.
Only after putting down the pencil did he remember the meal in the corner. He walked over and touched it. The lunch box had long since gone completely cold. He lifted the lid and sniffed. It smelled slightly sour, so he put the lid back on and tossed it into the rubbish bag. After rummaging through a drawer for a long time, he found half a bag of soda crackers that had been sitting there for nearly a week. He opened it and gnawed on two. They were too dry to swallow, so he picked up a bottle of cold water and gulped down more than half of it, choking and coughing.
He had just tossed aside the cracker bag and picked up a fresh piece of starfall iron, intending to see whether three natures could work, when the laboratory door opened.
Orochimaru walked in. His golden slit pupils swept over the pockmarked steel plate before settling on the hot piece of starfall iron on the desk. His lips curved in his habitual, hissing smile.
Without speaking, he first picked up the newly engraved starfall iron and fed chakra into it through his fingertips. Lava Release and Explosion Release switched seamlessly, acid and shock waves striking the steel plate in succession. Even his fingertips tightened slightly. People in the Shinobi World could struggle their entire lives, and awakening even one kekkei genkai made them a heaven-sent genius. Yet this little piece of black iron could let a Genin who had not even mastered nature transformation casually use two kekkei genkai.
"Kabuto told me you've come up with something interesting these past couple of days." Orochimaru put down the starfall iron and looked at Rinto, unable to conceal the fervor in his eyes.
"Just trying things." Rinto casually stuffed the scrap paper bearing the parameters into a drawer, his tone flat and unruffled.
Orochimaru moved half a step closer, lowering his voice, which carried a thoroughly enticing note. "This tracking anchor-point system of yours couldn't be better suited to the Cursed Seal. With just one compatible model, test subjects could switch natures as needed, and it could perfectly accommodate fluctuations in senjutsu chakra."
Watching Rinto's profile, he sweetened the offer further. "You wouldn't have to touch living subjects. You'd only need to provide the model blueprints. If it succeeds, you can have anything you want-chakra samples from the One-Tail through the Nine-Tails, diagrams of every forbidden jutsu sealed away in Konoha. Even the source of Ryūchi Cave's Senjutsu, I could get it for you."
Rinto tapped a fingertip lightly against the workbench without speaking.
He did indeed want tailed beast chakra samples. The Tailed Beasts' naturally stable composite configurations, and the logic of the yin-yang balance within them, were things he currently had no grasp of at all. They would be tremendously useful to his research.
But after just two seconds of silence, he raised his eyes to Orochimaru, his gaze full of impatience. He could not even be bothered with any further explanation, offering only a few flat words. "No. Don't bring this up again."
Orochimaru's smile faded a little. "Don't you want to take Senjutsu configurations and kekkei genkai configurations a step further?"
"I'll handle my own research." Rinto frowned, the irritation in his voice growing more obvious. "Don't come to me with anything involving human bodies. Don't make me repeat what I've already said."
A trace of darkness passed through Orochimaru's golden pupils. He said slowly, "You need to understand. Even if you refuse, Danzo, the Third, and the other four great shinobi villages will all come scrambling for this thing like mad once they learn it exists. Only by cooperating with me can you sit here and conduct your experiments in peace, with no one daring to knock on your door or touch your research materials."
Rinto tugged at the corner of his mouth in a smile without much warmth, his tone utterly indifferent. "Whatever."
Cut off my materials? Take back the laboratory? He did not take either to heart at all. More than ten years ago, in a dilapidated wooden hut, he had not even been able to afford a proper piece of black iron, yet he had still engraved a Wind Release configuration. These things had never been his weak point.
Orochimaru stared at him for quite some time, suppressing his surging emotions. Pushing this kid too far would only backfire. Nothing got through to him; research alone was his obsession. Force would not work. Suddenly, he smiled again, as though the earlier probing had never happened. "All right, pretend I never said it. Carry on. I won't disturb you."
With that, he turned and left without another word.
The instant the door closed, Rinto walked over and locked it with a click, then raised the barrier by two levels. Leaning against the door, he closed his eyes and took a breath. After staying up for nearly two days and two nights, drowsiness and exhaustion swept over him all at once. Even his legs felt a little numb.
He crouched and picked up the scrap iron he had thrown onto the floor. Examining it, he found only a small section along the edge had broken. He could still modify it and engrave a basic configuration, so he casually set it at the edge of the desk. Then he dropped back into his chair and stared blankly at the starfall iron on the desk for a while. His head was a jumble, shifting between how to modify the channels for three natures and the Tailed Beast samples Orochimaru had just mentioned, until his head hurt.
He shook his head, driving out the tangled thoughts, then opened a drawer and found a fresh engraving blade to replace the dull old one. He had just picked up a new piece of starfall iron when his stomach suddenly growled, hunger leaving him shaky. Frowning, he stopped and went looking for the soda crackers again, only to find nothing but crumbs. He cursed, gulped down two mouthfuls of cold water to suppress the hunger, and clamped the starfall iron into the vise.
After just two cuts, he stopped again, frowning at the blank scrap paper and muttering, "With three natures, how should the anchor points be arranged? Widen the channel? No, widening it will slow the flow, and the clearing won't keep up either..."
His pencil touched the paper. He drew a couple of strokes, decided they were wrong, and slashed them out to start again. As he drew, he remembered the heating problem after five switches, tossed down his pencil, and went searching through old cooling configuration drafts. He scattered paper all over the floor and searched for a long time before finding a crumpled sheet. He glanced over it twice, tossed it aside again, and turned back to stare blankly at the three-nature diagram.
Outside the window, the sky slowly darkened again. The desk lamp cast a small patch of light over the wreckage of the workbench. He hunched over the desk, frowning at the drawing, the charcoal pencil turning between his fingertips without making a single stroke for a long time.
Look again