After bidding farewell to Uchiha Mikoto, Uchiha Gen's next stop was Orochimaru's place.
He had previously promised Orochimaru that after the Jonin meeting concluded, he would go there every day to help for an hour, conducting experiments that required Medical Ninjutsu.
As for the Body Activation Technique he received in exchange, Uchiha Gen had also been practicing it.
Although the difficulty of practicing this technique was B-rank, as long as one had a sufficient level of Medical Ninjutsu, there was no difficulty in mastering the basics.
It was just that the Body Activation Technique was a passive ability that required accumulated time; in just over a month, it had only slightly strengthened his body, and the effect was not obvious.
"You're here? First, help me cut open the skulls of these two. I want to see what changes occur in the Chakra refined after transplanting the brain into another person's body while ensuring that the brain's consciousness still exists."
In the underground laboratory, Orochimaru, wearing a white lab coat and a mask, said to Uchiha Gen, who had just finished disinfecting and entered from the doorway.
"Understood."
Uchiha Gen nodded slightly toward Orochimaru, blue light lit up in his palm, condensing into a Chakra Scalpel, and he walked over to the Sunagakure Ninja to begin the operation.
Over half an hour later.
"It died. After the brain transplant, the consciousness only survived for fourteen minutes. However, in my perception, the Chakra did indeed change. I need to consider the negative effects brought about by the change in Chakra after the consciousness is transferred into the body——"
Orochimaru looked coldly at the two Sunagakure corpses on the operating table, a glint of contemplation flashing in his snake-like pupils.
Transferring consciousness within the body——————Living Corpse Reincarnation?
Orochimaru's exploration of immortality had indeed turned toward this research direction.
"Teacher Orochimaru, is the method of immortality you are seeking to transfer your own consciousness into other bodies?"
Uchiha Gen looked at the specimens made from the other Sunagakure Ninja corpses in the laboratory and spoke.
The dozen or so Sunagakure captives that had been smuggled back from the battlefield were now almost completely exhausted by Orochimaru, with only two remaining.
On average, he consumed one experimental subject almost every three days.
With the two remaining, it was unlikely to be enough for him to squander for a week.
"Correct. Perhaps there is no one in this world who is forever young, but there will always be new young people appearing, as long as I can transfer my consciousness into a new body."
"Theoretically, as long as human civilization continues to exist, I can live forever by relying on this technique."
Orochimaru said in a calm tone.
Uchiha Gen remained silent in response.
He knew the shortcomings of Living Corpse Reincarnation.
One was that the container's mental strength must be weaker than Orochimaru's, otherwise, a situation like the attempted possession of Sasuke would occur, resulting in a backlash. The other was the compatibility of the container; in the original timeline, Orochimaru didn't have enough time to possess Sasuke and had to temporarily choose Gen'yumaru, leading to a longer period of weakness and a lower baseline of strength.
Besides this, Living Corpse Reincarnation also had a three-year cooldown, and it was suspected to have an impact on the soul.
There were actually many such shortcomings; it was not truly perfect immortality.
But it was still immortality; it could indeed allow the caster to obtain an extremely long life, watching the changes of the world and the passing of time.
"What, are you very repulsed by such a technique?"
Orochimaru looked at Uchiha Gen's eyes with great interest and said.
"Ethics and life and death have always been a difficult problem. Perhaps before I am dying or old and weak, I would not refuse to live on using this method."
"However, if there were a more perfect method, that would naturally be better."
Uchiha Gen thought for a moment and answered honestly.
If it really came to that point, even if Living Corpse Reincarnation had some flaws, it would not be unacceptable.
That was a genuine second life, and one could continue to live on repeatedly.
"You are right. Only by surviving first can one have the qualifications to pursue other things."
"Imperfect immortality is still immortality. If successful, we could possess endless time to slowly improve upon these flaws."
"Just thinking about becoming fat in one bite and pursuing perfect immortality—what if this proposition cannot be completed within a limited lifespan? Wouldn't that be like drawing water with a bamboo basket, with life lasting only a few decades, ultimately becoming a dream and a bubble?"
Orochimaru took off his white gloves and said with an elegant smile.
Uchiha Gen also discovered that Orochimaru really liked that death poem of Oda Nobunaga.
Orochimaru continued to explain to Uchiha Gen: "This technique now has a basic concept."
"I paid a price to obtain the cultivation method of their family's secret Spirit Transformation Technique from Kato Dan, and I used the war merits accumulated in the Land of Rain to obtain an opportunity to browse the Scroll of Seals, where I acquired the forbidden technique, Edo Tensei, developed by the Second Hokage."
"These two techniques are the foundation for transferring the body. First, use the Spirit Transformation Technique to strip the soul from the body, and then use the method from the Edo Tensei technique to use the new body as a sacrifice to guide the soul onto it."
"However, there are still many difficulties to overcome within this. For example, the original Edo Tensei technique is used on the dead, but what we want is to continue living. How the soul can occupy a new body as a living person, how to deal with the original soul within it, and how to recover strength—these are all problems that need to be solved."
"But at least there is a direction. With sufficient experimental funding and test subjects, I will be able to overcome these flaws within ten years."
Orochimaru's tone was full of pride and confidence.
Listening to Orochimaru's tone, Uchiha Gen knew that he could no longer stop now.
And he had no need to stop him.
He was only in his teens now, and Orochimaru was only in his twenties; they were in the prime of their youth and had not yet reached the point where they had to worry about their lifespan.
Once Orochimaru resolved the heart disease regarding life and death brought about by the deaths of his parents and Nawaki, there would always be more time and energy to research a more perfect path to immortality.
"Teacher Orochimaru, the funding and experimental subjects required for this are not such simple matters, are they?"
Uchiha Gen remembered that in the original timeline, the reason Orochimaru colluded with Danzo, falling from the promising first-in-line successor to the Hokage to a rogue Ninja after his experiments were exposed, was precisely because of these things.
No money and no experimental subjects?
Danzo's Root could provide them, as long as you could give him what he wanted.
From Yamato's Wood Release experiments to the arm transplants of Uchiha Shin, these were all provided to Danzo by Orochimaru using his own scientific research capabilities.
"Do you have a way?"
Orochimaru said in a deep voice.
To him, these were indeed two very tricky problems.
For these experiments, he had already poured in the vast wealth accumulated over his past dozen years of life as a Ninja. Now, even the prisoners of war he had secretly hidden in the Land of Rain were almost depleted. According to the current research progress, in another week, he would have to find a way to scrape together money and people.