Kimimaro's smirk widened as he looked down at Saya.
"Then this can't wait. You'll present me with your techniques right away so I can… 'help' you."
Before she could answer, he flicked his wrist.
Another sealing tag slapped against her back, glowing faintly as the formula activated.
Saya's eyes went wide, fury erupting across her pale face.
She had been counting the seconds, waiting for the first tag's suppression to weaken, ready to turn the tables the instant her power returned.
But now, with this second one layered on, the possibility crumbled into dust.
"You—!" she burst out, her voice strangled with indignation.
Her teeth ground together, rage and humiliation boiling in her throat.
Kimimaro didn't give her the dignity of a reply.
He simply grabbed her by the collar of her cloak and lifted her effortlessly, as though handling garbage too filthy to touch with bare hands.
Her feet kicked uselessly against the air, her face dark with rage.
He turned then, glancing at the remaining ring of cultists still standing at the edges of the chamber, their chants faltering now that their leader had been subdued so easily.
His eyes slid toward Reika.
"Deal with the ants. I don't have time to waste convincing them."
Reika's lips pressed into a cold line. She didn't argue.
With swift seals, a crest of frost bloomed across the chamber, sharp spires of ice piercing the floor.
Cries echoed briefly, then silence. When the mist cleared, only shards of ice and broken corpses remained.
Saya could only watch from where Kimimaro held her, her body stiff as the reality sank in.
Her protests continued as they left the shrine, her voice sharp but breaking beneath the edges. "You think you can— You'll regret this! I am Chinoike Saya! You can't—"
Her words faltered when Kimimaro turned his gaze on her, cold and merciless. "Your cult is going nowhere. If it continues as it is, it will collapse as your clan did. I'll reorganize it myself. As its new leader."
Saya's breath caught.
A dozen retorts died in her throat.
Rage twisted inside her chest, hot and suffocating.
And yet, there was something else.
That gaze of his, that voice, cut deeper than her pride wanted to admit.
The way he had seen through her clan's tragedy, connecting truths even she had never dared piece together… it made her feel cornered, stripped bare.
But also, for the first time in years, she felt something unsettlingly close to… security.
Her fists trembled.
Her heart twisted with humiliation.
She hated him; she wanted to shred him apart, but a strange, treacherous feeling crept beneath the hatred.
She needed him. If she truly wanted to live, if she wanted to uncover the truth of that night, then she had no choice but to follow him.
Kimimaro, meanwhile, carried her with unshakable calm, as though none of her fury mattered.
Internally, he was already dissecting her nature.
A sadistic streak ran through her; he had already seen it in her smirk, her ritual, her games with power.
But sadists, when crushed utterly, could bend in the other direction. He knew this kind of woman.
Break them properly, and their cruelty gets inverted into submission for him alone.
It would take time, but he would mold her.
Reika walked at his side, silent but watchful, her eyes flicking between Kimimaro and the subdued Saya.
Eventually, the three of them reached Saya's so-called "main hideout" a few kilometers away.
It was nothing impressive, hidden in the folds of a rocky gorge, half-submerged beneath moss and mist.
From the outside, it looked like nothing more than an abandoned hermit's shack pressed against a cliffside, with a trickle of hot spring steam rising nearby.
But inside, Kimimaro could already sense the faint residue of seals, wards, and bloodstains.
A den for a cult that thrived in shadows, nothing more, nothing less.
Kimimaro set Saya down finally, but not gently, letting her stumble into the dirt before him.
His gaze remained sharp, his dominance pressing on her like a weight.
"This," he said coldly, "is where your weakness ends."
"From now on, your power, your cult, and your future belong to me."
Saya's chest heaved, her face twisted with fury and indignation.
But behind the rage, the part of her that survived by submission whispered the truth she couldn't deny: she was already his prisoner.
Kimimaro soon got and unrolled the Chinoike scrolls one by one, scanning the inked lines without hesitation, his expression calm but his mind constantly assessing his own current level.
His fighting style, as it stood, was still close to what it had always been in the original series as well, for now, the sharp elegance of a taijutsu practitioner with a cruel twist.
His simplest technique, pulling an arm bone and shaping it into a blade, was deceptively brutal.
With it, he could stab so fast that afterimages blurred into chaos, each thrust unpredictable in angle and rhythm until the opponent inevitably slipped and gave him the opening he needed.
If that wasn't enough, he had the Dance of the Willow.
Long, hardened bones burst from his palms, elbows, knees, and shoulders, flowing like branches in the wind, parrying, countering, and piercing with a grace that looked evasive until the bones cut deep.
And for defense, there was the Dance of the Larch, the eruption of spikes across his entire body that punished anyone foolish enough to come close, skewering them on their own momentum, like a hedgehog.
These three alone already made him a nightmare for taijutsu specialists, even with a child's body.
Beyond that, there were the more destructive Clematis dances, the whip of his own spine, the drill-like flower, techniques he had seen the original Kimimaro perform in the warped stages of the Curse Mark.
For now, he kept them sealed away.
Those techniques tore apart the user's body as much as their enemies, and until he found a safer way to refine them, they would remain shelved.
Instead, he complemented his dances with simple water and earth C-rank techniques, layering traps, barriers, and openings into his taijutsu flow.
Kimimaro knew the truth.
Measured purely by power, Reika's ice and Saya's Ketsuryūgan perhaps head-on put them above him since they were older.
But his discipline, tactics gave him the edge where it mattered.
He also knew the limits of his bloodline.
Some fans in his old world liked to imagine the Kaguya clan summoning seas of bone like Hashirama raised forests, but Kimimaro wasn't delusional.
Bones were far less efficient to create than wood using yang release.
Additionally, without a monster's chakra like Hashirama, such feats were impossible.
His own path would never be a total wide-area devastation.
Even if the total area he covered would increase with age.
No, his eyes lingered on the forbidden patterns of the scrolls, thoughts curling inward.
The way forward was refinement
Smaller, sharper, deadlier.
Not seas of bones, but the Ash Bones, the true evolution of his bloodline.
That was the future he would carve out soon.
The realization slowly pieced itself together in Kimimaro's mind with clinical precision.
The essence of these ritual techniques was not worship, not faith, not some divine hand reaching down from the sky.
It was Yin and Yang Release, warped into a loop that rewrote the body into something that refused to die.
The cultists, involved in the ritual process, themselves were nothing more than external conduits, tools to channel and shape the sacrificed energy into the chalice seals that birthed the so-called 'undead'.
The "Jashin symbols" were never divine revelations at all, only mental scaffolding, ritual frameworks, a layer of jutsu shiki designed to dress raw Yin–Yang manipulation in the language of worship.
A crude imitation of divinity.
Something like a permanent physical Izanagi, a seal of mixed chakra that shackled flesh and spirit together.
That explained Hidan.
He wasn't blessed by some god; he was simply the "perfect" product of this twisted formula.
But perfect vessels were rare.
Where Hidan's body had embraced the conversion completely, the most could only receive fragments.
Their altered beings could be killed, maimed, or destroyed, though not without difficulty.
And the success rate… depended entirely on the sacrifice.
The stronger the offering, the better the result.
The Chinoike themselves, with their natural Yin–Yang affinity, had been the best material, which further perfectly explained why half of the clan wanted to devour the other half.
After that, powerful shinobi.
Civilian fodder would only ever create brittle husks.
Kimimaro's eyes slid toward Saya, still bristling under the weight of his seal.
She had been too cowardly to aim higher.
Instead of reaching for shinobi prey, she had chosen peasants and vagabonds, eager for easy mass sacrifices.
And then, when opportunity knocked, she'd laid her trap for him and Reika.
Not because they had answers, but because their blood and chakra would have made exquisite sacrifices.
Kimimaro's lips curved faintly. "Cowardice masquerading as pragmatism," he thought.
To him, it was stupidity.
What worth was a cult if its rituals only spawned weaklings?
No. If he were to take this cult as his own, and he would, then it would not crawl in the shadows, chewing on scraps.
It would deal in real power, with real fuel.
Shinobi, not peasants.
Powerful ones, if possible.
Anything less was a waste.
"This isn't a faith," he thought coldly.
"It's a business. And from now on, it's mine."
At that moment, Ashina stirred within the seal, his presence also washing through the scrolls Kimimaro had just plundered, the entire time.
His voice was low, edged with hunger. "Interesting. These rites… they carry some potential. The Uzumaki were not strangers to such things. Our 'greatest' seal, the Reaper Death Seal, was nothing less than Yin–Yang Release fused with fuinjutsu. You see it too, don't you? This could be molded. I didn't expect to encounter something like that here. You got lucky again."
Kimimaro's lips curved into a thin grin.
"So it's not just my business after all," he answered silently. "It's a joint venture then."
Ashina hummed in dark amusement, his interest clear.
"Think of it as raw ore. With the right forging, it becomes steel. So, I am also interested."
"So, it seems we share an aim. You will build the body. I will sharpen the technique."
The seal pulsed against his skin, Ashina's presence further tightening like approval.
Kimimaro tilted his head slightly, amused.
"Let's see where this goes, then."
Teacher and student aligned for once, both staring at the same promise of power, Yin–Yang constructs waiting to be refined.
The thought didn't need more words, and they had the tacit understanding.
Ashina would dissect the techniques, sharpen the jutsu shiki, and refine the ritual framework until it rivaled Uzumaki art, while investigating and removing all possible hidden dangers.
Kimimaro would mold the structure, bend the cult itself into something disciplined, obedient, and way more useful.
Together, they would raise this hollow faith into a force.
For now, it was only a "startup".
But with the right sacrifices, the right fuel, it would grow into something far greater.
What had begun as a farce of blood and symbols would, under their hands, grow into a power neither of them could have managed alone.