Jugo spent the next few days busy, but he was having trouble progressing with the Bunretsu no Jutsu. The problems were very simple, werewolves could heal from losing limbs, but the division of the soul...
Not even Ukon and Sakon could help with that, so Jugo went to find an expert, Orochimaru.
Ironically, Orochimaru was of great help in this, his reincarnation jutsu essentially required leaving a small piece of his soul in each mark, serving as a means to attract the rest of his soul and prevent it from heading towards the Pure Land.
It was practically a "living" Horcrux.
Dividing a small piece of the soul was far less harmful overall than splitting it directly in half, but it still wasn't an easy task. Orochimaru used sealing techniques as a means to accomplish this, which made everything simpler. Of course, not every mark possessed a piece of Orochimaru's soul, only those he deemed worthy of possessing it.
Instead of splitting manually, he transformed the process into seals, and when he applied the seal, the soul fragment would split on its own.
This led Jugo to imagine that he could copy this, using seals as a means to split his soul in two, not just seals, but also using the mysticism of the world of LOTM.
The division would no longer be a ninjutsu, but as long as the effect was the same, Jugo would be content.
Thus, Jugo went from trying to make the werewolves split up to getting Orochimaru's help to transform the Bunretsu no Jutsu into runic language.
The process was much more complicated than anticipated. Jugo needed to use both sealing techniques and ancient Hermes while Orochimaru gave him ideas and explained potential problems. When the first prototype was made, they used a werewolf as a guinea pig and... the werewolf split in two, but only the body. The two pieces of soul were expelled from the body and went straight to the Tenebrous World, meaning the werewolf died.
Luckily for the werewolf, Jugo was able to pull his soul back, so he returned to life. It helped that the soul was in the Tenebrous World to begin with, luckily, there weren't any other deities with an "afterlife" in that world.
With the first test came the second, the third... time continued to pass while Jugo focused completely on this "ritual".
He didn't bother trying to figure out how to act as Ancient Bane yet, instead, he focused purely on splitting himself.
//-//
(Yugito's POV)
Night fell over the hidden village of Sound, the twilight seemed less silent and more inviting as the lights came on in the night market, life would not stop so soon after sunset.
Tired men and women returned home after a day's work, but there was no struggle in their eyes, only relief and confidence.
The villagers were still lively even after nightfall, some took their families to eat at a restaurant, others discussed the price of something, children ran and played, bringing kind smiles to passersby.
Yugito watched all of this from her window, and in the end she just sighed and left the window, going to check her equipment.
She had a mission, at this time, when merchants and nobles were arriving in the village, surveillance should be less strict, giving her enough time to gather information.
Oto remained a village full of mysteries, this was not what the Raikage wanted so close to their territory. She had already been everywhere she was allowed to go, heard more than she heard, and gathered what little information she could.
Aside from customs and general knowledge, she had gleaned nothing, so she would have to move in the shadows, searching for something that wouldn't be found in the mouths of drunkards, but hidden by seals and walls.
Night slowly fell until the figures in the street slowly returned to their homes. Among these figures, Yugito had already transformed into an ordinary villager, one who didn't go out much and hadn't gone out at all that day.
Yugito crept away until she felt the stares leave her, it was at that point that she hid and began to move in the dark, concealing her chakra and her tracks, like a cat, her figure barely emitting a sound.
She moved towards what should be considered the hidden building in the village, something she found by chance, something that wasn't in the open air, but was deep underground.
What she didn't realize was a white snake with narrow eyes slowly following her across the land, a Snake Clone of Jugo. He had been following Yugito long before today, noticing her obvious curiosity around the village. She was one of his most troublesome targets, so Jugo kept a Snake Clone with her the whole time.
The little snake stuck its tongue out to sniff the air, watching the direction Yugito was going, it couldn't help but feel strange.
The woman really knows where to go, even going to her office would be easier than going to Orochimaru's hideout.
It wasn't just Orochimaru who was there, but his main body and Jugo's werewolf army were there too, if she went in and got caught... it would be truly "beautiful".
With a soft chuckle, Jugo thought about what he would do with this mischievous "kitten".
Ay had truly given him a great gift, he wasn't even interested in the tailed beasts, but sending Yugito here would be a shame to ignore such a gift.
[A/N: I'm going to start using Ay instead of "A". I usually put it in quotation marks because "A" is an article in my language that would be translated as "The", which would be a pain to correct, so I have to put it in quotation marks, but it's annoying to keep doing that, so I'll just write Ay]