Zombie Sage in Naruto

Chapter 10, First Rank B Mission

"Lord Morino, I have completed my autopsy for today. The test reports have been sorted and sealed. If there's nothing else, I'll go to the memorial stone and find a place to bury the body."

Kaede Tsukasa grabbed an umbrella and went out.

A light rain began to fall from the night sky. Kaedeji, carrying a lantern, walked through the memorial forest and stopped at an open space at the very edge.

He picked up the carving knife and carved an unfamiliar name on the tombstone, and casually added the lie that he had "killed a Chunin from Iwagakure".

The sound of the blade scraping against the stone tablet was like fingernails scratching a coffin lid.

Today, he personally stitched up this corpse, and the fatal wound on the skull was clearly from a kunai from Konoha.

This is one of the daily tasks performed by the Corpse Disposal Department: the competent authority, the Intelligence and Interrogation Department, will issue orders for subordinate departments such as the Corpse Disposal Department, the Intelligence Collection Department, and the Prison Management Department to bury unidentifiable and mangled corpses.

For every additional name added to the list of the dead, the daimyo of the Land of Fire would allocate one more cent in compensation, and this extra funding would ultimately be used to advance human experimentation projects.

In the later stages of the war, the economic pressure was enormous, and it was impossible to rely entirely on Konoha's own economy to support the war. Konoha Village was essentially a super-large military region of the Land of Fire. If a long-term war were to be fought, it would require numerous nobles and lords from the entire Land of Fire to lead all the towns and villages to provide financial support to Konoha.

In this situation, it is not easy to pry some extra research funding out of the Land of Fire's finances, especially for projects that do not have a direct benefit to the war, which require special means.

This is the will of the village, and it must be carried out.

The rotten soil in the cemetery swelled from the rain, and Kaedeji, having finished his work, dragged the corpse of a Kumogakure genin into his personal office.

In this small organization with only 5 people, there are advantages to having fewer people. Kaede Tsukasa always has ample space to develop his own ideas, and his other colleagues don't say much—they all deal with corpses and do a lot of shady work that goes against the righteous and glorious Will of Fire. They are more tolerant of the special hobbies of individual colleagues.

"On October 25th, Kaede Tsukasa practiced the art of the dead soul again, and no contact between him and the priestess has been detected so far."

Morino Isuke glanced up, silently made a note, and continued to bury himself in the corpse in his hands. Although he didn't like this job either, as a ninja, he didn't have the right to choose; he only had the right to accept and carry out missions.

……

A deep blue chakra seeped into the corpse's meridians through Kaedeji's fingertips, causing the dead man's eyeballs to bulge in the darkness and his rotting throat to emit a hoarse roar.

"The thirty-seventh controlled experiment this month: a genin who had been dead for more than forty-eight hours could only endure fifteen minutes of high-intensity physical activity before suffering a lumbar spine fracture; a chunin from Iwagakure who had been dead for no more than forty-eight hours was able to use most of the ninjutsu he had mastered in life, although there were instances where finger bones would fly off when forming hand seals..."

What interests Kaede Tsukasa the most is the corpse of a Jonin from Sunagakure—a zombie puppeteer whose fingers can even create chakra threads.

"Based on my experience in the corpse transport team and the morgue, the best window for transformation is the ten minutes before brain death. Such zombies almost perfectly replicate their strength in life, and for a certain period of time, they can unleash even greater power than before. However, it requires refining chakra at any cost, which means that the body will deteriorate at an astonishing rate, basically rendering them useless after one battle." This isn't a waste, though. Before they become useless, they can use a decay explosion to create additional damage, which can be considered making use of waste.

Kaede Tsukasa drew a curve in his experimental log, and a strange spiderweb-like pattern appeared on the lungs of the Sand Village zombie.

He casually slit the zombie's throat, and the moment black blood gushed out, the rotting vocal cords suddenly trembled and broke completely, no longer able to utter the instinctive roar. This corpse was a Jonin-level puppeteer in life, and still retained 40% of its strength.

The only thing that made Kaede Tsukasa regretful was that the first Jonin he controlled was actually a puppeteer, and he didn't have enough puppets to supply the zombie.

Perhaps some cheap, low-level ninja zombies could be used as puppets for this high-level ninja zombie? Using zombies to fight... perhaps it could also be seen as a kind of ninjutsu he developed, Kaede Tsukasa thought.

The door swung open with a bang, and the distinctive smell of blood interrupted my thoughts.

Two Root ninjas burst through the door and rushed into the corpse disposal area. A young ninja, his body covered in purplish-black blood, was convulsing on a stretcher, black blood seeping from his seven orifices and accumulating into viscous puddles on the metal table.

Kaede glanced at him; he recognized the man.

Flying bamboo dragonfly.

"Can't be saved."

Morino Isuke gave it a quick check and shook his head: "We've already ended the war with Amegakure, so this must be Sunagakure's poison, right? Its internal organs have been completely corrupted. This kind of guy should have been dealt with long ago. Why was it sent to me while it was still alive?"

A Root ninja ripped off his blood-stained gloves and threw them on the ground to eliminate any possibility of him being contaminated with the poison: "The medical ninjas at the hospital have been trying to save him for two days, but they still can't. In order to save medical resources, they have actually given up on treatment. Lady Tsunade followed Lady Kato Dan on a mission outside the village and couldn't analyze the poison, so Lady Aburame Ryoma ordered us to bring him here."

"I can't save them either."

"I'm not asking you to save him. You need to dissect his body while he's still alive to observe the changes in his organs and write an analysis report on this toxin, as detailed as possible! These reports will eventually be submitted to Lady Tsunade as one of her reference materials for cracking the Sand Village's poison."

Another Root ninja spoke coldly, his eyes, devoid of any emotion beneath his mask, filled with ruthlessness: "This is a B-rank mission. If you succeed, it will add a new mark to your resume. But if this mission is leaked, you will become the very missions we need to complete."

Morino Isuke frowned, but nodded nonetheless: "I know that very well. No one who can enter the morgue is a fool, and certainly no one is a talkative idiot. Everyone here knows their fate..."

Moreover, dissecting and analyzing living ninjas from the same village would inevitably cause a huge uproar and severely damage the morale of the ninjas on the front lines if it were exposed.

Morino Isuke looked at the two Root ninjas in front of him, then looked down at the young ninja struggling in pain. In the end, he severed his rare empathy and ordered the "diagnosis" to begin.

(End of this chapter)