Chương 130: The Secret Experiments.

Looking at a stunned Kakashi and Tsunade, Haruto was satisfied. After a while of letting them digest the information Haruto quickly went back into business mode since killing Danzo wasn't his problem. There were adults for this sort of thing, why should he have to bear all the burden, he'd done all he could after all.

In fact no one had done more than him in this scenario, from helping people bypass the cursed tongue eradication seal, to creating the scenario for the rebellion by doing research, to informing the rebel faction of his one weakness/advantage. Haruto had done everything.

'I'm probably the main contributor for Danzo's downfall in this situation and the poor bastard doesn't even know.' So Haruto asked Kakashi his question directly, "Can you tell me where the ROOT headquarters are? I want to go see the Hashirama Cell experiments in person. If I'm successful I can even tell you guys the rough number of shinobi who've been transformed using wood release until now, the number you guys will have to fight in the rebellion."

Kakashi thought about it for a second and nodded, that seemed like a fair deal for an information someone as skilled as the person before them could get nearly anywhere. So Kakashi revealed the location.

"Go past the Hokage Rock mountain range, behind it you'll arrive at the valley that ROOT is presently using for their Hashirama Cell Transplant experiments. They're located in the third mountain from the right while you face the village."

"Thank you." Haruto responded before turning to Tsunade, "Catch your body gurl."

"Wha- Oh!! Time you give back my body!!! Next time it won't be so easy to steal!! I promise you that!!!" Tsunade shouted as she returned to her body and Haruto floated away back home. Haruto slept peacefully after the deal was made. Tsunade had promised him that she'd let him borrow Hashirama for a trial run and that was enough.

The next day was as usual, Haruto first went to the training grounds before going to the Research and Development department just to show his face to Arakawa and keep his own tabs on the rebellion by listening to Arakawa's unprovoked invitations to join it, before training under Daichi in the Scabbing Jutsu. The scabbing jutsu was nearly done.

Just another day or two of making sure that Haruto was perfectly proficient as a professional medical shinobi and Daichi decided he would start teaching Haruto the Suture jutsu. After all that Haruto trained in training ground seven for a while before returning home. At home Haruto practiced the suture jutsu while looking at the memories of the clone he'd split in the morning to perform a different task.

Today he had the clone stay at home to study the Impure World Reincarnation jutsu, after all Orochimaru was probably still inside the Forest of Death, so researching Hiruko's body modifications would have to wait.

'I see…' Haruto thought to himself, 'So the wondrous jutsu to resurrect the dead is a sham…'

'It doesn't directly use the soul vessel of the summoned person directly, but it destroys the sacrifice's vessel and then reforms it in a very specific way such that it forms a shell around the soul vessel of the summoned soul. This has the advantage of shielding the summoned soul from the effects of the pull of the underworld, to keep it around for longer until the jutsu ends.'

'The better the quality of the soul vessel of the sacrificed container, the easier it is to retain the summoned soul.' Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

'It also has another ace up its sleeve, that is, it converts the sacrificed soul's lifespan into chakra for the summoned soul, giving the impression of infinite chakra… something to look into for my future chakra expansion experiments… although I won't use someone's lifespan for my own chakra since just thinking of that makes me nauseous… it'll be helpful to at least understand the principles.'

'So for Orochimaru, he'll have to kill a present Kage and use him as a sacrifice for summoning a more powerful kage to steal their soul container instead…'

'I wonder which Kage level Shinobi he'll kill this time around…'

'Rasa?'

'Poor guy, catching strays in all timelines.'

'The Impure World Reincarnation Jutsu is also more like a contract to summon the dead and bind them to a body… with who the contract is no one knows… but according to Orochimaru's notes it belongs to the gates of hell.'

'The gates of hell are the ones that Hashirama, Tobirama and Orochimaru can all summon. The Legendary Triple or Quintuple Rashomon.'

'Where did they get a summoning scroll for that? Orochimaru had an answer for that too. Apparently to the North of Konoha was a land called the land of demons where a priestess who handles the seal on the demon Moryo had donated the summoning scroll to Tobirama. He had ventured into the holy land of the Rashomon to bargain with a deity residing there to get permission to summon souls from past the gates of hell.'

'That's quite shocking, isn't it? Either hell is the place all shinobi go for the killings they commit or pure land is hell and the deity of pure land is Hagoromo. Either way the information is a great revelation to the shinobi world.'

'Has Orochimaru gone to hell then?' Megumin asked after listening to the story Haruto had summarised for them from the scroll. Haruto shrugged, 'He tried but was kicked out for some reason… if he can't even go into hell, I don't know what place he can go.' Haruto finally went to sleep after a while before separating from his body once again. Today his goal was different. Today he wanted to visit the ROOT Hashirama experiment laboratories.

Haruto did as Kakashi told him, floated out into the darkness of the night before floating over the Hokage rock mountain range and counting the mountains before landing on the third mountain in the range.

"Where's the laboratory now…" Haruto mumbled since he couldn't find anything out of the ordinary on the mountain range. It wasn't until in the middle of the night when a group of researchers came out for a smoke break that Haruto noticed the entrance behind a few thick trees and slipped right in without triggering any traps or alarms simply because he was a soul.

"I wonder what Hashirama has to say about people growing his faces on their bodies…" Haruto mumbled out loud for his 'other' audience. Haruto floated through the eerie halls of the laboratories, trying to figure out where the Hashirama cell experiments were being conducted since every room he'd peeked at till now only contained prison cells, no doubt for the humans they'd be using as test subjects.

'Are those kids?' Megumin suddenly asked.

'Huh? Where?'

'There… behind you… there are three masked shinobi standing guard around their cell.' Megumin helpfully pointed out. And as Haruto turned to look his stomach twisted into knots seeing about twenty kids in the place. There were kids as young as four years old in there.

'I'll come back to that later… once I'm done with looking at the experiments themselves.' Megumin nodded, although her little fist had clenched tightly around her staff already.

'I assigned you a mission Haruto, check it when you're free.'

'Alright.' Haruto nodded, having a decent idea about what the mission was going to be about, but first he decided to see what he'd truly come here for, the experiments. After some more searching, Haruto arrived at the large three storey pristine lab room that was filled to the brim with patient beds and experimental subjects. The sight there was harrowing to say the least. The lab room had prison cells on the second and third floors. Only it wasn't to keep convicts contained or keep animals contained.

They were built to keep mad people contained. People who were screaming and fidgeting all over the place as if they couldn't stand themselves living in their own skin. Haruto floated closer to one of the nearer cells and spotted a man who was scribbling gibberish on the walls using the blood leaking from his bashed in head. Haruto quietly placed his hand above the man's soul vessel and immediately understood the problem.

"The man's soul vessel is being forced to accommodate more energy than its potential… so all he can do is be in a state of constant soul rending pain that is making him go mad."

'Can he be saved?' Edward asked softly. The experiments reminded him too much of the chimera experiments back home. Haruto nodded decisively.

"They definitely can… all that's needed to be done is to crack their soul vessels and the energy from the Hashirama cells that's filled their soul vessels that forced it to expand will escape and stabilize their mind once again… they won't be able to use Hashirama's wood release or even their own chakra since it'll be leaking all the time, but they will definitely be able to at least live as normal people once again. They're lifespan might be affected too… but if done correctly it shouldn't be by much."

Then Edward said softly.

'I issued you a mission.' Haruto said nothing, simply moving onto the next cell as he began observing everyone in there one by one.