The following morning.
Chad wasn't in any hurry to hand over to the village the things he had obtained in Konoha. First, he called Seizan and the rest of the summons that had helped him recover the scrolls (and the shelves along the way) to give them the promised reward.
Then he began cataloging the scrolls so that later he could read them and see which ones were useful, which could (or should) be destroyed, which were obsolete, and which needed to be transcribed to separate the useful parts from the useless ones.
Some of the most precious ones, such as the original scroll on Mito's Yin Seal, were carefully set aside for immediate study once he finished organizing everything.
Yes, those were going to stay with him; the village would already have more than enough to digest with the rest.
"What's this?" —while classifying everything, he found an enormous scroll with green and white lines on the outside, almost as tall as a person. He opened it and examined the contents, realizing what it really was— "Wait, is this the Katsuyu contract that the Senju keep?"
The names written in blood, the smeared fingerprints, the drawing of slugs…
"I thought Katsuyu kept the summoning contract herself," Chad stared at the huge scroll. "Although… it makes sense. If Katsuyu safeguards the contract when Tsunade dies, unless she sends clones traveling the world carrying the contract to find new contractors, she's basically giving up on ever being summoned again."
As for the names written on the contract, there were eight of them, but he only recognized the most recent ones: Hashirama, Tsunade, Nawaki, and Shizune.
"I know exactly what to do with this," he nodded.
He went out to the wide backyard, placed the scroll on the ground, and returned inside the house. When he came back out, he was carrying oil and matches. He soaked the scroll generously with oil, waited for it to absorb the flammable liquid, and, lighting a match with his thumb, tossed it onto the summoning contract.
Chad smiled as he watched it burn beautifully.
Using Katsuyu's contract was out of the question. Leaving aside the slug's loyalty to Tsunade, that meddlesome creature could sense things Chad didn't want made public.
Keep the summoning contract? That would be completely useless.
Katsuyu could simply reverse-summon the contract no matter where he put it if she knew it was with someone else, and then he wouldn't be able to do anything like this. The only reason Chad had gotten his hands on it was because Katsuyu probably believed Tsunade would store it responsibly in a hidden and secure place.
But it turned out that the menopausal gambling addict had simply tossed the scroll onto a pile in her house like it was nothing, with no guards or additional protective measures, aside from a fuinjutsu as "useful" as a bell tied to a string.
Ha!
No, the contract was going to be reduced to charcoal.
And with it, the connection between Shikkotsu Forest and its contractors would be destroyed.
There was a reason why clans like the toads, slugs, chameleons, monkeys, and so on were so careful with their summoning contracts and selective about who they allowed to put their name on them. It wasn't just about reputation. Creating them had become difficult since the fall of the Uzumaki and the Land of Whirlpools. The contracts were the nexus between them and those they agreed to help, and one more name on a contract meant one less available slot on the one they had.
He didn't know whether Katsuyu would notice the destruction of the summoning contract, but he was sure that Tsunade and Shizune wouldn't notice anything wrong until they tried to call a piece of Katsuyu. And with Tsunade's fear of blood, the chances of her using the summoning technique were infinitesimal, so it could be a long time before they realized something was wrong.
Once the summoning contract finished burning, Chad doused the remains with water, collected what was left with a garden shovel, and threw it into a trash bag, leaving it by the entrance to remind himself to throw it out later when he left.
That done, he went back to cataloging the scrolls while humming happily.
The sun was already beginning to set when he finished stacking the last scroll.
As expected, a large part of the library was related to medical knowledge, various plants and their use in different forms, secret drug recipes for ninja training, methods to counter poisons, and things like that.
Honestly, it wasn't very useful for Kumo, because most of the plants mentioned were from the Land of Fire. Unless they set up some greenhouses to grow them, at best they could take advantage of some of the preparation methods described for using them in different specialties.
Another part consisted of Tobirama's notes—essentially research journals on ninjutsu, genjutsu, and taijutsu.
These could be quite useful to the village!
While Kumo was technologically pioneering, even ahead of Konoha, the spread of that knowledge was quite limited, and like the rest of the ninja world, its technological tree was completely warped due to military preference.
Kumo's chakra cannon project was the best example; you couldn't make something like that without a solid base of knowledge.
Just taking part of that knowledge and applying it to other fields would push things forward significantly. Now, Kumo's ninjutsu research might not have been the best—only among the top three at best—but with Tobirama's theoretical framework and notes, the boost and inspiration would be considerable.
Then there were scrolls that were basically historical records, secret agreements with other clans, and the like. All prime fuel for another barbecue.
But the most interesting thing Chad found was a certain Senju clan ledger. The book didn't just detail the Senju clan's main sources of income at present (with the last update half a year ago); it also had records of which banks the money was in and how much there was…
"Hibui is going to love this," Chad said, tucking the scroll away.
It was no wonder Tsunade had lived for years as a hedonist who followed her every whim. The Senju clan had so much money in its coffers that it made Konoha look ridiculous.
When there's only one person left to use it, it's possible she couldn't spend it all in her lifetime—especially since it was still generating passive income.
As for Tsunade's loans?
She was probably too lazy to go to the banks to withdraw the money every time. She borrowed to get cash quickly and, when she had piled up too many debts, paid them all off at once without batting an eye.
Money was just a number to her.
He set those thoughts aside as he picked up the Konoha Sealing Scroll.
"Good thing I have Seizan. His chakra-nullifying claw technique worked wonders on the scroll's protective seal."
He opened it and began to review the contents.
"Damn, they weren't kidding when they said half the techniques in here are tailor-made to deal with the Uchiha."
Tobirama wasn't all that different from Orochimaru; they just had different obsessions, but they were the same type of person. Chad had no doubt that Tobirama had done many things behind Hashirama's back.
Truth be told, most of the techniques contained in the scroll had no value for Chad. Even the famous Flying Thunder God technique was just filler in his eyes.
He had something better.
At most, he might try to teach it to Yugito if she had the talent for it. As an agility-type kunoichi, it would suit her better than any of his other students.
He was far more interested in techniques like the multiplying explosive tags, the Eight Gates, Edo Tensei, or the Eight Trigrams Seal.
Especially the last three!
The Eight Gates suited Kumo like a glove; it would be well worth integrating and teaching the technique at the academy.
Imagine having, as graduation requirements, opening the First Gate—and after some time, all of Kumo's genin being able to use the Second Gate. Then chunin could use up to the Fourth, and jonin up to the Sixth.
Now imagine the Raikage with his Lightning Release chakra armor and, say, the Fifth or Sixth Gate open. Or perhaps Killer B, a perfect jinchūriki with monstrous regeneration, enduring the Seventh Gate with only a few days of rest as the price.
As for Edo Tensei, it wasn't that Chad wanted to start raising an army of the dead. Rather, he wanted to know the sequence of hand seals to cancel the technique if it was ever used against him, and he also wanted to develop better restraint methods.
As for the Eight Trigrams Seal, setting aside the fact that it would greatly improve the seals of Kumo's future jinchūriki compared to what was currently used on Yugito and Killer B, it was a fuinjutsu that contained many different minor sealing techniques that could be studied separately.
Kumo still had some Uzumaki seals that hadn't been deciphered yet; this could help.
"Hmm? The Senju Yin Seal is also here, but it's much less detailed than in Mito's scroll," he realized. "No, wait—this is basically a severely castrated version. At most it works as a chakra battery, and nothing more."
He already planned to deconstruct the Yin Seal to create a Yang Seal, so having this separate section neatly handed to him would be extremely useful in speeding up research progress.