"So this is the Grell Stone vein?" Neji murmured as he stood alone before the entrance of an enormous palace.
He pushed open the ancient, dust-covered doors and, following the trail of chakra, descended the stone stairs toward the deepest part of the palace. Soon, he arrived at a vast underground mining cavern.
"Just as I remembered... and the chakra here is incredibly dense. This has to be it." Neji looked up at the massive stones embedded in the ceiling above him.
The Grell Stones were sealed here, but the passage of time had weakened the seal. It had degraded so much that Naruto had easily broken through it earlier. Even without recent events, the stones would have been unearthed before long.
Neji glanced at the blood he had collected from Timoci. A smirk formed on his lips. With a flick of thought, he stored the blood into the system space. Letting someone else destroy the mine? What a joke.
"Eight Trigrams: Vacuum Palm!"
With a powerful strike, Neji launched a wave of compressed air so dense it formed visible contours, erupting with explosive force. With a thunderous crack, the sealing jutsu ruptured, unleashing a cascade of brilliant blue light from above.
What others deemed a catastrophic threat requiring the Void Maw to eliminate, Neji solved as if it were nothing more than a minor inconvenience. With a wave of his hand, he swept every last Grell Stone into the system space without leaving behind so much as a speck of dust.
With that nuisance handled, Neji walked over to the summoning array nearby, curiosity lighting up his eyes.
"A summoning array capable of calling forth the Void Maw... how did they even create something like this?"
The Void Maw was far more mysterious than any space-time ninjutsu in the shinobi world. No one knew where it truly led it could be through time, another dimension, or even an entirely different world.
"If I could master this summoning technique, is there anywhere I couldn't go?" Neji was clearly excited now. Since others had signed a blood pact with it, so could he.
But his ambitions didn't stop there. He didn't just want to summon it at will he wanted total control over it.
So, step one: take the summoning array. With swift precision, Neji dug his fingers into the engraved stone slab and heaved. In one fluid motion, he flipped the slab into the air and sealed it into the system space.
"Mission accomplished." Neji turned and strode away. Now that his objective was complete, there was no longer any reason to let Haido continue distracting Naruto and the others.
But to Neji's mild surprise, Haido had already been defeated by the time he emerged from the mine. It didn't take long for him to understand why. Haido wasn't particularly strong against a coordinated group effort, it was only natural he'd fall.
"Neji, you bastard! Why didn't you tell us there was a tracker on Timoci?!" Naruto shouted, pointing furiously at him.
"How else were we supposed to lure him here?" Neji replied flatly. He glanced at Naruto, thinking, With your personality, you would've spilled everything already.
"Neji... are you really not coming back to the village?" Sakura stepped forward, hope flickering in her voice.
"No. There's nothing left in the village that can help me grow. I'll return once my training is complete," Neji said calmly.
Then he turned to Gaara and spoke with quiet sincerity. "Think more about your sister."
With that, Neji vanished.
"Huh? What's he talking about?" Naruto blinked in confusion.
Gaara didn't answer. His eyes lingered on Temari, who had fallen silent. Since the death of their mother, Temari had taken it upon herself to care for him. Though she had once feared him, her warmth had always reached him in small ways.
Perhaps that was why he had never raised a hand against her, and why he always listened at least a little when she spoke. Yet now, having Neji point it out left him oddly unsettled.
"It's nothing. Let's go," Gaara said. But his tone had softened, just slightly.
Both Temari and Kankuro noticed the change at once. Though surprised, they were overjoyed. The wall between them and Gaara had thinned just a little. Maybe someday, they truly could live like a normal family.
Thank you, Neji, Temari whispered in her heart.
Unlike them, Neji wasted no time after leaving. Using his phasing ability, he returned directly to Orochimaru's base.
The moment he arrived, he pulled out one of the Grell Stones and began studying it in detail. This thing was bizarre able to draw out a person's potential, granting them all sorts of powers, and even transform their bodies to further amplify those powers.
Suddenly, a thought struck him like lightning. His expression shifted into one of disbelief.
"This thing... it's practically a cursed seal! No... it's even stronger than a cursed seal."
It was terrifying. A mere civilian, upon absorbing a Grell Stone, could leap to the level of a chunin or even jonin.
This kind of power could create an entire army of elite shinobi.
"Condensed chakra... similar to a cursed seal... That only leaves one possibility: senjutsu." Neji stared in awe at the glowing blue gem in his hand. "Yes. It's the power of nature the chakra of the natural world."
A bold idea began forming in his mind. If he could absorb all the Grell Stones, he might be able to perfect the ultimate Sage Mode. The power it would grant... difficult to estimate, but it certainly wouldn't be far off from the Six Paths power.
Just as he was deep in thought about how to absorb it, a knock sounded at his door. Kabuto's voice followed shortly after.
"Neji, Lord Orochimaru wants you in the lab."
"Yeah, I got it," Neji replied, stowing the Grell Stone away.
He opened the door to find Kabuto standing there as usual, smiling with that same... unnervingly flamboyant expression. The look gave Neji goosebumps.
This guy… he's not even trying to hide the fact that he's fully presenting as a woman now. It's creeping me out, Neji thought. Ever since coming to Orochimaru's base, Kabuto had grown more flamboyant by the day. It only reinforced Neji's conviction that Living Corpse Reincarnation was not something to learn lightly.
Kabuto was still trying to flirt, sending coy glances at Neji. Feeling nauseated, Neji quickened his pace and reached the lab in no time.
"What do you want?" Neji asked casually, taking a seat as he looked at Orochimaru, who was engrossed in research, and Sasuke, who stood beside him.
Orochimaru looked up and chuckled. "Neji, I need a favor."
"Forget it. You still haven't given me those jutsu you promised," Neji replied coldly. He wasn't falling for this snake's tricks. Orochimaru always tried to get something for nothing.
"Heh. Don't worry, Neji. I think this particular mission might actually interest you," Orochimaru said with a smile.
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