The lights had burned for three days straight, dazzling enough to blur his vision.
Rinto rubbed his eyes. The calluses on his fingertips scraped painfully against his eyelids, which were so dry he could barely open them. Still holding his engraving knife, he stared at the crystal jade split into three pieces on the workbench and swore.
This was the seventeenth piece of crystal jade to shatter.
Ever since opening those two tubes of Ice Release chakra samples three days ago, he had not left this laboratory. The door was unlocked. Kabuto delivered three meals a day and left them by the door; most were taken away untouched. His water jug had run dry twice. He had simply grabbed the distilled water used for experiments and gulped down a couple of mouthfuls. His throat hurt terribly when he swallowed, but he could not spare a thought for getting hot water.
His earlier fire-wind and water-earth transitional configurations had all involved "conversion"-turning natureless chakra into nature A, then nature B, with a transitional section to buffer the process. Everything had gone smoothly. But Ice Release was different. Only after dismantling the samples countless times had he understood: this was not water turning into wind. The chakra configurations of both water and wind existed stably at the same time, interlocking into an entirely new structure. They were not sequential, but parallel.
It was like forcing two kinds of particles that normally followed separate paths into the same channel, then making sure they neither fought nor repelled each other, all while shaping them into something new.
His entire approach had been wrong.
He had drawn over a hundred diagrams and revised the patterns more than a dozen times. Either the two natures repelled each other on contact, blowing the crystal jade apart, or water and wind went their separate ways and failed to produce Ice Release. At best, it sprayed water and then blew wind, with nothing remotely resembling ice.
For that seventeenth piece just now, he had deliberately spaced the two configurations' patterns far apart, giving each its own channel before joining them at the outlet. It had still shattered. The chakra collided at the outlet, blasting the crystal jade into three pieces. Fragments struck the wall, leaving little white pits.
Rinto swept the broken crystal jade onto the floor, where a small pile of discarded pieces had already accumulated. Some were cracked; others had corners blasted off. All were failures from the past three days. He leaned back in his chair, his back striking the backrest. Exhaustion seeped into his very bones, yet his mind raced on, unable to stop.
Where exactly was the problem?
The Ice Release configuration in the sample clearly had two structures entwined, perfectly stable. Why did it insist on exploding once replicated on crystal jade?
He reached for the glass tube on the table, which held the last bit of his Ice Release chakra sample. Only when his fingertips brushed the glass did he realize his hand had been shaking all along. He had barely eaten in three days, keeping himself going on a couple of mouthfuls of cold water. The blisters previously rubbed raw on the fingertips holding his knife had broken open again. Blood had dried on his finger pads, mixing with the white crystal jade powder into a dark mess.
The door opened gently, and Kabuto slipped inside, carrying a food box and a fresh stack of glass tubes. He showed no surprise at the discarded crystal jade littering the floor or Rinto's bloodshot eyes. He set the food box on the only empty corner of the table, then placed the glass tubes on the materials rack.
"Mr. Rinto, Lord Orochimaru asked me to bring some fresh chakra samples. Two are Kekkei Genkai samples-residual samples of Scorch Release." Kabuto kept his voice soft, afraid of startling him. "Also, the cafeteria just made this hot meal. Please eat some while it's warm. It's been three days, and you've barely eaten."
Rinto did not respond. His eyes remained fixed on the scrap paper covered in tangled lines, his mind filled with ways to interlock the two configurations. A long while passed before he turned his head, as though he had only just heard Kabuto speak. His voice was terribly hoarse. "Did you just say Orochimaru's Cursed Seal experiments have made progress?"
He had not had the attention to spare for Orochimaru's affairs before. Kabuto had mentioned it in passing when he entered, and Rinto had caught it.
"Yes." Kabuto nodded, a little surprised that he would ask. "Using the three-layer buffer model you provided significantly improved the Cursed Seal's compatibility rate. Three test subjects have already lasted three days without their chakra falling into disorder. Lord Orochimaru is very pleased."
"Do you have the coexistence data?" Rinto leaned forward, his eyes brightening, much of his earlier exhaustion fading. "The data on the Cursed Seal's foreign configuration coexisting stably with the subjects' own chakra. Are there detailed records?"
It suddenly struck him: at its core, was the Cursed Seal not two completely different chakra configurations coexisting stably within the same body? In essence, it was the same as Ice Release's parallel configurations! He had been thinking only about changing the patterns and had never considered this angle.
Kabuto paused, then hurriedly said, "Yes, Lord Orochimaru has them all. I..."
Before he could finish, Orochimaru's laughter drifted in from the doorway, slow and faintly hissing. "I came to thank you, only to hear you asking for my experimental data?"
Orochimaru leaned against the doorframe, still dressed in black, with traces of pale red solution on his cuffs. His golden eyes swept over the discarded crystal jade on the floor before settling on Rinto's haggard face, a smile curling his lips. He held a thick scroll, evidently having come straight from his own laboratory.
"Let me see the Cursed Seal coexistence data." Rinto dispensed with pleasantries and simply held out his hand, completely unconcerned with politeness. He had eyes only for that scroll.
Orochimaru raised an eyebrow, walked in, and tossed the scroll onto the table. "You certainly don't stand on ceremony. I thought you had no interest whatsoever in my Cursed Seal experiments."
"I didn't before. I do now." Rinto immediately unrolled it. It was packed with experimental records: chakra fluctuation curves, configuration compatibility data, and changes in the subjects' bodies, all clearly documented. Hunched over the table, he flipped through page after page at speed, his eyes growing brighter.
Just as I thought.
Orochimaru's Cursed Seal broke the senjutsu chakra configuration into fragments and embedded them, bit by bit, into the human body's chakra structure. It did not force them in, but fitted them together like mortise-and-tenon joints, leaving room for buffering so the two structures could gradually adjust to each other and eventually coexist.
That was precisely the mistake he had made. He had either separated the water and wind configurations too widely or forced them together, without finding the "mortise-and-tenon joints" that could interlock them. With both structures following separate paths, they could only collide in the end. It would have been stranger if they had not shattered.
"So that's it," Rinto murmured, tapping a section of data on the scroll. Completely forgetting Orochimaru was still standing beside him, he picked up a charcoal pencil and began drawing furiously on the scrap paper. Everything that had baffled him suddenly fell into place.
What he needed was not a separate path for each nature, but a dual-track interlocking configuration. From the outset, the water and wind particles had to be divided according to the structural proportions of Ice Release, each following its corresponding pattern. Locking structures between them would keep them from colliding randomly, allowing them to interlock into a complete Ice Release configuration precisely at the outlet.
Standing beside him, Orochimaru watched the rapidly darting pencil tip and the crooked yet logically clear patterns on the paper without speaking. He had come to thank him and see what new thing the boy had devised. Instead, he had gained fresh inspiration himself—Rinto's approach to configurations might also be useful for deeper optimization of the Cursed Seal.
Rinto drew for nearly half an hour, revising seven or eight times before finally settling on the first version of the interlocking configuration diagram. He tossed aside the pencil, grabbed a fresh piece of crystal jade, secured it in the vise, and picked up his engraving knife. Only as he was about to cut did he discover his hand was shaking too badly to hold the knife.
After three days without eating, once that rush of excitement passed, low blood sugar caught up with him. His vision began to darken.
"Eat first," Orochimaru said, nudging the food box by his feet. "Before you make a wrong cut and blast your own eyes out."
Rinto frowned, a little impatient, but knew he could not engrave such fine patterns in his current state. He put down the knife and grabbed the food box. The food inside was still warm. He shoveled it into his mouth, swallowing with barely any chewing, choking so badly he kept stretching his neck. Only after grabbing the distilled water beside him and gulping down more than half the bottle did he recover.
In less than five minutes, he had polished off the entire box. Pushing it aside, he picked up his knife and leaned over the workbench. He seemed a different person from moments before. His hand no longer shook, and his eyes shone.
Orochimaru did not leave. He simply pulled up a chair beside him and watched him engrave.
This was far more difficult than the earlier transitional configurations. The dual-track patterns were less than 0.03 cun apart, finer than a strand of hair, and the locking structures between them were even more intricate. The slightest error would ruin the entire configuration. Rinto slowed his breathing to match the rhythm of his cuts and barely blinked, afraid that a heavier breath or a tremor of his hand would send the knife astray.
Only the faint scraping of the knife across crystal jade sounded in the laboratory. It was quiet enough to hear both men breathing.
Kabuto came by once during the process. Seeing the scene, he silently withdrew, not even daring to close the door all the way.
Only when dusk fell and everyone in the research and development department outside had left did Rinto make the final cut. He set down the knife and moved his stone-stiff neck. His fingers were numb; it took a long while before he could curl them.
The crystal jade was only the size of a fingernail, its surface packed with patterns too fine to make out without close inspection. He carefully removed it from the vise, walked over to the steel-plate technique-testing target, took a deep breath, and injected a trace of his own natureless chakra.
There was no light and no sound.
Only a bone-piercing chill rose from the crystal jade. Pale white icy mist spread instantly, accompanied by the crack of freezing ice. When the mist dispersed, the thick steel plate before him was coated in a heavy layer of ice. The ice penetrated directly into the plate, freezing and cracking even its metal structure. A tap of the hand sent ice shards falling.
It worked.
Rinto's eyes shone with startling intensity. He tested it three more times. Every time, it released Ice Release stably, without cracking or repulsion. Its chakra conversion rate exceeded 80 percent, even better than he had expected.
He turned, grabbed the scrap paper, and rapidly recorded the data, muttering as he calculated the scope for optimizing the locking structures, where he could simplify them further, and where he could reduce losses.
"In less than a day, you've unraveled the structure of a Kekkei Genkai," Orochimaru said, genuine amazement in his voice. "Rinto, you never stop surprising me."
In all his years, he had seen countless geniuses, including Jiraiya and Tsunade back then, and Minato Namikaze, now enjoying such prominence. Yet none had ever been like Rinto, taking apart a Kekkei Genkai—which the Shinobi World regarded as an innate barrier—as clearly as disassembling components, then reproducing it.
This was no longer genius. This was overturning the rules of the entire Shinobi World.
"I've only scratched the surface." Rinto did not even look up. Only after finishing his notes did he put down the pencil. "Ice Release only has two natures. There are more complicated ones, like Dust Release, a three-nature Kekkei Tōta. Its structure must be more complex."
As he spoke, his eyes had already turned toward the two tubes of Scorch Release samples Kabuto had delivered that day. He was already planning to dismantle the Scorch Release configuration next.
Orochimaru smiled and said nothing more. He understood now: this boy was a bottomless pit. There was no knowing what jaw-dropping thing he would produce next.
Just then, footsteps sounded outside, followed by Kabuto's voice, respectful but slightly troubled. "Lord Orochimaru, Lord Hokage has sent Anbu. They say the Third would like you and Mr. Rinto to come to the Hokage's office tomorrow morning."
Orochimaru's brow creased, and the smile faded from his face.
Rinto acted as though he had heard nothing. He picked up a tube of Scorch Release sample and held it to the light, utterly unconcerned with any Hokage. His mind was filled with new configuration models.
"Understood," Orochimaru called toward the door, dismissing Kabuto before turning to Rinto. "The Third wants to see you. He's probably heard about your research and wants to see what you're like."
"Not going." Rinto refused flatly, setting the sample on the workbench and picking up a fresh piece of crystal jade. "I don't have time. I need to test the Scorch Release configuration. What's there to meet about? It'll interfere with my experiments."
He had come here to research, not to meet some Hokage or senior officials. Anyone who delayed his experiments was trouble.
Orochimaru chuckled, finding the boy increasingly interesting. In all of Konoha, apart from himself, only Rinto dared refuse a summons from the Third outright.
"Very well. I'll fend him off for you." Orochimaru stood. "As long as your research keeps surprising me, no one in Konoha will disturb you."
Rinto gave a hum of acknowledgment. His attention had already settled entirely on the sample in his hand. He did not even notice when Orochimaru left.
The night deepened, but the laboratory lights remained on. A few more pieces of discarded crystal jade joined the pile on the floor, and the scrap paper on the table piled higher and higher. Rinto completely forgot the time, the Hokage's summons, and everything outside.
In his world, only chakra configurations, his engraving knife, and crystal jade remained.