Crack.
The starfall iron broke.
Rinto did not even look at it. He flung it backhanded into the iron box at his feet, where it clattered among all the materials he had ruined over the past three days. The gauze around his fingertips had worn through, smearing blood mixed with iron filings across the workbench. He ignored it, took out a fresh piece of material, and snapped it into the vise.
He was tackling a tough problem: cramming Chakra separation, the three-way balance of Senjutsu, and nature transformation into a carrier the size of a fingernail. His previous Senjutsu solidification method required balancing the three components of Chakra beforehand. That was too much trouble. He wanted to inject the most basic Chakra and produce Senjutsu ninjutsu directly.
Over three days, he had blown up thirty-seven pieces of crystal jade and two pieces of starfall iron. At the most dangerous moment, a shard had sliced open his forehead, and blood had smeared his eye. He wiped it with his sleeve, grabbed fresh material, and kept carving. The rice ball at the corner of the desk had been delivered by Kabuto that morning and had hardened into a crust. In three days, he had taken only two bites.
The door was gently pushed open. Kabuto entered carrying a food box and a scroll, keeping his footsteps extremely light. At the sight of the charred pit melted into the steel plate, his eyes shifted behind his glasses. Without a word, he set the things down in the only empty space beside the desk.
Rinto's pen scratched parameters onto scrap paper. Without raising his head, he tossed out a fragment of a question. "Orochimaru's?"
"Yes. Live-subject records from the Senjutsu experiments." Kabuto pushed the scroll forward, then added softly, "People have been asking about you at the research department these past two days. Anbu from the Hokage Building have also checked the entry and exit records twice."
Rinto's pen never stopped. He did not even grunt in acknowledgment. He hooked the scroll toward him and opened it, tearing out only the pages with Chakra curves. He pasted the useful ones into his experiment notebook, then pushed the rest of the scroll back toward Kabuto without so much as lifting his eyelids.
Kabuto said nothing more. He collected the old food box and quietly withdrew.
Trouble came knocking that evening.
It was not Kabuto's gentle knock, but a pounding that shook dust from the doorframe. The people outside shouted belligerently, "Rinto! Open up! Root has orders to question you!"
The carving knife in Rinto's hand stopped, and his brows knotted tightly. This was what he hated most: being forcibly interrupted at a critical point in an experiment.
He did not get up. He threw two words through the door. "Get lost."
The people outside froze for a moment, then pounded even harder. "You dare disobey orders, brat? Lord Danzo wants to see you! Hand over your research materials immediately! This is a Konoha defense requirement!"
The words had barely fallen when shouts accompanied the forming of Earth Release hand seals, and a thick earthen wall slammed hard into the door.
Rinto's gaze turned cold. He pressed a fingertip against the controller at the edge of the workbench.
The crashing outside stopped abruptly, leaving only two stifled groans. He opened the door. Two men lay sprawled on the ground, twitching, their lips a grayish white. They did not even have the strength left to curse.
"Come here again, and I'll cripple your Chakra pathways." Rinto casually released the lockout. Without looking at them scrambling away, he shut the door behind him, raised the barrier to its maximum setting, and added two more layers of concealment configurations. He had no time to waste on these people. Every minute they cost him was a waste.
Back at the workbench, he held the carving knife for a long time without lowering it.
The scrap paper strewn across the desk and floor was an eyesore. More than a decade of records, from the first version of Wind Release in the ramshackle wooden hut to the Senjutsu circulation of a few days ago, lay in piles here and stacks there. Finding a single parameter took ages of searching. He raked a hand irritably through his hair, crouched on the floor, and sorted through them for most of the night. Only near dawn did he begin to put them in order. He took a blank scroll, wrote the title "Fundamentals of Chakra Configurations and Experimental Records of Carrier Solidification," and casually stuffed it into the very back of the blastproof cabinet.
That work could wait. First, he needed to finish sorting out Senjutsu.
He had only just cleared a little room on the workbench when another knock came. It was Kabuto's voice again, so cautious that it came through even through the door. "Mr. Rinto, Lord Orochimaru asks that you come to the main laboratory."
"No time." Rinto had already picked up his carving knife.
"My lord said he has obtained a sample of Hashirama Cells."
The carving knife in Rinto's hand stopped.
Hashirama Cells. The Shinobi World's finest carrier of life energy, the source of Wood Release. Before this, he had only seen scattered Chakra records in sealed archives. He had never handled a living sample. This material would be immensely useful for his high-load configurations and his research into Yang Release structures.
He pulled open the door and said only, "Go."
The moment he entered the main laboratory, Rinto's gaze fixed on the glass tube at the center of the experimental bench. A pale green cell suspension, its vigorous life energy perceptible even through the tube's walls. There was no mistaking it.
Orochimaru leaned against the bench. Watching him stare straight at the sample, he chuckled. "Want it?"
Rinto looked up and got straight to the point. "What are your terms, and how much do I get?"
"Simple." Orochimaru tapped the glass tube with a fingertip. "Help me modify a Cursed Seal configuration. Optimize the isolation layer so it can bypass Konoha's sensory barrier without leaking Chakra fluctuations." Seeing Rinto's brows draw together, he immediately added, "Don't worry. It won't cross your red line. You're only improving the concealment of the patterns. It has nothing to do with live experiments."
After a pause, he added another bargaining chip. "Succeed, and half this tube is yours. You can look through the subsequent cultivation data as you please. I'll also keep Danzo in check for you, so he won't keep sending flies to bother you every few days and delay your carving."
Rinto stared at him for two seconds, then nodded. "Fine. Give me the complete Cursed Seal configuration data. You'll have the model tomorrow."
Orochimaru motioned for Kabuto to hand over the scroll, then had a researcher portion out half a tube of cells, seal it, and pass it over. Rinto accepted it, his fingertips gripping the tube's walls. Without a single courtesy, he turned and walked out, his pace considerably faster than when he had arrived.
Watching his back disappear at the end of the corridor, Kabuto asked quietly, "My lord, Hashirama Cells are so precious. Giving him half..."
"What's the hurry?" Orochimaru's gaze remained on the doorway, undisguised interest filling his golden, slit-pupiled eyes. "What he can bring back to me is worth far more than half a tube of cells."
Meanwhile, Rinto plunged back into his laboratory, locked the door behind him, and turned every barrier up to maximum, even adding a filtration configuration to the ventilation opening. He casually swept the scroll of Cursed Seal data aside and carefully secured the cell sample on the detector. The moment he pressed the start button, even his breathing grew lighter.
The values on the screen jumped wildly, and configuration lines carrying an immensely powerful vitality unfolded before his eyes, little by little. He stared at the screen, his Adam's apple bobbing, and reached for the blank scrap paper beside him.