Chapter 418: Patients in Konoha Hospital
Kenichi found himself caught in a difficult choice.
Should he develop biological weapons or not?
However, he quickly stopped agonizing over it. No matter how much he thought about it, he currently had no way to create such weapons. In that case, perhaps he could first try to find something suitable, then decide later whether to use it.
Having a weapon and choosing not to use it was one thing.
Having no weapon to use was another.
"But how am I supposed to find that kind of virus or bacteria?"
Kenichi scratched his head.
He had to admit, this question troubled him a little. But soon, he thought of a good place.
A hospital.
Everyone knew that if a person was healthy, and their family was healthy too, then their understanding of illness would usually be very limited. They might only know about common colds and fevers.
Some might even think that not many people got sick, and that a shortage of medical resources was complete nonsense.
But anyone who had been to a hospital would never think that way.
Just as one would go to a gym to find people who liked exercise, or to a bar to find people who liked drinking, if one wanted to find sick people, then naturally, one had to go to a hospital.
Since arriving in the Ninja World, Kenichi had never been sick.
Even now, he had never seen a doctor or visited a hospital as a patient.
But other people certainly got sick.
He only needed to go to a hospital and find the people he was looking for.
As for which hospital should be his first choice, Kenichi had already made up his mind.
"This also lets me avoid meeting Sensei for now. I'm still not sure what Sensei thinks of me."
Kenichi scratched his head.
His teacher was, after all, Hiruzen's disciple, even if he was one of the more "filial" kinds.
But Kenichi did not know whether his own existence had caused any changes. At the very least, his teacher had not shown as much hatred toward Konoha and Hiruzen as before.
That was truly troublesome.
"I hope things go smoothly. If I find it, then…"
Kenichi stretched, then guided the airship toward Konoha.
Konoha Hospital.
This was perhaps the place in all of Konoha that had heard the most confessions and the most desperate prayers.
No other place could compare.
Every day, countless patients and their families rushed into this building. Some wore anxious expressions, while others left with relieved smiles.
Life was passed on here.
Life also faded here.
Kenichi licked his lips as he looked at Konoha Hospital.
He had lived in Konoha for quite some time, but he had almost never visited this place. The only visit that barely counted was when, at his teacher's request, he had taken some materials from Konoha's morgue for research.
So to Kenichi, the morgue was the most familiar part of Konoha Hospital.
Not anywhere else.
But the moment he entered the hospital, the atmosphere made Kenichi feel as if he had returned to his previous life. When he had visited friends in the hospital back then, the atmosphere had been almost exactly the same.
"Hello, is something wrong?" a nurse asked gently.
In any other place, asking that might earn a beating.
But in a hospital, such a question was perfectly normal.
"Where is the intensive care unit?" Kenichi asked with a smile.
The young nurse quickly pointed him toward the location of the intensive care unit. Kenichi thanked her, then followed her directions to the second floor of Konoha Hospital.
The moment he arrived on the second floor, Kenichi clearly sensed that the atmosphere here was completely different from the first floor.
He did not linger.
Instead, he looked into the wards one by one.
The patients here were not in good condition.
Among them, he even saw ninja lying on their beds, emaciated and weak, wearing breathing equipment while connected to monitoring devices.
Kenichi frowned slightly.
Although there were many critically ill patients here, he was neither a doctor nor a nurse, and the beds here did not list the patients' symptoms. He had no way of knowing how to find the targets he needed.
"Hello, are you… looking for someone?"
A somewhat familiar voice sounded.
Kenichi turned his head and saw Shizune.
She stood there holding a medical record book, scrutinizing him carefully.
Kenichi did not panic.
This time, he had borrowed the face of a genin. When he found that genin, the boy had been helping local villagers harvest sweet potatoes.
This was a common mission for genin.
Many ninja who had no hope of becoming chunin would take more missions, save money, and try to exchange it for higher-level ninjutsu.
However, Shizune's appearance was actually a great help to Kenichi.
The Mangekyo Sharingan surfaced in Kenichi's eyes.
Caught completely off guard, Shizune looked straight into his Mangekyo, and her eyes immediately went blank.
The Mangekyo Sharingan was extremely powerful. In the field of genjutsu, it could almost be called unique.
Even jinchuriki could be controlled by the Mangekyo Sharingan, such as the bravely sacrificed Fourth Mizukage, Yagura.
He had been both a Mizukage and a jinchuriki, yet he had still become a puppet before Obito's eyes. If Ao had not possessed the Byakugan and seen through the abnormality in his mind, Yagura might have remained a puppet until the end.
"Tell me, are there any ninja here suffering from incurable diseases?" Kenichi asked gently.
He looked at Shizune.
If he wanted, Shizune could be carrying a child right now, but he was more concerned with his research project.
Romance only slowed down his journey toward the stars.
Moreover, Kenichi also knew that once technology developed to a certain level in the future, the pleasure brought by such things would become minimal. If he wanted, he could constantly interact with different beauties in a virtual space.
It would not affect his physical body.
Only his mind would experience pleasure.
"Yes," Shizune said calmly.
She then led Kenichi to Konoha Hospital's archive room.
As the hospital's vice-director, she naturally had the authority to enter this archive. One could even say that when Tsunade was absent, Shizune was the acting director.
"They're all here."
Shizune placed all the files in front of Kenichi.
There were not many.
A little over three hundred files.
However, many of them belonged to patients who had already died. Among the living cases, only twenty-three ninja were still alive.
Kenichi paid no further attention to Shizune and let her handle her daily work. He picked up the files and began flipping through them one by one.
[Yamashita Nagakawa, chunin, male, fifty-four years old. Unexplained organ failure. According to experimental data, diagnosed with Feolga Syndrome. No available treatment at present. Estimated remaining lifespan: five months. Data under continued observation.]
Kenichi pinched the bridge of his nose.
What in the world was this so-called Feolga Syndrome?
Left with no choice, Kenichi called Shizune back.
If he were researching other things, he would be very interested. But not medicine.
Medicine was an extremely complex discipline.
In his previous life, medical universities specially trained medical students, and even then, most medical students had specialties. Training an all-around doctor was extremely difficult.
Even in the Ninja World, where chakra existed and a ninja's physical fitness and cognitive ability were enhanced, becoming a medical ninja was still incredibly difficult.
"Feolga Syndrome occurs when a patient is infected with the Feolga virus, resulting in organ failure. Chakra scalpels are ineffective against it, and conventional medical ninjutsu is also ineffective. Lady Tsunade has examined it and found no way to completely remove the virus from the body," Shizune explained patiently.
Kenichi raised an eyebrow.
His luck was surprisingly good. The very first patient he saw had met part of his criteria.
"Is it easily contagious? What's the fatality rate?" Kenichi asked again.
There had been many viruses and bacteria in his previous life, some with very high fatality rates.
But why were they not used as biological weapons?
Naturally, because they did not meet the necessary requirements.
High short-term lethality and rapid transmission.
"It is not airborne. It only spreads through bites from animals carrying the Feolga virus. The fatality rate is extremely high, almost one hundred percent," Shizune continued.
Kenichi frowned slightly.
That did not meet his requirements.
He did not need this kind of virus.
It had to be transmitted through bites?
That sounded a little like Biohazard, but the T-virus in Biohazard was airborne, which was how it spread to so many people.
So Kenichi picked up another file and continued reading.
[Bohai Manjo, systemic autoimmune disease…]
"This is an undiagnosed disease. The patient…"
Kenichi shook his head.
This also did not meet his requirements.
No virus could be found inside the patient's body.
Even Tsunade did not know how the patient had fallen ill. All she knew was that the patient's immune system eventually collapsed completely and began actively attacking organs that were normally not detected, such as the eyeballs. At the same time, even the smallest virus could flourish wildly in the patient's body.
In other words, the ninja's body had been turned into a virus culture medium.
The downside was that no one knew when the infection occurred. By the time symptoms appeared, the immune collapse had often already begun.
The only clear sign was unbearable eye pain.
That was when the immune system began attacking the eyeballs.
The human immune system was strange.
Although the eyeball was also an important organ, the immune system normally did not detect it. If the immune system discovered the eye, it would treat the eye as an invading virus or foreign object and attack it.
This situation often happened in patients with damaged eyeballs.
If doctors judged that the damaged eye could not be saved, they often recommended removal. Otherwise, once the body's immune system detected the damaged eyeball, it would attack it, and might also attack the other healthy eye.
Kenichi had not expected such a condition to appear even among ninja.
"Then what about this one?" Kenichi asked patiently.
But the viruses and bacteria recorded here either failed to meet the requirement for a high transmission rate, or took too long between onset and death.
He basically could not find even a single case that perfectly matched his requirements.
This gave Kenichi a headache.
[Hyuga Hanaaki, jonin, female, twenty-seven years old. Chakra abnormality, severe dehydration, multiple organ failure, respiratory system failure, ineffective rehydration, viscous blood. Symptoms consistent with Nanovirus infection. Admitted to intensive care unit for treatment. Estimated remaining lifespan: three days.]
Kenichi raised an eyebrow.
Good heavens.
A jonin from the Hyuga clan?
A twenty-seven-year-old jonin?
She was undoubtedly a genius.
After all, becoming a jonin was not something just anyone could do. That was why there were so few jonin to begin with.
And at twenty-seven, she had already experienced the Ninja World War and survived.
She truly was a genius.
"What is Nanovirus?" Kenichi asked Shizune curiously.
"Nanovirus is a virus Lady Tsunade discovered…"
Shizune continued explaining, acting like an emotionless answering machine.
Kenichi stroked his chin.
This virus matched his requirements quite well.
Rapid onset.
High fatality rate.
He simply did not know whether it was contagious.
"Take me to see her."
Kenichi stood up.
Shizune led him to the patient's room.
It was still on the second floor, but this ward was clearly of a much higher standard. After all, the patient was a ninja of the Hyuga clan, and a jonin at that. Differential treatment was quite normal.
"Is it contagious?" Kenichi asked as he looked at the emaciated Hyuga Hanaaki inside the ward.
"At present, there are no cases proving that it is. The Hyuga clan has not reported any additional infections either," Shizune said, shaking her head.
Kenichi was a little disappointed.
However, this virus was already quite good. He truly did not want to give up on it.
So Kenichi created a Shadow Clone and had it walk inside.
His main body naturally would not go in.
The other party was a patient, and who knew how this thing spread? If he walked in and became infected, that would be far too ridiculous.
While he waited for the Shadow Clone's examination, doctors and nurses occasionally came looking for Shizune.
Kenichi also let Shizune handle her own work while he waited for the Shadow Clone to bring out the disinfected report.
Then he sat to the side with the report in hand, while the Shadow Clone continued examining the patient inside.
[High body temperature. Persistent high fever. Temperature has reached forty-two degrees.]
Kenichi looked at the examination report in his hand and raised an eyebrow.
Forty-two degrees?
At that point, either the person had to go, or the virus had to go.
[Blood is extremely viscous. Body is severely dehydrated. Breathing is abnormally difficult. Intubation required?]
Kenichi fell into thought.
This virus should not have airborne transmission ability.
Otherwise, the Hyuga clan would have been wiped out long ago.
So, bodily fluid transmission?
Kenichi planned to conduct an experiment.
He also planned to take some of her blood clots.
There was no helping it.
Her blood had almost congealed into blood pudding.
.....
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