"Use living things."
Shu Shiraishi's voice drowned out the rumbling aftershocks of the explosion outside the blast-proof glass.
Orochimaru knelt in the mud.
His hands, covered in black engine oil, froze in mid-air, his fingers still trembling.
He turned his head and looked at Shu Shiraishi's back.
"A living thing?" Orochimaru's voice was hoarse. "What kind of living thing could stick to a missile? It would be burned to a crisp before it even got there."
Shu Shiraishi didn't turn around. His military boots trotted up the concrete steps of the bunker.
"Replace the missile's nose cone with heat-resistant glass."
The footsteps faded into the distance.
Orochimaru slowly stood up and patted the mud off his knees.
He picked up the canvas helmet from the ground and put it back on his bald head.
The darkest corner of Konoha.
The tree canopy is so dense that even in broad daylight, hardly any sunlight can penetrate.
The air was filled with the sour, pungent smell of fermenting rotten leaves.
In front of a black wooden door.
Shu Shiraishi stopped in his tracks. Kagami Uchiha was standing beside him.
Jing raised her right leg and kicked the heavy wooden door.
Clang.
The door hinge broke. The wooden door crashed to the ground, kicking up a cloud of choking dust.
The room was dark. There were no windows.
Rows of transparent glass jars hung on the wall, filled with countless black insects and centipedes with venomous spines.
The rustling sound of tens of thousands of insects crawling was enough to send chills down your spine.
Aburame Shikuroo stood in front of the long wooden table.
He was wearing a high-necked trench coat, his face completely obscured by large sunglasses and the high collar.
He was holding a long bamboo pair of tweezers and was throwing chunks of raw, bloody meat into a ceramic jar.
The door was kicked open. Shikuroo trembled.
A piece of meat fell onto the table.
Hundreds of black beetles instantly swarmed out of the jar and pounced on the raw meat.
In just a few seconds, he gnawed away the skin and flesh into a handful of white bone fragments.
" Lord Hokage." Shikuroo placed the bamboo tweezers on the corner of the table.
The voice muffled inside the high collar. "Outsiders are not allowed in the Aburame's insect chamber. It will frighten the insects."
Shu Shiraishi walked over.
The leather boots stepped directly onto several black beetles that had crawled onto the ground.
Smack
The beetle burst open, oozing green slime.
Shikuroo clenched his jaw sharply. The muscles behind his sunglasses twitched. He didn't dare move.
Shu Shiraishi glanced at the pottery jar.
"This is the Rinkaichū you're so proud of?"
He gave a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"Eat raw meat. Reproduce quickly. Throw them onto the battlefield to bite people?"
"A single C-rank Great Fireball reduced it to ashes."
Shikuroo clenched his fists. The sleeves of his trench coat were stretched taut.
"The swarm of insects spreads out, impossible to defend against, Fire Style cannot burn them all," he retorted, forcing a smile.
"Too slow."
Shu Shiraishi tapped the edge of the wooden table twice. "By the time your bugs crawl over the hill, my heavy machine gun will have wiped them all out."
He extended his right hand and opened his palm.
"Hand over the most powerful queen insect of your clan."
Shikuroo was stunned.
His head tilted back half an inch.
"The mother insect is the clan's secret foundation, used to propagate all..."
Kagami Uchiha stepped forward.
Push the hilt with your left thumb.
"Clang."
The straight sword was drawn half an inch from its sheath. A cold glint flashed across the lenses of the Shikuroo sunglasses.
"You insects." Mirror's voice was colder than a blade.
"Or Aburame Clan should have a new clan leader today."
Shikuroo's chest heaved violently.
He swallowed hard. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down inside his collar.
Turn around and walk to the innermost wall.
A protruding stone was pressed onto the wall bricks. The bricks bounced off.
He presented a black stone box.
The surface of the box is engraved with dense Sealing Jutsu.
Lift the heavy stone lid.
Inside was a purple beetle about the size of a thumb.
Its carapace gleamed with a greasy, fluorescent sheen. It crawled very slowly, as plump as a ball of flesh.
Shu Shiraishi grabbed the stone box and closed the lid.
"Starting tomorrow, the entire Aburame Clan will go to the farm."
Shu Shiraishi walked out with the box in his hand.
"Apply fertilizer to the soil to loosen it and kill pests."
"Who dares to hoard poisonous insects?" He stopped at the doorway without turning around. "I just shoved his culture jar into his own mouth."
Temporary Laboratory Number One.
The exhaust fans in the biochemical workshop were spinning wildly.
The air was filled with the pungent smell of disinfectant and formaldehyde.
Tsunade, wearing a white lab coat, is staring into a microscope.
Her golden hair was casually tied into a bun. A few stray strands of hair were stuck to her forehead with sweat.
"Bang."
The black stone box was thrown heavily onto the iron table.
Tsunade was startled and her knee hit the metal table on the stomach.
"Ouch!" She winced in pain and reached up to rub her knee.
What is this thing?
Shu Shiraishi pulled out an iron chair and sat down. The chair legs scraped against the ground with a piercing, high-pitched sound.
"The mother insect of the Aburame."
He pushed the stone box next to Tsunade.
"Fuse it with Hashirama Cells and perform gene recombination."
Tsunade rolled her eyes.
"Do you think I'm brewing wine? Forcing two completely different biological genes together will just cause it to collapse and turn into water."
She slammed the test tube rack she was holding onto the table.
"I don't want to hear the details," Shu Shiraishi interrupted her.
He took a cigarette out of his pocket and put it in his mouth.
"I want it to be smaller. At the nanometer level."
"It needs to be highly poisonous. More importantly, it needs to retain its sensitive sense of smell for Chakra."
Tsunade hung open for a long time.
"Nanometer level? And you need Chakra- based olfaction?" Her voice rose an octave. "What are you going to do with those bugs?"
"Stuff it into the missile warhead."
Shu Shiraishi a match and lit a cigarette.
Orochimaru's machine can't fly accurately. That metal lump can't accurately measure wind direction at high altitudes.
"Then let the insects smell it."
He exhaled a puff of blue smoke.
" The Earth Release ninjas from the coal mines in Iwagakure have Chakra scent that lingers for miles around."
"The mother insect is mounted on the warhead. The offspring insects are dispersed through the air, forming a sensory network."
"As soon as you smell Chakra, pull the bomb and crash into it."
Tsunade gasped.
Using live venomous insects as guidance systems—this insane idea happens to be logically sound in biology.
She bit her lower lip until it bled, tasting a hint of salty, metallic blood.
Five days.
Tsunade grabbed the stone box from the table.
"Have Orochimaru send over two barrels of high-purity Chakra conduction fluid. I need to sever this insect's nerve cords."
She turned and opened the drawer, searching for a scalpel.
Shu Shiraishi stood up.
"Sufficient materials. All we care about is the result."
For the next five days, the biochemistry lab stayed up all night.
Tsunade leaned close to the microscope. Her eyepiece was smeared with mascara, and a dark ring appeared under her eyes.
On the slide, the Hashirama Cells, like crazed green algae, lunge at the genetic chain of the purple mother worm.
The mother insect's original exoskeleton was brutally torn apart. Purple fluid and green cell fluid mixed into a mushy mess.
Tsunade, squeezing the rubber tip until it was flattened.
"Add two drops of stabilizer," she shouted without looking up.
A nearby medical Genin hurriedly handed over a medicine bottle.
My hand slipped. The bottle cap fell to the ground and rolled into a corner.
Tsunade didn't curse. She grabbed the medicine bottle and accurately dripped two drops into the medicine bottle.
The microscopic battle under the microscope has ceased.
That clump of cells, resembling sludge, began to shrink and divide at a rate visible to the naked eye.
In the end, it turned into countless tiny particles with a faint purple glow.
Day 5.
Missile assembly workshop.
The air was thick with the smell of engine oil and alcohol.
A newly manufactured Chakra missile lay horizontally on the iron frame.
The surface of the projectile is painted with rust-preventive red paint.
The cone-shaped armor on the head was removed, revealing a transparent, thick glass sensor compartment.
The interior of the cabin is covered with complex metal contacts.
Orochimaru stood beside the shelf.
The bald patch on his head gleamed under the incandescent lights of the workshop.
He was so anxious that he kept stamping his feet. His straw sandals made a rustling sound as they scraped against the iron plate.
It was biting its thumbnail, leaving it pitted and uneven.
Tsunade walked over carrying a stainless steel tray.
She was wearing a pair of thick white rubber gloves that went all the way up to her elbows.
They were wearing thick gas masks.
"What's the rush?" Tsunade's voice came through her mask, muffled.
"If even a tiny bit of this stuff leaks out, everyone in your run-down factory will have their lungs rotten to the core."
Orochimaru immediately shut up, even instinctively covering his nose with his hand.
His eyes, however, were fixed intently on the tray.
On the tray was a sealed petri dish about the size of a palm.
The fat purple beetle was no longer inside.
There was only a clump of translucent, gelatinous substance that shimmered with an eerie light.
Look closely. That's not glue at all.
It was thousands upon thousands of tiny insects, almost invisible to the naked eye, huddled together, wriggling frantically.
"The recombined mother worm aggregate."
Tsunade placed the tray on the control panel.
"Once the warhead explodes, the offspring can survive in the air for two days, converting the intensity of Chakra signals into microcurrents and transmitting them back to the mother worm."
She picked up a pair of long-handled medical tweezers.
Carefully unscrew the lid of the petri dish.
His wrist was extremely steady, without the slightest tremor.
The tweezers reached into the glass dish and picked up the clump of gelatinous substance that was shimmering with a faint glow.
Orochimaru held his breath, gripping his clothes tightly with both hands, afraid that even a loud breath would scatter the insects.
Tsunade inserted the tweezers into the glass sensor compartment at the front of the missile.
Release the tweezers.
The gel-like substance landed on the row of metal contacts, spreading out like a lump of jelly.
She quickly pulled out the tweezers and slammed the hatch down with her other hand.
"Click."
The glass hatch was tightly shut. A ring of black sealing rubber gaskets was flattened.
"Connect the power." Tsunade a step back.
Orochimaru immediately pounced on the control panel next to him.
He shoved the row of black power switches down.
"Snap, snap, snap." A series of crisp sounds.
Inside the glass chamber, an extremely thin guide needle rises from the bottom and pierces directly into the clump of gelatinous substance.
The swarm was instantly activated.
Missile tip.
A previously off red indicator light suddenly lit up.
It burst forth with a blinding red light.
"Beep. Beep. Beep."
A sharp, rhythmic search for the enemy echoed through the empty workshop.