"Hmph. Deidara, are you looking to die?"
"Only eternal beauty is art. Everything, no matter what it is, will one day decay. Therefore, only that which is eternal can be called art."
Sasori caressed his Third Kazekage puppet with an almost sacred reverence. It was his most perfect masterpiece, a puppet with Kage-level strength.
According to the principles of the Human Puppet technique, as long as the body was preserved intact, the finished puppet could wield the full power of the person in life. However, a puppet was still a puppet. It lacked the combat experience of the deceased. Although its strength could be 100% preserved, its performance in battle was controlled by the puppet master. How much of that strength could actually be brought to bear was unknown.
Take Kakashi, for example. His strength lay in his combat experience and battle intuition. If he were turned into a puppet, he would be, at best, a jonin-level threat. But in reality, Kakashi, with the skills of a jonin, could go toe-to-toe with Kage-level opponents entirely because of his vast battle experience.
In this respect, Orochimaru's Edo Tensei was the perfect solution. The soul of the deceased was infused into the vessel, and all their subconscious combat reflexes were the habits of their past life. The drawback was that a reanimated soul with a strong will could easily break free from control. And if you erased their consciousness, they couldn't fight at their full potential.
In a way, Sasori and Orochimaru were similar. Both had witnessed the fragility of life and sought immortality. The difference was that one pursued it through technological modification, while the other took a path of magic and biology.
This kind of argument between Deidara and Sasori happened every few days. They were used to it.
After packing his things, Sasori headed out. He preferred to hide inside a sturdy puppet, which in turn contained his true body, which he had also modified into a second puppet. At its core was his brain, the one part he could not replace. No matter how he modified himself, he still needed his brain to think, unless he could somehow turn that into a puppet as well.
As the sun set, Sasori walked slowly out of the cave alone. Deidara watched his back against the setting sun and shook his head, feeling as if he might never see him again.
"Why does this feel so strange?" Deidara watched Sasori walk away, a sense of unease creeping into his heart, as if Sasori were leaving for good.
Sasori had requested leave from Pain and it had been approved. When there were no missions, Pain didn't restrict the members too much. They were all S-rank rogue ninja, proud and arrogant, not slaves.
"Hoshigakure? Why have I never heard of this village?" Yukihime scratched her head. She had read many books but had never come across a village with that name.
"It's self-proclaimed. In reality, it's just a fourth or fifth-rate little village. The founder is ambitious and hopes to be like the Five Great Shinobi Villages, but in truth, they're just playing house in their own little corner. They can't even get out the 'door.'"
Uchiha Nagi said coolly, "At the very least, I've never seen anyone from Hoshigakure in any of the Chunin Exams."
The five great villages were, in essence, like the five rogue states of his previous life. The Chunin Exams were more like a sports meet to show off military might, or a military exercise. The invited nations were at least mid-sized countries. A small village that didn't even qualify for an invitation was basically irrelevant. Not being invited to the Chunin Exams showed just how small these villages were. Their territory probably wasn't even a few kilometers wide. There were many such villages with no real presence, so obscure they were hard to find even on a map.
As they passed by some farmlands, a few ragged farmers saw Uchiha Nagi's group and grew visibly nervous. But when they saw that they wore no forehead protectors, they let out a collective sigh of relief. Of course, they still didn't dare get too close. From their posture, it looked as if they were ready to bolt at the first sign of danger. It had to be said that a person's vigilance was often honed through repeated escapes like this.
"Excuse me, uncle. Is there a village called Hoshigakure around here?"
"Hoshigakure? You mean the Star Village? The one where the meteorite fell? Just go that way. You'll see a village with a big crater. That's it."
The ragged-looking farmer, though a bit scared, still answered when he saw that it was just a small boy, Kimimaro, asking for directions.
"Alright, thank you." Kimimaro then returned to report to his teacher.
"Mmm, got it. Let's go," Uchiha Nagi nodded.
Meteorites fell from time to time, and the five great nations would occasionally pick up some remnants. So, no one found it strange that Hoshigakure had named itself that. Plus, they were very low-key and had no powerful ninja making waves outside their village, so it was normal that people didn't know about them. They only knew that this village had changed its name because of a meteorite, but they didn't know that the meteorite they had found was anything but ordinary.
The village leader, after finding the meteorite, had started calling himself the Hoshikage. The reason he was so arrogant as to call himself a Kage in a place with so little land was because this meteorite possessed an immense amount of energy.
The First Hoshikage had discovered that the meteorite contained an extremely large amount of energy that could be used by the human body, and his ambition had been kindled. However, Uchiha Nagi knew that while the meteorite's power was great and usable, it also contained radiation. People of this era didn't know what radiation was and had no way to separate it from the energy. So, if you absorbed too much, side effects were inevitable. Even the miraculous energy of chakra couldn't prevent the damage radiation did to the human body. In the end, those who absorbed the meteorite's energy for long periods of time all died young.
"Ah, so this is Hoshigakure." Sasori stood outside the village, looking coolly at the meteorite crater. Over the years, the crater had become a large lake, and not far from the lake was Hoshigakure. Sasori had learned of this place from Akatsuki's intelligence network. With White Zetsu as their number one spy, the Akatsuki knew pretty much everything that happened in the ninja world, big or small.
However, a meteorite that would kill you if you absorbed too much of its energy was naturally of no interest to the Akatsuki. Except for Kisame, none of them relied on external objects, with the exception of Sasori. So, Sasori had come to Hoshigakure with the intention of collecting the meteorite to see if it could be used as a power source for his puppets, or if it could be melted down and forged into a material for a puppet.
"Hmph. Doesn't even have the strength of a Kage, yet he dares to call himself the Hoshikage." Sasori scoffed and began to walk towards the village, his puppet body moving with steady steps.
In Hoshigakure, the current Hoshikage, Akahoshi, was leading a group of young children in training. To say it was training was a stretch; it was more like everyone was gathered around the meteorite, absorbing its endless energy. As for whether these children would die from radiation before they turned thirty, Akahoshi couldn't care less. There were too many orphans in this era. If they died, he could just collect some more, raise them for a few years, and cultivate their loyalty.
Those who aim for great things cannot be bothered with trivial matters. If, in the next Great Ninja War, he could expand his territory and elevate his village to the status of a mid-sized nation, or even one of the five great nations, the population would grow endlessly. This ever-increasing population could then replenish the ranks of the dead ninja. And the most miraculous thing about the meteorite was that it could allow even those without talent to absorb its energy and become a chunin, a jonin, or even a Kage.
"Lord Akahoshi! Outside... there are enemies outside!" a man rushed in to report.
"Enemies? Who is it?" Akahoshi frowned. Hoshigakure had always been low-key. Who would come here to cause trouble?
"I don't know. The person has a strange appearance, like a beast crawling on the ground. He's wearing a black cloak with red clouds embroidered on it."
Unlike the others, Sasori did not wear a forehead protector.
"Hmph. Another one looking to die. Let's go. We'll go out and kill him together," Akahoshi said with a wave of his hand.
"Yes, my lord!" the group of young boys and girls responded in unison.
Akahoshi never trusted anyone. When he was not around, the meteorite was always put away. So, when facing an enemy, he couldn't possibly leave his subordinates here to train. What if a traitor decided to steal the stone?
After re-sealing the meteorite and placing it within a barrier, Akahoshi led a large group of people out. He wanted to see who dared to cause trouble in Hoshigakure.
"Heh heh, a very nice specimen. To think it has the strength of a chunin. I mustn't damage it."
Hiding inside his Hiruko puppet, Sasori was killing someone with a poison needle. The reason he used poison was that it preserved the body intact, perfect for making a human puppet. And secondly, it was cheap and effective. Ninja were high-offense, low-defense. A single poison needle was all it took.
On the ground lay a messy pile of corpses. Sasori couldn't be bothered to collect the bodies of genin; his Performance of a Hundred Puppets scroll was full of them. Only the bodies of chunin and jonin were worthy of being preserved as puppets.
"Lord Hoshikage won't let you get away with this... agh!"
The man on the ground died before he could finish his sentence, pierced through the heart by Sasori's scorpion tail.
"Hmm? More have come? One, two, three... fifteen specimens. Very nice." Sasori turned around nonchalantly. Just as he finished speaking, the Hoshikage, Akahoshi, arrived with a dozen or so people.
"You have some nerve, coming to Hoshigakure to cause trouble!" Akahoshi's eyes blazed with fury as he looked at the dozen or so corpses on the ground. These were his future subordinates for conquering the world. Ninja didn't just appear out of nowhere. Not one in a hundred civilians had the aptitude to train their chakra. And if you couldn't train your chakra, you couldn't absorb the meteorite's power.
"Heh heh, it seems you have the strength of a jonin. Very good. My collection has gained another piece today," Sasori said with satisfaction. This trip wasn't a waste. Besides the meteorite with its unknown energy, he could also collect a jonin-level puppet. He was very pleased.
"Hmph. Collection? We'll see who's collecting whom. Ninja of Hoshigakure! The time has come to protect our village! Show them a power the outside world has never seen! Use the combination ninjutsu!" Akahoshi shouted.
"HAI, LORD AKAHOSHI!"
The dozen or so ninja all formed the same hand sign and shouted in unison, "Secret Technique: Mysterious Peacock Method!"