"Yoru, you and Kushina go capture him. I'll dispatch the Anbu to assist you!"
Hiruzen Sarutobi did not hesitate in the slightest. He directly mobilized his two strongest trump cards.
Gojo Yoru asked, "Hokage-sama, do you suspect that jonin named Hiruko is the one behind the Impure World Reincarnation Technique?"
Before Hiruzen could answer, Yoru began analyzing the situation himself.
"If he really is the mastermind, that means he has both the Second Tsuchikage and the Second Hokage as his trump cards, and he must already have left Flying Thunder God markers outside the village. No matter how many people you send after him, it'll just be a wasted effort."
"And the fact that the mastermind was able to come up with such a near-unsolvable combination technique and battle plan specifically to deal with me means he's a calm, quick-thinking assassin. If we rush out blindly to capture him, we might end up walking right into his trap and losing valuable combat power for nothing."
Hiruzen gradually calmed down and slipped back into the mindset of a politician. He nodded in agreement.
"You make a very good point. We really do need to proceed carefully."
Then Hiruzen looked at the Anbu member still kneeling on one knee and asked, "Have you confirmed what forbidden technique Hiruko stole? Is the Impure World Reincarnation scroll still there? And do the seals show any signs that someone else used chakra to unseal it?"
"Please wait a moment, Hokage-sama—"
The Anbu member did not answer immediately. Instead, he raised a hand and touched the concealed radio earpiece hidden beneath his mask and hair, then reported respectfully, "According to the investigation, only one forbidden scroll is missing from the vault: the incomplete Chimera Technique. The scroll for Impure World Reincarnation was not taken. The chakra on its seal is still intact, and there are no signs that any unsealing technique was used."
Hiruzen let out a quiet sigh of relief, and much of the unease in his heart eased.
From the look of it, the odds of Hiruko being the mastermind behind Impure World Reincarnation were very low.
But the very next second, Hiruzen's heart sank again.
If it wasn't Hiruko, then that meant there was a very high chance it was an outsider.
And considering how badly that mastermind wanted Gojo Yoru dead, the possibility that it was an enemy nation was extremely high.
Could it really be someone from Kumogakure?
And if not, then who?
Danzo?
Hiruzen suddenly felt a splitting headache coming on.
No matter what, Hiruko's situation had to be dealt with first.
Just as Hiruzen was about to speak again, the Anbu member reported once more, "Hokage-sama, Orochimaru-sama, Jiraiya-sama, and Tsunade-sama have already gone to pursue Hiruko."
The tight knot between Hiruzen's brows eased slightly.
"In that case, leave Hiruko to Orochimaru and the others. After all, they were classmates and friends."
Hiruzen also felt a bit of self-reproach.
He had not expected that even he could misjudge someone this badly.
Because Hiruko had a good relationship with the members of Team Sarutobi, and because sensory ninja had all been sent to the battlefield during the Second Great Ninja War, Hiruzen had reassigned Hiruko to guard the forbidden techniques vault.
He never expected it would nearly lead to a disaster.
If Hiruko really was the mastermind behind all this, then Hiruzen himself would have effectively created a great enemy and a huge hidden danger for both Gojo Yoru and Konoha.
Yoru, however, made no move to volunteer to help with the pursuit.
He knew very well who the real mastermind behind the Impure World Reincarnation Technique was. If he hadn't been worried that the same kind of near-unsolvable combo attack might strike again—and if he hadn't wanted to turn the whole of Konoha upside down to wipe out the White Zetsu clones—he wouldn't even have bothered reporting the incident to Hiruzen in the first place.
As for Hiruko, Yoru actually had a fairly favorable impression of the guy, tragic undertones and all.
If he hadn't awakened a space-time bloodline, his own "build" would probably have been to become the ultimate version of Hiruko.
And anyone who could become a movie boss was never some nobody. If possible, Yoru wanted to make arrangements for Hiruko too and bring him under his own command.
That was all the more reason not to get involved personally.
So he changed the subject.
"Hokage-sama, Kushina and I will begin searching the village first. Once this incident is over, hold a jonin meeting and let me search the compounds of the major ninja clans as well."
"I'll be counting on the two of you during this time. If you need anything, just let me know," Hiruzen said with a nod.
Compared to Hiruko, clearing hidden dangers from the village was far more important.
Just as Yoru had said, if Hiruko really was the mastermind, then chasing him was pointless anyway.
And if he wasn't, then Team Sarutobi was more than enough to pursue him. Since Orochimaru and the others had once been his classmates and friends, there was even a chance they might persuade him to turn back.
As for what kind of forbidden technique the Chimera Technique actually was, Hiruzen could not remember off the top of his head.
An incomplete forbidden technique meant it probably wasn't especially powerful. It might even have been nothing more than an unfinished idea.
Hiruko had most likely defected because he feared punishment.
With Hiruzen's permission secured, Gojo Yoru began using intangibility and spatial perception to sweep Konoha for hidden threats.
Unfortunately, his spatial perception still couldn't cover the entirety of Konoha in one go, or this would have been much simpler.
Then again, in the ninja world, very few sensory abilities could cover all of Konoha. The Forest of Death alone required a full ten kilometers just to reach the central tower.
After nearly getting played by Uchiha Madara, Yoru no longer dared underestimate the Asura of the ninja world.
Madara clearly took him very seriously. The fact that he had resorted to such a vicious method proved it. Unless Yoru turned Konoha upside down completely, he truly wouldn't be able to sleep easy.
Who knew whether Madara, unable to deal with him directly, might instead target Kushina and make him experience the pain of loss?
If the Nine-Tails died, it could still eventually revive somewhere in the world. But if Kushina were reduced to an atomic state, even using Nagato's Rinnegan to revive her would be impossible.
So Yoru not only intended to search all of Konoha from top to bottom, but also to prepare for the possibility that Madara would go after the people he treasured.
Over the next few days, Yoru really did detect familiar points of light on quite a few civilians. Those were the distinctive traces of White Zetsu clones parasitizing people through the Spore Technique.
Yoru did not attack the civilians directly. Instead, he reported the information to Hiruzen, then worked together with the Barrier Team and the Sealing Team to imprison those civilians and force the White Zetsu clones out of their bodies.
This time, Yoru didn't give them any chance to turn into plants. The moment they emerged, he used sealing techniques to lock them away.
Unfortunately, these White Zetsu clones had no brains. The Yamanaka clan's mind-reading techniques and genjutsu were completely ineffective against them, making it impossible to extract any useful intelligence.
Yoru wasn't surprised.
The reason he had done this in the first place was simply to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys.
Sure enough, during the next round of his sweep, Yoru no longer sensed any familiar points of light. That meant the White Zetsu clones that had infiltrated Konoha through the Spore Technique had either fled already or were now using impersonation techniques to hide themselves in an even more advanced disguise.
Spatial perception hard-countered the Mayfly Technique and the Spore Technique, but it was helpless against impersonation.
Once he finished clearing out the hidden threats, Yoru planned to use the Spirit Transformation Technique to possess Kushina and help her develop a version of the Mind's Eye of the Kagura that could sense good and evil.
As long as Kushina mastered that version of Mind's Eye of the Kagura, Konoha would become his unshakable home ground, and Madara would have no way of interfering.
Yoru suddenly had a premonition.
The Third Great Ninja War, which would very likely still break out in the future, might well become a game of chess between him and Uchiha Madara.
For the first time in years of smooth victories, with his strength now standing at the summit of the ninja world, Yoru finally felt a trace of pressure again.
But even more than pressure, what he felt was fighting spirit and excitement.
Things were different now.
Back when he was still weak, all he wanted was to lie low and grow stronger in peace.
Now that he had reached the peak of the ninja world, he actually needed pressure to force himself to keep growing.
These past few years of one-sided victories had not brought him much actual growth beyond developing spatial perception and a space-time version of the Spirit Transformation Technique.
Some ideas had remained undeveloped because his space-time chakra reserves and his talent simply weren't enough.
It was nothing like during the Second Great Ninja War, when Hanzo of the Salamander and the pressure created by the exposure of his space-time bloodline had forced him to grow rapidly. In order to deal with Hanzo's Body Flicker and assassination methods, the second enhancement of his talent sharpened his thinking, allowing Yoru to specifically develop things like laser beams and the Chidori line of techniques.
In order to evade assassination attempts, he had come up with the Spirit Transformation Technique, which then led him to the idea of developing spatial perception.
The ninjutsu Yoru had developed either came from inspiration drawn from certain shows in his previous life, or from the pressure of the outside world pushing him to keep identifying his own weaknesses and finding every possible way to make up for them.
Being targeted by a powerful enemy had both downsides and upsides.
The downside was obvious: one careless mistake, and you were dead.
But the upside was that one day, Yoru's twice-enhanced quick thinking might suddenly spark with inspiration, leading him to conceive a powerful new technique and gradually bring it into existence.
More than ever, Yoru found himself yearning for his third evolution to arrive as soon as possible.
Having already experienced the first two, he was now one hundred percent certain that the third evolution would be a massive turning point.
It would be like the jump in cultivation novels from early stage to middle stage, or from middle stage to late-stage great cultivator.
Translated into the ninja world, it would be the difference between Kage level and Super Kage level, or between Super Kage and Six Paths level—a full dimensional gap.
Compared to a full-spectrum increase in talent, an increase in the volume of his space-time chakra almost seemed secondary.
Of course, that was only an illusion. Both were equally important.
Only if both rose together would Yoru have the talent and the energy needed to turn some of his more unbelievable ideas into reality.
Time flew by, and before anyone realized it, the calendar had already turned to March of Konoha Year 42.
Madara's nearly unsolvable combination attack and battle plan had truly scared Kushina badly.
For the first time in her life, the girl had come that close to death.
Rather than continuing to cherish the last carefree days of going on missions, she now had a new sense of purpose. Over the past six months, she had been fighting Kurama nonstop, wrestling Nine-Tails chakra away from him in order to train the good-and-evil sensing version of Mind's Eye of the Kagura.
That, too, was one of the strange benefits of having a powerful enemy.
Over the past few years, Kushina had become extremely swollen with confidence.
In terms of combat power, there were very few people in Konoha besides Gojo Yoru who could stand beside her.
Even looking across all of Uzushiogakure, there had never been many geniuses capable of awakening all three of its unique abilities at once.
With all three abilities awakened, Kushina had virtually no rivals in medical arts, sensory abilities, or sealing techniques.
Being more well-rounded than both regular jonin and elite jonin, Kushina had believed she had no weaknesses left at all.
And yet, despite being this complete and this powerful, she had almost been killed instantly.
That lingering fear and aftershock haunted her for a long time. She repeatedly dreamed of herself being taken out in an instant, waking up over and over from nightmares. Sometimes she could only fall asleep while clinging to Yoru.
If Kurama had not been restrained by the Eight Trigrams Seal—and if Yoru had not always arrived in time to reinforce it—he would already have had many chances to break free.
Yoru also never told Kushina that the one who had tried to assassinate them was not hiding inside Konoha at all, but rather Uchiha Madara lurking somewhere unknown.
With an unknown powerful enemy driving her forward, Kushina finally had the motivation to become stronger and rapidly realize the potential she had to reach Super Kage level.
Once she mastered the good-and-evil sensing version of Mind's Eye of the Kagura, Yoru planned to have her train in Sage Mode at Shikkotsu Forest, then master all five nature transformations, develop all kinds of Rasenshuriken variations, and finally continue drawing in Nine-Tails chakra to see whether, like the Uchiha clan's Mangekyo Sharingan, she could use Kurama's ocean-like chakra reserves to activate a "Kurama Mode" that didn't require forging a bond with Kurama himself—in other words, full Tailed Beast transformation.
Kurama was the most special of the nine tailed beasts.
It wasn't just that his chakra reserves were absurd. Half of Kurama was already on par with the complete Eight-Tails, and in terms of sheer performance, he was arguably even more outrageous.
More importantly, Kurama's complete tailed-beast transformation was different from every other jinchuriki. Others transformed into the physical form of their tailed beast, but Kurama manifested as a golden energy form.
And it was that energy form that gave Yoru inspiration.
Susanoo was the materialization of Yin Release chakra. Kurama's full tailed-beast transformation, on the other hand, was a beast-shaped expression of Kurama's chakra.
So why couldn't a Nine-Tails jinchuriki do what jinchuriki of other tailed beasts did—not by forming a bond with the beast, but by training hard enough to suppress the beast's will with their own and control the tailed beast form using human consciousness?
Wasn't that basically the same principle behind the Uchiha clan's Perfect Susanoo?
If Kushina could reach that level, she would not only be able to pilot a chakra "mecha," she could also fire Tailed Beast Bombs on her own—or even create Sage Art: Five Release Rasenshuriken the size of a Tailed Beast Bomb.
That was the kind of power that could rewrite the map itself, the basic standard of a Super Kage-tier powerhouse.
At that point, even Nagato would no longer be her match.
The Preta Path could absorb techniques, sure—but it still needed time to do it. And during that time, it would be locked in place. Even if it could absorb ninjutsu and release Shinra Tensei at the same time, Kushina would still have more than one way to deal with him.
If Kushina could truly reach that level, her strength would surpass Naruto and Sasuke as they were when fighting Six Paths Obito, placing her infinitely close to the level of Uchiha Madara during the Final Valley battle.
Even among Super Kage-tier fighters, she would stand among the very best.
While Kushina was working hard to grow stronger, Orochimaru—after failing to capture Hiruko—had also found a new line of research aside from space-time ninjutsu.
That new subject was the sealed White Zetsu clones.
Orochimaru found these creatures—so similar to humans yet lacking brains—extremely fascinating.
After studying them for only a few days, he reached a firm conclusion:
The mastermind behind the Impure World Reincarnation Technique absolutely could not be someone from Konoha.
The very existence of these creatures, along with the methods they possessed, placed them on an entirely different level.
If they had been created by someone, then that person was either a brilliant scientist, an unfathomably powerful expert, or perhaps even part of some unknown organization.
The Impure World Reincarnation Technique and these creatures were probably only one part of that person's—or that group's—arsenal.
At the same time, Orochimaru also developed an interest in the Impure World Reincarnation Technique itself, and from Hiruzen, he obtained permission to research forbidden techniques.
Even though the path of fate had changed, Orochimaru still ended up obtaining the Impure World Reincarnation Technique.
Only the method was different.
And so was the treatment.
Yoru himself had not been idle over the past six months, either.
Apart from helping Kushina and Konan grow stronger, he had also been improving his own foundation.
Although his actual power had become difficult to raise further because of the limits of his talent and energy, his fundamentals had already reached the limit of his second evolution over the last few years.
By now, Yoru's attributes were complete across yin, yang, and the five elements, and he had mastered seven nature transformations.
Thanks to his chakra control at the pinnacle of the ninja world, he had trained all five elemental nature transformations to the point where he could use triple-element composite ninjutsu.
The reason he still couldn't perform five-element composite ninjutsu was not a lack of talent, but a lack of chakra quantity.
Beyond triple-element composite techniques, Yoru could now also fuse space-time chakra with certain elemental ninjutsu, rather than limiting himself to the lightning-based Chidori line.
The technique he had used last year to cut through Dust Release: Detachment of the Primitive World was precisely a Wind Release: Wind Cutter enhanced with space-time chakra.
Yoru's slashes were small, but they could sever the katana of a Perfect Susanoo and split apart mountain-cleaving strikes.
Now, half a year later, Yoru had reached the very peak of his bottleneck.
All he lacked was his third evolution, the breakthrough that would raise his ceiling to an entirely new level.
March 20, Konoha Year 42.
Another graduation season had arrived.
All sixth-year students in every ninja village were about to face the first major hurdle of their shinobi lives.
If they cleared it, they would graduate from ninja trainees to real ninja.
If they failed, they would either repeat the year or accept an offer from another department and become a specialized type of ninja. Their future ceiling would then be no higher than Special Jonin, and their chances of ever becoming a fully capable all-round jonin would be next to zero.
Compared to the nervous sixth-years, the elite class geniuses who had applied to graduate early in their third year were full of confidence.
Even Obito Uchiha—who in the original story had been dead last despite belonging to the Uchiha clan—had been affected by the butterfly effect, found the field he was good at, awakened his potential ahead of time, and gained the ability to graduate early.
Every one of the gifted students who had applied for early graduation passed the assessment.
In order to repay Hiruzen Sarutobi for nurturing him, Gojo Yoru officially transitioned into the role of jonin instructor. Besides the already-decided Sarutobi Asuma, he also submitted the names of two other students he had personally chosen to Hiruzen.
As one of Konoha's key pillars, Yoru naturally had the privilege of choosing his own students.
And since Hiruzen wanted him to become Asuma's jonin instructor, he would certainly tolerate some of Yoru's willfulness.
But when Hiruzen saw the names of the other two subordinates Yoru had selected, he suddenly felt both troubled and deeply annoyed.
His arrangements had been thrown into chaos.
Still, he could not refuse Yoru that much face, so he had no choice but to reorganize the teams.
And just like that, Yoru triggered yet another butterfly effect.
Only this time, it was deliberate.
A small bit of mischief from someone who had already reached the top of the ninja world.