Inside the once-luxurious office of the Konoha Casino, the owner, sporting a small mustache, wore a broad smile.
" Lord Shinsei, please have some tea."
Shinsei waved his hand, "No need for tea. Is everything prepared?"
"Knowing you were coming these next few days, I've already made preparations," the short shopkeeper said, opening the door to the next room and struggling to drag out a suitcase.
Shinsei took the box and opened it. Inside, there were stacks of banknotes piled up densely, the largest denomination being 100,000 taels and the smallest being 10,000 taels.
"Five hundred million taels in total, and the change is all here. Would you like to count it?" The mustachioed shopkeeper smiled obsequiously.
"No need." Shinsei grabbed the box, took out the sealing scroll, and put it away.
This is the money the teacher earns from accepting apprentices, along with her salary and even her own performance bonuses. The teacher is addicted to gambling, but her luck is incredibly bad, so as her apprentice, all I can do is help her out.
We are about to conduct cloning experiments and urgently need a large amount of funding. This money is being used for the right purposes.
That's absolutely right! Shinsei firmly believes this once again.
"Alright, I'm leaving. Remember, don't tell anyone." Shinsei carefully put away the sealing scroll and was about to leave.
" Lord Shinsei!" the mustachioed shopkeeper called out hurriedly.
"Is there anything else?" Shinsei asked, turning his head.
"My... my son, you've met him before, he recently wanted to join the Anbu."
"Oh? You want me to look after you?" As the Hokage's assistant, Shinsei had that kind of authority.
"No, no, no," the mustachioed shopkeeper shook his head repeatedly, "You must firmly refuse him, he's my only son."
Well, some people want to join the Anbu but it's not that easy; some people see the Anbu as a venomous snake. I remember the boss's son, Shinsei; he really doesn't have much talent. If he joins the Anbu without anyone protecting him, he'll probably become cannon fodder.
The boss's request wasn't difficult, Shinsei agreed, since the boss had always been cooperative with his requests.
Although Tsunade used the Transformation Technique when gambling in the Konoha Casino, her fame as the Hokage of Konoha was too great, and coupled with her terrible gambling luck, she was as dazzling as Fire Fly in the dark, impossible to hide.
This money was too hot to handle, so Shinsei approached the boss and explained his plan. The boss agreed almost without hesitation. It seems that even in Konoha, people know who the big and small kings are.
After leaving the casino, Shinsei turned and headed to the hospital, greeting many beautiful nurses along the way.
He was extremely popular at the hospital, firstly because he was handsome and strong, and secondly because he was Tsunade's student.
Pushing open the door to a room, this was Tsunade's office at the hospital. No one was inside. Shinsei entered, casually closed the door, and walked to a corner of the room, forming hand Hand Seals.
Chakra light emanated from the wall, and a wooden door appeared. Shinsei channeled Chakra into the barrier, opened the door, and revealed a downward stone staircase.
Following the stone steps leads to a long corridor lined with rooms on both sides.
Shinsei peered through the glass wall outside a room and saw a pink-haired girl sitting at a table inside, writing and drawing.
It's strange that Sakura didn't go to find Sasuke at this time.
When Sakura saw Shinsei walk in, she threw her pen on the table and said angrily, "It's all your fault! Cloning Technique is so difficult, I've started losing my hair! Hey, where's your hair?"
Shinsei shrugged. "It was an accident while practicing a Ninjutsu."
Cloning Technique is indeed quite difficult for Sakura, who is under 13 years old.
But Shinsei had no other choice. He couldn't trust anyone with enough strength, and Tsunade only gave him occasional guidance. She had no interest in such trivial tasks, and besides, she was busy with her Hokage duties.
Sakura wouldn't have agreed at first; her medical knowledge and her teacher's Ninjutsu would have kept her busy enough. Fortunately, Shinsei offered another bait: the Cursed Seal on Sasuke's neck.
The Cursed Seal is essentially a low-quality use of Natural Energy, a byproduct of Senjutsu's research into Orochimaru.
Konoha already has the bodies of the Sound Four and Kimimaro, plus the Cursed Seal of Heaven on Sasuke's neck, so the sample size is sufficient. Given Tsunade's mastery of Sealing Jutsu and medical knowledge, replicating or even improving the Cursed Seal shouldn't be too difficult; the only problem is the lack of experimental samples.
Cloning Technique was the prerequisite for all of this. After Shinsei obtained the White Zetsu's corpse, he wanted to clone some of them as human experimental subjects. Otherwise, given Tsunade's personality, she would never have allowed live human experiments.
Cloning technology is an asexual reproduction technique. It involves transplanting the nucleus of a donor cell into an enucleated egg cell, stimulating the two cells to fuse into a new cell, causing the new cell to divide and develop into an embryo, and then culturing the embryo into a fully formed embryo.
The cells used for cloning are preferably totipotent cells, such as egg cells and embryonic stem cells.
However, White Zetsu is a peculiar existence; it lacks the functions of a normal human.
Therefore, the only option is to use induced pluripotent stem cell technology to reprogram somatic cells with specific transcription factors, inducing them to transform into a state similar to embryonic pluripotent stem cells.
Fortunately, Orochimaru's teaching methods are simple enough that anyone who understands them can easily imitate them.
Shinsei took out some money and gave it to Sakura so she could buy more experimental equipment. The equipment Orochimaru gave her was only the most basic and most important cultivation device; she would need to buy more herself.
Sakura's medical talent is indeed higher than mine. As long as she has enough motivation, she will improve very quickly. I believe she will be able to start operating in a few days.
Shinsei also took the compiled cloning data and read it sentence by sentence. After all, this was a project he was in charge of, and he had to make sure he knew it by heart no matter what.
The next morning, after reporting to the Hokage's office, Shinsei was about to continue his training in Sage Mode when Tsunade stopped him.
"The people from Sunagakure will arrive today to collect Sasori of the Red Sands's body. You should go with them tomorrow."
"Oh, so fast? Have you gotten the information from the interrogation?" Shinsei thought that Sunagakure would need to discuss things for a while before coming to take over Sasori of the Red Sands. After all, they didn't have Kazekage right now and were in a stage of co-governance by the elders. It seems that Chiyo has a strong control over Sunagakure.
"The interrogation yielded results," Tsunade, resting her chin on her hands. "I removed the seal from his mind, and he showed no sign of resistance."
Tsunade took a scroll from the drawer and handed it to Shinsei, "This is intelligence on the Akatsuki members. They're already watching you, so be careful."
"They're targeting me?" Shinsei was puzzled. Logically speaking, the information he had revealed shouldn't qualify him to be among Pain's targets. Did they want to recruit him?
Shinsei unfurled the scroll and began to examine it carefully.
This section introduces the members of the Akatsuki and their purpose in collecting the Tailed Beast. It also includes Sasori of the Red Sands's speculation that their base is in Amegakure. However, it provides little information about the individual members, only their names, approximate strengths, and preferred Ninjutsu —no key details are given.
The intelligence report indicates that Pain, the leader, has instructed Akatsuki members to bring Shinsei back from Konoha if they encounter him, but the report does not specify how.
This intelligence has its uses, but expecting it to unite the Five Great Shinobi Villages against the Akatsuki is wishful thinking.
The Sunagakure is currently preoccupied with its own problems, and the Raikage of the Raikage Village is focused on surpassing Konoha to become the leader, so he has no intention of damaging his strength, and there are no missing-nin in his family.
The Third Tsuchikage of Iwagakure is an old stubborn man, while Kirigakure has probably just emerged from the Bloody Mist Village.
These Five Great Shinobi Villages are already riddled with internal conflicts; if they aren't severely punished, there's no point in even thinking about uniting them.
"We worked hard to catch these, we can't just hand them over to them for nothing, can we? Has the teacher decided what to exchange them for?"