Chapter 343: The Mysteries of Soul and Body
"Suffocation?" Kenichi looked at Amado in surprise.
That was definitely a strange sensation. According to his previous research, however, Edo Tensei did not require breathing at all. People revived through Edo Tensei had no need to breathe, even if some of them still retained the habit.
But that was only because they had breathed while alive, so it had become instinctive. It was like someone suddenly telling you that your breathing was under your own control. The moment you became aware of it, it no longer felt entirely automatic.
Even so, humans were still humans. They could not simply stop breathing.
Only after becoming a soul could one break free from that basic physical need.
Yet now Amado was saying he had felt as if he were suffocating.
That made things very interesting.
"...It is not exactly suffocation," Amado said after thinking for a moment. "It is more like a very uncomfortable sensation. I was not truly breathing. I was just not used to not needing to breathe."
He touched his own body, then immediately turned to look at his daughter.
Akebi was lying quietly on the sofa, covered with a blanket that Kenichi had draped over her. Although Kenichi had certainly been treated to quite a view in the process, what needed to be done still had to be done.
"My daughter, right now..." Amado's voice trembled slightly.
He had paid with his own life for this moment. If it had failed...
"She's alive," Kenichi said before he could finish. "Her heartbeat, brain waves, and everything else have returned to normal values. She just hasn't woken up yet. It may be that her soul still needs time to adjust."
"..."
In the next instant, Amado dropped to the floor.
Tears streamed down his face as he clutched Akebi's hand, feeling her warmth. He laughed and cried at the same time, looking half deranged.
Kenichi said nothing. He only watched quietly.
Amado had sacrificed so much to bring his daughter back. In the end, he had truly succeeded, at the cost of his own life.
Frankly speaking, from a purely practical perspective, it was a loss.
Amado's strength was already close to Special Jonin level. With some effort, he could probably have revived a Jonin. That was an extremely valuable bargaining chip, enough to exchange for a powerful and capable ninja.
Although Akebi had also been a ninja, according to Amado, she had only been a Genin. She had never been particularly outstanding.
If Kenichi had insisted on pure efficiency, he could have simply controlled some other Genin with parasites, taught them One's Own Life Reincarnation, and had them revive Akebi instead.
But this was Amado's daughter.
There was no way Kenichi was going to stop an old father from saving his child with his own hands.
So he did nothing.
He was someone who valued efficiency and cost effectiveness, but even he understood that not everything in this world could be measured by those standards alone. Some things still had to be done, even if they were exhausting and irrational.
Besides, Amado's death also created a chance to study the Pure Land itself. That alone made this experiment priceless.
"It's good... it's good that she's alive..." Amado wiped his face and slowly stood up.
He glanced at Kenichi in embarrassment. At his age, crying like that really was a loss of composure.
"Mr. Amado," Kenichi said, changing the subject with perfect tact, "although your daughter has been revived, she still has not regained consciousness. I've been monitoring her brain waves. They remain active, so she may simply still be in the adaptation phase."
Amado accepted the hot tea Kenichi handed him and took a slow sip.
Kenichi did not mention the tears. If their positions had been reversed, he would have lost control too.
People were like that. Unless someone had truly become a creature without emotion, scenes like this were inevitable.
That was why he chose to shift the conversation back to science. It was the easiest way to help Amado recover his composure.
"The soul really does exist," Amado said after another sip. "The moment I died, I felt an incredible sense of peace."
Kenichi immediately wrote that down in the experiment log.
That was valuable data.
"The feeling was very strange," Amado continued. "Before I died, my body was in terrible shape, but my mind was filled with an almost unnatural calm. The instant death arrived, my soul felt... free. As though I had finally taken off a coat that had been soaked through with water."
He touched his face as he spoke, trying to put the feeling into words.
Before death, he had been miserable.
He had wanted to live.
No, more than that. In those final moments, the desire to survive had become so strong it bordered on madness. He had even regretted reviving his daughter. A single thought had screamed through him over and over.
I should live.
It had been such a fierce instinct to survive that every cell in his body had seemed to be roaring for life, and with it came a suffocating fear of death.
And then, at the exact instant he died, his soul floated free from his body.
Everything changed.
In that moment, the whole world became more beautiful than ever before.
His soul felt as if it had returned to the womb, wrapped in safety and comfort. The sensation was so difficult to describe that Amado could only say this much: every pleasure he had ever experienced in life became trivial beside it.
His mind was quiet.
His spirit was weightless.
It was a level of relaxation so absolute that it felt almost sacred.
Then he found himself in a vast field of whiteness. He could not see anything around him, but he could still see his own corpse below.
He knew that body was dead.
But he felt no horror toward it.
Only joy.
Only peace.
He had even felt a kind of disgust toward the body itself, as if going back to it would be like willingly putting on a rotting shell.
"And when I left my body," Amado said, pausing for a moment as he remembered, "I saw my daughter. She was crying, and then she was being dragged into some kind of black..."
He stopped, brows tightening.
Kenichi naturally understood.
"She was being revived at that time," Kenichi said. "Because her soul was returning to her body, you lost sight of her."
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he thought through the implications.
It really was fascinating.
There seemed to be a huge difference in cognition between souls and living beings. If his guess was correct, then souls of the dead could not directly perceive the souls of the living.
That meant the Pure Land probably existed on an entirely different dimensional plane.
If the world of the living was three dimensional, then the world of souls might be two dimensional, or perhaps even four dimensional. Whatever the case, the two did not overlap normally. One could only perceive the other through special means.
"And when you brought me back with Edo Tensei," Amado went on, "I felt a very powerful pull. It was as if someone had forced that rotten old coat back onto me. That was why it was so uncomfortable. Even now, it still feels unbearable."
He took another sip of tea, though he could not taste it.
He still wanted to drink it anyway, as if the act itself could make his condition feel less miserable.
"That is probably the key reason why the Pure Land has such a strong attraction for souls," Kenichi said with a nod.
Most beings preferred comfort. Souls were no different.
It was like being offered two choices.
The first was to lie in an air conditioned apartment during the hottest part of summer, stretched out on a sofa with food, games, and iced soda within arm's reach.
The second was to march through a burning desert under the noon sun, rationing every last drop of water.
Almost anyone would choose the first option.
The soul seemed to be governed by the same principle.
Compared to the strange comfort of the Pure Land, being dragged back into an Edo Tensei body was like being forced into a thick, soaking wet down coat. Every part of you would want to tear it off immediately.
That also explained a problem Kenichi had noticed long ago with Edo Tensei.
Most people brought back with it wanted to return to the Pure Land as quickly as possible, unless some greater obsession forced them to remain.
During the Fourth Great Ninja War, for example, the revived Kage had stayed in the world of the living in order to battle Obito and Madara.
But that was only because there was something they still had to do.
Otherwise, they would have chosen to go back.
"This is truly bizarre," Amado murmured as he looked at his body. His eyes were full of disdain. "No wonder Akebi always looked so unhappy while trapped in that state. If it were me, I would hate wearing this kind of body all the time too."
"Exactly," Kenichi said simply.
Then he fell silent, deep in thought.
He was thinking about the true meaning of the soul.
In the ninja world, souls undeniably existed. They even had a destination: the Pure Land.
But Kenichi's past research on souls had been extremely limited, almost nonexistent. Souls were simply too hard to study. The only real example he had ever had was Orochimaru.
Orochimaru had already used Living Corpse Reincarnation. His soul had moved into another body, while the original soul of that body seemed to have vanished.
But Kenichi had noticed a problem.
After the transfer, Orochimaru's body had gradually begun to change in subtle ways. The current vessel was growing more feminine by the day. Even Jiraiya had recently written with complete confidence that Orochimaru had actually been a woman all along and had merely used some strange technique to live as a man.
He had sounded so convinced that Kenichi had almost believed him.
He had barely resisted the urge to ask Orochimaru directly whether he had once been a girl.
If he had actually asked, the relationship between master and disciple might have shattered on the spot.
The whole thing would probably have turned into something like: "Amamiya Kenichi vs Orochimaru? The Rift Between Master and Disciple!"
Kishimoto could probably have dragged that out for a month.
Still, it proved one thing.
The body clearly influenced the soul.
But at the same time, the soul also influenced the body.
The two were interconnected.
"I... what is wrong with me?"
A soft, sweet voice interrupted his thoughts.
Kenichi and Amado both turned at once.
Akebi had sat up.
As she did, the blanket covering her slipped down.
Amado reacted with astonishing speed and yanked it back over her. Kenichi pressed his lips together. He had already seen enough. In fact, if he had been just a little less moral and had delayed Amado's revival by a bit longer, Amado might already have been preparing to become a grandfather.
Still, Akebi's figure truly was impressive.
"Akebi! Akebi!" Amado cried.
At the moment, he had no idea he had almost become a grandfather thanks to someone's flexible morals. He was only looking at his daughter with trembling concern.
"Dad?" Akebi asked, blinking. She recognized him immediately. "What's wrong with you?"
Kenichi silently pulled out the experiment log again and continued recording.
This final stage of the experiment was crucial. The most important question of all still remained.
Was Akebi truly alive again?
Amado had tried many clones before, but every one of them had failed. Their personalities had all turned warped and violent.
This was why Kenichi had asked beforehand how he distinguished the original from the copies. Amado's answer had been simple.
There was one question.
And every clone, without exception, always gave more or less the same response.
"Akebi," Amado said, voice shaking, "do you remember that thing Dad gave you when you were little...?"
This was the key.
The easiest way to distinguish the real person from a false replica was often through small memories like this.
Kenichi sat quietly. He already knew what the wrong answer sounded like. Amado had told him before.
Something along the lines of:
"You old geezer, how would I remember what junk you gave me? Stop asking stupid questions or I'll blow you up with your money."
Not the exact wording, but close enough in spirit.
"Hm..." Akebi lowered her eyes and thought carefully. "You gave me a plush teddy bear. I loved it so much... but I accidentally lost it later."
Kenichi raised an eyebrow.
Good.
This was the real Akebi.
At last, there was no need to worry about a clone problem.
Clone related ethics were troublesome enough already. He did not want to add another chapter to that nightmare.
"Akebi... Akebi..." Amado bit his lip so hard it nearly bled. His eyes turned red. His hands would not stop trembling.
This was his daughter.
The real daughter.
Not some hollow shell dragged around by Edo Tensei, but the child he had wanted to bring back for so long.
"Dad... what happened to you...?" Akebi asked softly.
Only now did she notice something was wrong.
His hands were ice cold.
There was not the slightest warmth in them.
Kenichi touched his nose and silently looked away.
The older he got, the less he could bear scenes like this.
.....
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