Chapter 377: Konoha Leadership's Decision
Night had fallen, and with snow still coming down, thick clouds blotted out the moon entirely, casting Konoha's unlit side streets into shadow.
Streetlights weren't exactly rare in the Naruto world — the setting had its own tech tree, admittedly a somewhat skewed one, but nowhere near as bizarre as the One Piece world's.
The One Piece world's technology had gone so far off the rails nobody could really say what had caused it to twist that far in the first place.
It was already 11:30 at night, edging toward the small hours, but the Hokage Building still blazed with light, every one of Konoha's "civil servants" still hard at work.
That included the village's senior leadership — Minato, Hiruzen, Mizuki Homura, and the rest — all gathered in a meeting that had, by now, run well past two hours.
The subject, naturally, was everything that had happened over the past several days.
In particular, the pile of Void Beast corpses the Ancient One had left out in the Land of Fire had become one of the meeting's central topics — a subject they'd already been circling for nearly an hour without landing on a single useful proposal for dealing with it.
Seated at the head of the table, Minato let out a tired sigh and tapped a photograph laid out in front of him.
The photo showed exactly what everyone in the room already knew — the mountain range of Void Beast corpses out in the Land of Fire, piled endlessly one atop another.
Well over half of the sprawling grassland had disappeared beneath them, the sheer height of the pile enough to make anyone's scalp crawl.
Minato spoke, his tone grave. "According to the latest reports, blood from those corpses has already seeped several hundred meters underground."
"The plant life across that entire stretch of grassland has been thrown completely out of balance — growth rates second only to Wood Style ninjutsu at this point. Take an ordinary weed that should top out at fifty centimeters — in five days, it's already grown several meters tall, practically the size of a full tree."
"Our people brought back some blood and tissue samples for study, but we haven't turned up much of use yet — the only real finding is that the blue blood is saturated with an overwhelming amount of raw vitality."
At that, Minato gestured toward a glass test tube sitting on the meeting table.
Inside sat roughly half a vial of pale blue liquid, its texture somewhere between viscous and paste-like, though noticeably thinner than actual paste.
He paused for a moment before continuing. "That's the blood from those corpses. It's what's causing the plants to grow wild — and there's reason to think it can trigger mutations in animals as well."
"Perhaps this isn't purely a disaster. It might be worth studying properly. If this blood has some beneficial effect on the human body, with no dangerous side effects, we could turn this liability into an asset."
Mizuki Homura, one of the two senior elders in Konoha's advisory council, frowned. "I've no objection to studying the material — the corpses are already sitting there, after all, no sense ignoring them entirely."
"But there's one thing you need to bear in mind, Hokage-sama. Konoha's most brilliant scientific mind happens to be Orochimaru, and he's a defector now. If we want to study these corpses, you can be sure he does too. So will every other hidden village."
"That pile could very well become the spark for another shinobi world war — especially if it turns out these corpses have real value. That kind of payoff would be more than enough to push the other villages into open conflict."
Hiruzen, seated nearby, tapped the table thoughtfully and spoke up. "He's right. A corpse pile of that scale simply can't be hidden. The other villages will study it regardless of what we do — there's no way we can stop them."
Hiruzen wasn't wrong. The sheer area the Void Beast corpses covered made concealment a non-starter.
Even if every single shinobi in Konoha mobilized at once, there was no realistic way to keep other villages from getting their hands on at least some of the flesh and blood.
Under those conditions, any hidden village could simply walk in and take a sample home for research — trivially easy.
And if that research turned up something genuinely valuable — valuable enough to justify war —
Konoha risked becoming the target of every other village at once, forced once again to stand alone against the rest of the shinobi world.
Nobody in the room wanted to see that scenario play out. Not one of them — Danzō included.
Danzō might have wanted the Hokage seat badly, but that didn't mean he wanted to see Konoha reduced to rubble by another war.
At this point, Minato spoke again. "Since we can't stop other villages from taking samples anyway, and given that these corpses aren't really Konoha's private property to begin with—"
He paused, then continued. "I think our best move is to treat these strange creatures' remains as a bargaining chip — something to buy Konoha a longer stretch of peace. We could allow the other villages access for research, but only on the condition that every village studies it together, and that whatever conclusions come out of it get shared openly among everyone."
"And if the research turns up anything genuinely useful, Konoha won't hoard it either — we'll share it the same way, or offer it for sale."
Danzō, who'd stayed quiet through most of the discussion, finally broke in. "And what makes you so confident the other villages would actually cooperate honestly? I don't think much of this proposal."
"..."
The back-and-forth had already dragged on for over two hours, and the room was still stuck on the same question, no workable plan in sight.
The corpses posed two clear dangers to Konoha, both already laid out in the discussion.
First: the blood was causing strange mutations in plant and animal life alike, with no way to know yet whether those changes were beneficial or dangerous.
Second: if any other village discovered a genuine use for the corpses, it could easily spark a war aimed squarely at Konoha.
Both possibilities left the village's leadership with pounding headaches. Was this, in some sense, simply the price of what had happened? Konoha restored from a crater back to normal — and this mountain of alien remains was the cost of that restoration?
At that point, Hiruzen spoke up again. "If we could get ahead of the other villages — figure out what these corpses are actually good for before anyone else does — we'd have a lot more room to work with."
"We could feed them a partial version of whatever we learn, just enough to keep them occupied and misdirected. What they wouldn't know is that whatever we shared would only be the smallest fraction of what we actually know."
Another of the council's senior elders, Utatane Koharu, nodded thoughtfully. "That could work. The question is whether we're actually capable of pulling it off."
Minato rubbed the base of his left thumb and said, "There might be one person who could make it happen. The question is whether the rest of you are willing to consider it."
Mizuki Homura seemed to catch his meaning immediately, frowning. "He ran human experiments right here in Konoha. His crimes are unforgivable, and he's already defected once—"
Before he could finish, Minato cut in. "Homura-sensei, if we want any real chance of getting ahead of the other villages on this, Orochimaru is the one person who could actually do it."
"I'm not suggesting we forgive what he's done — that's not on the table. But I'm Hokage, and this is my call to make. If Orochimaru returned to Konoha, that would serve this village better than leaving him out there as a defector."
"..."
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