Kurotsuchi's mind was an absolute mess.
Splash.
She sprinted over to the side and plunged her head straight into a water-filled rain barrel.
The massive lore drop she had just received was way too complicated!
She desperately needed to cool her brain down and clear her head.
"You're seriously telling me Uchiha Madara and my grandfather are love rivals fighting over Granny Chiyo?" Kurotsuchi yanked her head up.
Water streamed down her face, but her expression remained locked in sheer disbelief.
"That's right. My condolences... no, wait. Just let nature take its course." Hashirama nodded with dead-serious sincerity.
"How the hell did it turn out like this..." Kurotsuchi groaned, burying her face in her hands.
Hashirama was just about to offer a few words of comfort when he caught Kurotsuchi muttering to herself.
'How could Uchiha Madara possibly fall for Granny Chiyo? Is it just because Granny Chiyo's name also has 'Chiyo' in it?'
"?"
Hashirama froze in confusion.
He could only stand there and watch as Kurotsuchi wandered off, completely lost in her own bizarre train of thought.
...
Meanwhile, in Sunagakure.
Upon arriving in the village, Ōnoki immediately flexed his authority as the former Tsuchikage, tracking down Gaara to anxiously demand Granny Chiyo's exact location.
The second he secured the coordinates, he blasted straight out the window.
Even Gaara was left stunned by the erratic behavior.
Ōnoki tracked Chiyo down, only to find her completely alone.
That immediately struck him as sketchy after digesting Senju Hashirama's wild story.
Shouldn't Uchiha Madara be clinging to Granny Chiyo 24/7?
"Ōnoki? What the hell are you doing here, you old fool?" Granny Chiyo stared at the short, floating old man with genuine puzzlement.
"Chiyo!" Ōnoki suddenly barked. "Wake up! Don't let lust cloud your judgment! Madara must be plotting something!"
"..."
Chiyo was completely speechless.
Did she really need this fossil to remind her of that?
Had he busted his back flying all the way from Iwagakure just to lecture her?
And what the hell did he mean, lust cloud your judgment?
She was literally just quietly sunbathing! What part of her looked like she was overcome by sheer lust?
'Could this old bastard be coveting my beauty so much that his own filthy mind makes everything look dirty?' she thought.
"Ōnoki, don't tell me you actually think you're the only one who saw through him. You're still as arrogant and foolish as ever." Chiyo let out a cold snort, not even bothering to roll over.
Ōnoki froze.
He slowly drifted down from the sky.
"You mean everything you did was just an act for Madara? You were trying to sniff out his real goal?"
Before Granny Chiyo could even respond, Ōnoki frantically pressed her.
"Then what exactly is Madara's scheme? What the hell is he trying to pull?"
"Why so anxious? I guess the rumors about Uchiha Madara being the boogeyman casting a shadow over your entire life were actually true." Granny Chiyo cracked her eyes open, a sly smirk creeping onto her face.
"I am doing this for the safety of the shinobi world!" Ōnoki stubbornly fired back.
"Fine, fine, the safety of the shinobi world." Granny Chiyo dropped the act. "Uchiha Madara pitched a deal to me. After I use the One's Own Life Reincarnation to revive him, once he recovers his peak strength and snatches back his Rinnegan, he will use that Rinnegan to revive me in return.
He also explicitly mentioned that the Rinnegan's Rinne Tensei can pull off a group resurrection. So while reviving me, he promised to resurrect my son and daughter-in-law as a bonus."
Chiyo didn't bother hiding anything, laying out the exact proposal Uchiha Madara had pitched to her over the last few days.
After all, the Five Great Shinobi Villages were essentially a united front now.
Their true enemies were the Ōtsutsuki clan and any rogue elements threatening global peace.
Spilling the beans to Ōnoki was perfectly fine, the old man wasn't exactly a loose-lipped gossip anyway.
"One's Own Life Reincarnation?" Ōnoki scowled in confusion. "Aren't you a puppeteer? What the hell is that?"
"It's an ultimate medical ninjutsu this old woman originally engineered to revive her son and daughter-in-law. It allows the user to transfer their own life force directly into another person, fully completing a 'resurrection.'
Unfortunately, even though I perfected this forbidden technique and made resurrection a reality, my own life force and chakra reserves just aren't massive enough to pull it off. I also can't revive two people at the exact same time. It strictly operates on a one-life-for-one-life exchange rate.
On top of that, I never managed to track down Sasori before, so I simply never used it. I have absolutely no clue how Madara dug up that information, but that's exactly why he targeted me," Granny Chiyo explained smoothly.
"What? Resurrection? Wait! Don't tell me you're actually considering it!" Ōnoki was thoroughly spooked.
He had only just learned that the Rinnegan could revive the dead from Kurotsuchi, who got the intel straight from Makoto.
As for One's Own Life Reincarnation, he had known absolutely zero about it until this exact second.
He had no idea when this old puppet-playing woman had secretly cooked up such an absurdly broken forbidden jutsu.
No wonder Uchiha Madara locked onto her.
If it were just the One's Own Life Reincarnation, Ōnoki wouldn't have stressed out.
Judging by the current vibe, Granny Chiyo fully knew Uchiha Madara was running a scam and hadn't been swayed by his charm offensive.
Since she wasn't stupid, why would she sacrifice her own life for absolutely no reason just to revive Madara?
But he never expected Uchiha Madara to be this venomously cunning—dangling the ultimate bait of using the Rinnegan to group-revive Granny Chiyo and her dead family!
This 'revive me first, then I'll revive yours later' pitch genuinely terrified Ōnoki, because he feared Granny Chiyo might not be able to resist the massive temptation.
Honestly, if it were him, and Kurotsuchi had tragically died, and a golden ticket to resurrection dangled right in front of his face? He probably wouldn't be able to stop himself from signing Madara's devil's contract either.
"Sigh."
Facing Ōnoki's frantic stare, Granny Chiyo didn't answer directly.
She simply let out a heavy sigh.
That dramatic sigh immediately sent Ōnoki into a total panic.
His brain suddenly sparked with desperate inspiration.
"No, wait! Rinne Tensei with the Rinnegan—I remember Kurotsuchi explicitly mentioning that casting it requires sacrificing the user's own life, right?! Once you revive Madara, there is absolutely no way in hell he's going to sacrifice himself all over again just to revive your family! He deliberately hid that fatal flaw from you! He's playing you!"
"That's exactly right." Granny Chiyo shot Ōnoki a side-eye.
In truth, she had only sighed because she was thinking about Sasori's current... bizarre situation.
If her son and daughter-in-law truly got resurrected, even via Edo Tensei, and saw exactly what Sasori had turned into, it might not exactly be a heartwarming family reunion.
If it were that simple, she would have filed an application with Amegakure ages ago.
At the end of the day, the current Sasori didn't urgently need his parents revived, and she had already gotten used to the weird status quo.
Otherwise, why would she even need to humor Uchiha Madara?
She would still have to help the guy fetch his Rinnegan first!
Wouldn't it be infinitely easier to just cut a direct deal with the leader of the Akatsuki?
However, seeing Ōnoki practically hyperventilating, Granny Chiyo decided to ruthlessly troll him a little more.
"Madara actually didn't hide that little detail. He claimed that even though Rinne Tensei drains a colossal amount of life force and chakra—to the point where even a Senju or Uzumaki would drop dead—as long as he becomes the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki, his vitality will skyrocket enough to survive the cast and avoid the one-for-one death penalty."
"What?!" Ōnoki was completely mind-blown.
Why was this plot getting progressively more insane?
At first, it was just helping Madara revive.
Now it had aggressively escalated into helping Madara become the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki?!
A second Sage of Six Paths? A second Ōtsutsuki Kaguya?!
Just as Ōnoki was reeling in pure shock, his senses suddenly spiked.
Someone was approaching.
The chakra signature was extremely weak. But after locking onto it... it was actually Madara?!
'Damn it! We're going to get caught! I just alerted the snake in the grass!'
Ōnoki's eyes frantically darted left and right.
Gritting his teeth in pure desperation, he leaned forward and aggressively pressed his face right up against Granny Chiyo's!
"?!"
Granny Chiyo had literally just been lying there, peacefully catching some rays.
She never in a million years expected Ōnoki to suddenly pull a stunt like this, and her eyes instantly shot wide open in sheer horror!
----
Mfker this turn from some gayshit joke into an old people romance.... been 400 chapter and we got zero normal romance for once ffs!