Chapter 589: Investigation and Analysis
On the empty island reef, two figures suddenly appeared at some unknown time.
The leading man wore a mask, revealing only a single scarlet eye.
Landing behind him was an oddity with a half-black, half-white face, his upper body wrapped in giant leaves. It was exactly the most low-profile member of Akatsuki, Zetsu.
"No, we still need to go north for another thirty or forty miles," Zetsu bowed slightly, standing at a subordinate position, pointing towards the distance as he answered.
"Even further?" The leading man narrowed his eyes.
"Yes, Lord Obito."
Following the direction the oddity pointed, Obito only saw a hazy gray expanse between the sea and the sky. He could faintly feel a displeasing aura floating in the air and in the ocean.
The further north they went, the thicker this ominous aura became. Standing on this reef, it even began to cause a dull pain.
Zetsu told him this was the lingering embers left behind after that massive explosion.
What kind of explosion could leave embers tens of miles away that still possessed such terrifying residual power days later? Imagining the power of that secret jutsu, Obito couldn't help but get goosebumps and subconsciously took a step back.
Black Zetsu noticed Obito's movement.
As the true mastermind behind the scenes, he played the role of an obedient tool as always. The expression on his face didn't change in the slightest, as if he hadn't seen anything.
Normally, beneath Black Zetsu's calm facade, he would have long started to despise Obito's cowardice deep down. He was actually quite dissatisfied with this tool Madara had found—narrow-minded and foolish, far less useful than the tool he had found, Madara Uchiha. He was only tolerating Obito for the sake of the plan's implementation.
But this time, he completely understood Obito's state of mind.
"Immediately after the battle ended, I sent three White Zetsus over to scout," Zetsu suddenly said.
The half-plant White Zetsus were excellent scouts on land, but in the sea, they could only walk step by step like ordinary ninja. Therefore, this scouting operation was slow, and even casualties were within Zetsu's expectations.
Yet Zetsu still couldn't have expected that it would take a full three days before a single White Zetsu, covered in swollen pus and rotting beyond recognition, returned to the base.
"...That place... is hell..." After forcing himself to deliver the intel and that sentence, the surviving White Zetsu drew his last breath.
The horror in Black Zetsu's heart at that time was not much less than Obito's at this moment!
Later, he sent out more personnel. And because the residual radiation at the nuclear blast site had further decreased, Zetsu slowly came to know what had happened here.
Zetsu recounted everything that had happened here to Obito one by one.
The latter frowned without saying a word.
Abruptly, his nostrils flared as if he had sensed something. He jumped a few steps forward onto the reef by the seaside, his gaze sweeping downward, and his eyes instantly hardened into substance.
Dead fish.
Endless dead fish!
They rotted on the sea surface, accumulated near the island reefs, forming a massive, densely packed expanse. In the middle of the massive school of fish, two giant killer whales floated belly-up, lying motionless among the fish. Their corpses were swollen and rotting, pus splashing everywhere, particularly eye-catching.
The thick stench of decay, drifting with the changing sea breeze, drilled into their nasal cavities like leeches, nauseatingly disgusting.
Besides the weak splashing sound of the ocean waves, the surroundings were excessively calm, almost dead silent.
This shocking scene greatly startled Obito. He was about to question Zetsu but quickly realized the reason.
The cause was self-evident.
"Hmph..." Obito had a dark expression. He bypassed the school of dead fish and said in a low voice, "No wonder I smelled a stench earlier."
"...The power of the embers seems to be constantly diminishing; it is now no longer enough to make a ninja sick," Zetsu added a sentence. "Thinking about it now, some of the burning embers must have been carried away by the ocean currents."
Obito was noncommittal, walking forward with a gloomy face.
He was no environmentalist and had no special thoughts about the massive die-off of fish schools. He just felt a few degrees more apprehension in his heart towards the secret jutsu Haruno Sakura had used that day.
Zetsu followed behind him, his face seemingly calm, but his heart was equally churning. His apprehension towards Haruno Sakura was even a bit deeper than Obito's.
After walking another stretch of the sea route, Zetsu called out to Obito: "This is the location of the battle that day."
Obito stopped in his tracks.
"Is it here..."
The surroundings were a calm sea area, with nothing special to be seen.
But the cursed aura in the air was intense to the extreme. Standing here, the burning sensation became particularly obvious, as if every breath would be attacked by an omnipresent enemy.
Even while protecting his body with chakra, Obito instinctively realized that he couldn't stay in such a place for too long.
When the first three White Zetsus entered, the power of those "embers" was probably a hundred times what it is now, right?
The man pursed his lips, imagining the scene of the White Zetsus slowly corroding, rotting, and swelling with pus, without saying a word.
After a long time, he slowly opened his mouth: "If it were the power of the Ten-Tails, how would it compare to this?"
Zetsu was stunned for a moment, then answered: "This... I don't know. Perhaps the Ten-Tails is still more powerful."
On the surface, Zetsu indeed couldn't answer this question.
But Black Zetsu had actually witnessed the power of the Ten-Tails.
In comparison, the total volume of the Ten-Tails' power was still many times stronger than Haruno Sakura's hand-rubbed atomic bomb. However, its quality was far inferior to the power of a nuclear explosion. At the very least, no matter what, the Ten-Tails could never create a fireball of tens of millions of degrees.
Conversely, if the Ten-Tails took a nuclear bomb point-blank, then within the radius of the fireball at the blast center, under that blazing temperature that melted everything, whether it was the One-Tail, Ten-Tails, or Hundred-Tails, they would all be reduced to ashes!
This was the disparity.
Obito sneered: "What do you know."
He took a deep breath, feeling a faint burning sensation rising in his body, his expression becoming increasingly solemn.
"Can you feel this power, Zetsu? That explosion directly wiped out the Six Paths of Pain fighting at full strength. Although that fool Nagato didn't fully unleash the power of the Rinnegan, to be annihilated so easily... it's truly hard to imagine exactly what level of energy Haruno Sakura has mastered!
"I'm a bit regretful now. Rashly breaking away from Konan and Nagato without listening to your intelligence was my mistake... If I had known that girl possessed such power, I should have continued hiding behind the scenes and let Nagato take the brunt of it!
"By the way, with an explosion of this magnitude, Haruno Sakura must have paid some price, right!?"
Zetsu shook his head: "Theoretically, such a brutal explosion would catch the caster in the blast as well... But according to intel provided by our informants in the Land of Water, the day after the battle, she was seen in the village, full of energy and shopping... She doesn't seem to have suffered any serious injuries!"
Obito's expression turned a few degrees uglier.
"She probably dodged the explosion using the Reverse Summoning Jutsu..." Obito guessed the correct answer without thinking too deeply about it. "Forget it, there's no point in guessing the details of the battle."
He thought for a moment and concluded: "In short, this shouldn't be a secret jutsu that can be cast casually. Otherwise, Haruno Sakura would have used this jutsu right from the start, instead of fighting a bitter battle for a long time, exhausting all her trump cards, and only using it at the very end to decide the victory. This looks like the jutsu carries huge risks, giving the feeling that it was a desperate move cast only when there was no other choice!"
Zetsu nodded.
Black Zetsu included, agreed with Obito's analysis.
If Haruno Sakura really could rub out nuclear bombs casually without facing any risks or prices, then Black Zetsu could just forget about his millennium plan. He should obediently hide away and wait for that woman to die of old age before coming out to stir up trouble again.
Forget about Obito Uchiha, Nagato, or even Madara; even if his mother resurrected, she probably wouldn't want to take a nuclear bomb point-blank.
"That's right," Zetsu smiled easily. "If Haruno Sakura were really this strong, Konoha wouldn't need to fear us at all and should take this opportunity to start unifying the ninja world! Therefore, her jutsu must have very strong limitations."
As expected of figures hiding behind the scenes of the ninja world weaving conspiracies; in just a few words, they had analyzed a lot of intelligence. Haruno Sakura's move indeed had various limitations. The casting itself carried massive risks, and moreover, the preparation of enriched uranium required a long time.
After their analysis, they felt that Haruno Sakura wasn't completely unbeatable, and the oppression in their hearts lessened considerably.
But ultimately, with such a figure existing, no matter how they analyzed the limitations of that jutsu, a lingering shadow still shrouded the hearts of Obito and Black Zetsu.
This made them feel a bit out of place—Akatsuki should be the shadow looming over the hearts of the ninja of various countries. Why did the roles seem to be reversing now?
"Haruno Sakura..." silently repeating this name, Obito narrowed his eyes slightly. "To deal with her, we will need more power."
Or rather, cannon fodder to take the brunt at the front...
Zetsu's heart stirred: "You mean...?"
"Orochimaru." Obito said in a deep voice. "Yes, I need him, and his Impure World Reincarnation."
After saying that, he turned and left.