Chapter 91: Creating the Rinnegan

On the floor below the stage, Shitoshi Kuroda’s fists clenched and unclenched, then clenched again, then released again.

His palms were slick with sweat, and his heart brimmed with anxiety and anticipation.

He stared at his two sons on the stage and held his breath.

This was an opportunity.

His two sons had been dragged up there by Orochimaru after a fight. Perhaps Orochimaru had been angered; perhaps he simply did not care. Kuroda was more inclined to believe the latter.

Now Orochimaru wanted to use his two sons for an experiment and unveil a “gift” before everyone. Far from displeased, Kuroda felt a private surge of delight.

At last, he had a thread he could tie himself to Orochimaru with.

Whether that “gift” was real or false, even if his two sons dropped dead on the spot, he would applaud and praise the “gift” highly. He would buy it at any price.

A son could be made again, but chances to connect with Orochimaru were few. Besides, his sons had indeed done wrong. Even if Orochimaru did not care, he could not ignore it.

Compensation. This matter had to be compensated for.

He wore a satisfied smile.

The others quickly caught on as well. Orochimaru likely did not give a damn about children squabbling over trivial nonsense. If Kuroda made a show of humility, he was certain to leave a good impression.

Orochimaru was at the height of his power now; to say he was the world’s foremost figure would not be an exaggeration. Anyone who could latch onto him would inspire envy, jealousy, and resentment.

Some even turned back to glare fiercely at their own children. They had brought the little ones here to broaden their horizons, and yet their children had not even managed to start a fight. What sort of children were these?

The children, bewildered and aggrieved, wondered why their fathers were staring at them. They had done nothing wrong...

On the stage, Orochimaru asked the question with a faint expression and a slight curve at the corner of his mouth. Yet when the blond child saw that smile, he stepped back in terror, his whole body beginning to tremble.

He realized he had caused a catastrophe.

“I don’t want it... I won’t drink it... I...” He refused to drink the reagent. He was afraid of dying. He did not want to die.

“Brat!”

Below the stage, Kuroda cursed inwardly, but he did not dare speak aloud for fear of displeasing Orochimaru. Deep in his heart, however, killing intent had already stirred.

Fortunately, at that moment, the black-haired child gritted his teeth and stepped forward with a resolute expression.

“Lord Orochimaru, I’ll drink it.”

After a pause, he went on, “I don’t understand what you’re saying, my lord, but I know this thing may change my fate and my mother’s. I want my father to take me seriously. I want him to stop driving me and my mother away, so I’ll drink it.”

The blond child’s eyes lit up with joy.

“Drink it! Hurry and drink it! If you die in my place, Father will be very happy, and your mother will be treated well too. Drink it now!”

The black-haired child walked to Orochimaru with an expression of unwavering resolve.

Orochimaru patted the black-haired child’s head and smiled.

“Drink the red one.”

Red Lotus lowered the tray. Upon it sat three neatly arranged reagents: red, yellow, and blue. The black-haired child reached out, hesitated over the three vials, then withdrew his hand.

“What’s wrong, little one?” Red Lotus asked kindly as she lowered her head, her smile lovely.

The black-haired child said, “...I’m color-blind.”

At last, the black-haired child drained the red reagent in one gulp.

Everyone stared fixedly at him, waiting to see what would become of him. They doubted Orochimaru’s words were true and suspected that the real purpose was coercive profiteering, that it was never any kind of gift at all.

But what if it was true? Since the display had been made with such solemnity, even if it were not true, they still wanted to see what Orochimaru’s purpose really was.

“Aah!”

Suddenly, the child who had drunk the reagent cried out in agony and clutched his throat tightly, as though he could not breathe.

Veins bulged across his face, bloodshot lines spread through his eyes, and blood began to run down from them.

The blood was a vivid red.

The black-haired child then covered both eyes with his hands, clearly feeling pain in them even more acutely than in his throat.

“Aah!”

He roared again, like a beast. Lowering his hands, he revealed that both of his eyes had become single-tomoe Sharingan.

The crowd was shocked. This was the Sharingan!

That reagent had caused an ordinary child to evolve into a Sharingan user!

“Oh? A single-tomoe Sharingan has appeared?” Orochimaru said with a smile. “It seems this child’s emotional fluctuations are quite intense.”

Orochimaru said to the crowd, “The red reagent he just drank was an Uchiha bloodline reagent, mixed with Indra’s chakra. He now has the abilities of the Uchiha clan. Next, he will drink the yellow reagent.”

Red Lotus picked up the yellow vial and handed it to the black-haired child. His eyes were red, and the veins on his face had not yet subsided, but he could feel power.

Great power.

He took the yellow reagent and tipped his head back to drink it in one gulp.

“Aah!” he roared again.

The yellow reagent’s effects began to manifest. His clothes bulged as though something were growing up from beneath his skin.

The next instant, with a soft tearing sound, his clothes split apart, and a profusion of branches and leaves burst from his body, lush and vigorous.

Orochimaru said to the people below the stage, “This is the bloodline power of the Senju clan, and it also contains Ashura’s chakra.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a massive tree had already grown from the black-haired child’s body, trapping him within its trunk.

Before the people below could even recover from their shock, they heard two crisp cracks. The black-haired child burst free of the tree. Now possessing the powers of both the Uchiha and Senju clans, breaking out was easy.

Below the stage, Black Zetsu, disguised as the ruler of a small nation, stared in astonishment at the black-haired child. He had only just been agonizing over a suitable body to resurrect his mother, and now one had appeared.

This black-haired child possessed the bloodline power of both the Uchiha and Senju clans. He had to be obtained.

Black Zetsu was already thinking that after this affair was over, he would go and trick the black-haired child into carrying out the Moon’s Eye Plan.

The others were also stunned, but shock had come so often already that their capacity to accept it had grown. They soon recovered.

At that moment, Orochimaru said, “Drink the third reagent.”

The black-haired child did not hesitate. He took the third blue vial from Red Lotus and drank it in one gulp.

He could feel immense power boiling within him, and he liked the sensation.

Orochimaru said to the crowd, “The blue reagent is an emotional reagent. For the Uchiha clan, awakening their eyes requires stimulation. This vial is a highly concentrated one; with my current resources, I could only produce a single dose. Watch carefully.”

Hearing this, everyone looked even more intently at the black-haired child.

At that point, his expression began to distort, shifting from joy to anger, from delight to sorrow.

He tasted every flavor of emotion, sweet and bitter alike.

Clearly, he was experiencing all manner of extreme feelings.

This emotional reagent had been infused with genjutsu effects, allowing it to create “real” scenes based on a person’s psyche and thereby generate emotional power that could awaken the eyes.

The black-haired child crouched on the floor in agony, writhing with spasms as tears, blood, mucus, and saliva all flowed together. He looked utterly miserable.

After quite a while, he finally calmed down.

But instead of opening his eyes at once, he staggered to his feet first. Once his body had steadied, he opened them abruptly.

His eyes had already transformed completely into the Rinnegan.

Compared with everyone else, Black Zetsu was undoubtedly the most shocked of all, shocked beyond measure. His eyes widened to the limit, and his hands trembled uncontrollably.

“Too perfect... this is too perfect... I must obtain this black-haired child, he, he is the sacrifice for Mother’s resurrection!

“No, this black-haired child is something created by Orochimaru. I must obtain Orochimaru’s method of creation...

“No, that’s not right either. Orochimaru just said he would give this method away as a gift...

“Then I... only need to wait?”

After thinking it over carefully, Black Zetsu still felt something was wrong. This seemed too easy, almost as if the day Mother would be resurrected was already right before his eyes.

Then what had he been doing for the past few thousand years?

All that frantic scheming—had it all been meaningless?

He suddenly began to doubt life itself.