Kimimaro raised his hand, bone shifting with a soft crack as a clean, needle-like spike unfolded from his palm.
With the same calm ease, he unfurled two summoned sealed scrolls beside it, as if this entire exchange had been premeditated down to the breath.
Because it had been.
He had always intended to trade with Orochimaru one day.
He had simply assumed it would be under far easier circumstances, perhaps even from a position of complete dominance after a victory… not this razor-thin equilibrium, both sides ragged yet standing.
The girls glanced at the scrolls, curiosity tightening the air.
Even they didn't know what he had prepared.
Orochimaru accepted them with a slow, serpentine motion, unrolling the first with idle interest.
Then his posture changed.
Eyes narrowing.
Breath catching for half a second.
He read deeper… and deeper… each line drawing him in like a hook.
They were only teasers, the smallest fraction of what Kimimaro was offering, yet his focus sharpened with every symbol and every note.
Kimimaro watched the reaction he had anticipated, the corner of his mouth pulling into a small, knowing smirk.
Only two things.
Not even "things," really.
Research, really.
Pure, distilled research.
The first scroll held his own.
The second held more so Emi's.
And the first one… Orochimaru realized immediately… was something no one else in this world could have better produced.
What Kimimaro offered wasn't a shinobi ninjutsu at all, nor was it some technique comparable to Dan Katō's jutsu in the same domain.
It wasn't a jutsu at all.
It was knowledge.
A structured, comprehensive understanding of souls.
And Orochimaru felt that immediately.
The notes hinted at mindscapes not as abstract metaphors but as navigable systems.
Of how invading souls behaved inside foreign vessels.
Of how dominance formed.
Of how two souls could clash, merge, devour, or override.
Of how to stabilize a foreign body and make it truly one's own.
In the best way possible.
These weren't theories.
They were observations.
Hard-earned.
First-hand.
Kimimaro didn't say it aloud, but the implications were clear even from the fragments written there.
He had lived this.
Not in the way Orochimaru hopped between vessels, but in the way a second soul slips into a world, fights for a body, conquers it, and reshapes what remains into something new and more powerful.
It was the kind of insight only a transmigrator could possess.
Not a technique.
Not a ritual.
A blueprint.
The missing conceptual skeleton that Orochimaru's "Living Corpse Reincarnation" had always lacked.
A way to perfect possession, stabilize identity, repair rejection, and eventually… transcend the imperfections of the jutsu entirely.
Orochimaru's pupils thinned as he read, the air around him tightening.
This was knowledge he had never been able to acquire.
Not through a decade of corpses.
And now someone was offering it to him freely.
'Is he the same as me?'
'Is this truly his first body?'
'Or was he simply born with some aberrant soul mutation that let him perceive all of this?'
Orochimaru had no answers… and that uncertainty only sharpened his interest.
He found himself already itching to unroll the second scroll, now that he had grasped the implications of the first.
Kimimaro's smirk deepened the moment he saw Orochimaru's inadvert reaction, and his a bit impatient opening of the second one.
It was no less valuable… especially to a man who revered science the way Orochimaru did.
It contained Emi's research.
A framework detailing how the Yang Release chakra could merge with scientific methodology to alter cells themselves at a foundational level.
Kimimaro had copied it exactly as she researched it months ago.
It wasn't complete yet.
But even unfinished, the principles were already potent, fundamental, and decades ahead of anything the shinobi world possessed.
To apply it properly, Orochimaru would need either a Byakugan with Emi's own level of microscopic precision or a technological instrument capable of replicating that sight.
Something that did not exist naturally in this world.
But if anyone could create it… It was Orochimaru, perhaps.
He had the resources.
He had the network.
He had subordinates educated for decades, specialists he had personally gathered from nations and civilian sectors alike.
For example, Kimimaro's half-cult of illiterate, half-trained Jashinist strays couldn't compare to that kind of long-established scientific infrastructure.
Orochimaru, for the first time today, visibly leaned closer.
He also understood exactly how useful this was.
While Orochimaru was still absorbed in the scrolls, eyes gleaming with the thrill of new horizons cracking open, Kimimaro suddenly felt a faint pulse vibrate through his pendant.
Ashina's voice slipped into his mind.
Calm at first.
But beneath it… a note of worry.
And something tighter, almost accusatory.
"Why did you not ask for Edo Tensei?"
Kimimaro's expression froze for a fraction of a breath.
He understood immediately.
He had made a mistake.
He had promised Ashina, a few years back, that he would obtain Edo Tensei someday.
Not for some superficial curiosity, but because the technique held unique components crucial for Ashina's eventual revival into a real, functioning body.
And Kimimaro… had never once told him the full truth.
He had never mentioned that he possessed a transmigrator-level comprehension of souls, something far more refined than Edo Tensei's relatively crude architecture.
Edo Tensei's brilliance lay in its manipulation of the Pure Land link, not in true understanding of transmigration or soul integration, despite how intimately it dealt with spirits.
He had never explained that his own true knowledge could be shaped into something far better. He had hidden it.
On purpose.
Back then, he had been too weak.
Too early in the partnership.
If Ashina revived too soon, if he returned in full, overwhelming Uzumaki form, Kimimaro knew their delicate dynamic would shatter.
The balance would flip overnight.
Ashina would become the dominant figure in the partnership, not him.
So he buried the knowledge.
All of it.
But now, after watching Orochimaru twist Edo Tensei into its more advanced, grotesquely efficient form, far beyond Tobirama's initial prototype, that he was vaguely aware of back when he was alive, Ashina had clearly realized something.
And he feared that he was reneging on his promise. Kimimaro forgot about this completely.