Just as Reiji's eyes were about to be gouged out—
"Bang!"
A muffled sound rang out.
In front of Isamu, the Reiji buried in the ground burst into a puff of white smoke.
A second later, a wooden log appeared in the pit.
"Body Replacement Technique!"
Isamu's pupils shrank sharply, and his heart surged with panic.
Damn it! The experiments clearly showed that this immortal freak can't use chakra! So how the hell did he pull off a Body Replacement Technique?!
As he stood frozen, a beating heart wrapped in paper had somehow appeared at his feet without him noticing.
A faint sizzling sound snapped Isamu out of his daze.
"No—an explosive tag!"
But before he could react, a flash of blinding light from the explosion swallowed him whole.
With a thunderous boom, the pitch-black alley was lit up like broad daylight.
Deep within the alley, Reiji's soaked figure gradually emerged, clutching his chest. The firelight reflected in his eyes, his face twisted in a mix of pain and grim satisfaction.
"Man, Shuku's ninja pouch really saved my life. Ninjutsu scrolls, explosive tags... What a treasure. Too bad I used up the last tag."
With the explosion's aftermath still echoing, a mangled body was flung through the air, crashing heavily to the ground in silence. On closer look—it was Isamu.
Gone was his earlier arrogance. His body was scorched and torn, both legs blown off clean at the knees.
Reiji's face turned deathly pale.
Even as an immortal, pain was still very real. The agony of a missing heart twisted his delicate features into a grimace.
Clutching his chest, Reiji slowly approached Isamu's broken body, studying the leader of the Jashin cult.
Despite taking a blast at point-blank range and losing both legs, the guy's hood still clung to his head. For some reason, Reiji really wanted to see the face of this cold-blooded butcher.
One hand still pressed to his chest, he reached out with the other, ready to lift the hood and unmask the beast beneath.
Suddenly, Isamu's eyes snapped open—wide and pitch black, with no whites in sight.
"Genjutsu: Mind Control Technique!"
In the next instant, Reiji's entire body froze, as if locked in place. The hand reaching forward and the one gripping his chest both stopped mid-motion.
On the ground, the black in Isamu's eyes rapidly faded. He coughed up a mouthful of thick, dark blood, and the hand forming seals dropped limply.
"Damn it... you sly little brat... I swear, for the rest of your life, you'll suffer under my torment!"
He gritted his teeth as blood continued to leak from his mouth.
Though the downpour had doused the flames, the explosion's roar would definitely draw the ninja of Amegakure. He had to get out immediately.
Good thing I still have the Mind Control Technique to handle this monster. Otherwise, I'd be dead meat by now.
That thought sent another wave of fury through him. His suppressed blood surged once more, and he spat out another mouthful.
"Damn monster! Get over here and carry me out!"
Isamu glared at Reiji's harmless-looking face, wishing he could tear him apart—but for now, he had to rely on him to survive.
Obeying the Genjutsu, Reiji silently reached out and picked Isamu up in a princess carry without effort.
"Move!"
Isamu was just about to bark more orders when a chillingly familiar sound reached his ears—
"Hiss, hiss, hiss…"
"Hiss, hiss, hiss…"
"What the hell is that sound?!"
Isamu's soul nearly flew out of his body in panic.
No way—that's the sound of explosive tags! And it's way too close!
Right then, a brilliant white light flared from beneath Reiji's shirt.
A second later, a massive explosion erupted between the two of them!
The white light and fire engulfed them instantly. In his final moment of consciousness, Isamu suddenly recalled the old man in the lab coat's parting words: "If you find the immortal, dismember him and bring him back. Don't waste time talking."
"I thought you said there were no more explosive tags?! Dammit! This is a damn trap!"
Whether he would survive or not was uncertain—but the guy holding him? No doubt he would. After all, he was a damn immortal!
As flames tore through the alley, two bodies were flung in opposite directions.
One toward the world of the living, the other toward hell.
"Bang!" Two dull thuds rang out in quick succession as Reiji and Isamu collapsed to the ground.
The searing pain jolted Reiji awake. His scorched eyelids struggled open, and as he took in the scene before him, realization struck. A faint, unsettling smile curled across his burned face as he muttered to himself,
"Tch... Wouldn't it have been easier to just die quietly? Why go through all that nonsense?"
Still, right now wasn't the time to worry about Isamu's corpse. What mattered most was dealing with the Amegakure ninja bound to show up soon.
If they discovered the secret behind his immortality, he'd end up as nothing more than a lab specimen, sliced and dissected.
With that grim thought, Reiji ignored his missing organs and the extensive burns across his torso. Gritting through the agony of torn flesh, he reached into Shukou's ninja bag and pulled out a handful of soldier pills, shoving them into his mouth.
This was something he'd learned through painful trial and error—eating boosted his regeneration rate, even if just a little.
Besides, he wasn't like Hidan, who got blown apart by a barrage of explosive tags.
Shukou's bag had only come with two. One had taken out his cursed heart along with Isamu's lower legs. The other had finished Isamu off—and scattered Reiji's guts somewhere he couldn't find.
At the thought, Reiji let out a bitter chuckle.
Good thing he wasn't Nawaki, Tsunade's little brother. If he were, he'd be long dead by now.
Still chewing soldier pills, he stripped off the tattered remnants of his robe and darted deeper into the alley to wait for his body to recover.
...
As he crouched in the darkness, a strange thought popped into his head:
If I mastered the Eight Inner Gates… wouldn't that mean—
Morning Peacock in the morning, Daytime Tiger by noon, Evening Elephant in the evening, and Night Guy at dusk…
Couldn't I just casually pop open the Death Gate for a street performance?
Man, just imagining it gets me pumped!
Screw Genjutsu, Ninjutsu, and Dōjutsu—against me, they're all trash!
What Rikudō Sennin? I'll kick him across the map!
And if one kick's not enough, I'll just keep kicking till the story ends!
That thought filled Reiji with a sudden sense of security.
Still, in his memories, Guy's father, Might Duy, while he did wreck the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, was clearly weaker than Guy himself.
So yeah, the Eight Inner Gates depend on the user. If your Taijutsu's solid, you get more out of it. I've gotta stick with the Taijutsu path—no switching for a hundred years!
...
Sitting deep in the shadows of the alley, Reiji used both hands to pull the skin on either side of his abdominal wound closer together. There wasn't enough time for his organs to regenerate, so he had to let the skin close first. As for the innards underneath... they'd have to grow back slowly.
Watching the slow healing process made him anxious. He regretted not picking up sewing skills.
If I had thread to stitch this up, it'd heal way faster...
Reiji's version of immortality wasn't much different from what he remembered of Hidan—except he lacked that busted Curse Technique: Death Controlling Possessed Blood.
Basically, it was a watered-down version of immortality.
According to the old man in the lab coat, this kind of immortality wasn't Jashin-sama's blessing at all—it was more like a curse.
And Reiji agreed, for the most part.
First off, there was the pain. He wasn't like Hidan, who got off on suffering. Reiji hated it. Even after being sliced, burned, electrocuted, and wind-dried for over half a year, he still hadn't gotten used to the excruciating agony that could break a person's mind.
The worst part was the pain that came with healing.
Reiji could still vividly remember the unbearable, soul-deep agony—the maddening itch that crawled through his bones as they slowly pieced themselves back together.
Next came the matter of chakra.
Technically speaking, Reiji had already mastered chakra extraction back in the underground facility.
It was one of the many experiments the old man in the lab coat had conducted.
Though he acted like he couldn't extract chakra, Reiji had secretly tested it himself. His body could do it—just barely.
The output, though, was pathetic.
He'd observed another test subject in the lab, a kid named Haruto. If Haruto's chakra flowed like a normal stream, then Reiji's was more like having kidney stones—painfully slow drips that made you want to scream.
The one upside was that his immortal cells seemed capable of extracting chakra endlessly.
Which meant, given enough time, even a slow drip could eventually fill a bucket.
Still, in Reiji's eyes, that wasn't the most important thing.
What mattered more was that his body was only seven years old—and he was thrilled to find out that immortality didn't interfere with his growth.
That meant he'd get older, and yes, "little Reiji" would grow with him too.
On top of that, his physical strength could still be improved through training.
Thanks to the countless injuries he'd endured, his bones were ridiculously durable. Even taking an explosive tag blast at point-blank range, they held up.
Look at Isamu over there—his upper and lower halves barely hanging together by a single spine.
And Reiji? Aside from losing his internal organs, the worst he suffered was a few cracked ribs.
...
As Reiji sat thinking, the sound of chaotic footsteps and splashing water suddenly echoed from nearby.
"Stay alert! The explosion happened right here!"
At the mouth of the alley, a mature voice with a deep, magnetic tone called out.