A few hours later, with the disguised Kabuto announcing the news as Orochimaru, Sasuke was formally declared his personally acknowledged disciple.
In Orochimaru's absence, Sasuke had full authority to direct and make use of all of the Hidden Sound Village's personnel and resources.
Under the watchful eyes of a crowd filled with varying degrees of reluctant acceptance, envy, and thinly veiled resentment, Sasuke walked back to his assigned room with complete composure.
He knew some of them weren't happy about it. That wasn't a concern.
A good beating and they'd fall in line.
Inside his room, Sasuke closed his eyes, sat cross-legged on the floor, and began quietly sorting through the memories he had taken from Orochimaru.
Because of the risk of Orochimaru leaving hidden contingencies behind, Sasuke had burned his soul into a crystalline state with black flames after their battle rather than absorbing it fully.
As a result, he hadn't gained nearly as much of Orochimaru's actual power as the original timeline's Sasuke had. What he had gained in terms of raw strength was negligible.
But he had preserved every one of Orochimaru's memories intact. Compared to Orochimaru's power, those memories were the real treasure.
Decades of Orochimaru's life played through his mind like a film reel, flickering past in rapid succession.
The first thing he turned to, naturally, was the Impure World Reincarnation.
This S-rank forbidden technique, developed by the Second Hokage Tobirama Senju, was capable of summoning the souls of deceased ninja back from the afterlife and reincarnating them in physical form to fight.
The technique that had defined the course of the Fourth Great Ninja War.
Sasuke sat still for several hours. Then, gradually, he opened his eyes, rose, and formed four seals in sequence: Tiger, Snake, Dog, Dragon. He bit his finger.
After pressing his hand to the floor, a summoning circle materialized in the air, and a coffin slowly rose from the ground.
The Impure World Reincarnation was extraordinarily difficult to master. The disciplines it touched were vast, spanning not only physical techniques but soul binding, summoning, sealing, and more.
Sasuke had examined it when he first obtained the Scroll of Seals, but with the knowledge he'd had at the time, mastering it had seemed essentially out of reach.
After absorbing Orochimaru's memories, all he needed was to work through them carefully.
Orochimaru's knowledge in this area poured through him like clarity breaking through fog, and the key pieces fell into place quickly.
This was one of the most important reasons Sasuke had needed to kill Orochimaru.
Without those memories, there was no way he could have grasped this technique and successfully performed it in half a day.
Beyond the Impure World Reincarnation, Orochimaru's vast knowledge was helping him with a range of other jutsu as well.
Even the Flying Thunder God Technique.
Orochimaru couldn't use the Flying Thunder God himself, but it shared foundational elements with sealing, summoning and reverse summoning, and space-time ninjutsu, all areas Orochimaru had studied deeply.
Where before Sasuke might have needed years to reach genuine proficiency with the Flying Thunder God, he was now confident that at most a year, possibly less, would bring him to fluid mastery.
Creak.
The coffin slowly opened. Inside was nothing but empty space. No body of any kind.
The Impure World Reincarnation required collecting a sample of the target's cells and placing a living person as the vessel for the dead person's soul, before the soul could be drawn from the Pure Land and anchored in the living world.
Sasuke had successfully performed the technique, but he hadn't placed any cells or a sacrifice inside. The coffin was empty.
... Orochimaru's version of the Impure World Reincarnation is only version 1.5. Not the final version.
Sasuke looked at the empty coffin before him and turned it over in his mind.
Orochimaru's version was genuinely an improvement over what was recorded in the Scroll of Seals.
The most obvious enhancements were a significant reduction in chakra consumption for the caster, increased strength in the reincarnated individuals, and stronger control over them.
But it still wasn't at its peak. That distinction belonged to the version Kabuto developed and refined during the Fourth Great Ninja War, which reduced the chakra cost for the caster to essentially nothing, leaving the caster in something like a perpetual motion state.
That was the final version of the Impure World Reincarnation.
Orochimaru's version: not ideal.
Orochimaru-Kabuto's version: much better.
Ahem.
Even if Kabuto's version cut the chakra cost considerably more, the actual power of both versions depended on the same thing: the quality of the vessel used.
Sasuke didn't have White Zetsu cells, but he had Yamato's cells, which had been enhanced by the Hero Water.
After absorbing a portion of the Hero Water, Yamato's cells had taken on a plant-like quality, complete with chloroplasts and photosynthetic bacteria capable of photosynthesis.
Using those enhanced cells to clone a human body for use as a sacrifice should be at least comparable to White Zetsu cells, if not their equal.
The individuals Sasuke most wanted to reincarnate were naturally the First and Second Hokage. Of the two, the Second was the priority right now.
The Second Hokage was the creator and original master of the Flying Thunder God Technique, and a grand master of forbidden techniques.
Using him as a sparring partner would accelerate Sasuke's mastery of the Flying Thunder God and other techniques dramatically.
There was also a somewhat indulgent curiosity in the back of Sasuke's mind.
He wanted to see the expression on Tobirama Senju's face, a man who had harbored deep contempt for the Uchiha throughout his life, when he found himself unable to do anything about having been summoned by an Uchiha.
Unfortunately, the First and Second Hokage's souls had already been sealed into the stomach of the Uzumaki clan's Shinigami by the Third Hokage. The Impure World Reincarnation could not reach them there.
Sasuke found nothing in Orochimaru's memories about a method for undoing the Dead Demon Consuming Seal.
It was presumably something Orochimaru only discovered over the following three years, through continuous research into old records.
The Scroll of Seals contained some documentation of the Uzumaki clan's secret techniques, but nothing about releasing the Dead Demon Consuming Seal. Sasuke wasn't particularly surprised.
In the original timeline, both the Third and Fourth Hokage had looked genuinely shocked when the Dead Demon Consuming Seal was undone, as though they had believed it completely irreversible.
It stood to reason that Kushina, despite being a princess of the Uzumaki clan, had not handed over the full depths of the clan's knowledge to Konoha.
... If I can't summon the First or the Second, the Impure World Reincarnation isn't particularly useful to me right now.
Sasuke murmured quietly. The strongest individuals currently available to Orochimaru for reincarnation were only the Third Kazekage and the Fourth Kazekage.
He didn't think much of either of their combat abilities. Neither would serve as a useful sparring partner.
Lost in quiet thought, staring at the coffin, something moved in Sasuke's mind. The mark at his brow slowly opened, revealing a three-tomoe Sharingan in vivid crimson.
After using the Kotoamatsukami, this eye's power had dropped significantly, reverting from Mangekyou to three-tomoe.
"I find myself looking forward more and more to the day we finally settle things, Uchiha Itachi. Heh heh heh."
The corner of Sasuke's mouth curved slightly, something playful in his gaze.
"When you come face to face with an old friend who once entrusted both the Leaf's future and the Uchiha's future to you... I wonder what your expression will look like."
"I imagine it will be quite something. Interesting. Very interesting."
Sasuke gave a quiet laugh, settled back down on the floor, and returned to sorting through Orochimaru's memories.
A moment later.
"Hmm?"
Sasuke let out a small sound of surprise, a thoughtful look crossing his eyes.
"The Gold and Silver Brothers are from the Hagoromo clan?"
In the original story, the Hagoromo clan had been little more than background detail, mentioned only briefly.
During the Warring States era they had stood against both the Senju and the Uchiha, and were eventually wiped out by the two clans working together.
The Hagoromo clan had taken the Sage of Six Paths' name as their surname, which was a classic form of lineage marking in this world shaped by Japanese culture.
The Kaguya clan, for example, were descendants of the Otsutsuki's princess Kaguya, and took her name as their own.
The Hagoromo clan's crest also bore a notable resemblance to the markings on the Sage of Six Paths' forehead and the back of his robe, a pattern of three ribbon-like lines encircling a full moon.
From this, it could reasonably be inferred that the Hagoromo clan were likely descendants of the Otsutsuki's Hagoromo as well.
Of course, this was inference. But through Orochimaru's memories, Sasuke confirmed it as fact. The Hagoromo clan were indeed descendants of the Otsutsuki.
Because the Gold and Silver Brothers were descendants of the Sage of Six Paths, and their full names were...
Hagoromo Kinkaku and Hagoromo Ginkaku.
Now Sasuke understood why, after the Hidden Cloud's defeat in the First Great Ninja War, the two brothers had made their desperate gamble, acting unilaterally and striking during the peace talks, attacking the Second Raikage and Second Hokage, killing one and severely wounding the other.
Beyond being the warmongers they were, part of it was simply that Konoha, the village Hashirama and Madara had built together, represented to those two brothers the clan that had destroyed their lineage.
"I see. Once this world becomes real, nothing happens without reason. Every event has its roots, every effect its cause."
___
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