Konoha Notes

Chapter 167 Planting Trees
As early as when she took over the village's affairs, Tsunade discovered that there were some accounts in the village's finances with unclear destinations.

Some of the funds were applied for by Orochimaru under the guise of conducting experiments when he was still in the village, and their whereabouts are unknown; others were approved for Root under the names of "intelligence activity expenses" or "special material procurement".

Of course, some results were eventually submitted, but the process was still unclear.

Tsunade had no interest in delving deeper into the things left over from the Third Hokage's era. But things were different now; she needed to find something for Danzo to do.

So, the day after his conversation with Kakashi, several ANBU ninjas escorted several large boxes of sealed documents to Danzo's current residence.

"Advisor Shimura." The head of the Anbu said respectfully, "The Hokage believes you are experienced and familiar with the village's past."

"These are the village's financial records for the past twenty years. There are some points that need clarification, so please check and verify them. Once you have finished compiling them, please report them directly to the Hokage's office."

Danzo stared grimly at the files that nearly filled his office. How could he not understand the problems with these tedious and meaningless documents and the accounting issues?

If the accounts were truly unaccounted for, Hiruzen Sarutobi would have already handed them over to Root to handle. What else could be left?
The commander of the secret service then said, "Given that this information involves village secrets, please complete it on your own."

"We will remain here during your work hours until the mission is completed."
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After isolating the most troublesome and unstable factor in the process of reorganizing Root again, Tsunade officially signed the appointment letter, appointing Hatake Kakashi to be fully responsible for the takeover and reorganization of Root.

It is foreseeable that for a considerable period of time, Kakashi will have to devote his energy to the affairs of Root.

After two months of a fulfilling life of working during the day and studying at night, Xiu Si finally entered the rhythm he had wanted to enter when he first applied for leave.

During this period of intensive study and reflection, he gained a deeper understanding of the nature of chakra.

Chakra is not just a kind of energy; it is also a special information carrier closely connected with life and spirit, a kind of information backup.

This backup is very long-lasting, even surpassing the physical body's demise to some extent. After a powerful ninja dies, their chakra can remain for a long time, even influencing future generations in some form.

Those ninjas who created bloodline limits encoded a specific and stable chakra nature change into their own life information through their own training or development.

Their descendants may inherit this "compressed package" through bloodline, and during the growth process, they can "decompress" and "read" it, and even without systematic learning, they can instinctively master the corresponding way of using power.

This led to the formation of the Bloodline Limit Family.

The Senju clan are descendants of Ashura, who was the second son of the Sage of Six Paths and inherited Hagoromo Otsutsuki's sage body and Yang Release life force.

Therefore, the Wood Release developed by Hashirama Senju may be related to it. That is, what may be related to Wood Release is the life force of the Sage Body or Yang Release.

Continuing along this line of thought: Ashura's power originates from his father, the Sage of Six Paths, who was once the Jinchūriki of the Ten-Tails. And what is the Ten-Tails? It is the origin of chakra, the juvenile form of the Divine Tree that descended to earth.

Therefore, what may be related to Wood Release is the Divine Tree.

So, which part of the Divine Tree is specifically related to this? The Divine Tree can be divided into two parts: the "body" and the "chakra." The body is the Gedo Mazo, but what about the chakra? The chakra was divided into nine parts by the Sage of Six Paths, transforming into the nine tailed beasts. The Gedo Mazo possesses absolute power to suppress the tailed beasts and can absorb their chakra.

Therefore, the ultimate reference point of the Wood Release power system, or rather the deep logic of its power manifestation, is actually a simulation of the characteristics of the Gedo Mazo.
As this deduction gradually became clear in his mind, Shuji himself was somewhat surprised.

In other words, if a user of Wood Release wants to further explore this power and seek a more fundamental and powerful form, the direction they should refer to is the process by which the Gedo Mazo sealed the nine tailed beasts, reassembled its chakra, and transformed into the complete Ten-Tails?
As Shuji wrote this conjecture in his notebook, another absurd thought involuntarily popped into his head: Hashirama Senju had captured all the tailed beasts except for the One-Tailed Beast. If the One-Tailed Beast had not been sealed by Sunagakure at that time, it was he who had taken action.

So, in the end, having gathered Wood Release, the chakra of the nine tailed beasts, and the chakra of Ashura, could Hashirama Senju surpass Ashura and get closer to the Sage of Six Paths, the founder of Shinobi?

Xiu Si shook his head, temporarily setting aside his overly distant and vague conjectures.

He stood up and took out two scrolls. Back last year, during his battle with Iwagakure, he had briefly absorbed and sealed samples of chakra from the Four-Tails and Five-Tails using Wood Release.

Originally, I just wanted to take advantage of this rare opportunity to study the nature of the tailed beasts' chakra.

But if... his guess that the power of Wood Release tends to mimic the characteristics of the Gedo Mazo is somewhat correct, then perhaps an interesting experiment could be tried.

He encouraged a Wood Release tree, imbued with life force, to grow continuously. During this process, he carefully channeled the chakra of the Tailed Beasts into it, while simultaneously controlling the inherent digestive properties of Wood Release to prevent the tree from immediately assimilating and absorbing the foreign chakra.

So what kind of effect will it ultimately produce?
Xiu Si didn't know, but he felt that at the moment when his development of Wood Release was temporarily stuck at a bottleneck, and Sage Mode training required a lot of time and effort, it was not unreasonable to make such a small-scale attempt.

If there are any unexpected gains, that would be good. If not, it proves that my conjecture about Wood Release was wrong, and there is no loss.

This is itself part of intelligence gathering.

So, for the rest of the fifty-fifth year of Konoha, aside from being occasionally pulled into the Hokage's office by Tsunade to do some work, and occasionally, when he felt restless, he would take Anko and temporarily drag one or two teammates out of the village to carry out some not-too-complex missions...

Xiu Si spends most of his time and energy in the woods behind his old house in the western suburbs, conducting tree-planting experiments.

The ninja world was unusually quiet in the second half of the year. Onoki completely stopped his operations in the west, and Sunagakure received supplies from Konoha. After gaining some breathing room, Sunagakure seized the rare opportunity to recuperate.

After signing a peace treaty with Konoha, Kirigakure completely disappeared.

Only Kumogakure (Hidden Cloud Village) is enthusiastically and energetically preparing for the Chunin Exams scheduled for next March, actively lobbying and inviting more ninja villages to participate in this grand event, intending to expand its influence.

Time slipped by quietly. One day, when Shuji looked up from his engrossed research and noticed the newly sprouted buds on the trees beside the old house, he suddenly realized—

The year 56 of Konoha had quietly arrived without anyone noticing.

(End of this chapter)